Writing in 1983, with what feels like a touching level of confidence from our vantage point, historian Peter H. Amman noted that “because in retrospect we know that fascism never took in the United States, we are likely to overlook aspects of the American experience that nurtured what might well be described as protofascist proclivities”. He noted a “hardy nativist tradition” — say, the American Party, the Ku Klux Klan, or the demagogue broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin — which shared some but not all the characteristics associated with fascism.