They believe cities are taking advantage of them, because the Republican Party has for decades been telling them we are real Americans while they who live in urban centers are atheist, criminal, lazy, parasitic, or even diseased. Meanwhile, “real Americans” are pure, hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying and virtuous. “We” are the makers in other words. “They” are the takers. The more very smart people seek an empirical basis for fictive fascist thinking, the more they actually legitimize fascist politics.

—John Stoehr, in “The Fascist Mind Is Dumb”