To understand the terror attack last week, it isn’t necessary to turn Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy to find a predecessor or understand what happened. Just as easily one can go back into our own history. Following the Civil War, Southern Redeemers — bloody counter revolutionists — employed “White Terror” to violently overthrow the democratically constructed and multi-racial Reconstruction governments in the South and proceeded to install a new, whites only political regime throughout the South. It rested on terror, coercion, and the super exploitation of Black people who were stripped of any rights and forced to live in constant fear. It was the U.S. variant of fascism, long before fascism as a word and regime was part of the world’s lexicon and experience.