Donald Trump’s new “American Midnight” is upon us

These days time often feels like a flat circle where the past present and future are collapsing into a disorienting blur as President Donald Trump and his supporters escalate the collapse of our civil society institutions norms and democracy Various are framing this moment of political vertigo as a new Red Scare a st-century McCarthyism But this is only partly true In his award-winning book American Midnight The Great War A Violent Peace and Democracy s Forgotten Situation leading historian Adam Hochschild draws a parallel to an even darker and more perilous time in American history A century ago in the years following World War I when President Woodrow Wilson s administration and its allies crushed dissent by targeting newspapers imprisoning political rivals inciting political vigilantism and engaging in a mass deportation campaign to root out supposed communists and socialists and other undesirables in America As one of our leading historians and the author of other bestselling books including King Leopold s Ghost A Story of Greed Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa Hochschild has often turned his incisive eye to examining tumultuous times in world history I just now spoke with him about this era s frightening echoes in Trumpist America our embattled democracy the importance of collective action and maintaining hope and his warning that Trump is fast moving to declare martial law in Democratic-led cities to achieve a chilling end Related How far will Donald Trump go to sell a lie This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length How are you feeling given all the horrible things that have happened so rapidly with Trump s return to power I am worried and apprehensive We all knew in advance that Trump s second term would be far nastier than the first but minimal of us appreciated just how much worse The Republicans control both the House and Senate The Democratic leadership is weak at the national level This makes everything much worse But we still have the ability to fight back One thing that is really different in current times than a century ago We have powerful state governments that are fighting Trumpism very forcefully in Illinois California Oregon Those governors are speaking out and states are going their own way in a great number of fields For example Trump is madly pushing oil and gas but my home state of California the world s fourth largest financial system were it a separate country generates two-thirds of its electricity from renewables and that percentage rises every year History is being whitewashed and there are now literal thoughtcrimes that the Trump administration and its allies are enforcing What is the role and obligation of the historian in these troubled times We need to fight to preserve our right to see history clearly without superpatriotic blinders To see the good the bad the previous Trump-like demagogues here and abroad and to take inspiration from fights for justice that have been successfully fought The ability to see history clearly is precious And that too is something Trump is trying to ban telling the Smithsonian for instance that its institutions emphasize slavery too much We need to fight to preserve our right to see history clearly without superpatriotic blinders To see the good the bad the previous Trump-like demagogues here and abroad and to take inspiration from fights for justice that have been successfully fought Nothing is more central at this point than looking closely at exactly how in the past major countries moved from democracy to dictatorship whether for example Adolf Hitler taking power in Germany in or Vladimir Putin doing so in Russia in the early s We need to familiarize ourselves with every phase of that process so we can recognize it when it happens here An early signal that it is indeed happening here is Trump s eagerness to get troops on the streets of cities where he is unpopular Dictatorship perpetually has the threat of armed force behind it I ve been thinking a lot about your prescient book American Midnight and the crackdown on civil rights and freedoms in the post-World War I years The parallels to the Trump administration s assault on democracy free speech and the rule of law are uncanny I certainly agree that there are a multitude of eerie parallels between the assault on democracy in this country in - and the similar assault Trump is mounting in the modern day I think that s a reason why American Midnight has unveiled a good number of readers I began it during the first Trump administration because I saw so several parallels between what he sought to do and what the second-term Woodrow Wilson really did do Censor the critical media stir vigilante movements to action and throw political enemies in jail It is strange how different those two presidents are in style and personality Wilson would have looked down his nose at Trump as a crude uneducated lout But the two men are also very similar in their desire to ruthlessly silence their enemies Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts One difference is that in the Russian Revolution happened and the ruling elites in both Europe and the United States feared that its spirit would spread In the modern day no matter how much Trump fumes against radical Left Marxists the Democrats he attacks are neither radical nor Marxist and are pretty mild by historical standards The rhetoric is still there although I think it has less power than it did when numerous in the United States really did fear revolution But reality has never been a constraint when it comes to Trump s rhetoric As they say history doesn t repeat itself but it sure does rhyme I think the biggest rhyme to watch out for is the way Trump spews venom at his enemies calling them vermin and enemies of the people This in turn legitimates attacks on them by his followers which have sometimes turned violent and could well do so again Why is McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the s the go-to reference point and warning for so several political observers The post-World War I crackdown which was in a multitude of approaches much worse is generally ignored No country likes to remember embarrassing periods of its history McCarthyism is remembered so well because it was conclusively extinguished by the mainstream Congress censured McCarthy and Eisenhower criticized him So its end is easy to celebrate as a triumph of reason and of middle-of-the-road politics But no such thing really happened to end the post- World War I crackdown and nothing brought back to life its principal casualties The Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World both of which were in effect crushed for good We need your help to stay independent Subscribe the present day to assistance Chauncey DeVega s journalism What are specific lessons from your book American Midnight about resistance and perhaps even triumphing in the fight for real democracy Let s focus on the heroes Even people who are persecuted can inspire others Socialist leader Eugene V Debs was sentenced to jail in for speaking out against the First World War But in still in prison he received nearly a million votes as the Socialist candidate for president Emma Goldman was expelled from the country in and spent her last years in exile from a United States she loved But her example still inspires numerous radicals and feminists the present day Louis F Post a high-ranking federal bureaucrat who was very much a fixture of what Trump would call the Deep State saved thousands of people from being deported from the United States One of the notable villains in the period I chronicled in American Midnight was Wilson s attorney general in his second term A Mitchell Palmer Ambitious to run for president in Palmer promised wave after wave of deportations does that sound familiar and staged raids to arrest thousands of people to be deported Post largely and brilliantly foiled him using a variety of legal maneuvers and then Palmer turned to another scare tactic He predicted a nationwide Communist uprising on May Day in Scaring people this way is a common maneuver of ambitious demagogues His predictions were headline news and millions of people assumed him May came and absolutely nothing happened It took the wind out of the sails of his presidential campaign How did those targeted by Wilson and other officers endure What lessons do such people have for us the present day I think people endure best when they see they are not alone That s why taking part in marches and demonstrations matters you see how a great number of people out there agree with you We are indeed not alone I think people endure best when they see they are not alone That s why taking part in marches and demonstrations matters you see how a multitude of people out there agree with you We are indeed not alone Trump has a majority of people disapproving of him in the opinion polls right now Let s not forget that There are all kinds of examples in history when what seemed impossible happened In the s or s if you described anybody in South Africa that that country would have a Black president they would have laughed In the same decades if you d stated anyone in the United States we d someday have a Black president they would have laughed In the s virtually every continent on earth had a few form of slavery often widespread and unfailingly taken for granted By a century later it was outlawed at least formally almost everywhere Take heart from times when the impossible happened Your book is titled American Midnight What time of the day is it now in America It was a period dark as midnight back then and we re in another midnight right now But we have much more overt resistance to it than was the scenario in or A century ago we did not have millions of people in the streets like we had in the No Kings demonstrations and we will have again I hope We did not have federal district and appeals courts that were willing to repeatedly rule against the administration as in the present day s lower and middle-level federal courts have done We did not have outspoken state governors willing to call the president a would-be dictator Instead in - we had totally craven state governments who rushed to pass their own versions of the federal law that was the cornerstone of the repression the Espionage Act These differences give me particular hope for in the present day What do you think comes next with Trump and his MAGA forces attacks on democracy What do you want to prepare the American people for The biggest dangers now are Trump declaring martial law in Democratic-ruled cities and Trump seizing control of voting process machinery nationally which he is trying to do There s a strong connection between these two things and Democratic Illinois Gov JB Pritzker in the last few days summed it up shrewdly Trump wants to militarize major cities across the United States especially blue cities in blue states because he wants us to get used to the idea of military on the streets before next year s elections Pritzker declared I believe that he s going to post people outside of ballot boxes and polling places And if he necessities to in order to control those elections he ll assume control of the ballot boxes Read more about this topic Podcast bros criticize Trump and sports bros step in Pam Bondi is Trump s mean girl Pope Leo takes aim at MAGA s false gospel The post Donald Trump s new American Midnight is upon us appeared first on Salon com