America has always conceived of itself as a democracy. This has obscured the fact that a variety of different regimes, of competing social and political orders, of incompatible visions of what the country should be, have existed side by side throughout the nation’s history.

A hierarchical ethno-state dominated by white Christians or a pluralistic democracy with sincere egalitarian aspirations? That conflict was not resolved in 1776. It wasn’t settled in 1865. And unfortunately, the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t usher in democratic consensus either.

According to the dominant mainstream narrative, the civil rights legislation took the question of whether or not America was supposed to be a pluralistic democracy off the table: The nation proceeded on the basis of a democratic consensus, confining those who rejected it to an existence on the fringes.

But if the stories we tell about the past could not have plausibly led to the present we are experiencing, we have a problem. This is one of those cases: In order to get from that tale to where we are now, one would have to conceptualize Trumpism as an aberration, an accidental departure.

A much more plausible interpretation is that America did not reach a consensus about what this nation should be in the 1960s. Instead, the forces who rejected the vision of egalitarian pluralism have engaged in a comprehensive counter-mobilization by movement conservatism.

The Civil Rights Act *not* as the culmination of noble egalitarian ambitions but as a fateful turn in the wrong direction: That is the defining position on today’s political Right far beyond the rabid MAGA base. On January 20, those who explicitly reject the creedal or civic national identity came to power.

The Trumpist regime’s core project is fueled by a very old ethno-nationalist vision: Redefine citizenship, redraw the boundaries of who gets to belong, roll back the post-1960s civil rights regime, nullify the very foundations of pluralistic democracy rooted in the Reconstruction amendments.

The overarching goal is to restore white male domination in all spheres of life and recenter the social and political order around strict hierarchies of race, gender, religion and wealth - as opposed to equality and egalitarian principles.