Thread by @tzimmer_history

There are interesting parallels between the reaction of American conservatives to #Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday and the way West German conservatives despised the idea of celebrating May 8 as a “Day of Liberation” through much of the post-war period. Some thoughts: 1/

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1405597165867655169

May 8, 1945 was, of course, the day Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. It is widely celebrated in many countries, including the U.S., where it is known as VE Day: Victory in Europe Day. 2/

It was celebrated in one of the two post-war Germanies: The German Democratic Republic, which was part of the Eastern Bloc and defined its identity in discontinuity with Prussian and Nazi history, and explicitly (though inadequately) as a society of anti-fascists. 3/

Based on this officially imposed state identity, the day was celebrated as the “day of liberation of the German people from Hitler-fascism” (Tag der Befreiuung des deutschen Volkes vom Hitlerfaschismus). 4/

The situation was very different in West Germany, where May 8 was largely – and deliberately – ignored in the first two post-war decades. 5/

This changed after Chancellor Willy Brandt, as part of a general attempt to establish a more critical understanding of the Nazi past and a better relationship with Germany’s eastern neighbors, embraced the idea of May 8 as a day of liberation in 1970. 6/

For many German conservatives, this was an outlandish provocation - made worse because it came from Brandt, the leader of the Social Democratic Party who had been forced to flee into exile in Norway after the Nazis rose to power in 1933. 7/

German conservatives argued that it was ridiculous to celebrate Germany’s defeat in World War II – and saw Brandt’s re-framing as part of what they perceived as a disgraceful unpatriotic denigration pushed by a dangerously leftwing chancellor. 8/

Conservatives lost the fight over May 8, however, when one of their own, West German president Richard von Weizsäcker, unambiguously declared it a Day of Liberation (Tag der Befreiung) in his speech during the ceremony commemorating the end of the war in 1985. 9/

Von Weizsäcker was not only president and an extremely well regarded member of the conservative Christian Democratic Party CDU. He had also himself been an officer in Hitler’s army and fought on the eastern front. 10/

Here is a video of Weizsäcker’s speech on May 8, 1985: 11/ tagesschau.de/multimedia/vid…

And here is an official translation of his speech into English: 12/
bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Dow…

In a way, of course, the conservative critics of the “day of liberation” idea had been right. Germany was indeed defeated in 1945. The Allies didn’t liberate Germany – they liberated Germany’s victims: in the concentration camps, the political prisoners, those in hiding. 13/

And the contemporaneous perception at the end of the war among the vast majority of Germans was dominated not by a feeling of liberation, but defeat, insecurity, fear; few Germans concerned themselves with the victims of Nazi terror for whom May 8 indeed brought liberation. 14/

Today, May 8 is observed as a day of remembrance in Germany. It’s not a public holiday, however; an arrangement that perhaps adequately captures the fact that, while rejoicing at Hitler’s defeat, Germans should remember on what side they fought. 15/

And yet, establishing the idea of a “day of liberation” was immensely important as a political project: It stated, to put it in basic terms, that Nazi Germany’s defeat was something to be celebrated, that Germans should rejoice because they got liberated from themselves. 16/

The debate over May 8 was also a manifestation of a larger shift in Germany’s ongoing struggle to deal with the Nazi past - a development which it also accelerated and to which it lent credence in turn. 17/

By the 1990s, the Holocaust had been elevated to the center of German national identity. As former president Joachim Gauck put it on Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2015: “There is no German identity without Auschwitz.” 18/ bundestag.de/dokumente/text…

And more generally, a consensus had formed around centering not the defeat of 1945, not the concern for national honor, but the victims of Nazi terror and genocide, and the responsibilities that follow from acknowledging Germany’s crimes for the country’s present and future. 19/

Let’s look at how the reaction of some U.S. conservatives to #Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday compares to the story of May 8 and Germany’s ongoing struggle to come to terms with the Nazi past more generally. 20/

There are quite a few similarities in rhetoric, style, and substance. There is the perception of #Juneteenth being established to disgrace the nation – the idea of an anti-patriotic “humiliation ritual” could have been transported straight from the West German 1970s. 21/

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1405633500544446464

There is also the fact that conservatives see themselves in a fight against corrosive leftwing subversion and claim they’re being confronted with a radical leftwing agenda enacted by Biden here, Brandt there. 22/

The same idea here: 23/

The end of slavery as one of America’s “darkest moments” - the fear that once people start questioning the “patriotic,” white nationalist tale of history, they might also come to reject the idea of America as a country in which white Christians deserve to dominate. 24/

Finally, the contexts are similar in the sense that these symbolic fights happen(ed) against the background of a general “liberalization” and a widespread fear among conservatives to lose / have lost political and cultural hegemony to “the Left.” 25/

At a first glance, however, these similarities are puzzling. Germany’s conservatives at least had a point, regardless of where one stands on the reactionary political project: Germany *was* defeated in 1945, it was a case of the defeated celebrating defeat. 26/

But why would anyone object to celebrating the end of slavery? It became possible because the United States – the country conservatives claim to love! – *won* and defeated a traitorous rebellion. Why are conservatives acting like they’re told to celebrate their own defeat? 27/

One important part of the answer, of course, is negative polarization – a point that @smotus makes brilliantly here. In today’s political landscape, if “our” enemy is in favor, “we” must be opposed. 28/

https://twitter.com/smotus/status/1405626179323764736

But there’s more going on here, just like there has always been more to the German struggles over the Nazi past. There is an underlying conflict over who gets to determine what “America” is and, consequently, what the country’s political, social, and cultural order should be. 29/

The answer to the question of “Why are conservatives acting like they’re told to celebrate their own defeat?” is: because in a way, that’s exactly what’s happening. 30/

They’re not the successors to the defeated Confederacy in any legal sense, of course; and unlike Germany’s post-war conservatives, they weren’t personally defeated in the Civil War. 31/

But if we look deeper, at the central fault lines that have defined the American project since the beginning, there are important continuities between the two sides that fought over slavery in the 1860s and the opposing sides in today’s conflict over the #Juneteenth holiday. 32/

There are different ways to frame these continuities. In “How the South Won the Civil War,” @HC_Richardson identifies the ideology on which the Confederacy was built as the conviction that the world should be dominated by wealthy white men. 33/
global.oup.com/academic/produ…

Historian @glgerstle identifies the conflict between “civic nationalism” and “racial nationalism” as the core dynamic shaping the American project. 34/

In this perspective, those who are celebrating #Juneteenth are proponents of civic nationalism – clinging to a vision of America as a truly multiracial, truly pluralistic democracy in which an individual’s status is not largely determined by race, gender, or religion. 35/

Those who oppose #Juneteenth, on the other hand, are indeed the spiritual descendants of those who were defeated in 1865: The white nationalists, for whom America was only imaginable as a white Christian nation and thus a place where white Christians had a right to dominate. 36/

It is crucial to unpack what’s behind the opposition to #Juneteenth beyond pure partisanship. Such symbolic conflicts over the past and its commemoration are always tied to and defined by political and cultural struggles in the present. 37/

Tell me how you think Germany should handle its Nazi past and I’ll tell you what your idea of the country’s present and future is. Tell me what you think about #Juneteenth being a federal holiday and I’ll tell you what your vision of “real” America is. 38/

In Germany, centering the victims - those for whom May 8 was indeed, in a very real, very direct sense a day of liberation, and of course the millions for whom that liberation came too late - became the accepted position of all pro-democracy parties. 39/

Those who oppose such a perspective on Germany’s past and the responsibilities it entails in the present - forces that would certainly oppose celebrating the end of slavery - are to be found on the Far Right. They’re not “conservatives.” They’re extremists. 40/

On a superficial level, it might seem that the situation isn’t all that different in the U.S., as the establishment of #Juneteenth was supported unanimously in the Senate and by almost all members of the House. A rare bipartisan agreement. 41/

I don’t want to deny that the symbolism of bipartisan support for #Juneteenth could, potentially, be powerful. But the differences between the Republican position regarding America’s past and what is accepted among Germany’s conservatives are instructive. 42/

In Germany, the willingness to grapple with past crimes and integrate them in the nation’s identity in a way that defines and guides the country in the present and the future has become a litmus test for whether or not parties are considered part of the democratic consensus. 43/

Meanwhile, Republicans are currently conducting a witch hunt against “unpatriotic” ideas on the state level. 44/

Wherever they can, Republicans are using the power of the state to outlaw dissent, restrict critical debate, and punish anyone who dares to question the righteousness of past, present, or future white reactionary rule. 45/

The Republican position seems to be: Fine, let’s make #Juneteenth a holiday - but no one ever gets to talk about what it actually means, and no one gets to ask critical questions about the lasting legacies of slavery and racism. 46/

The bipartisan vote in Congress notwithstanding, that approach to the nation’s past, present, and future is closer to what the German Far Right believes than to anything that is considered acceptable from a party that champions democracy as an idea and a political project. 47/

If you demand “patriotism” and define it as the glorification of a mythical past that serves as the basis and justification for white nationalist rule in the present, you are not a (small d) democrat. Not in Germany, not in America, not anywhere. /end