YESTERDAY WE SHARED TIDBITS from two professors, London Review of Books contributor Eric Foner reviewing Richard Slotkin’s A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America. Today in Part 2 we continue with myths dating from the Civil War and World War II up through the Obama era.
Civil War Myths. Slotkin identities no fewer than three distinct myths evolving from our Civil War: “the Myth of Liberation, embodied in slave emancipation; the Myth of White Reunion, which depicted the war as a battle of brother against brother in which both sides could retrospectively take pride; and the Lost Cause, a glorification of the Old South and a legitimation of the system of segregation and disenfranchisement put in place, with northern acquiescence, in the 1890s.”
“During Reconstruction,” Foner writes, “the US embarked on a remarkable, if short-lived, experiment in interracial democracy, an attempt to remake the body politic so as to bring to fruition the Myth of Liberation. The violent overthrow of Reconstruction put an end to this effort. The Lost Cause soon became deeply entrenched in American culture, North as well as South.”
To wit, that genteel plantation life with even “darkies” happy.
The Good War. Foner describes, “Partly to heighten the distinction between the United States and Nazi tyranny, partly as a way of generating support for the war among the descendants of recent immigrants, the federal government promoted the idea that the US stood for pluralism and democracy. Racism was the enemy’s philosophy and Allied victory would lead to a peace in which FDR’s ‘four freedoms’ were enjoyed throughout the world.”
Foner continues, “The Myth of the Good War received its most influential articulation, according to Slotkin, in what he calls ‘platoon movies’…. (even though the actual army, indeed society at large, remained rigidly segregated). However much these movies were divorced from reality, Slotkin believes that they promoted racial and religious toleration and helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of the Myth of the Movement.”
The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946. Image from Entertainment‘s “The 22 Best World War II Movies of All Time.”
The Movement. “According to this myth,” Foner says, “the nation’s purpose lay not so much in what had been accomplished as in the agendas based on different versions of equality that had yet to be fulfilled. In official rhetoric and Hollywood’s myth-making machine, tolerance succeeded white supremacy as the defining quality of American culture and politics.”
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. Official White House photo by Pete Souza via Wikipedia.
Foner observes, “The electoral success of Barack Obama, despite the radical right’s denial of his status as an American citizen, helped to propel the Myth of the Movement forwards.”
A New National Myth to Emerge. Foner writes, “The current crisis, according to Slotkin, provides the conditions for emergence of a new national myth. He identifies two possibilities. One, which would turn the clock back to reconstitute the ‘cultural Lost Cause’, would be a disaster. The second, whose elements have not yet coalesced, would unite the country in favour of a tolerant, more equal tomorrow, in effect linking racial justice with greater economic equality.”
A Historian’s Role. “There is something disarming,” Foner continues, “about Slotkin’s optimism that a new national myth can help to provide a solution to our current divisions. But readers may wonder if the role of the historian today is not so much to devise new myths as to piece together a candid appraisal, no matter how alarming, of the fraught moment in which we live.”
A Summary. What’s more, as IndieBound summerizes in its review, “while Trump and his MAGA followers have played up a frontier-inspired hostility to the federal government and rallied around Confederate symbols to champion a racially exclusive definition of American nationality, Blue America, taking its cue from the protest movements of the 1960s, envisions a limitlessly pluralistic country in which the federal government is the ultimate enforcer of rights and opportunities. American history—and the foundations of our democracy—have become a battleground. It is not clear at this time which vision will prevail.”
Tuesday November 5 will determine it. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024