Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Hey everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started today, I just want to say it's almost April, everybody. Donald Trump is in trouble. He is in trouble. Recent primaries are showing that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of Republican voters don't want him. But now is not the time to get complacent. It is not the time to say we've got him beat. In fact, it is the time to double down. Do what you can in your state, in your county, in your city, in your community, in your neighborhood to make sure
that we, the pro-democracy movement, are successful in November. Get out there, gang, whatever it is, a political organization, a charitable organization, a voter rights organization, a voter registration organization, working as a poll worker. Your work makes a difference, guys. It all adds up. It builds democracy brick by brick. Let's get after it, gang. Thanks, and on with the show.
Welcome back to The Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reid Galen. Today, I'm joined by Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, an assistant professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. He is a historian of modern political and intellectual thought with a focus on Europe and primarily concentrates on the topics of history of the modern global peace movement, international human rights, decolonization, theories of development, political economy, and the intersection of religion and politics.
He is the editor of the new book, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America, which is now available wherever fine books are sold. Guys, do not let the title scare you. It is a great collection of essays. I hope you'll go out and get it. Today, he's coming to us from Middletown, Connecticut. Danny, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Reid, so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. So I have many guests like you that are much more accomplished than I am. And when I read your bio, I'm like, okay, well, I'm almost 50 years in. I got a lot of work ahead of me. But thanks for joining me. As I said to you right before, I read a lot of books. I interview a lot of authors. Most of them are excellent authors.
Most of them I have a pretty good idea of what I'm getting into. And I'm always happy that it either, you know, look, everybody loves to be confirmed in what they already think is true or think is right. Or given additional examples of things that you were saying, doing, writing, whatever the case might be. But this collection here actually got me thinking about a few things and sort of scratched my head. And so before we actually get into the individual essays, why this? Why now? Why you?
This debate, which became one, it wasn't apparent early on at least. It took two or three years before people started calling it a fascism debate. It struck my curiosity not so much for what was appearing in places like the New York Review of Books or the Republic or the Nation where these pieces were appearing on whether we're living in fascist times or not.
But what was happening on social media, where you saw pundits and leading historians and academics just kind of going at it in a way that you wouldn't normally see them in those spaces. So I realized something quite huge was at stake. And
The strange thing is that no one had put together a book that brought all these different voices together. And as a teacher and someone who teaches classes that try to use history to understand the present, I just thought, what an opportunity. And luck worked itself out, and I was given a contract to write this book. And so it really is an attempt to just try to get...
people who are confused about what's going on, try to give them a general understanding of this whole question about fascism today. - So let's start a little bit at the beginning
about the word fascism, the use of it right now. The word fascism comes from Italian fascisti, which is the sort of bundle of sticks and the axe and all that. But, you know, it's an authoritarian, typically right wing. You know, after World War Two, we defeat the fascists in Italy and Germany. And now you come home and everybody you might disagree with is a fascist pig. Right. Or, you know, everybody from Nixon is a fascist. LBJ is a fascist. Like and so
In the what I'm going to call the before time of, let's say, prior to Trump in 2015, the word got thrown around. I mean, there was always a joke in politics like never go full Hitler. Right. That rule is now out the window with so many other things. But.
You know, fascism was, again, just sort of thrown around for anybody that you didn't like or you thought was overbearing, authoritarian in nature. So now it's like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We're calling someone Donald Trump and his movement MAGA America First Trumpism, a fascist movement, political organization. So take us through a little bit of the history of how we got obsessed with the F word.
Yeah, it's a great question. Just you talking about how the term was used in so many different ways after World War II, and even during the interwar period, the definition was still not so clear.
There were a lot of liberals, for instance, in the 1920s that said positive things about Mussolini, for instance. But there's a great book by Bruce Kutlick, maybe you're aware of it, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania who just wrote a word history of this term going back to the 20s all the way to the present, and just points out exactly what you did, which is that it's always been a floating signifier used on the left, the right, the middle to discount one's enemies. You mentioned an
a number of great instances. But I think what happened was just the sheer shock of Trump winning and the unexpected nature of that just, I think, was so unsettling that a number of specialists and
in the area of European history in particular, and then others working on different academic approaches to the topic, thought it was appropriate. And essentially, you know, someone like Timothy Snyder, Yale historian, that night of the election, in fact, penned a long Facebook post, warning of the times in which we live, and started using this word very quickly, something like a Jason Stanley, his colleague at Yale. And I think with the difference between what
It was happening now, at least since 2016, it passes. It seems as though the mainstream has grabbed a hold of it, that it's not just some accusation that someone off to the far right or far left is making, but it's something that is widespread, especially amongst punditry class. Rachel Maddow, for instance, it's kind of everywhere. And I think that does make it a little bit different than in the past where it wasn't as mainstream, I don't think.
You mentioned Maddow, Tim Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, you know, people who are very well read, very well studied, like yourself, who are saying, like, here are the things that make up a fascist movement, a fascist leader, you know, and I'll get to them here in a second. And they all seem to check out, right? That's like, okay, yeah, you know, there's nativism, there's racism, there's nationalism, there's a Christian, you know, hardcore religious component. There's a demagogue at the top.
There's the othering, right? There's the in groups, the out groups. And then you have someone like Richard Evans, you know, great historian who I read his three book series on Nazi Germany, who says, no, no, no, no, no, this isn't fascism. Yes. So it just seems at the level of professional historians, you know, historians are always.
hesitant to make historical comparisons from the past to the present because of the differences. Isn't that a little bit ironic? It can be at face value, but given the nature of just the profession, it's not as surprising as you'd think. All these charges we've been hearing lately about presentism and anachronism and politicizing history, the profession in general has been very much concerned about those issues for decades. And you can maybe see it manifesting itself now, right?
regarding the fascism debate. But I think what someone like Richard Evans and others, it's a lot of historians in the book, Samuel Moyn is another instance. Adam Tooze, for instance, who's not in the book, big historians. What they're going to say is, well, look, there are these similarities
manipulation of truth, just as Mussolini or Hitler used propaganda, Trump manipulates truth, or undermining of democracy from within, or Beer Hall Pooches, similar to January 6th. I think these other historians are going to say things like, what about
But if you're going to go with analogy, what about disanalogy? Any comparison has to be focused on where it doesn't connect. And that's what they do. So they say, well, World War I, inseparable from the rise of fascism, there really isn't something on that scale today. Bolshevik movement definitely was a...
inspired fascist movements as a reaction. Doesn't seem to be that there's anything on par with that today. They're quick to go to the differences and say, "Hey, look, how do you make sense of this?"
Given what you're saying about the things that map on. And these are substantive mass political movements, for instance. There really isn't mass political movements today like in the past. So that's where there's a point of contention, right? When you compare Europe's past to the present today and making this strong connection with the Nazis, for instance. Where does it not connect? And if so, what does it do with that analogy?
Well, but I can't remember which of the writers in here said this, though, is that you talked about that, you know, fascism and let's say Germany was a reaction to a rising communist tide following Russia slash the Soviet Union in 1917. You know, there is a progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but it is significantly in the minority, even if they make more noise. But someone in here says, if you don't have an enemy, go create one.
Right. So that's right. That's right. Woke leftist Black Lives Matter, trans kids, whatever the case might be. OK, so it's not as easy as communism of the Jews, although the Jews are there and they call everybody they don't like communists. Right. These movements don't appear to be afraid of finding the enemy or creating one if they need to. Yeah, that's right. And I think.
One might say that the difference in terms of these enemies is that one is, at least in terms of the instances that you gave, one is rooted in what, for lack of a better term, could be identity politics. And the other is mass politics, which is a little bit of a different thing. There's too many component parts, it's too atomized to lead to some kind of huge mass movement, but it does create myriad enemies.
And I think that's one of the reasons why another... I mean, if you look at it as politicized, one of the reasons you need an enemy if you are promoting this idea that we are living in fascist times is it does allow for alliances and coalitions. So it creates a kind of popular front strategy, which is to say that, well, if we really are in fascist times, let's get over our differences and let's join forces. So...
I think the political aspect of it, even when the analogy is not working, I think those who use it will be honest and say, well, this is also motivated by politics as well. Right. Well, and you can see that, you know, I consider myself part of a pro-democracy movement.
Right. Work alongside some Republicans, some former Republicans, a few conservatives, mostly people that are left of center. But, you know, as I've said before, and the listeners have heard me say a thousand times, we don't have to agree on everything in this moment. We have to agree on one thing. And frankly, you know, the Trump coalition, such as it is, has a lot of that, too. I think the difference is.
is that, as I've said before, the Trump coalition, they'll take whatever crazy you got, right? Their bar for entry is very, very low. Like the left requires a level of purity. And believe me, like even as someone who has, and we collectively, you know, former Republicans,
have continually shown like ourselves to be willing to be out on the ragged edge of the fight against Trump. Like for our friends on the left, we have to continually prove ourselves the right that, oh, we're not really just a wolf in sheep's clothing. Whereas the right is like, yeah, sure. Come on in. You're nuts. We'll take you too. That is interesting. And I do think regarding what you talk about in terms of purity, you saw this
within the Democratic Party in 2016 with the Bernie crowd and the Hillary Clinton crowd was not getting along right. And still, I think there are leftists who want the Democratic Party to recognize their efforts in getting Biden elected right by continuing to push for student loan forgiveness and all these kinds of things. So I agree with you 100%. I do think that it's not just any crazy. There's some political aims and ambitions that
that have to be met for that coalition to continue.
Odoo is the affordable, all-in-one management software with a library of fully integrated business applications that help you get more done in less time for a fraction of the price. To learn more, visit odoo.com slash Lincoln. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash Lincoln. Odoo. Modern management made simple.
I want to bring up an individual in particular before I get into something broader. So there's a essay in here about Bill Barr by Tamsyn Shaw called The Carl Schmitt of Our Time. So Carl Schmitt was a Nazi lawyer, right? Had all these crazy race theories, et cetera, et cetera. So Tamsyn, she compares...
of Schmidt's executive authority piece, but also weaves in, you know, Schmidt was a Catholic, you know, Barr is a very Catholic guy. And I thought it was an interesting inclusion, frankly, personally. And I'll tell you why, Danny, because about a week and we didn't find this out until 2022, about a week after Election Day in 2020, Mark Meadows, chief of staff at the White House to the president, United States sends a memo right to Bill Barr. The email says
Here's the Lincoln Project information I mentioned with my name, Rick Wilson's name and Stuart Stevens name and all sorts of tweets and everything else we'd done because we'd gone after their lawyers. Right. Like we'd gone and we'd scared off a bunch of their law firms.
And so, like, I have a special place in my heart for Bill Barr, which was he never ultimately did anything about it. But certainly he didn't tell Mark Meadows, don't send the email. He didn't send a response back. Like, why would you ever send this to me? And I think that, you know, one of the indelible images of our political history will be Barr looking like the minister for internal security as Donald Trump crossed Pennsylvania Avenue. Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's great to point out to Tamsin's piece, Carl Schmitt, who, as you mentioned, well, he was known as the crown jurist of the Third Reich and was a brilliant, by all accounts, brilliant legal political mind. And because of some of the influences that he's had on political theory, his thinking about states of exception in particular, what happens when a regime is being attacked? How do you act in a way that has to go beyond
parliamentary measures to secure a regime. And I think she's right to point to his Catholic background and to connect to Barr. He's just always kind of there floating around. So the question is, though, it's whether he maps on well to our situation. It sounds like, given what you just said, it absolutely does, if I'm understanding your recollections of this memo correctly. Yeah. That's one other piece of this, too, is
And one of the writers in here, I can't remember which of what he speaks about, and maybe it was this essay about 9-11 and how everything became about security after 9-11 and everything becomes a state of emergency. And if everything's a state of emergency, Danny, then anything goes. And he calls back, you know, OK, so Lincoln, you know, suspends habeas corpus during 9-11.
the Civil War. Obviously, FDR interns tens of thousands of Asian Americans, Nisei, right? Japanese citizens, Japanese Americans. So like this is not unheard of. And I want to go back to that theme, not unheard of in America. But that's where I think sometimes, and this is one of the things that made me think, and I'm glad you put all this together because I thought it was an interesting collection and connection of things in the way you broke the book up as well, is we sort of gave over all this stuff to
in the fear and panic after 9-11, right? I mean, look, I went to work at the Department of Homeland Security on March 1st, 2003, the day they stood the place up. Now, I worked at FEMA, so I was one of the 5,000 people who wasn't a cop of 183,000 or whatever the hell it was. But think about that idea. It was like, I mean, to really dumb it down, Danny, for me, not for you so much, is we still take our shoes off at the airport, right? Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah. But that's the kind of stuff where, you know, you talk about, you know, it's the Insurrection Act, which, again, another one of your authors, you know, George H.W. Bush did in the wake of the riots. Kennedy and Eisenhower did it in the context of desegregating schools. So it's not an unknown thing. I think the difference is now if you're going to take this ever present conflict and now apply it to the Insurrection Act or a Bill Barr, which is I am now President.
There are people there I believe are threats to the country, ergo, I can do this in the name of protecting the country. That's right. So it's ruled by Fiat, and it does give an extreme amount of power to the presidency to create law ex nihilo, out of nothing, I mean, at their will. And it results in this permanent state of exception. And this does come from Schmidt, and that the assumption also is that
By ruling in a state of exception, you represent the true people and the true people will be aligned with the laws that you create. That means that those who protest or those who disagree aren't part of the true people, right? And this is where the kind of fascist connotation comes from. Right. And remember for the post 9-11 thing, remember they put in the thing about the library books. And I remember I might've even been guilty of saying it, Danny, which is like,
Well, unless you're checking out some pretty weird stuff, because I worked for the Bush administration. Right. So I was deep in it. What do you have to worry about? Well, now, as I have blossomed into this pro-democracy advocate and, you know, shed my formerly partisan skin, I'm like, that's crazy. Right. We shouldn't do that. We shouldn't track those things. But let me ask a broader question, which the book doesn't reference. But it drove me to this line of thinking, not just with Trump.
But with a country like the United States in the 21st century, in which, you know, every country is different, we'll get to that idea in a second. Is it possible for Congress to claw back executive power? Is that something they would be willing to do? Is that something that the people are willing to accept? Is there a time when, I mean, there was, you know, I mean, I live in the state of Utah. We live in a dictatorship of the legislature. You know, that's gone too far to the other side, right? That's sort of.
England kind of stuff. But is there ever a time when we don't reach a breaking point on executive authority that then creates some conflagration perhaps, right? As we've seen in the past, or can the system reset itself so we don't get to Leviathan? I know that's a much bigger question. That's not actually in the book. Well,
Well, it's a great question because the power that the presidency now wields to make these decisions for everybody. And of course, it also applies to the judiciary and the power that it has. You know, when you have no terms on how long a Supreme Court justice can have that position, then how democratic is that? So, you know, what is the strategy of reining that in?
And I think it would have to work through the Congress. That would be the best possible way, as pressure is put on by constituents through democratic mobilization. The beauty of our system, with its checks and balances, can also be the problem with it. But if the party system is rejuvenated and rejuvenated,
more reflective of the people, maybe those kinds of checks can take place. We'll come back in 2025 and have that whole discussion. So, all right. So I want to talk about fascism and the idea that
It's sometimes hard to pin down what fascism is. Again, I give the broad outlines of what it tends to be similar, but that all fascism is homegrown. German fascism was different from Italian fascism. You know, if we have it here, it's different than anything else, which is why it's like, well, you know, when you make comparisons to Hitler, to your point about World War I and the pre-war era and, you know, mass unemployment,
The stab you in the back, right? All of that stuff, right? Inflation, you know, people complain about inflation now, like this was 130,000% from one day to the next, right? Like it was no human can really understand. But we have our own, right? And in this moment. And so as I've asked other authors and guests is this stuff seems to ebb and flow everywhere, but certainly even here in the U.S.,
That's a major discussion of the book, which is, you know, we know that this word comes from Europe. We know that the first fascist movements, it's a European concept, which would seem to push against the idea of a homogenous form of fascism in the United States. And then the response is, well, actually, we have our own traditions. And like you said, each nation state has its own indigenous, homegrown traditions.
So here in this country, people, especially those associated with something called the Black Radical Tradition, there's a couple of representatives of this in the book. Robert Paxton, who's the leading scholar of fascism, will say, "Look, well, you have to focus on the second complex clan. You have to focus on some of the Nazi cosplaying groups, the German goons, all this." These groups had real traction here and maybe were marginalized after World War II, but kind of always have been
been on the fringe and they've returned. So what does it amount to? What is American fascism? I think is essentially the question. And I don't know if you could boil it down to an essence just because I, after having edited this book and read so many books on fascism, the interesting thing about it is that reducing it to an essence doesn't seem to be possible. So we have to look at certain characteristics. This country, it would most certainly seem is that there's a profound racial element involved
Some would think of white supremacy. Others would point to new developments such as surveillance, capitalism, some of the rhetoric of Trump, you will not replace us, grand replacement theory that has come over from Europe. And also the weird uniform thing, the weird cosplaying. And now for those people, it's, well, it could be the Proud Boys and their kilts and their yellow shirts or their black shirts.
Or the guys in the khaki pants and the white polo shirts, right? It's a nerdy outfit, but it's a uniform of a sort. Yeah, there's that. There's some that would point to like Catherine Bellew. I don't know if you've had her on your show, but she wrote a very well-received book called Bring the War Home, which talks about veterans from Vietnam and then the Iraq War who were radicalized in these places. And then they come back and embrace white power movements, some of these groups.
are some of Trump's most diehard supporters. So militarism, a number of features. I wouldn't want to reduce it to one thing. The idea that one man can solve all the country's problems and no one else can is kind of a classic fascist idea. And I think you get that with Trump. Only he can do it, right?
So, you know, there's something called late fascism, which would say, let's move away from the cosplaying and let's move away from thinking about the horrors of the Nazi regime and
Fascism has taken on a more modernized form, right? It's a more slippery concept. It's actually maybe even multiracial. We know that one of the leaders of the Proud Boys, he wasn't white. So it's taken on new form today, right? And therefore we shouldn't discount it because it doesn't look like Nazi fascism. Rather, we have to deal with it on its own terms. That view is by someone named Alberto Toscano. He's not in the book, but it's very popular today, that way of thinking about fascism.
I think that the essay that got me the most was American fascism. It has happened here by Sarah Churchwell. I got my nerdy highlighter. Speaking of nerdy, I highlighted more out of this particular essay than the rest of them. And one of them is fascism is as fascism does, which is, yeah, OK. So it's not goose stepping morons burning books. Right. And ultimately killing people.
six million people by extermination and then responsible for tens of millions more because they started a world war. But it is Enrico Terrio, federal prisoner. It is X, Y, and Z. It is these people. It's everybody from guys and gals in the red MAGA hats to Steve Bannon, right? And a number, a lot of elites, right? Which some billionaires, right? The MAGA slash American fascisties
Like they don't run on gasoline. They don't run on oxygen. They run on cash. And a lot of it shows up. Yeah, I think that's great to highlight her piece. I think of all the people writing on this who take the view that we are absolutely living in fascist times. She is the most compelling. And she's someone that's very active on social media. I highly recommend following her. But yeah, I mean, I think that's where the argument goes. The MAGA-wearing, rabid nationalist...
who, you know, is essentially maybe even wanting a theocracy of some kind. You know, just to be fair to the other side, there would be some who would say, well, you know, there's certainly a crisis of democracy, there's no doubt about it. But by the other side, I mean, anyone who's opposed to Trump but doesn't buy into the, that this is fascism.
But, you know, there are other ways of framing this crisis. And the term fascism is ultimately, for all the reasons that you mentioned at the very beginning, it's politicized, it's used to cancel, it's used to basically rule out any kind of dialogue with this other side and make it totally illegitimate, right? And so that's kind of where the debate lies. You know, if Trump is, there's a number of pieces that have come out recently, one by Jan-Werner Mueller, a couple others saying essentially that Trump wants to be like Viktor Orban.
and that if he is elected, then that's what we'll have. Well, Viktor Orban self-identifies as kind of a Christian Democrat or a Christian nationalist. Whether or not that's true, that self-description, is that fascist, right? It's authoritarian, we know that. Do we need to go the further distance and say that it's fascist? So that's kind of where, you know, this kind of did it happen here, that's where we get into the weeds. And look, I mean, I'm sure as a professor and as a historian,
you are allergic, probably highly allergic to binary answers. And intellectually, I am too. Politically, in this moment, however...
in a campaign, maybe it's because I'm a campaign guy, Danny. Campaigns are binary. You win or you lose. And so for me, you talk about, okay, yeah, well, you know, he's bad, he's authoritarian, but he's not fascist. I'm sort of like, you know, come see, come saw, right? You know, potato, potato. I mean, if sitting with Trump, and I've said this to many of my friends, many of whom don't talk to me anymore, but I say this also to soft Republicans, which is to
to be for Trump means you have to sit at the table with the Camp Auschwitz guy. Is that something you're willing to do? It's not something I'm willing to do. I think it's something most Americans aren't willing to do. But again, that's not nuanced. And I understand the nuance you're talking about. I'm trying to figure out how you maintain a level of thoughtfulness if you believe, as I do, that this is the fight for American democracy, because I'm not saying I disagree with you. I'm just trying to figure out how you take
your reasoned and thoughtful position and apply that to a thing where I'm like, oh man, this could get ugly in a hurry. I totally agree with you, Reid. I am an academic and I'm sitting in my office thinking about these things, even though I'm very much concerned and
I want Trump to be defeated. I think the way that where it hinges in terms of the politics of it, at least for me, is whether you see the phenomena of Trump as being external to our democratic system or whether he is actually a product of a system that's not working well and there's a desperation for solutions.
Radical solutions, right? And I think where this debate, just to put it in the context of the book, the crux of it is if you see him as an aberration and as external to our system, it's much more easier to write him off as a fascist.
But if you see him as a product of growing economic inequality, if you see him as a product of white middle-class Rust Belt workers living shorter lives and dying of opioids, and that's just a product of our society, then you're going to say, well, it's not that Trump's not really the problem here. The problem is with our democracy. Until we fix that, we're just going to keep getting more and more Trumps. And so I think that's why for those who resist the label, they're thinking about that. This doesn't solve the problem.
And it actually gives people the impression that the problem can be solved if you just get rid of these fascists. What I said about Trump is, you know, if luck is the definition of when preparation meets opportunity, then whether or not it was militia types, you know, hard right wingers, Christian nationalists, right? Like they have prepared for decades for this eventuality. And
society, politics, the world met them right when Donald Trump appeared on the escalator. Right. But for, you know, his opponents on a couple of debate stages and just not having any idea what to do about the guy when one of them should have just gone and put their finger in his chest and say, that's enough.
You either cut it out or believe me, you're going to be on your butt on this stage and he probably would have run away. You know, maybe we aren't here today, but that's a whole other thing. So one last thing I want to talk about, and this is America's trouble with our own reflection. And it goes back to Churchwell's essay and about the idea that the progenitor of so many fascist ideas, in particular in Germany, is
very well came from the Jim Crow South. And here's a particular passage that sort of was a political, spiritual, intellectual gut punch for me, Danny. Quote, The Courier was one of many African-American papers that not only saw affinities between Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America, but also traced causal links.
Connections, quote, Hitler learns from America, unquote, the courier had declared as early as 1933, reporting that German universities under the new regime of the Third Reich were explaining that they drew their ideas from, quote, the American pathfinders Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, and that, quote, racial insanities in America provided Nazi Germany with, quote, a model for oppressing and persecuting its own minorities. That is pretty darn damning.
Yeah, that's a great passage that you quoted. I'm glad you did it. There's a great book by James Whitman called Hitler's American Model. I think Sarah Churchill is probably referencing that book, which shows how the Nazis were very much, with the Nuremberg Laws, very much influenced by Jim Crow segregation laws. This goes to some of the other chapters in the book, such as Jason Stanley and others,
Meaning that for those who say, well, there are too many differences between Europe and the United States for this fascism comparison, the response is, well, actually, it was the Nazis were inspired by the Americans, right? And their form of discrimination.
It's a very, very powerful point. I think the passage you just quoted puts it very well, and it would lead strongly in the direction that this is as American as fascism is American as apple pie. Not only that, it inspired the most egregious regime ever to exist. I think that's a very powerful point. Yeah. And I mean, you know, this is and this goes back to my ebbing and flowing idea, Danny, which is if you think about it, we will never know what reconstruction might have been.
because Lincoln died. And Andrew Johnson, I mean, he was a copperhead for God's sakes, right? And didn't care, right? He was drunk anyway. Grant comes in, basically eradicates the KKK, right? Which you see the follow on the long-term downstream effects of Grant, not only as general, but also as president is...
until Ron Chernow comes out with a book about him, he's a drunk idiot, right? Like it's not until he gets sort of a second look 150 years after he dies that you realize he was an incredible general and he tried to do the right things as president, especially vis-a-vis the South. So, you know, that's one of those things where it's like, how could we not know in the 20s this would come back, right? I mean, all those statues that have been taken down, they weren't put up in 1866. They were put up in 1916.
And it's a lost cause. They lost the war. And let me just say this. Lincoln just historically was smart. He never recognized the Confederacy as a country, right? It was an insurrection. He was very smart about that. He wasn't going to give them the credit for being a country or a nation. But then we have the Civil Rights Act, right? We have Truman desegregates the military, you know, Brown versus Board of Education. We start to see the desegregation of schools. All of this was imperfect. I'm not saying then we get the Civil Rights Acts in the mid 60s, Voting Rights Act and
And now is a former mayor of a big American city. Danny said to me a couple of years ago, I can't believe we're having to do this again. Right. And so that's where it seems like, you know, the Supreme Court, to your point about being forever and not like they got the Voting Rights Act. Like I have lived in the South. That was a ridiculously bad idea. But they knew it. But it allowed so much of that Jim Crow stuff to come back, making it harder to vote.
Right. I mean, if you think about in Florida, right, they pass a ballot measure, I think, with 60 percent of the vote to reenfranchise nonviolent felons. And Ron DeSantis goes out and basically passes a poll tax to make it nearly impossible for any of these people to participate. And then when a few tried to actually register to vote legally, they got arrested.
This is a fight for now, but it's really a fight forever. This is never going to be killed dead. You're never going to cut the head off this snake altogether. It's a hydra, whatever metaphor you want to use. I'm sorry to say that, but like, I guess from here, what do we take from this book and how can we apply it to what we're seeing today?
First of all, thank you for those comments. I think everything you just said is spot on. And I take the book to ultimately suggest the following, and it just goes back to your Hydra comment. Our democracy is fragile. I went to high school in the 90s. It was the decade of the end of history. And if you would have told me fast forward 30 years from then or whatever, 20-something years, that the kinds of things that are happening today would take place, I would have been shocked.
And I think the takeaway from the book is our democracies are not permanent. They just don't last forever. And we have to work on them. I spend a lot of time in Europe. And one of the things that amazes me is that some of these cities like Paris and Prague, they're constantly renovating buildings there because they're old and they're going to fall apart.
And I think because we're kind of a younger country, you don't realize that in order to maintain things, you just kind of have to constantly be, you know, making sure your sidewalks, your buildings, everything is maintained. And that's the way we have to approach democracy, because if not, it will deteriorate and something far worse will replace it.
That is the main story of the book. How we label this, you know, that's another issue. But I think all the participants of this book who none of these people are for Trump would say that our democracy is in crisis and are looking for ways forward, regardless of where they stand on this debate. Well, amen to that. Listen, Danny, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. Before we let you go, where can we find your other work? If you dare to tread on social media, where can we find you? Yeah, I'm actually on Twitter.
Twitter, you could just look up my whole name, it will come up. I do a regular interview series for The Nation. It's about one interview a month. Usually they focus on new books. So if you're interested in new works on economics,
I interview a lot of authors. And so check out, check me out at The Nation and also on Twitter, Daniel Steinmetz Jenkins. As always, gang, you find me on Twitter and TikTok as long as it's legal at Reed Galen on Instagram and threads at Reed underscore Galen underscore LP over at Substack, the home front. I hope you'll check it out. Before I go, I want to say thank you.
Thanks to superfan Kim. I know you're listening out there. Thank you for everything. Everybody else, we'll see you next time. Thanks again to everyone for listening. Be sure to follow and subscribe to The Lincoln Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or however you listen. Don't forget to leave a five-star review.
To connect with us, follow us on Twitter, at Project Lincoln. And for more information on our movement, to join our mailing list, subscribe to our newsletter, or make a contribution to our efforts, visit LincolnProject.us. If you want to message the podcast directly, please send an email to podcast at LincolnProject.us. And if you want to personally join the fight to save our nation's democracy, visit JoinTheUnion.us.
For The Lincoln Project, I'm Reid Galen. I'll see you on the next episode. Support for The Lincoln Project podcast comes from Odoo. If you feel like you're wasting time and money with your current business software or just want to know what you could be missing, then you need to join the millions of other users who've switched to Odoo.
Odoo is the affordable, all-in-one management software with a library of fully integrated business applications that help you get more done in less time for a fraction of the price. To learn more, visit odoo.com slash Lincoln. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash Lincoln. Odoo. Modern management made simple.
