The origins and definition of the word ‘Americanitis’ are opaque at best. It is generally believed to have appeared in medical journals of the late nineteenth century, describing

a particular nervous ailment found in the inhabitants of the United States of America. Thought to cause disease, heart attack, nervous exhaustion, and even insanity, Americanitis was seen as a serious threat to the American public. In fact, in 1925, Time Magazine reported that Americanitis was responsible for claiming up to 240,000—white—lives a year.1 Nevertheless, with the passing of the Great Depression, its position as a legitimate disease faded in the public eye. Now virtually forgotten, I wish to resurrect it, and propose that it be used to describe a disease that truly does claim lives: white supremacy.

It’s the charm of Bavaria, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, reads the tagline on the official website of the town of Helen, Georgia. In contrast to the bustle of Atlanta about a hundred miles southward, the bucolic mountains surrounding Helen are home to some of the Southeast’s most beautiful national forests. At dawn, their valleys, carved over millennia by the Chattahoochee River, are often covered in a heavy mist. A cluster of exaggerated Fachwerk structures, appearing like a gingerbread village, peeks above this mist: the towers and spires of the town of Helen. As you drive into Helen from Atlanta, you pass the Nacoochee Mound, an ancient Native American burial mound topped with an ornate nineteenth-century gazebo.