On November 3, the day before the Iran hostage crisis overtook headlines, a group of white supremacists attacked an antiracism event organized by members of the Communist Workers’ Party in Greensboro, North Carolina. Four white men and a black woman were shot and killed. The perpetrators were acquitted in both state and federal court. Among them were neo-Nazis and Klan members who found common cause in their opposition to liberal politics—“distinctions among white power factions melted away,” writes historian Kathleen Belew, and “anti-communism was used as an alibi for racism.”18 The alibi
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