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The stories that matter about money and politics in the race for the White House
The author is Professor of Public Humanities at the University of London and author of ‘The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells
This week, the Supreme Court granted Donald Trump an extraordinary level of immunity from prosecution, which dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor described as elevating the president to the status of “king above the law.” The next day, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, said he was “very encouraged” by the ruling. “We are in the process of taking this country back,” he declared, before adding an even clearer threat: “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it.”
In this unsettling election season, we can seek solace in the lessons of history, but we risk looking at the wrong stories. After his disastrous debate performance, in which he appeared weak and sounded incoherent, some have pointed out parallels between President Joe Biden and historically weak incumbents who faced internal or third-party challengers and lost after one term.
Of course, Biden’s opponent, just three years younger, is considerably more incoherent. During the pandemic, he suggested injecting bleach as a cure for Covid; in a July 4 speech, he praised the American Revolutionary Army because “in June 1775 … it took control of the airports.” But he bellows in a loud, intimidating tone, so people think he’s strong.
Americans’ lack of understanding of their own history contributes to the political chaos we are currently experiencing. One of the most pertinent aspects of the country’s past is the reality of American fascism in the 1930s, when far-right groups were proliferating across the United States, declaring sympathy for European fascism and organizing their own color-shirt movements.
In 1933, a retired general named Smedley Darlington Butler testified before Congress that a group of financiers had asked him to lead a coup against Franklin Roosevelt. With the support of the right-wing Liberty League, Butler was to mobilize an army of disaffected veterans to march on Washington and establish a fascist military dictatorship. Historians who previously considered Butler a fool to have taken the “Wall Street putsch” seriously have recently been re-evaluating this view.
The search for an American Caesar, cited by contemporary right-wing think-tanks, has been a long one. The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who led the 2021 insurrection were the heirs to the Silver Shirts of the 1930s: they all thought they were taking back the country, for themselves. Not for nothing was the most popular American film of the early 20th century, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, titled The Birth of a Nation.
They were fighting to reverse the emancipatory efforts of the Civil War and the legislative groundwork created to extend equality under the law to all, which is why the Civil War has sometimes been called the Second American Revolution. Opponents of this revolution, on the other hand, wanted only “proper” citizens to be able to exercise power. The Confederacy also thought it was engaged in a Second American Revolution by fighting for states’ rights independence, the specific right in question being the enslavement of other human beings.
They also wanted to “take back the country,” which led to insurrections in the South during the 1870s and 1880s after the war. White supremacist vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the Red Shirts, and the White League engaged in serial coups against racially mixed local governments, more than one of which was successful.
All of this should be familiar and deeply troubling. We may lament that this is a choice between two dithering old white men, but they are not equally problematic. One of them will install a government of other law-abiding people. The other has been convicted of 34 felonies, has been found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case, and faces a barrage of charges for his role in an insurrection against his own government. A former aide has claimed that Trump frequently called for the “execution” of people he didn’t like. This week’s Supreme Court ruling would grant Trump immunity if this conversation had led to actual executions, because it was “official.”
Many Americans found it difficult to celebrate the Fourth of July this week, as it commemorates America’s founding democratic principles, and recalled John Adams’ ambition to create “a government of laws, and not of men.” The Declaration of Independence includes a long list of accusations against King George, the justifications for the first American Revolution. These include: “He has made the judges dependent solely upon his will, as to the continuance of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries,” and “He has stirred up domestic insurrections among us.”
The case being brought against Mad King George looks a lot like the one brought against Trump. Instead, the Supreme Court decided to hear a case with the chilling name of Donald J. Trump v. United States and ruled in favor of Donald J. Trump.