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Jan 2, 2019 • 74 tweets • 23 min read
1. This article, which identified 2018 as the year of the “history thread” (and in which I was honored to be included), inspired me to look back at the many threads I produced this year and create this “thread of threads.”
2. These threads draw upon my reading and training as an American historian, but they also draw on my life history as someone who grew up middle-class in a small town in what is now reddest central Pennsylvania.
3. Most of them were written quickly, and generally in response to something I had read that day or the previous day and about which I had some g*d damn thoughts.
4. My imagined audience were my parents and their friends back in central PA...intelligent, kind, and thoughtful people who didn’t have the luxury of a grad school education and a career that involved reading tons of books about American history.
5. My goal was to contextualize the present as best I could, to connect dots in ways that made sense to me and hopefully others. So FWIW, here is a thread compiling the (far too many) threads I produced in 2018 loosely organized by theme.
6. They comprise a record of one American historian trying to make sense of this bizarrely historical year in real time. A bit like Harbottle Dorr perhaps. masshist.org/dorr/
7. Hopefully not like Victor Klemperer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Kl…
8. Here’s the thread that’s mentioned in the Salon article. It was motivated by Steven Miller’s hypocrisy...his ancestors, like mine, would have perished in the Holocaust had immigration policies like his been in place at the turn of the century.
9. One theme that preoccupied me this year was the history & future of conservatism. This is the thread that garnered the most attention. I hope to soon write more on the historical relationship between Trumpism, Bushism, Reaganism, and Goldwaterism.
10. My first book was about politics, the media, and democracy in the 1790s, and I’ve been fascinated by that dynamic in our present as well.
11. Several threads explored the central (though shifting) role that racism has played in the history of conservatism, like this thread on the varieties of GOP racism from Goldwater to Trump.
12. I also found myself meditating on Americans’ undying love of conspiracy theories. Like this thread on QAnon and the history of conspiracy theories in the US.
13. I’ve tried to make sense of the resurgent far right and its relationship to the more toxic forms of nationalism developing around the world and within the GOP.
14. As a historian who’s lived through 50 years of US History, I’ve also been struck by the uniquely febrile historical moment we’re living through.
15. I’ve attempted to find historical precedents/antecedents for Trump, while also noting how much of a departure he is from the US political tradition--like this thread on Trumpism as a rejection of the Lincolnian tradition of “Abolition Democracy.”
16. I’m really proud of this one, though I’ll admit it’s super-nerdy. It’s Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, translated into Trump-ese.
17. Here is a bibliographical thread with links to many of the key works on the history of American conservatism that inform my understanding of that tradition.
18. On the distinctive variety of “ironic” white supremacy “with a friendly face” that is both a departure from and a continuation of the history of racism within the conservative movement.
19. On the willful ignorance (or myth of American innocence) that undergirded the “color blind,” small government conservatism of Reagan Republicanism.
20. On the cynical, racist calculations that lay behind the @gop approach to immigration policy in the Trump era.
21. A thread on how the TV of the 1970s (on which my generation was weaned) inoculated me from ever thinking that the American working class was white. But it’s understandable why folks shaped by post-1980 TV might think that.
22. Demographics are not destiny in the realm of politics. But demographics PLUS Trump’s doubling down on angry conservative identity politics make for some rough electoral sledding ahead for the GOP.
23. White identity media and white identity politics: How Fox News’s racist con both reflects and shapes its audience’s worldview.
24. Sarah Palin is a big part of the story of how the GOP came to double down on white identity politics. Many people who’ve lamented Trumpism (McCain and Bill Kristol, to just name two) were responsible for Palin-izing the GOP. We mustn’t forget that.
25. Racism has been a feature, not a bug, in the history of American conservatism from Goldwater to Trump, and it’s not only white conservatives who’ve refused to grapple with that truth.
26. On conservatism’s “white nationalism” problem...and why radical rightists are often just considered “super patriots” while left of center folks are treated like existential enemies to freedom.
27. Trump’s unique lack of shame PLUS traditional @gop race baiting = a recipe for a distinctively American form of authoritarian demagoguery.
28. On the distinctive threat which a radicalized (and radicalizing) Fox News poses to American democracy.
29. As if the world needed another thread by a historian debunking D’Souza...but this one is maybe a bit different because it tries to unpack the nature of his appeal to white conservatives--as a racist who claims to hate racism.
30. When Never Trump conservatives distinguish Trump’s racism from what they knew to be an “open and inclusive” GOP in the days of Reagan and Bush, how accurate is that narrative?
31. A close reading of Trump’s “blood and soil” 2018 SOTU address.
32. A thread on the international movement drawing together white Christian nationalism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, militarism, the alt-right, and Mel Gibson...yes, you heard that right, Mel Gibson.
33. Perhaps the most important long-term damage Trump has done to the GOP (& US politics more generally) is that he has dissolved the boundary between the GOP & its far right edge. There be monsters out there, yet most conservatives seem unconcerned.
34. A thread exploring the particularly angry and divisive form that much conservative “patriotism” has taken in the Age of Trump.
35. Remember when Steve Bannon reappeared in November 2018 with a high-production-value film about how Trump is at war with his fellow citizens? Yeah, me neither, but it happened, and it’s as horrible as you’d imagine.
36. Conspiracy theories are all fun and games sideshow until they get combined with state power...and then things can get ugly.
37. What Roseanne’s self-outing as a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist tells us about the significant number of conservative white Americans who have long, semi-secretly shared her conspiratorial worldview.
38. On the similarities between the John Birch Society of the late 1950s (which was a not insignificant part of Goldwater’s base) and the Bannon-ite Right Wing Dark Webbers of today.
39. On Trump as the inheritor and executor of the ambitious, conservative long game to dismantle the New Deal Order.
40. What if the conservative movement that built the GOP base was never what the Never Trump Conservatives thought it was. Like ever?
41. What if the conservative movement that built the GOP base was never what the Never Trump Conservatives thought it was. Like ever? Part 2, the Andrew Sullivan edition.
42. On Andrew Sullivan's flawed (IMHO) effort to distinguish Trumpism and "true conservatism." The good parts of Sullivan's "conservative tradition" that he wants to applaud, I argue, are just good old fashioned liberalism.
43. To what extent was (and is) the conservative movement about ideas? The rise of Trumpism suggests that, for the base at least, it was more about identities perceived to be under siege than noble ideas.
44. Why it’s not so weird that Mr. Rogers was a Republican for his entire life...and why there’s probably zero chance he’d be a Republican if he was still alive today.
45. Some reflections on the passing of John McCain, and what his legacy tells us about the past and future of the GOP.
46. On Oregon’s long-serving GOP Senator Mark Hatfield, the sort of moderate, pro-government conservative that was driven out of the party in the 1990s.
47. Where I presumptuously suggest that conservatives might have much to learn and gain by reining in their habit of arguing against a caricatured “left” that exists, for the most part, only in their fevered imagination.
48. Some receipts regarding the right’s rhetorical obsession with “the left” as scary monolith.
49. Unpacking the distinctive identity that animates the MAGA, anti-PC, hater of libtards type of American conservative.
50. How the Sayoc bombings are indicative of the fundamental illiberalism of Trump’s GOP.
51. How the concept of “political culture” helps us understand why Trump is not technically responsible for Sayoc’s violent actions, yet Sayoc’s actions reveal some important, terrible truths about the Trumpist GOP.
52. While Trump’s legislative accomplishments have been minimal, he has succeeded in bringing many previously unthinkably (or at least unspeakably) outlandish ideas into the nation’s political conversation.
53. On the surprising lack of clear-eyed, reality-based thinking going on within the GOP about the future of the party post-Trump.
54. On Trump and the (as yet unrealized) possibility that his cruelty and incompetence might combine with some unexpected contingency to produce a big and bad historical change.
55. Why the current iteration of the @gop potentially poses an existential threat to American democracy.
56. On the mixed legacy of American exceptionalism, and the dangerous direction that tradition has taken under Trump.
57. Some interesting lessons that the history of American conservatism might teach us about the future of progressivism.
58. A Lincoln-inspired rant from July urging the Democrats to embrace a message that involves STANDING FOR SOMETHING instead of trying to chase the unicorn of the “moderate GOP voter.”
59. Where I try to plumb the depths of Trump’s ignorance about the world--Trump, the self-appointed defender of a “culture” about which he knows less than the immigrants he demeans.
60. On Trump (and the broader contemporary right’s) valorization of strongman Andrew Jackson, the “law and order” politician who once, when serving as a judge, threatened to shoot a defendant dead on the street.
61. On the relationship between Donald Trump, those ubiquitous advertisements for gold on @FoxNews, and Andrew Jackson (whose portrait Bannon told Trump to display prominently in the White House.
62. How Macron’s subtle jabs at Trump harkened back to the ways pro-French Americans in the 1790s used the visit of Edmund Genet to poke at what they saw as the quasi-monarchical politics of GW and the Federalists.
63. On the inescapably ambiguous role that SCOTUS was designed to play in American political life, and why Trump’s power to appoint extremist judges potentially marks a dangerous turning point in American jurisprudence.
64. How Thomas Paine (and the American tradition of reformist liberalism) helps us understand why conservatives were so hysterically worried about the tyrannical furies they think are about to be unleashed by the MeToo movement.
65. What did Americans in the founding era have to say about whether the new nation was a republic or a democracy (one of the favorite talking points on the anti-majoritarian right these days)?
66. From July—Is there a chance that the “peaceful transfer of power” norm won’t hold in the name of Trump? So far so good, in terms of what happened in 2018. But the real test will be 2020.
67. A suggestion to NYTimes reporters who venture out to Western PA (where I was raised) to take the pulse of Trump voters. Ask them what they think about Joe Paterno first. It might help you understand why they’re still on team Trump.
68. If you grew up in a small town like I did, then Donald Trump is totally recognizable as just another goombah from Palookaville. The only problem is that he’s now the most powerful man in the world.
69. On the impact that Russian disinformation had on my small circle of former HS friends on Facebook in 2016. FWIW, many people chimed in to say that they had experienced that closely resembled mine.
70. Why the indiscriminate anti-authoritarianism of the white boomer generation has wrecked American politics.
71. On the divergent forms of conservative masculinity embodied by Trump on one hand, and Comey/Mueller on the other.
72. On the revealingly f***ed up way Trump uses one of his favorite words, “love.”
73. On the revealingly f***ed up way Trump uses another of his favorite terms, “tough,” and what that says about the herd of pliant cowards he’s assembled around himself.
74. That time in February when President Alfred E. Neuman posted a thumbs-up photo of himself wearing a sh*t eating grin 24 hours after 17 innocent people were gunned down in their high school.

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More from @SethCotlar

Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 18
The rightward lurch of the GOP since 2015 has led many to ask "when did it start?" and "how did it happen?" I've been researching the Oregon chapter of that story, and it's clear that 1970 was a key turning point, and that it was a bottom up more than a top down story.
People on the far right mobilized at the county level across the state and almost succeeded in taking over the party in 1970. That would have been shocking since the Oregon GOP Senators Hatfield & Packwood were known for their moderation, if not outright liberalism at the time.
Walter Huss and his fellow "ultraconservatives" continued organizing at the local level and in 1978 finally succeeded in taking over the state GOP. Huss was removed from his chair position after a few disastrous months, but it had a lasting impact.
Read 10 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 18
Has there ever been a television news host who had more consistent and influential access to a sitting President than “fair and balanced” Hannity?
Screenshot from this story. washingtonpost.com/politics/inter…
Flashback to this 2018 reporting. I motion that we refer to Hannity’s show as MAGA-PRAVDA from this point forward. nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 17
If you’d told me in 1989 when I was a student in Gordon Wood’s Am Rev class that in thirty years he’d be giving friendly interviews to Trotskyites and publishing in a far right review affiliated with a lawyer who advocated overturning the 2020 election for Donald Trump…well.
Gordon Wood, who was so sensitive about his professional reputation that he was angry that the 1619 Project didn't consult with him, is now affiliating himself with an institution that gave a fellowship to a Pizzagate guy.
To be honest, however, if you'd told me that it was Gordon Wood's interpretation of the history of racism and slavery in the US that would particularly endear him to the class-reductionist left and the anti-anti-racist right, then I would have less surprised by that.
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 17
In 1951 the National Association of Manufacturers commissioned a comic book about the dangers of inflation. The art work was by Dan Barry, of Flash Gordon fame.
You can read the entire thing here. I was inspired to search for these online because they were mentioned in Edward Miller's biography of Robert Welch which I'm currently reading. Welch may have had something to do with commissioning this comic. lcamtuf.coredump.cx/communism/Your…
Charles Schulz (yes, that Charles Schulz) was the artist who produced this very understated anti-communist comic in 1947. lcamtuf.coredump.cx/communism/Is%2…
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 16
Things one tweets when one has no understanding, like absolutely none, like a howling black hole of the opposite of understanding, of what historians do; and also a raging volcano's worth of misplaced confidence about your ability to make pronouncements about what historians do.
Tell me you've never had an actual conversation with a historian about what they do or read the most basic methodological texts used in introductory theory and methods course without actually telling me that.
The anti-intellectual "public intellectual" is, IMO, not a great look.
Read 6 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 14
I'm starting to think that the people who built their identity around the imperative to "stand athwart history yelling stop" rendered themselves uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the sorts of adjustments necessary to deal with a pandemic of historically-unprecedented scale.
I mean, you can yell "stop" at the coronavirus all you like, but it really doesn't care.
You can yell "stop" at climate change all you like, but it really doesn't care.
Read 5 tweets

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