For decades, academic and popular histories have treated political violence as a phenomenon defined largely by its distance from the naturally occurring liberal center. “The rise of the right” is cast in apocalyptic terms — more Darth Vader than ordinary politics, its actors, many of whom bear little resemblance to traditional conservatism, depicted as aberrations: dangerous, irrational, and fundamentally alien to the democratic order, operating in secret and speaking in code to thwart liberal heroes.