Thomas Zimmer23h ago

ICYMI over the Easter weekend:

I wrote about why Murray Rothbard and Francis Fukuyama are crucial context for the Right’s assault on birthright citizenship, about how we conceptualize progress in history, and about the possibility of democratic change:

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/0999474f-9069-4edc-8afa-14ba857741fa

No Right Is Ever Safe – but Progress Is Possible

The outrageous assault on birthright citizenship should prompt us to reflect on the fragility of democratic progress - and our own responsibility to defend it

Steady
Show threadThomas Zimmer23h ago

“We shall repeal the twentieth century”: That’s how self-identified “radical reactionary” Murray Rothbard described the Right’s vision in 1992.

This really is the core goal of the radical Right: Roll back whatever racial and social progress has been achieved over the past century and a half.

Show threadThomas Zimmer23h ago
It sounds outlandish. To most people who aren’t professionally obligated to analyze the extreme Right, it must seem bizarre that anyone would really be devoted to such a brutally retrograde idea. But that’s where we are: No right, nothing the mainstream would consider “progress” is safe.
Show threadThomas Zimmer23h ago
The goal, ultimately, is to turn the clock back to *before* the Reconstruction Amendments. That doesn’t mean re-instituting slavery, exactly. But it means fully re-orienting the coercive powers of government towards upholding strict hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth.
Show threadThomas Zimmer23h ago

The lesson from U.S. history, if there is one, is not that progress is impossible. There has been tremendous progress at times!

But we must not assume directionality in history. There is no arc, there is no linear progression, no utopian end goal we are somehow destined to reach.

Show threadThomas Zimmer23h ago
You know who understands that racial and social progress has been real? The American Right. Their radicalization has been fueled by a pervasive sense of being under siege. They are not attacking out of a sense of strength, but because they are feeling their backs against the wall.
Show threadThomas Zimmer23h ago

We need to accept that things can change – in either direction: It really could get much, much worse. But it could also get better.

There is nothing inevitable about either doom or progress. We are neither fated nor guaranteed to experience the status quo for all eternity.

Show threadThe Doctor
@tzimmer_history May I quote you on that?
Apr 7 at 5:41pmWeb
Show threadThomas Zimmer18h ago
@drwho I wrote this in the piece and I mean what I write. So, yeah, certainly.
Show threadThe Doctor18h ago

@tzimmer_history Thank you very much.

I always ask. Consent is important.