Master Race "Democracy" And The Closing Of The Mind

 I'm laboring through Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. It's an amazing book, but rather a dense read.

Anyway, I've reached the 1850s and the lead-up to the Civil War. There is an interesting segment where Wilentz talks about Master Race democracy in the South. While Edmund Morgan first postulated that the rise of American equality - at least the Chesapeake region - was predicated on African slavery and Native American subjugation, it was pretty clear by the 1850s that many White Southerners had taken this idea and run with it.

By the 1850s, elite opinion in the South had changed from the opinion of the Revolutionary generation. People like Washington, Jefferson and Madison saw slavery as a necessary evil and something that could not be ended easily, but something that would likely die out over time. For decades, this position had informed moderate thinking on slavery and combined with the idea that freed slaves should be forcibly removed from the country back to Africa or to the Caribbean. This was the so-called Re-Colonization movement. People like Lincoln endorsed it because A) they couldn't imagine freed Blacks getting a fair shake from the White majority and B) they never bothered to talk to actual Black people. Lincoln would change, because he was Lincoln.

Anyway, an interesting moment in Master Race Democracy was the publication of Hinton Helper's book, The Impending Crisis of the South.  Helper was a poor to middling mountain White. He hated Black people, but he hated the White aristocracy of the South even more (a natural precursor to Andrew Johnson). He saw the White South as essentially an oligarchy run by the scions of plantation wealth and one that kept the White South poor, illiterate and backwards. 

Those plantation elites responded by passing laws to ban Helper's book in every slave state except Kentucky.

These sort of bans were not new. For years, there was a Gag Rule in the House of Representatives that forbade even discussing petitions against slavery. US mails could not carry abolitionist literature south of the Mason-Dixon line. Banning books, from Helper's to Uncle Tom's Cabin, was a natural next step.

When Hitler came to power, he looked to the ideas of the American South to craft his version of Master Race democracy called Herrenvolk Democracy. The basic thread was that certain people are true citizens and other people are not. The White Anglo-Saxon South or the Aryan Germans were given authority to rule because of the racial inferiority of other groups. Burning books is a trademark of this movement; ideas can be defeated with ideas, but only if those ideas are given free rein.

I bring this up, because it is increasingly clear that the GOP is relying on a form of Herrenvolk democracy. The GOP is basically the party of White Patriarchy (women can absolutely serve patriarchy). In order to sustain that, they have to stop critical thinking... or Critical Race Theory.

The whole argument over CRT is bullshit, of course. CRT is a law school theory about assuming that all legal institutions are either explicitly or perhaps implicitly based on White Supremacy. Put another way, don't assume that things that LOOK race neutral are in fact race neutral. It's not a universally held position, either.

What the GOP is really railing against is the idea that America has White Supremacist origins. Sorry, but it does. There is no objective reading of American history that does not center the idea that White Protestant Americans had a right to conquer land from Native Americans and enslave African because they belonged to a superior race. Hell, they even excluded Catholics when they could from this form of Herrenvolk "Democracy." But if we understand America's White Supremacist past accurately, it pierces the aura of White Victimhood that is essential to Herrenvolk democracy.

The White South fanned secessionist flames because of the "Crime of the North" which was basically the North saying, "Yeah, we don't want any more slave states." Not "get rid of your slaves" just "no more slave states." The South was the victim. (Of course, the nascent anti-slavery Republican party also used the victim ploy in talking about how Slave Power was destroying the will of the majority. Tough to argue they were wrong though.) Hitler of course used German victimhood to launch his ascent to power. Trump's appeal to the his base was that he would fight back against the oppressors of Sarah Palin's Real Americans.

That the current GOP is basically banning books or avenues of academic inquiry should surprise no one. Ron DeSantis went to Harvard, but he understands the power that "liberal" ideas have in destroying the thrall of Herrenvolk democracy. So he will try and ban the teaching of anything to do with America's tortured racist past.

My hope is that this is the last gasp of a dying movement. (And not just because they are literally gasping for breath on ventilators in ICUs.) The appeal of Herrenvolk democracy is limited and largely un-American - even if it has deep roots in the South. The panic and desperation of the Trumpists is because subconsciously, they know they are losing.

This moment does feel like the 1850s, but America's division is not geographic and unlikely to end in Civil War. Domestic terrorism is much more likely, though to be fair many of the Trumpists are such fucking morons that they will likely be planning to blow up a Pride Parade in a chat room where half the members are FBI agents. 

This...isn't good. I don't think America as an idea dies on the rocks of Trumpism and his appeal to Herrenvolk democracy, but it's not going to be a fun decade.