Historians Speak! "The Trump Presidency and America's Illiberal History"

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Summary

In this Harvard History Department event, Professor Stephen Khan from NYU explored historical perspectives on the Trump presidency and its connection to America's illiberal history. Drawing from his book, 'Illiberal America: A History,' Khan traced the roots of illiberalism in the U.S., suggesting that the current political climate isn't an anomaly but a continuation of a longstanding illiberal tradition. He dissected historical instances from as early as the 17th century to the present, examining how illiberal practices have shaped American society and politics. The discussion also covered the role of educational and public institutions under current political pressures, emphasizing the need for a broadened understanding of liberalism versus illiberalism in shaping national narratives.

Highlights

Professor Stephen Khan delivers an insightful lecture on illiberalism in America 📚.
Khan suggests that illiberal practices date back to the 17th century and are deeply embedded in American history ⏳.
He argues that the current political climate under Trump reflects these longstanding practices, not an isolated occurrence 📅.
The talk includes comparisons to past eras, emphasizing recurring themes in American governance 🤔.
Audience engagement highlights concerns about current political strategies and comparisons to historical events 📣.

Key Takeaways

Professor Khan explores America's longstanding tradition of illiberalism, tracing it back to the 17th century 📜.
The current political environment is seen as a continuation of historical illiberal practices, not an anomaly 📅.
Educational institutions like Harvard are highlighted as being under modern siege 🎯.
Past and present dynamics of racial, social, and political issues are intricately linked, showing continuity 🌐.
The discussion emphasized the potential of social movements to instigate change to counter illiberalism 🔄.

Overview

At a recent Harvard event, NYU's Professor Stephen Khan delivered a thought-provoking lecture on the Trump presidency and its ties to America's illiberal past. This lecture formed part of Harvard's 'Historians Speak' series, aiming to provide historical context to prominent political topics.

Khan focused on unmasking the deep-rooted histories of illiberalism in the United States, tracing them back centuries and examining their resurgence in modern times under the Trump administration. He posited that the turbulent political atmosphere today is less of a sudden deviation and more of a reflection of persistent illiberal traditions.

Amidst exploring historical parallels, Khan stressed the ongoing threats to educational and public sectors posed by current political ideologies. He advocated for a reinvigorated understanding of American history — one that accounts for both liberal and illiberal narratives, urging the audience to recognize the power of social movements in fostering change.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Event Details The chapter introduces an event organized by the Harvard Business Department as part of its 'historians speak' series. This initiative aims to provide a historical perspective on the rapid and tumultuous events during the early months of the Trump administration. Today's speaker is Professor Stephen Khan from the NYU History Department.
01:00 - 03:30: Introduction of Professor Stephen Khan The chapter begins with an introduction to a discussion led by Professor Stephen Khan, focusing on the Trump presidency and its implications in the context of American liberal history. The moderator, Liz Cohen from the history department, outlines the structure of the event: a brief introduction of Professor Khan, followed by a 45-minute speech, a few questions from her to start the discussion, and concluding with an open Q&A session, all set to conclude by 7:30.
03:30 - 07:00: Professor Khan's Background and Work The chapter provides an introduction to Professor Khan, highlighting his longstanding relationship with Steve, whom he met during graduate studies at Yale. It recalls a significant meeting at an American Historical Association event in San Francisco, emphasizing Khan's admiration for Steve's contributions over the years.
07:00 - 10:30: Discussion on Current Political Climate and Historical Context The chapter opens with a reflection on the historical context of slavery and emancipation, setting the stage for a broader discussion on populism and its implications in the American South. The reference to Steve's first book, which emerged from his award-winning PhD dissertation, delves into the roots of Southern populism. This work, focusing on yeoman farmers and the transformation of Georgia from 1850 to 1890, showcases the socio-political shifts of the era, earning the prestigious Frederick Jackson Turner Award.
10:30 - 15:00: Illiberalism in American History The chapter 'Illiberalism in American History' touches on significant works in American history literature. It discusses a book that was honored by the Organization of American Historians in 1983 as the best first book in US history. This was followed by 'A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South: From Slavery to the Great Migration,' which won the Bankro Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2004. Additionally, the chapter mentions another book, 'The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom,' published in 2009, based on the 2007 Nathan Huggin lectures.
15:00 - 19:00: Examples of Illiberalism in American History The chapter explores examples of illiberalism in American history, inspired by Steve's recent book 'Illiberal America: A History' published in 2024. The talk, given at Harvard, indicates Steve's prior engagements and authoritative status on the subject, reflecting the nation's evolution without borders amid civil wars.
19:00 - 23:00: The Liberal Tradition and its Critiques This chapter discusses the accomplishments of a notable scholar and teacher who has been associated with New York University (NYU) since 2016. He is praised for his impressive scholarly writing and successful teaching career. Beyond academia, he has actively participated in public history and humanities projects, aiming to make history accessible to the public. Additionally, he contributes to NYU's prison education program, offering educational courses to incarcerated individuals.
23:00 - 26:00: Contemporary Illiberalism and Historical Patterns The chapter discusses the topic of contemporary illiberalism and its historical patterns, starting with a mention of incarcerated students who are obtaining associate degrees. It notes the welcome of a speaker named Steve and acknowledges the audience's presence, particularly with spring break approaching, despite the unseasonable weather. The content hints at societal issues within the context of academia and broader sociopolitical structures.
26:00 - 29:00: Factors Contributing to the Current Political Crisis The chapter begins with the speaker acknowledging the complexity and multifaceted nature of discussing the current political crisis in a historical context. The speaker aims to provide an overview or sketch of the situation within a limited time frame of less than 45 minutes, highlighting their own thought process and perspectives. The focus is on exploring different ways of interpreting the crisis rather than presenting a singular narrative.
29:00 - 35:00: Historical Responses to Illiberalism In the chapter titled "Historical Responses to Illiberalism," the author reflects on the process of writing "A Liberal America," which was published about a year ago. The chapter involves a comprehensive reflection on the American past, aiming to provide insights into the current state of affairs. The author acknowledges that the current period is notably perilous, both in terms of time and context, suggesting a critical examination of how past responses to illiberalism can inform present challenges.
35:00 - 39:00: Conclusion and Discussion This chapter discusses the perception of universities, specifically institutions like Harvard, as targets under the current political climate and ideologies. It highlights the radical right's criticism of these establishments. An example is given by referencing JD Vance's statement from a couple of years ago, where he declared that universities are considered as adversaries.

Historians Speak! "The Trump Presidency and America's Illiberal History" Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 we want to welcome those in the room and who are online joining us at to the Harvard Business Department's next event in its historians speak which is an effort by the department to bring an historical perspective to the fastm moving and rather rass events that have taken place during the first months of the Trump administration today's speaker is Professor Stephen Khan of the NYU History Department and
00:30 - 01:00 his topic is the Trump presidency and Americans to liberal history uh let me just introduce myself i am Liz Cohen um of the history department and I will serve as moderator for the evening the plan is that I'll just give a brief introduction to Steve and then he will speak for about 45 minutes and then I will ask him a few questions to get things rolling and then we will invite you to join in and we'll end by 7:30 so let me just give a introduce
01:00 - 01:30 Steve to you uh it's a great pleasure to do this uh I've known Steve for a very long time i remembered that we met when we were both graduate students i was a busy career view at Yale so this was quite a many year big many years ago uh there was a NHA American Historical Association meeting in San Francisco and a mutual friend of ours brought him to dinner uh at at our house um and since then I have admired greatly the important contributions that Steve has
01:30 - 02:00 made to the history of slavery and emancipation populism American South the American Empire and many other topics i'm just going to touch on a few highlights steve's first book which was based on his Allen's Neans Prize-winning PhD dissertation was called The Roots of Southern Populism: Yman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upount 1850 to 1890 and it won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award uh from the
02:00 - 02:30 Organization of American Historians as the best book uh first book in US history in 1983 that book was followed by A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South: From Slavery to the Great Migration which won both the Bankro Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2004 steve's next book The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom was published in 2009 and it was based on the 2007 Nathan Huggin lectures that he
02:30 - 03:00 gave here at Harvard so we know you've been here before and next was a nation without border uh the United States and the world in the age of civil wars uh 2016 and finally his most recent book published in 2024 in liberal America and history which is and this is the book here and this is the book that I think is inspiring what he will share with us this evening uh I'll just mention one more thing um in addition to Steve's
03:00 - 03:30 impressive scholarly writing and his success as a teacher at NYU where he's been since 2016 and in the the schools he taught in before that he's been uh where he was a very successful teacher he's been involved in a number of public history and humanities projects that have helped to bring history out of the university classroom into the larger world and most recently he has been teaching in NYU's prison education program which authors courses and
03:30 - 04:00 associate degrees incarcerated students so now please join me in welcoming Steve back to Park uh well thank you for that mere and over generous in introduction and thank you all for being here i understand of course on the eve of spring break um even though the weather is not quite
04:00 - 04:30 cooperating um I really appreciate the invitation to come here and to talk uh about the uh current uh political situation in uh historical context as best as we can of course there's no one way uh of doing that but I will try to um in less than 45 minutes uh try to sort of sketch out some ways uh that I've been thinking
04:30 - 05:00 about as I was in the process of writing a liberal America which came out about a year ago um but required a pretty extensive reflection uh on how we think about the American past and how that might help us understand where we currently are we live today as we all know in a very perilous time and we stand on especially perilous ground
05:00 - 05:30 which we've come to recognize universities like uh Harvard are in the crosshairs of the current I would call it regime in the making and of course in of the radical right more generally um some of you have doubtless heard um JD Vance's uh proclamation actually a couple of years ago uh about how universities are the enemy this is
05:30 - 06:00 somebody who would probably be scratching a living had it not been for Ohio State University and Yale Law School but nonetheless uh is um turning the um uh lasers on us uh the vulnerabilities no no uh boundaries really anyone on campus students faculty and staff uh especially as we know
06:00 - 06:30 political activists and international students bahud Kal being the most uh recent example but unfortunately probably uh the first s president uh the president said uh the first of many um and the entire research project of the university has been belittled and set for and the word to be used is destruction and presidents and administrators have been visibly ducking
06:30 - 07:00 for cover uh or bending the knee and I'm sure all of you are uh most of you are familiar with the really important piece that professors uh Brown and Johnson recently published in the Harvard Crimson which is takes aim at that and emphasizes the importance of resistance recognizing that rolling over only makes the job uh easier now this of course is not the first time universities have uh
07:00 - 07:30 been under siege uh certainly in the early phases of the Cold War um and especially during the 1950s we called it the McCarthyite era but it was much broader uh than that uh involved Democrats as well as Republicans uh where faculty and others were fired blacklisted required to take loyalty oaths later on during the Vietnam War a lot of the public was increasingly disenchanted with what was going on at
07:30 - 08:00 universities although the institutions more broadly uh tended not to be blamed and then in the 1980s it was really the first round of w what we've come to call the culture wars um being waged uh by people like Duza and Laura Ingram who you know this was their springboard uh into uh greater uh notoriety I should say right-wing newspapers being
08:00 - 08:30 published uh on college campuses broad attacks on the very idea of legal education and especially on affirmative action gay rights and all sorts of uh programs that were designed to make the university make liberal arts education available to larger numbers of people who had you know traditionally been left out um recent years of course uh the attacks have been ratched up and have
08:30 - 09:00 been fortified by billionaire donors back in back in the day you know if you gave a lot of money you got to slap your name on a building now it seems that you can claim the right to surveil instruction uh and the faculty it seems to me that this is part of a likely process of ethnic and political cleansing uh not only for the humanities but certainly focused on that now the place uh placing of the universities in the current regime's enemies list I
09:00 - 09:30 think is part of a a throughine of the past uh almost two months now because attacks have been launched on uh institutions and groups who compose a base uh of potential independence and opposition uh on institutions and programs that tie people to the federal government uh an effort to weaken uh politically and economically the positions of people of color whether
09:30 - 10:00 they're immigrants or not and the deployment of expulsion a very longstanding American tradition as an appropriate method of repression not only for undocumented people but for activists and those regarded as political enemies for federal employees for those who are accused of being hired um under DEI DEI or enabling
10:00 - 10:30 DEI members of the press and social media expulsion uh it's unclear what the investigations that will likely be conducted um against those who uh were involved in the January 6th investigations and others that um uh involved Donald Trump uh but uh my fear is that they will soon be labeled enemies of the people and maybe the
10:30 - 11:00 Democratic party along with it now there's no question that uh in its speed and scale we are witnessing something I believe that at least at the national level of politics is probably unprecedented i do not believe it's unprecedented at the state and local levels and it has led to constant exasperation about the so-called norms that are being violated this struck me
11:00 - 11:30 as early as 201516 when Trump began to uh begin his candidacy for presidency and um you know many people in the media who were just a gasast at one thing after another it seems to me that the idea of norms itself uh being violated shows the power of what is usually called uh a liberal tradition um the idea that American history is largely organized around the
11:30 - 12:00 set of ideas and practices that involve rights civic inclusiveness involve representative institutions democratic methods of selection the rule of law the separation of powers um the acceptance of the outcome of elections now one of the things that so surprising to me in 2015 16 it was as if everything
12:00 - 12:30 was going swimmingly up until that point but ever since at least the mid 1990s all sorts of things were uh going on in the political world that was suggesting that these so-called liberal norms or liberal democratic norms were on very shaky ground to begin with or were being violated on a regular basis the Supreme Court had already intervened in a presidential election you know at the first possible notice and decided the
12:30 - 13:00 outcome it had turned on spigot of big money in politics it had gutted voting rights and this was before dogs um as a result state legislatures across the country took the first opportunity to raise the bar for participation in political life which of course uh hit the poor and people of color the hardest and it was intended to do uh there was
13:00 - 13:30 the rise of white nationalist um uh in white nationalist influence on the Republican party uh I would just remind you that in the late 1980s uh the neo-Nazi and clansman David Duke uh not only was elected to the state legislature in Louisiana but he ran for the Senate and the governorship came very close to winning the Senate race and on all occasions won nearly 60% of
13:30 - 14:00 the white vote a few years later Pat Buchanan talked about launching a culture war celebrated white nationalism and told the Republican party to pay heed to someone like David Doo because he really demonstrated a way forward and many of the weaknesses uh that uh the Democratic Party and liberalism more generally had it was in this period the
14:00 - 14:30 explosion of mass incarceration um which you know uh coincided not simply with the Reagan and Bush administrations but with the Clinton administration uh which not only expelled people from their communities but really expelled people from political life it's not simply that except for a couple of states people who are incarcerated can't vote but in most places they can't vote not only when they're released but until their parole
14:30 - 15:00 is completed and they've and they have finished paying all their debts um back to the state uh which can be very considerable um and and so all of this is going on and somehow or other uh you know Trump was being responded to as if uh you know the the uh American political system was for the most part very uh well um the liberal tradition uh in fact uh
15:00 - 15:30 is not a longstanding perspective on American society and American history uh it is an invention of the 1940s and 1950s beforehand historians never talked about American development that way they talked about the important influence of Europe and European institutions about an Angloutonic kind of uh myasma and
15:30 - 16:00 then of course there was a progressive interpretation of history which was about conflict um you could have called it class conflict some did but it was about the people versus the interests this hung on for a long time for multiple decades until the 40s and the 50s when the idea of a liberal tradition uh was born and um what's so interesting about me is that it has hung on for a
16:00 - 16:30 long time with great tenacity despite the fact that it was bludgeoned within a few years of its emergence and critics were coming at it from all sorts of perspectives people who were interested in African-American history who were interested in class and workingclass history who were interested in women's history who were interested in native peoples and so on and so forth which the uh you know liberal tradition and the writers hearts offer many others some
16:30 - 17:00 who were critics um others were celebrated it um uh had so instead what I'd like to suggest and I I'll take the remaining time I have um is to suggest that what we're seeing is not the shakiness of the liberal tradition or defections from it uh but rather the powerful eruption of a very deeply rooted illiberalism that can be traced back to
17:00 - 17:30 the 17th century that was tethered in important ways to early modern and feudal worlds and then had a an extended life and to this day it has emerged over time in numerous social and cultural forms it became modernized it adopted new languages and new targets but I will say there were a number of characteristics that one can
17:30 - 18:00 see uh again and again and let me mention a number of these characteristics uh and you know that they'll help us understand a lot of what is going on at the moment one is a belief in inherent inequalities inequalities that are civil political and social a belief in what you might call assigned or ascribed hierarchies of
18:00 - 18:30 gender race and nationality a quest for cultural and/or religious homogeneity or uniformity the marking of internal and external enemies and the use of exclusions and expulsions as a means of defeating them and this of course means the centrality
18:30 - 19:00 of political violence as a way of both attaining and maintaining power and privileging the will of the community however that community may be defined and of course community is a very uh ambiguous concept but privileging the will of the community over the rule of law now we can see the illiberal
19:00 - 19:30 eruptions on many occasions in different places um as you could well imagine but when I was writing a liberal America I was interested not in digging up the worst stuff to be found and there was plenty of that but actually uh looking episodically at those moments in the past that they're not the darkest on the surface but that were more likely associated with the rise and development
19:30 - 20:00 of liberalism and to try to unpack what was going on and to interrogate the sort of what was looked at and what wasn't looked at and so what I'd like to do is just um sort of mention a few of these examples as a way of you know maybe constructing a discussion too um let's start with the 1960s now this of course is uh generally seen as sort of the
20:00 - 20:30 salad days of modern liberalism uh the great society the enactment of the civil rights and voting rights act a variety of rights movements but it's also a time and this is oftentimes ignored uh partly because in 1964 Barry Goldwater got so many people including people like Richard Hostad or someone who was really interested it in the radical right thought that was the end that the
20:30 - 21:00 Republican party and the conservative movement had kind of run out of gas but from the point of view of the energized radical right it was the beginning that Barry Goldwater represented a shift in the Republican party from the east coast and its international wing to the west coast and a variety of new perspectives this is a time with the emerg where the John Bur society is founded in the late 1950s um the young Americans uh for
21:00 - 21:30 freedom um uh were organized in 1960 at Bill Buckley's estate in um uh in uh Connecticut and I think maybe more important than anything else as a kind of um example of what's going on and what we could easily miss is the rise of George Wallace now as many of you know George Wallace was elected governor of Mississippi in
21:30 - 22:00 1962 and he gave a just horrific uh inaugural address talking about segregation now segregation tomorrow segregation forever martin Luther King regarded him as the worst racist uh in the entire country but it turns out that he ran for president on three occasions one time in 1964 now this is shortly after the assassination of John F kennedy uh Lyndon Johnson had just become president and he decided uh he was making a tour
22:00 - 22:30 of college campuses outside of the south and it was very clear even then that he had an audience that he could speak to and uh 1964 he ran at three primaries in the north Wisconsin Indiana Maryland and won about a third of the vote before he dropped out in 1968 he organized his own party and for a while it looked as though he was going to win enough
22:30 - 23:00 electoral votes to throw the entire election into the House of Representatives where even if he didn't win it would be something of a kingmaker as he uh recognized what he managed to do was to home a language of grievance and of racial hostility that seemed to have a great deal of appeal to white constituencies in the urban north and the rural north out west uh in
23:00 - 23:30 1972 before he was sidelined by an assassin's bullet he had already won primaries running for the Democratic nomination there it's not entirely clear what would have happened to that year had it not been uh for him these uh this still resonates with us and I think if you want to look at you know the more more recent um sort of sort of early signs of what we're seeing now and the
23:30 - 24:00 kind of mobilization that has taken place in the last 10 years he's definitely someone to look at closely um we can think moving back a little further of the progressive era which we tend to associate with the birth of modern liberalism uh but you know if you look at this there was an very great attraction uh to social engineering across the progressive uh spectrum that showed itself in fascination with
24:00 - 24:30 eugenics scientific reading uh and with immigration restriction uh tethered to that um it's fascination with segregation which was embraced by progressive all over the country who saw this really as the modern way to choreograph race relations as opposed to the violence that was exploding and it soon uh in the
24:30 - 25:00 uh in the south and of course pie versus Ferguson uh puts the stamp of the Supreme Court on it fascination with the disfranchisement not only of African-Americans but of recent immigrants who as Herbert Crowley one of the most noteworthy progressives would put it didn't seem to understand the national purpose and therefore you know American politics should really be in the hands of people who were educated to this who were professionals uh and so on
25:00 - 25:30 and of course Williams versus Mississippi uh was an example of the Supreme of course validating that this is the t an age of American imperialism and warfare uh an effort to extend American values overseas to tutor people of color whether in the Caribbean or in the Philippines um who it seemed were unable to uh govern themselves but it built on the conquest of the North
25:30 - 26:00 American continent you know one of the things that's so interesting about this is that officers and troops who were in the Philippines uh had been involved in Indian wars in the trans Mississippi West and they kind of likened their experience uh in the Philippines to what was going on in the west you know the suppression of backward people who couldn't take care of themselves and who were undermining uh the American project uh
26:00 - 26:30 more generally uh there's an alliance of government and corporations especially during the first world war and the eventual repression of political radicals at that time in many ways I would suggest anticipating European fascism of the 1920s and indeed a lot of this came to fruition in the United States in the 1920s the Kulux Clan was probably the largest social and political movement in
26:30 - 27:00 the country targeting Jews and Catholics as well as uh people of African descent uh America firstism bursts on the sea religious fundamentalism and an enormous admiration of early fascism especially in Italy especially Mussolini until uh the Italians invaded Ethiopia but up until that point well Joseph you know eugenics was connecting scientific research in the United States in Nazi Germany and Joseph Mangala got a a grant
27:00 - 27:30 from the Rockefeller Foundation uh to do his work so you know I think this is an important thing uh to recognize we can think moving back a little bit too of the jonian period which is associated with the rise of American democracy it's also a period of mass expulsions now of course the best known and some of the most horrific involve the expulsions of native peoples from
27:30 - 28:00 their lands east of the Mississippi out to something called Indian territory in the west where there is no expectation that it would ever become a state in the union it's not currently clear what it even was but it also involved the expulsions of free black people of Catholics of Mormons of abolitionists the 1830s was a period of mob violence so extreme that Abraham Lincoln and
28:00 - 28:30 Alexis Toqueville commented on it and worried about the future of the country and whether mob rule was really uh taking hold rather than a rule of law um there's the rise of the first mass nivist movement uh that coincides with the um immigration of large numbers of rural Irish Catholics which was not restricting immigration but was focused
28:30 - 29:00 on uh limiting the civil and political rights of those who came and the social reform impulse of the period you know included advocacy of the penitentiary and One of the interesting things about this is among the leaders and among the architects of the penitentiary which included the acceptance of convict labor and corporal punishment and were people who were deeply involved in the anti-slavery they didn't see really any
29:00 - 29:30 uh uh any contradiction necessarily and this is something when I've taught u uh in the proven education program I have my students read Benjamin Rush who is a really interesting figure and who as a physician and as a enlightened figure and it's important political person you know had a really moral denunciation of what safekeeping but also held up the penitentiary as the humane alternative
29:30 - 30:00 uh to traditional uh forms of punishment uh we can think moving back a a little bit and I won't move back any further than this uh to the revolutionary and constitutional era that did produce a framework uh for a republic but oftentimes ignored is a powerful anti-atholicism that had long been part of the political culture of England uh
30:00 - 30:30 long-term attachments to monarchy and to hierarchical forms of authority deep worries about popular democracy especially uh the 18780s which showed up in the in the constitution and of course a central support both for slavery and rewards for slavers now what I'd like to just kind of finish with is
30:30 - 31:00 um sort of the like like why might it be useful to think about illiberalism as something that is powerful and serious that ought to be considered and um uh and what what it can get us and I think it's important for a number of reasons for one thing I think it helps us understand what's out there and what we're up against you know there's a
31:00 - 31:30 tendency to describe the behaviors of many people on the right or many people who vote for those on the right who seem of course seems to be supportive of rightwing policies as a backlash or as small P populism which I have to confess as a historian of populism really irritates because you know people who are called populist never consider themselves they don't talk about themselves populist It's a me it's
31:30 - 32:00 basically a derogatory term um and this I think is a response that is embedded in an idea of a liberal tradition as being a centerpiece of American history and politics the idea is that the diversions from it are little more than ragefilled and generally irrational and that's what we you know we look at people like that and it's usually
32:00 - 32:30 ascribed to working people or the lower classes or to those who are regarded as un or undereducated i mean how do we talk about the so-called white working class in an American uh political analysis the only time we really talk about class of the two types one is to talk about the middle class and one is to use class as really inadequate and in terms of the white working class uh
32:30 - 33:00 which no one is very clear about defining except that they seem to lack a college degree now this of course is true for probably 60% of the adult population in the United States including you know many people who are billionaire olivear that's a particular point it's not very helpful but we're seeing but it does suggest that what's happening is really without substance
33:00 - 33:30 and in some ways although it's a comforting thought and I think especially in 201617 that it was especially comforting because it was this kind of idea that what happened in that year was a fluke that it was a noxious weed growing in an otherwise you know fertile democratic soil and all we needed to do was kind of pluck it out and we could return to some kind of normaly now obviously we no longer are as optimistic uh about that
33:30 - 34:00 what we're seeing is not without substance it's not I believe um simply rage Each film I think it taps into deep perspectives practices and understandings entire world views that of course are international in scope and one of the things we obviously need to recognize is that we are in uh a worldwide illiberal moment that may be longer than that
34:00 - 34:30 maybe era um that is going to be very consequential for how we're going to think about what happens in the United States now I will say that it seems to me that um the uh sort of the liberalism and how it manifests itself politically is historically contingent it's not set in stone it does change and politics is volatile and people who find themselves
34:30 - 35:00 in one place politically at one point can find themselves in other places i mean one of the things that's really interesting is that if we look at the history of American socialism uh in the you know basically from the late 1890s into the 1940s one of the areas that was strongest was in the midsection of the country from Texas and Louisiana to Oklahoma and Kansas and the
35:00 - 35:30 Dakotas if not socialism then social democracy you know one of the things for us to figure out is how the red states became the red states right and you know what what it now obviously it has to do with a lot of things including population migration and so on but there's a question about you know whether there is a way of thinking about uh traditions that are deeply set bare that we're not very aware of that did
35:30 - 36:00 influence these i mean Milwaukee had socialism mayors of the 1940s so um you know the Nonpartisan League the Farmer Worker Party which is still around um in Minnesota uh you know I mean this is an important perspective on uh on what's going on um but it may be historically contingent but it is powerful and serious nonetheless and strengthened at least in this country as most elsewhere by decades of
36:00 - 36:30 mobilization by the right uh which took on an increasingly neoliberal cast but I think ended up effectively constructing an entire political culture that has been so encompassed that has become bipartisan and that it seems like it's always been with us uh it is a political culture that of course celebrates the individual the market
36:30 - 37:00 accumulation the protection of property especially certain kinds of property uh law and order and the admiration of economic elites and idors and at the same time it's a political culture that has come to demonize the state state initiatives that are um directed toward achieving equality the states perceive
37:00 - 37:30 clients social welfare and safety nets intellectual and artistic life which has been going on for a long time but they're feeling it uh much more powerfully at the moment educators and public educational institutions uh in general i think one of the things this suggests is that the task that lies ahead uh is about challenging this political culture and it's not as if that's the
37:30 - 38:00 only thing that's ever been out there between the 1930s and the 1960s probably the only error in American uh history that you could call somewhat social democratic um was a very different one with a very different sensibilities and the point is not to go back but to actually expand build upon the sort of um commitments loyalties and senses of obligations to
38:00 - 38:30 each other that were there to build a vision of the future that weakens illiberalism um because it has been weakened uh and it can be weakened but it is there and it's not simply going to disappear and I think that's important to recognize um taking illiberalism as a powerful his um uh force uh does one more thing and
38:30 - 39:00 I'll finish with this uh it descends liberalism from the American historical merit now by that I mean not simply diminishes because liberalism is a very very powerful and changing force in its own right but my sense is that the centrality of the liberal tradition in American historical thinking even for those who have taken you know set their
39:00 - 39:30 sights on it and inflicted massive uh damage on it as an interpretive um uh orientation um nonetheless kind of sees many developments in relationship to it and as a result I think blinds us to a range of political ideas and movements that have in fact faked our past and that indeed need to be excavated and which
39:30 - 40:00 may have owed nothing to either illiberalism or liberalism even if eventually these currents kind of ran over and through them i mean just to mention a few popular democracy uh cooperivism radical abolitionism anti- monopoly and yes populism of the 19th and early 20th centuries socialism and social
40:00 - 40:30 democracy black nationalism and feminism industrial unionism and cynicalism and gay rights uh to name just a few um and so I I do think that that in some important ways u the significance of uh you know the multiplicity of political traditions
40:30 - 41:00 that have been really significant in American history and that have really private a whole variety of important social movements um uh has tended to be overlooked if they can't be sort of connected uh to the liberal tradition or what has you know in recent decades been what you might call a slavery to freedom narrative which is you know we sinned in the past but little by little we have kind of redeemed ourselves of this I
41:00 - 41:30 mean it reached probably the apogee uh when Barack Obama was elected president and for five minutes you talked about uh living a postracial society uh but on the sixth minute it was pretty clear that that was um history is u of course in part about continuities uh but it's also about change and I think one of the things we've learned is that big changes come uh from the
41:30 - 42:00 efforts of ordinary people and oftentimes those who had been excluded those who had been put and those who have been or at least their attempts to expel it and who are likely to be most committed to the goals and to the values that we claim to exalt
42:00 - 42:30 was a really fascinating talk and um I think put into uh 45 minutes many of the arguments uh made in this book which I highly recommend to you you have certainly made a convincing case in the book in particular and in shorthand here in the talk that the US has faced many moments uh forces and faces of
42:30 - 43:00 neoliberalism there you leave with us with no question that uh American culture society and politics has been very much influenced by this strain of the liberalism but as in the book in particular you point when you you go from one of these sort of key moments to another you point to particular stimuli that you argue have inspired um the rise of it so when you talk about um the the the the strides that were made for
43:00 - 43:30 example by African-Americans after the civil war and during reconstruction are then are met with the rise of the KKK the influx of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe at the turn of the century many of them Catholic encourages nivism and eugenics you talk about how the rise of communism um in the Soviet with the Soviet Union uh leads to the Red Scare after World War I and then with Soviet expansion after World War II
43:30 - 44:00 uh into Eastern Europe with McCarthyism so um without you know so forcing you into sort of a too too specific a a ranking I just wonder what you think are the most important precipitating factors in this most recent rise of authoritarianism anti-democracy intense culture wars and so forth because we do want to try to understand better how we what what's going on in our world today and I'll
44:00 - 44:30 just kind of rem remind us of some of the arguments that are sort of circulating out there about how to explain what's what's behind what's happening now one is the racial argument which you pointed to um at base an attack against racial progress perceived unfairness of a of affirmative action for white election of Obama black lives matter as well as the influx of brown immigrants from the global south other critics would say would add to that that
44:30 - 45:00 it's also a rejection of second-wave feminism and the and gay the progress of gay marriage focusing here on issues of gender and sexuality we've heard a lot about cultural resentments such as the middle America rejecting the lifestyle the cosmopolitan values the arrogance of the coastal elites uh us um there's then a very important more economic argument that you do engage with in the book uh and here I would point to Gary Gersell's
45:00 - 45:30 recent book on the rise of neoliberalism that really it's the it's neoliberalism and the globalization that comes out of it followed by the great recession of 2008 and9 that's been a key stimuli for this really extreme right-wing turn um the strange thing the unusual part about that argument is that the the the behind it um represent I think a strange alliance between workingclass and lower middle class people experiencing sort of
45:30 - 46:00 a shrinking share of national wealth and stalled intergenerational mobility rejecting policies like NAFTA and so forth them on the one side and then on the other side these high-tech and high finance many of the billionaires who are anti-state anti-regulation anti- tax so I'm just sort of wondering playing out those racial cultural uh gender uh economic arguments how you would
46:00 - 46:30 prioritize you know or you think it's just a salt of of the sort of political culture that you refer to at the end of the talk um well that's a very big question um first of all I think we need to learn a lot more about looking at the contemporary situation about the you know social profile and dynamics of the right wing and I have long been
46:30 - 47:00 suspicious of the um uh talking about the white working class as the basis of this um the white first of all white working people uh ha behave politically in a whole variety of ways as of as numerous studies have shown uh it seems to me that probably um the driving force tends to be those who were connected with the Tea Party movement yeah um after Obama was elected
47:00 - 47:30 and and and started up like you know when he was inaugurated they were out there and and here you're looking at people who are educated but who are um Christian uh fundamentalists and nationalists people who um uh were more likely to be um sort of middling types um small business people contractors
47:30 - 48:00 people who were very vulnerable to shifts in the economy and who were dependent on working people um and who had you know tight profit margins and therefore were very anti-UN and very tough on labor questions um so but I do think that sort of the large context here has to do with something that was happening in a broad you know
48:00 - 48:30 international environment which was the deindustrialization of uh of Europe and North America um it has to do with the shriveling of the kind of social welfare state that was being built uh you know all over Europe and especially in some areas rather than others it had to do with the enormous migrations that empire and the decolonization ended up producing as you
48:30 - 49:00 know suddenly uh countries that were always looking at the United States as the most racist society in the world were beginning to experience you know their own problems with it um you know also I think the you know the sort of um pulling out and and sort of um mobilizing around um sort of and this is connected to um you know sort of Christian fundamentalists with a a sort
49:00 - 49:30 of a view of family and community um patriarchy um suspicions obviously opposition to feminism opposition to the rights movements in general and I think there is kind of a particularist sense of rights that has long been part uh of American history which means you know um you can have your rights there but you're not going to have your rights here and you could
49:30 - 50:00 see this obviously even in housing issues in large cities that preeded you know oftentimes there's you know they look at the explosions the rebellions of the 1960s but this was happening in the late 40s and 1950s as you know the um um uh black urban population in in northern cities was expanding as a housing shortage was you know you know as well as anyone um was bedeing a lot of these
50:00 - 50:30 places i think the a large shift in the um political economy of sort of industrial societies um the weakening of the sort of social democratic impulse and the sort of social welfare states that were being um uh uh were being built uh less so in the United States but nonetheless and um and I you know
50:30 - 51:00 I mean that's what I would you know I think it's a cultural political and of course an economic issue it's all of these things and I I don't think we can see it's not like the same thing repeats itself i mean I do think that of a whole variety of moments there are different things that are involved i mean as you pointed out you know the end of the 19th century is a time of immense social and political conflict um a sense that the kind of uh competitive and sort of
51:00 - 51:30 economically liberal world of the 19th century was um unequipped to deal with modernity and I don't think it's a surprise that you know you see you know responses anti-liberalism all over the I mean anti- 19th century liberalism all over the place and I do think that because we kind of attach ourselves to a view progressivism as largely a liberal phenomena um with its unfortunate
51:30 - 52:00 excursions into racism and imperialism that I think there's really connecting tissue um and I I have to say that I think eugenics has in most studies of progressivism not been given uh sufficient attention i remember when I was reading the minutes of a um a big uh actually Margaret Sanger organized it in New York it was a birth control convention but you know there was a lot
52:00 - 52:30 of talk about eugenics and if you saw the people who were there it was like a who's who of American political and intellectual life who were really drawn to this and to the whole idea you know of social engineering that that may not be all in a kind of sort of right illiberal direction but it it it was very powerful and it just seemed to me that you know this this is something that we needed to take seriously and I thought that this was kind of a way in
52:30 - 53:00 which liberalism was itself being modernized um for a world that was was changing you know I mean it's you can so big right and then there was another thing right so let me ask you another question um fortunately historians don't have to don't predict the future we uh that's that's to our benefit um and also granted that uh history never will play out exactly the same way But I wonder what you have learned from looking at
53:00 - 53:30 these past moments of kind of illiberal frenzy that we're sort of living in now as well how long they last uh and how they end since you know we kind of have it would be really helpful to know how long we're going to suffer um so what has like what has worked best i mean seriously sort of analytically what kinds of things have worked best to beat back these sort of
53:30 - 54:00 hyperoliberal moments institutions like courts which we're now depending on a great deal social movements you kind of suggested that at the end of your talk um you know what have you know even when courts in fact act one of the things we're worried about today and I wonder if there are historical precedents how can they can they really make uh executives respond and implement the decisions that they make um you know are there any precedents we can look to can
54:00 - 54:30 you present us with a case of an illiberal moment that actually came to an end and how it did um um well first of all I I don't happen to think that there's any kind of p you know not that you were asking this there's any kind of kind of pendulum uh that you know we go move to one side then kind of things move back which
54:30 - 55:00 itself is sort of a comforting idea that if we can just endure this for another few years that somehow I don't think that's the case at all i think it's also important depressing to recognize that if you look at the American past it's basically been a very conservative one except for if I mean the real moments that made a difference were explosive ones from below um they were ones uh as during the revolutionary period uh about
55:00 - 55:30 the organization of you know artisans and working people in cities and small uh uh property owners in the countryside certainly during the middle of the 19 and then of course you know African-American abolitionists who you know were so important in driving the anti-slavery movement in a direction that you know eventually not only began to end uh Ponenta's
55:30 - 56:00 slavery outside of the southern states but eventually made possible um the mass emancipation but that itself you know would never have happened had it not been the of the activism of enslaved people otherwise you know one of the things that people don't recognize is that at the beginning of the civil I I I I prefer quote war of the rebellion But um the civil war you know if someone asked thought about what you know how
56:00 - 56:30 slavery might end in the United States uh it would be gradually because that's the way it ended in the northeast and middle Atlantic i mean there was no you know a sense that that was tethered to an idea that people who were enslaved were not ready for freedom and therefore you know emancipation brought disorder along with it and somehow or other gradualism uh which was the case in many other uh slave societies in one form or another would be necessary but you know
56:30 - 57:00 we're talking now about the 14th amendment uh and birthright citizenship I mean had it not been for you know the activism of enslaved people the war would not have ended the way it did slavery would not have ended the way it did there would be no 13th amendment 14th amendment or 15th amendment at all no civil rights bill and so you know that was an incredible moment but it didn't you know and and it had its you
57:00 - 57:30 know version in the south and in parts of the north um but and certainly in the 1930s um you know it seems to me that the mobilizations that took place partly explained why there was no fascism in the United States um uh so but I do think that for the most part the courts have been very conservative um wherever you look um on the lower levels they've pretty much done the work of employers
57:30 - 58:00 in crushing labor unrest uh certainly all the way up to the Supreme Court you know they except for the Warren Court they played mostly a role in limiting uh rights and uh protecting property and expanding ideas about um you know who in fact was covered by the 14th amendment um you know substantive due process and things like that and so I do think that you know looking back and somehow
58:00 - 58:30 thinking that you know there there's a multiplicity of uh sort of political you know episodes that you know swing between so-called liberal and and conservative or however you want to put it is probably not the case at all you know in um in the 19 in 1968 um you know we we think about that presidential election very very close but if you combine Nixon's vote and Wallace's vote it was
58:30 - 59:00 57% of the population um you know and and I I I I just think we need sort of to understand that and the you know periods of time when you could talk about real sort of change was was coming from social movements so I I'm a little less I mean at this point there's kind of for reasons that are completely understandable an idea and interest in
59:00 - 59:30 defending American institutions as best as possible because they seem to be you know the few one among the few forms of stability to be found although I have to confess you know having ever since you know 2017 and you know turning on even like MSNBC and seeing you know the FBI and the CIA and the National Security State regarded as our friends I think is really weird and I think one of the things is
59:30 - 60:00 true is that people on the left have have not developed much of a foreign policy perspective at all um at least since you know the kind of end of the Vietnam War and um you know national uh um uh you know decolonization struggles and so on and so forth and so you know we're living in a moment now where of course NATO um which two decades or three decades
60:00 - 60:30 ago we would have looked on with some suspicion uh is now along with any kind of institution that we can Then you know we're talking about you know things being wrecked and I'm not minimizing the importance because I do think that the goal is to destroy as much as possible to weaken uh people who are dependent or I don't mean dependent in a negative way but who depend on the resources of the federal government uh for their own uh
60:30 - 61:00 personal stability and prosperity i mean you know you fire federal employees what does that mean i mean it's that's clearly you know targeting people of color who are disproportionately you know represented there so I think there is a you know I don't think I think that the destruction is is awful and I don't know how it's g how long it'll take to rebuild or well whether there's going to be much interest in rebuilding it until of
61:00 - 61:30 course people don't get their social security checks and I you know but even so I'm I'm I I I I'm dubious about the argument that you know as soon as they realize that the price of eggs is what it is or inflation is going to be what it is uh or the stock market is going to collapse as much that somehow they'll realize that you know they may or that enough people are being fired i think it will brew discontent but I'm not convinced that it will be the source of
61:30 - 62:00 really mobilizing against what's going on and it just seems to me that at the moment you know social movements are very fractured um there's a lot of stuff going on out there but they're not interconnected and until that begins to take place and look at this particular point it's going to be dangerous for anyone to do it and and for anyone to get out into the streets and protest because the arm is going to be called
62:00 - 62:30 out and they're going to shoot and you know um Kent State was a long time ago but you know was kind of an indication of what happens when you put troops on the ground with live ammunition and you know who who may feel that they uh are expected to maintain order that way so you know I do think I don't believe you know I'm getting old and my
62:30 - 63:00 fear is that maybe I won't [Music] see things getting you know changed while I'm still with us but I'm going to say I won't but But but and I don't feel that it's hopeless and I know anyone who studies seriously history seriously knows that you know hopelessness is not about history um sometimes it's
63:00 - 63:30 hopelessness sometimes it's continuity but change does happen usually people who seek change don't get everything they want um sometimes they don't get a lot of what they want but they change the landscape and I think that's what we need i think we need the shift in the cultural political landscape so people can see an alternative way of thinking about the society that they live in and at this particular point I don't think
63:30 - 64:00 it's out there so I am going to open it up but I just want to say one moment of one point of hope you you dismiss the courts as totally conservative i just want to remind us that there have been a few progressive high points round vore Roie Wade it's true we're still trying to defend them but um No it's not completely an over no I said it except for the board right okay i have a question here and then there go i'm Don Goldman i was a history
64:00 - 64:30 major here in what you call the salad days and I'll just mention that we had more people on the street protesting the cutting down of sycamore trees on Memorial Drive than we have in the street today free trying to free Khalil so when you talked about fear guns and all I that resonates with those salad days where people went to the streets and took the chance so but what I really want to talk talk about get your opinion um it was a great talk it's provocative
64:30 - 65:00 which is what a good talk should be i'm uncomfortable with the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal first of all illliberal is pjar it implies that it's against liberal and it's ill and it doesn't capture the intolerance of the that strain in American history and it tends to get us to categorize things that are abominable as well progressives did that and I'm going to ask you specifically about
65:00 - 65:30 eugenics we are sitting in the seat of eugenics harvard was the world intellectual leader in eugenics the president of Harvard was a eugenicist and I'll tell you he was no freaking progressive he was a racist and he hated Jews and he was intolerant and he epitomizes what is euphemistically called the liberalism so is there a way to frame this that captures the essence of what truly
65:30 - 66:00 non-liberal strain of American history is versus liberal and progressive but I'm trying to be provocative um but I think it's a good question still and I do think what I was interested in discussing uh political current that was longstand I mean that that went way back and was all was both close to the surface but
66:00 - 66:30 deep as well now I think there is a problem with using the term illiberal because I argue in the book and you know I think that um this is precedes liberalism so you know maybe there's a better concept but I I did think that it does capture the um you know the racism intolerance and to try not to simply see it as kind of variations negative
66:30 - 67:00 variations on liberalism that it had a life of its own that it it was capable of being kind of excavated and sort of energized And um you know I think that the question you raise um you know suggests some of the you know ways in which that there might be limitations to using I I mean the categories I think you're right you don't want to fit things into neat categories i don't think any of the categories are neat and I think that one
67:00 - 67:30 of the things that's characteristic of politics and political culture is a lot of volatility and you can't necessarily expect that certain people will always behave in X kind of way so it's contextual too yeah i think it sanitizes the situation by using those terms um one thing I want to say we just had define yourself to just give your name oh yeah um I'm John Trump research director of the center for labor and a just economy at Harvard Law School um I
67:30 - 68:00 just want to mention we just had over 200 people at 4:30 p.m protesting oh yeah but I think that was a reasonable turnout i think you're being a little tough on us we could do better but I want to ask two-part question um I want to hear a little bit about because it's such a part of your life prison education programs and what you think is going to happen with those and I want to
68:00 - 68:30 then direct it to the question of the politics of crime and illiberalism in the United States because you mentioned Clinton 1.3 million people in prison when he was elected 2.1 million when he finished we had William Weld i remember Chsky and and Howard Zinn they were teaching in my program and they said "We got to vote for Welcome you got to stop the illiberal silver." and then weld
68:30 - 69:00 eliminated prison education programs and I just want to say one defense of George Wallace if that's possible in Harvard george Wallace very late in his life was very apologetic about what he had done you never see a Trump person apologize ever and I just remember the Village Voice in the 80s when I was living in New York had an article saying "It's very shocking that Ed Cotch our mayor
69:00 - 69:30 from the liberal silk stocking district has much more reactionary views on race than George Wallace does today." And so yeah so it's a little bit I'm addressing a little bit the center left and the war on crime because George written about as a right-wing project right but anyway um let me see if I can answer that briefly um first of all I I think mass incarceration can only be understood as a bipartisan uh project uh where uh crime and race and disorder were
69:30 - 70:00 interconnected although the idea of the black body as a a criminal body goes way way back um to the end of slavery and to the early emancipations uh outside of the South um you know I think one of the things that's happened is uh just as you know the sort of um what's happened to Black Lives Matter and George Floyd uh we had a moment not that long ago when it appeared as though
70:00 - 70:30 things were moving in a different direction and certainly uh even among conservatives there was kind of the sense that mass incarceration you know was a problem to be taken on my fear now is that things are moving in an entirely different direction and that um incarceration and expulsion which effectively incarceration is is going to be a solution you know to largecale problems and is going to um you know involve a lot of people so I worry about
70:30 - 71:00 the pension centers and so on and so forth you know I I think I worry that these programs which you know have had you know really very good outcomes for for individual people um will be in danger and that uh the public um concern about what it means to live in a society where the uh there's no other place in the world where a larger percentage of population is incarcerated you know we
71:00 - 71:30 we don't care about that anymore john there's a lot in the book about that so I get that vince you were Yeah thank you Vincent Brown i teach here in the history department um thank you Steve that was a very powerful um sobering reorientation American history but it reminded me u of why and I'm going to date us both you were my favorite lecture at UC San Diego in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate and it only dates you
71:30 - 72:00 it's really nice nice to have you great he was a great student i'm getting better um so I want to ask you a question about you know your approach to American history when you think about the current moment um we hear a lot especially the political science of the world here that compares the United States to other societies you know maybe it's Turkey maybe it's Hungary maybe it's maybe it's um maybe it's Nazi Germany um I want to get a sense from
72:00 - 72:30 you about why you think this more integrated approach this more connected approach that really talks about American traditions as homegrown kind of indigenous illiberal tradition i know you you're interested in the international dimensions of this why that approach may offer some more insight into what's happening now than the approach that compares different societies and and their authoritarian trends well that's a great question and I couldn't say I mean I I I do think one
72:30 - 73:00 of the weaknesses of this book is precisely that it's a little too American focused there are points at which I sort of acknowledge that it's not an American issue we have to look way beyond that but I I do think that it is a problem to somehow see it as you know um kind of a um a particular kind of American development because more and more it's pretty obvious that that's not
73:00 - 73:30 the case and that what happens in North America and then the United States feeds off you know what's going on in in many many places and and and what happens here is often often times in reference to or reaction to as you know you know think about the Haitian revolution think about the Paris commune um and you know there's no way of getting away from that which is why I think this America firstism thing is you know kind of comes
73:30 - 74:00 in because it comes in at a at a particularly international moment following you know the first world war and the idea of you know sort of an international approach about self-determination perhaps on an international uh scale and you know push back against that so I I think that a better uh way of thinking about this is to constantly not so much comparative but
74:00 - 74:30 internationalize it and I'm always reluctant to say this is like that you know where in our past is what's happening now like and I don't really think it's like anything else but you could say you know it may be closest to this or some of the dynamics are closest to that and I think what we can learn from is not to you know not to see what's you know just the same but to kind of understand the sort of dynamics that bring about uh political outcomes
74:30 - 75:00 so I again I do think that if I had more time and energy um I think I would have liked to do this you know I sort of end the book with this and uh you know with a kind of inter you know sort of an international you know perspective which I think there's no way of avoiding at this I mean you make a great mistake if you didn't recognize that I mean where you know where is this not happening um
75:00 - 75:30 but nonetheless um I I I think I end up focusing and and that's you know maybe the Trump you know phenomenon is something distinctive about the United States and it's hard to find this him elsewhere but it's part of a phenomenon that's that's all over the place and I just add in addition to you know the fact that there are similar origins of mass immigration pressures and de-industrialization there also are
75:30 - 76:00 influences across countries so when you've got you know Hungarian leaders coming and speaking to right-wing Republicans United States and giving them a playbook it internationalizes it on another level okay yes introduce yourself uh my name is David Army i'm a freshman here at the college uh thank you for calling out professor my question is um I wrote this as as you were answering other questions is American liberalism inherently flawed if America has been as you said or has had
76:00 - 76:30 as you said a very conservative past and the periods of liberalism have been or they have appeared to be the exception and not the norm would liberalism then be deviation from the natural order or are we are we simply returning to form with this recent rise of quote unquote illiberalism it's another big question but I would say that you know in in this book and my thinking I I've looked at liberalism uh
76:30 - 77:00 particularly in its kind of political iterations uh it's not only that but um uh certainly in terms of economics and the you know development of what we call modern liberalism or some people call it corporate li liberalism at the turn of the 20th century well through you know the 20th century um you know that has been you know very powerful force and in many ways it has sort of pushed
77:00 - 77:30 conservatism uh you know all 19th century you know conservatism aside but I I do think that um you know liberalism has had all sorts of inherent problems um that have to do with how do you sort of universalize if you have any interest in doing this so what you regard as the core values and what do you how do you deal with the issue of power which I think liberals
77:30 - 78:00 have never been particularly good at addressing uh especially because they'd rather not disrupt the distribution of um of of um you know of wealth and of political power and somehow you know as modern liberals have seen you know the way you deal with it is you promote economic growth and somehow or other that's going to expand the pie and you don't have to think about well what does
78:00 - 78:30 that mean for you know great disparities um in the um inequalities of wealth i mean this has been a problem you know obviously it has become so extreme of late that it kind of blinds us to the fact that you know significant inequalities and wealth have always been part uh of American society and you know there was again a period when the in the 30s you know when tax policy you know developed in such a way and because of the you know great depression that the
78:30 - 79:00 you know sort of the great inequalities rather shrank a little it um and u that is also another reason to kind of look at this you know period because it's certainly a time where um you know largescale economic institutions were expected to you know contribute to you know federal revenues and so on and so forth but I do think you know it seems to me that
79:00 - 79:30 um uh that our past is you know that that what you might call broadly speaking a conservatism has been more powerful than I think is generally acknowledged and I think part of it is because um illiberal sensibilities and practices and ideas about these religions are not just backlashes but they're kind of fundamentally embedded and um they get entangled i
79:30 - 80:00 mean I think one of the stories is how people who are you know self- reggarding liberals end up doing very illiberal things because I think they are committed to maintaining order and they don't have a you know a very good response when disorder occurs and they tend to fall back on certain perspectives that you know where liberalism you know has thrived on i see any more hands yes harold Chapman
80:00 - 80:30 uh I know yeah colleagues at colleagues at NYU uh this was great um I particularly um was um uh sort of moved by the argument that we underestimate the extent to which this tradition is real and that if we ride off MAGA as a kind of aberration of of the uneducated all that it's a huge mistake that one though um thought I'm having though is whether
80:30 - 81:00 uh the the line of argument may uh tend to underestimate how radical uh what's going on is now uh and uh you mean the radicalism of MAGA the radicalism of the current moment and it's too soon as a historian you know it's way too soon to know what's really going on in some ways and where it's headed but there is something profound about the and the difference between Trump one and Trump two is um this uh
81:00 - 81:30 social movement from above and below uh has been going on for a while but this is the moment where they have seized the apparatus of the state and I'm not sure that's ever happened before in neoliberal moment uh in the way that you you've described and that's where the analogies to uh in a war fascism are relevant although you can vastly exaggerate that but that when you start to have the the state capacity they're dismantling the state yes but they're also radically using the state and when
81:30 - 82:00 you have state capacity that we now have in the 21st century of all kinds to be able to use that to operationalize uh a traditional a neoliberal tradition is a is a big big rupture now maybe it will maybe it'll fizzle out maybe it'll bump but there there I think that part of the question of where is this going how long it's going to last what is the meaning of the current moment has to take into
82:00 - 82:30 account the seizure of a state i think you're absolutely right i mean I don't think there's any question about it i I think that certainly the preparation for uh you know Trump's ele re-election or however you want to put it project 2025 the you know sort of intellectual and legal resources um that went into it a sense that you know they what to do how to
82:30 - 83:00 move and um which is happening with you know breakneck speed um I I think one of the things is Yeah i'm not really surprised by anything but you know it's one thing talking about what you're think might happen and watching it and that's you know I it's horrifying and it's going to be more horrifying uh as more and more people are going to be subject you know and as the state I I
83:00 - 83:30 think you're right this is this is a you know takeover of the state and the you like you're saying destroying some of it using some of it and um you know not entirely clear where it goes but I think it sort of suggests the formidability of what we're looking at and you know I think we need to understand that we are in you know a new moment just if I can
83:30 - 84:00 add one of the conditions for that to have happened in the past has been the willingness of the nonradical right to align with the and the the transformation of the Republican party which was a was a very serious complicated operation has enabled that and that has broken the dam and and that also is analogist to uh you know the inner war fascist again that that can change but but you know it's it's a radical doesn't look
84:00 - 84:30 like it's about to and it's been developing over time and therefore it has all sorts of you know financial uh support institutional support you know they've trained a couple of generations of you know people who are you know ready to step in you know other people who are not particularly trained to step in but are but are happy to step in and to take orders um about what they should do and use the power as they
84:30 - 85:00 would see fit so you know I think that's that that's 100% right and that strange alliance of you know these kind of ex-manufacturing workers on the one hand and these you know billionaire high-tech high finance people you wonder how long does that hold maybe if if maybe it's breaking apart is our best hope but um yeah I mean you listen to someone like Steve Bannon who you know is is you know
85:00 - 85:30 points to that and is very hostile to Musk and hostile to the kind of oligarchical you know wealth and power and not not that what he offers up is you know anything to to look at but I I don't you know I I think part of it is to recognize that over decades the political culture has just been captured and I and it has not only been Republicans it's been look at you know
85:30 - 86:00 the Democratic leadership you know council in the mid 1980s after Montdale got uh crushed and I might add Mandelle you know was talking about industrial policy right i mean that was the sort of last time you heard about that but um but and about taxing wealthy people and you know that's but I do think that the radicalism of the moment which I think is very real was made possible by a much
86:00 - 86:30 longer term process of development and collapse of effective formal opposition and I I I just think that you know what we're faced with is a um opposition party that may itself um be banned um or is not adequately equipped because they don't even know what's going on and except for a few people who are standing up who I
86:30 - 87:00 guarantee will be marked uh for persecution and I I don't you know then you have so it seems to me that you know some sort of move social movement type thing if possible and it may have to develop almost in an underground way but certainly it needs to make connections maybe social media will enable some of it but um people have to find each other and they have to figure out what they share and what they want to fight for
87:00 - 87:30 and in some ways put aside certain differences as a friend of mine said you know not everyone can fit fit through the eye of a needle and and that that's a way of kind of defining you know boundaries but I don't know how effective that will be at this point because unlike 2020 when you know Trump had alienated the military and he could not count on them if he wanted to call
87:30 - 88:00 them out you know he's he's made it sure that that's not going to happen again and um and he will be able to do that because they certainly do believe in the chain of command well not depressing thank you i just want to thank everyone anyone for a cocktail thanks thanks Steve for this wonderfully thank you all for coming out at uh stimulating evening