The Kansas City Star’s Judy Thomas wrote this week about the death of Leonard Zeskind, a Kansas Citian committed to researching and uncovering the many tendrils of white nationalism in the U.S. His landmark book on the project was one of hundreds recently purged from the library at the U.S. Naval Academy by the reckless administration, Judy reported. In 2009, I wrote about the book upon its release, and reading about it again, in this fraught moment of authoritarian and right-wing fervor, speaks to its utter timeliness and timelessness. In visits with Zeskind at his office at the time, a labyrinthine lair lined with file cabinets, he displayed both a sly sense of humor and utter seriousness about his work. In one moment, he beseeched me to aim a bottle of lubricant into his eyes. That was a first in my newspaper career. The story below first appeared on page 1 of The Kansas City Star on May 18, 2009.