I grew up in Mississippi. The attitudes exhibited by the current crop of white nationalists were always there. I went to high school with the progeny of Kluckers and American Nazi Party members. Sure, there weren't many of them, but they were pretty open with sentiments that many tried to whitewash and cover up.
It's still an us-against-them thing, even today. I related a few weeks ago about my conversation (during the settling of my Dad's estate) with a process server who lived in a predominately white county (Rankin). He was pretty emphatic that they were Republicans but you don't want to deal with the Democrats in Hinds Co. I lived amongst them for the 1st 28 years of my life, and I knew damn well what his code words were talking about.
There has been a racial resentment among white Southerners since the end of the Civil War. Reconstruction brought equality and rights to freed slaves, but the deal was made the "heal" the country, when Reconstruction came to an end, and a similar feudal arrangement was imposed again. Rights to vote, own property, etc were taken away.
And politicians down South ever since have known and exploited this resentment. Goldwater '64, Nixon's "Southern Strategy", Reagan announced his 1980 presidential campaign at the Neshoba Co. fair in Philadelphia, MS....site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964.....all the way to Willie Horton, and on and on.
LBJ most famously said: "[FONT="]If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."[/FONT]