I am teaching a graduate course on the “21st Century History Wars” this semester. If anybody is interested in following along here on Twitter, I’d be happy to keep a running diary of what we read and discuss. A few thoughts on the outline of the course and the idea behind it:
Not just in the United States, but on either side of the Atlantic, we are witnessing intense conflicts over questions of cultural hegemony and national identity that have catapulted debates over “history” to the top of the political agenda.
These are struggles over who gets to define the national story and what place the legacies of racism, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism should occupy in it – with serious implications for the political, social, and cultural order in the present.
These “history wars” provide an excellent window into the broader political, social, and cultural debates that define the U.S., in particular, and the “West” more generally – they are directly tied to current conflicts over multiracial, pluralistic democracy.
We start with a deep dive into past and present history wars in the U.S.: From the fight over National History Standards in the 90s to the current flurry of reactionary education / history bills on the state level, from the 1619 Project to the conflict over Confederate monuments.
We’re also exploring the inter- and transnational context: It was the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 that led to a transatlantic wave of protests, acting as catalysts for broader debates over the past and present of colonialism and racism in the UK and elsewhere.
And we’re paying special attention to Germany, where a fierce new fight over how to study, teach, and remember the Holocaust, the so-called Catechism Debate, erupted in the summer of 2021 – not coincidentally at the height of the “History Wars” elsewhere in the “West.”
These German debates are interesting from a U.S. perspective, in particular, as the idea that America should “learn from the Germans” is so widely held over here, that Germany had somehow found a more honest, more productive way of handling the “Memory of Evil.”
Just when the idea of “Learning from the Germans” has been so widely applauded in the U.S., voices in Germany have become louder calling for a critical re-assessment of the German way of “working through the past,” diagnosing some deep and disconcerting flaws.
The overall goal of this course is to gain a better understanding of the ways in which “history” shapes the present, how it influences political, social, and cultural debates, who gets to define that “history” and what role historians, politicians, activists play in that process.
We want to examine why such conflicts over “history” come to the forefront of the political/social/cultural debate at specific moments in time, and explore them as reflections on national identity, with all the political consequences that entails.
I’ve never taught this course before, so it’s all a bit of an experiment and I am very much open to suggestions and ideas regarding readings and topics. I’m working with a fantastic group of students, and I am excited to find out where our discussions will go.
Very excited to find out that so many people are interested in following along. Wonderful. Once again: It will be an experiment. I’ll do my best to keep up over the course of the semester, outlining what we read, the issues we discuss, our main conclusions and open questions.
I think I’ll try to post an update every week, probably in the form of short, separate threads, otherwise this original thread would become unwieldy quite quickly. But I’ll always update this thread here with a link to those weekly reflections, so this can be the starting point.
The semester has already started, we are three weeks in - so as soon as I find the time, I’ll post an update on what we’ve been reading and discussing so far, before we’re set to revisit the 1619 Project next week. Excited to hear everybody’s thoughts and ideas!
People are suggesting a hashtag would be helpful, which I think makes sense. I’ll be using #GEST535 - simply because that’s the course’s official designation.
Also, a sincere apology in advance: It will be impossible to answer everyone’s questions or react to all the comments.
Finally, a warning: In addition to updates on the course, expect lots of U.S. politics and history. I focus on democracy and its discontents, and that’s obviously an acutely contested issue. I also write columns for @GuardianUS, if you’re interested. Here’s the latest:
Here’s the recap of Week 2: A look at some big-picture takes on the History Wars, and a discussion centered around how nationalist regimes deploy “memory laws” and whether American Liberals have abandoned the idea of progress in history.
Here’s the recap of Week 3: An attempt to contextualize the conflict over history education - and a reflection on “patriotic” visions of history and the project of creating national unity.
This is the type of comment I’ve been getting a lot for this piece: Always from self-regarding liberals who never want to grapple with the fact that the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 60s – the legacy of which they surely want to claim – clearly violated those principles.
The polite mainstream widely rejected them with precisely those arguments: too radical, too loud, too disruptive, too divisive. Protests demanding justice, student protests, protests carried by a multiracial coalition are almost always unpopular as they are happening.
And they just keep coming:
“If you engage in civil disobedience you will get arrested.”
Easy! And this from someone who had “Democrat” in their bio and started their previous comment by claiming they - of course! - would have supported the 1960s civil rights movement. Perfect.
What an absolute disaster that Republicans are still successfully playing their cynical game of exploiting fears over antisemitism in order to advance their reactionary crusade – and mainstream institutions keep willfully playing along.
I wrote about this here (link in bio): 1/
We have reached a truly bizarre place in our political discourse when supposedly serious people want us to believe that the party of Trump, QAnon, and “Great Replacement” is the bulwark against antisemitism in America. 2/
After pretending to be really upset about campus antisemitism during the congressional hearings in December, Stefanik ran off to meet “her friend,” the leader of a fascistic movement, the guy who is raging against immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” 3/
I dove into how leading conservative commentators in National Review are imagining a second Trump presidency. What they offer isn’t analysis. It is sophistry in defense of the premise that the actual threat isn’t Trump, it’s hysterical Libs and the radical Left. 2/
The goal is evidently not to provide National Review readers with an understanding of what’s been happening on the Right, but to portray Trump and his political project as so mundane and unremarkable that the liberal reaction to Trump must seem unhinged and dangerous. 3/
Anti-Anti-Trump Conservatism Is a Disingenuous and Dangerous Game
A case study of how National Review normalizes Trump, rages against a bizarre caricature of “the Left,” and thereby accommodates rightwing extremism.
A thread, based on my new piece (link in bio):
🧵1/
I dissect two recent pieces written by National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry and senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty - who represent that “respectable” spectrum of the American Right the mainstream political discourse consistently asks us to take seriously. 2/
Whether or not rightwing extremists manage to take power depends largely on how much support they get from mainstream conservative circles – it depends on the extent to which the rightwing establishment is willing to make common cause with extremism. 3/
Anti-anti-Trumpism in National Review stands in a long tradition of modern conservative leaders accommodating and providing cover for anti-democratic extremism – going all the way back to the conservative godfather William F. Buckley himself.
New piece (link in bio):
🧵1/
In early 2016, National Review – to much fanfare and mainstream praise – published a special issue titled “Against Trump.” No more. An increasingly untethered anti-anti-Trumpism is the game these “serious” conservatives are playing. 2/
When editor-in-chief Rich Lowry organized the “Against Trump” special issue of National Review, he was widely hailed for continuing the noble conservative tradition of holding the line against fringe extremism – just like magazine founder Willian F. Buckley had supposedly done.3/
There is also an element of Volkish ideology here - the assumption that rural white people with reactionary sensibilities represent “real America” and therefore command deference - while the groups that make up the pluralistic Democratic coalition constitute a deviation.
1/
This ideology of “real Americanism” is crucial: It provides the foundation for the Right’s anti-democratic radicalization, forms the basis of its normalization in mainstream political discourse, and helps explain why the response to the authoritarian threat has been lacking.
2/
The idea that Trump and his base deserve special deference from mainstream political and media institutions is based on the assumption that Trump embodies and gives voice to an uprising of “regular folks” who had supposedly been unfairly ignored by arrogant elites in 2016. 3/