About those Proud Boys in kilts

[Hekate]

60. We had a wave of settlers who were Scots-Irish in the 1700s

They were the foundational white ethnic group of the Appalachians, and then of the working class South and Ohio Valley. Protestant, very Protestant, but never WASPS — quite erroneously lumped in with them, according to Jim Webb. Fierce fighters for thousands of years. Can hold a grudge for generations (see: The Troubles. See also: Hatfields and McCoys). Heirs to a ferocious honor-culture.

How did the Scots end up in Northern Ireland? Short version: the British formed the Ulster Plantation, 1609, by seizing and colonizing the vast area most resistant to British rule. No one forgets a wrong, ever.

My mother did 5 books of genealogy in her life, and was usually able to eventually trace family lines “across the water” (i.e. the Atlantic). Not my dad’s family name — that petered out in 1775 in Boston. 1775 would have put James Cassidy close to the end of the Scots-Irish migration, I have since discovered, so that might be a clue. The identifiable Irish, the Mulloolys, O’Haras, and the rest, were the Catholics.

I recommend —always— James Webb’s “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.” The man is a superb storyteller, and this is a much better book than “Hillbilly Elegy” : deeper, richer, more fully realized. There’s much to know and consider beyond poverty and dysfunction : presidents, military from top to bottom, so much of what we take for granted in American history and culture. He doesn’t skip over the sad and bad parts, as they were part of the shaping of America.

Second book, or one chapter of it: “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, Chapter 6 —Harlan, Kentucky: ‘Die like a man, like your brother did!’ Gladwell is the one who pegged the mindset as “a virulent form of honor culture.” And there we will find a clue to the curdled remnants who form the Proud Boys and their ilk.

But if you only read one book, make it Jim Webb’s. I learned an immense amount about a region that was alien to me (my ties are to California and Hawai’i) and about a culture (not the Proud Boys, not the Klan) that so often was right before my eyes.

POSTSCRIPT: I see a number of posters objecting to the term “hillbilly.” Please recognize it has made a comeback due to J.D. Vance’s 2016 “Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis,” which is about his own family.