“Personally, I’m scared,” she says, referring to the election results. “They’re flying Confederate flags, calling you ugly things. They’re very comfortable with that now; either way it’s not going to go well.”

Terror of scarcity in a rural economy that’s never recovered from the 2008 recession has been accompanied by a surge of white supremacist organizing by Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County [ACTBAC], a so-called Southern heritage group.

A countervailing progressive force might have pointed to more rational bases for the county’s economic deterioration such as the legislature’s tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations foisted on the state by its Republican super-majority. They opted for the “trickle down” approach rather than pursuing Medicaid expansion, a living wage and investment in broadband and transportation options to connect rural workers to jobs.

Read the article at The Guardian