In a Vox piece called “White Riot,” Zack Beauchamp recently laid out his case that the rise of Trump and the European far right is rooted in longstanding racist and xenophobic tendencies in the electorate. This orientation was activated by a sense of lost power and prestige in an era of mass immigration and a generally cosmopolitan and pluralist elite.

Beauchamp’s argument is interesting, and in several instances he brings forward useful evidence about the causes of far-right para-politics and political violence. But it is also historically naïve.

The equivalent case was made, famously, by center-right historians about the rise of fascism in the first instance, for which they blamed the long durée of German anti-Semitism and anti-modernism. That argument has been correctly interpreted since then as a bid to relieve the right wing of the political establishment from blame for welcoming nihilistic elements into formal politics and ultimately ushering them to the apex of power as a cynical means of serving its own interests.