In this important column, @ezraklein emphasizes the need to question certain pervasive myths about American democracy. I would like to add some thoughts from a historical perspective – on a democracy that never has been yet: 1/
Even after four years of Trump, even after the insurrection of January 6, the animating principle for too many Democratic officials and liberals more broadly seems to be that “It cannot happen here.” 2/
American democracy can no longer afford this mix of willful ignorance and naive exceptionalism. It absolutely can happen here – and in many ways, an authoritarian victory would constitute a return to the historical norm. 3/
We should acknowledge what “democracy” meant in America before the civil rights legislation of the 1960s: A system that was fairly democratic if you happened to be a white Christian man – and something entirely different if you were not. 4/
Reconstruction after the Civil War was a notable exception from this norm – which only strengthens the argument: America’s first attempt at multiracial democracy turned out to be a fairly short-lived and ultimately aborted experiment, drowned in white reactionary violence. 5/
Why, then, do so many pundits, journalists, and politicians cling to the idea of America’s glorious democratic history? Why is it still widely considered a radical act to emphasize the contested history of democracy and how anti-democratic forces have shaped the country? 6/
The answer is that a glorified version of the history of American democracy appeals not only to people on the Right, but to moderate conservatives and liberals as well – many of whom have reacted to Trump’s rise by actually doubling down on this romanticized tale. 7/
Take this seemingly harmless tweet by leading Never Trumper Bill Kristol. It is indicative of a view of America’s past that presents Trump as an aberration - which is historically inadequate. But its exculpatory implications make it attractive to moderates and liberals alike. 8/
What is suggested here is an aberrationist tale. Kristol implies that America has been a successful democracy since the founding and that the country has little to no prior experience with authoritarianism. 9/
In fact, in this view, such anti-democratic onslaughts are so foreign that it’s hard for Americans to wrap their head around what is happening. These are the core building blocks of the aberrationist interpretation of Trumpism: Everything was fine until he came along. 10/
It’s easy to see what makes this version of U.S. history so attractive. In this tale, no one is to blame for Trump’s rise because no one could have seen it coming: How could we criticize anyone for failing to prevent such an insidious outside force from taking power? 11/
Such a narrative does not only suit Never Trump conservatives who helped shape and supported the party that gave us Trump, but also Liberals who failed to anticipate and stop the rise of Trumpism. 12/
(These are the same reasons why the apologist idea of Trump as a genius demagogue has such widespread appeal, as I tried to outline in this thread here:) 13/
The idea that the U.S. is the world’s oldest democracy is a fairly commonly held view. Whether or not that’s correct is debatable. It depends on the definition of “democracy,” of course - and, if we go back in history, on who we decide to ask and listen to. 14/
There is no doubt that those who had a seat at the table of political power would have argued that America was a functioning democracy. But for most of U.S. history, only white men were invited to that table – wealthy white men, in particular. 15/
What if we asked Native Americans in the 1830s? Or the millions of enslaved black people in the 1850s? Or African Americans in the Jim Crow South in the 1930s? Would they have agreed that America was a stable, “consolidated” democracy? Certainly not. 16/
Rather than perpetuating this idea of America’s glorious democratic past, we should investigate: What did democracy mean at any given moment, both as an idea and as a practice? And how did that change over time? 17/
Once again, for most of its existence, the American political system was best described as a herrenvolk democracy: A system that was fairly democratic for white Christian men – and something entirely different for everyone else. 18/
Before the 1960s, the United States had no serious claim to being anything approaching a functioning multiracial democracy, as apartheid was the reality in many regions of the country. 19/
Which is why it’s so disingenuous to suggest that America lacks experience with authoritarianism. Even if we ignore the country’s pre-1865 history (Confederacy, anyone?), the Jim Crow South was clearly a violent, authoritarian one-party regime. 20/
It is equally weird to pretend that America lacks experience with far-right extremism. After all, the KKK might just be the world’s oldest, most infamous white supremacist organization still in existence – counting millions of Americans as members at its peak in the 1920s. 21/
And this is not at all a story of the past, as white supremacist extremism is still the biggest domestic terror threat today, according to the country’s own national security apparatus. 22/
nytimes.com/2021/05/12/us/…
I understand that traditional narratives about the nation’s past don’t exactly emphasize these aspects. But it’s also not like these are obscure topics of which few people have ever heard. It’s never been easier to update those obsolete views of the nation’s history. 23/
Start with @kathleen_belew’s fantastic work on the white power movement, for instance. No one who’s read “Bring the War Home” will ever again be tempted to argue that America lacks experience with the type of far-right extremism that was on display on January 6. 24/
Traditional narratives about the making of modern conservatism underplayed the importance of far-right ideologies and groups, of course, instead opting to emphasize how gate keepers like William F. Buckley supposedly expelled those elements from “respectable” conservatism. 25/
But this “respectability” tale has come under fire, and scholars of conservatism like @rickperlstein have consistently emphasized how the history of the conservative movement as it was often told could not have produced the present in which we live. 26/
nytimes.com/2017/04/11/mag…
A new generation of scholars like @DavidAstinWalsh and @johnshuntington is doing fantastic work that will revise our understanding of the relationship between the Far Right and the conservative movement. 27/
These scholars are constantly putting their work out there in interviews, articles, op-eds… It’s not difficult to find! No one needs to bury themselves in some obscure academic tomes; there are no excuses for failing to acknowledge new interpretations and insights. 28/
The same is true for work on the longstanding anti-democratic tendencies and impulses on the American Right – a topic that is absolutely crucial to understanding the rise of Trumpism and why Republicans are all in on the authoritarian onslaught on democracy. 29/
Again, no one has to follow some arcane academic debates to get an idea of how crucial these contexts are. I highly recommend listening to the wonderful @KnowYrEnemyPod that has taught me so much about the American Right over the past few years. 30/
Or read the fantastic work by @lkatfield and @Joshua_A_Tait, who dissect the American Right in their articles and columns in the most incisive ways; and follow @SethCotlar who regularly produces wonderfully insightful threads on the history of conservatism. 31/
What anyone who cares to read and listen can learn from the publicly accessible work of these fantastic scholars and observers is that these anti-democratic, authoritarian, white nationalist tendencies and forces are not just fringe phenomena in U.S. history. 32/
They have fundamentally shaped the American project at all times, and continue to do so. This was never more obvious than in the Right’s reaction to the election of Barack Obama, which, to many conservatives, came as a shock and personal offence. 33/
They reacted with anti-democratic demonization in the form of the birtherism conspiracy, depicting Barack Obama as a socialist, Un-American “Other,” elected by an illegitimate coalition – and still, today, about 50 percent of Republicans are birthers. 34/
fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-b…
Against this background, it becomes clear that Trumpism’s rise is anything but an aberration in American history, and there is nothing aberrationist about white reactionary violence in reaction to the “threat” of political, social, and racial progress. 35/
What is indeed a fairly recent development in U.S. history is democracy becoming not just a contested issue – which it has always been – but a partisan one: Until the late twentieth century, anti-democratic forces were spread across the parties. 36/
The Democratic Party, for instance, existed as an alliance between liberal democrats and white supremacist Dixiecrats until at least the 1960s. And there was a pretty stable, bipartisan elite consensus that democracy should not interfere with the established power structure. 37/
After World War II, however, the parties began to polarize over the question of whether or not the country should become a liberal, multiracial democracy: a system in which all citizens count equally and elect a representative government with majoritarian rules. 38/
This process of partisan sorting might just be the most consequential political development of the recent past. Its story is complex, it took a long time, and there is some wonderful scholarship that dissects and analyzes it all in great detail. 39/
But again, for those who are willing to move beyond the mythical tales of America’s gloriously democratic past, historians have done a fantastic job putting their work out there, synthesizing their research in a way that makes it easily accessible and digestible. 40/
On the process of partisan sorting and realignment, for instance, check out this great series of blog posts by @Historian_Steve – synthesizing the latest historical scholarship on these issues and providing plenty of suggestions for further reading. 41/
historianstevecampbell.com/blog/in-progre…
And in case you want your history from Twitter, @KevinMKruse has you covered: Here’s just one of his many, many incisive threads, this one on the parties’ changing relationship with civil rights and multiracial democracy (inspired by Kanye West!): 42/
This brings us to today: One party has come to advocate multiracial democracy – while the other is committed to doing whatever it takes to prevent what conservatives believe would be the destruction of “real” (read: white Christian patriarchal) America. 43/
Conservatives are radicalizing, yes – but what we are seeing is not a departure, not an aberration. The GOP has been on an anti-democratic trajectory for a long time; conservatives were never on board with multiracial democracy. 44/
Republicans haven’t all of a sudden turned their backs on democracy because they were seduced by a brilliant demagogue. Trump isn’t the cause, he’s a symptom – his rise made possible by longstanding anti-democratic, authoritarian tendencies and impulses among conservatives. 45/
Trumpism is not an aberration. It is deeply rooted in American traditions and continuities of racism, white nationalism, white nationalist Christianism, and nativism; it is fueled by the same energies and anxieties that have shaped the American project from the beginning. 46/
Focusing on the idea that America is the world’s oldest “modern,” consolidated democracy – while technically not wrong, depending on the definition of “democracy” – does more to obscure than to illuminate the country’s past, present, and future. 47/
The political system that was stable and consolidated for most of U.S. history was a herrenvolk democracy, or racial caste democracy – a restricted form of democracy that deliberately left a specific political, social, and economic order largely intact and untouched. 48/
But there is nothing old, stable, or consolidated about multiracial, pluralistic democracy in America. It only started less than 60 years ago, and the conflict over whether or not it should be allowed to endure and prosper has dominated U.S. politics and culture ever since. 49/
A lot of Centrists and Liberals are invested in a narrative that presents the threat of Trumpian authoritarianism as an aberration from America’s supposedly glorious democratic history. But that’s bad history, even if it’s propagated by forces aligned against Trump. 50/
If it is truly the case, as Kristol alleges, that Americans are taken by surprise by the anti-democratic, authoritarian onslaught we are witnessing, it is because they have been taught a sanitized version of history in which these forces are relegated to an afterthought. 51/
Such a sanitized, idealized version of history is not only analytically inadequate, it’s also politically problematic, as it leaves Americans ill-prepared to recognize and admit the authoritarian danger. Let’s make a concerted effort not to perpetuate these glorified tales. 52/
If we really care to understand Trump’s rise, the nature and appeal of Trumpism, and how to situate it all in the larger context of U.S. history, we need to abandon the widespread myths about the past and present of American democracy – a democracy that never has been yet. /end

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More from @tzimmer_history

5 Jul
“What the hell happened to her?” suggests that Haley and, by extension, Republicans in general have recently lost their way. Better to acknowledge that everything we’re seeing is well in line with longstanding anti-democratic, authoritarian tendencies on the American Right.
That doesn’t mean that Republicans haven’t changed the way they talk, the way they present themselves. Many have. And these shifts on the level of rhetoric and style were, to some extent, inspired by Trump.
I reflected on Haley’s embrace of “brawler politics,” specifically, here:
Read 9 tweets
1 Jul
Appreciate the sentiment - but I’m really hoping that a) we’re not seriously still debating *if* #SCOTUS is an impediment to progress, and that b) we can all acknowledge that impeding progress towards multiracial democracy has been the historical norm for the Supreme Court.
Seriously, the widespread view among Liberals of #SCOTUS as an ally in the fight for a more democratic, fairer society stems entirely from a romanticized understanding of the Court’s history, misconstruing the Warren Court as the norm, when really that era was a massive outlier.
Whenever you bring up the fact that SCOTUS has, as a historical norm, been allied far more often with an anti-democratic, reactionary political project, someone will inevitably yell “But what about this decision? Or that decision?!”
Read 12 tweets
30 Jun
As far as I can tell, Hanania is widely regarded and presented by people on the center-right as a serious conservative intellectual. This, however, is not something a serious intellectual would write.
One has to be either remarkably uninformed or astonishingly disingenuous to equate the serious theoretical work and empirical analyses by leading legal scholars with the “modern representatives” of fascism and white nationalism.
If you think of Crenshaw / Bell and Stormfront / Bannon as equivalents, that really says a lot about you.
Read 4 tweets
29 Jun
This is a crucial piece by @ThePlumLineGS, outlining why the Select Committee should explore the “white rage” behind the January 6 insurrection.

I’d like to add: The white nationalist threat doesn’t emanate from the fringes of society – but from the Republican Party itself. 1/
We must not miss the forest for the trees: “White rage” is not just a fringe phenomenon in American politics, and the people who stormed the Capitol were not just a bunch of frustrated individuals from the fringes of society. 2/
They also weren’t simply seduced and overwhelmed by Trump’s #BigLie – I reflected on why it would be dangerously misleading to imagine the insurrectionists as victims of brilliant propaganda here: 3/
Read 40 tweets
28 Jun
Nikki Haley made some statements last week that provide an interesting window into the conservative psyche and help explain why even the “moderates” united behind Trump. Some thoughts: 1/
There’s obviously a lot of wannabe-tough nonsense in Nikki Haley’s statement. But it also expresses a feeling of being on the defensive, of being under siege, that is pervasive among conservatives – and has been for quite some time. 2/
“The days of being nice should be over” – time to get dirty, to fight back by whatever means. That, to me, is the underlying principle, the anxiety and energy that animates much of what is happening on the American Right. 3/
Read 32 tweets
23 Jun
Was this statement opposing federal initiatives to guarantee the right to vote made in:

A: 1869 (reaction to the 15th Amendment)
B: 1890 (justification for Jim Crow laws)
C: 1965 (reaction to the Voting Rights Act)
D: 2021 (justification for blocking the For the People Act)
The answer is D, but the only clue is the mention of S1 - because other than that it’s exactly how white supremacists have always justified their highly discriminatory election laws that were specifically designed to disenfranchise Blacks and anyone threatening their rule.
Seriously, if you know anything about the history of racism and white supremacy in this country, about how it took the federal government overriding “states’ rights” and forcing the states to respect Black people’s right to vote, you know how outrageous a statement this is.
Read 5 tweets

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