I beg to differ. I was brought up the 1960s rural South, and this is precisely "the religious right we thought we knew". I know these people, I am intimate with them, I know how they think and how they see the world. Take my word for it, they are no damn good.

My experience with it as a young man was primarily about their attitude to science, particularly the Evolution/Creationism issue, but the connections with nationalism, racism, nativism, militarism, misogyny, capitalism and fascism were as clear and obvious to me back then as they are to me now. American religious fundamentalism may have its origins in colonial Puritanism, but its final form is a product of slavery and Jim Crow. Th correlation is undeniable. There's not much difference between burning witches and lynching Negroes.

The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They've always been that way. There is nothing new or novel about this movement. Like violence, they're as American as cherry pie.