 the reenactment of myths in American history that's provocative here on history is here to help with history professor Peter Hoffenberg and likewise with our special guest who comes and makes contributions to our discussions Gene Rosenfeld thank you both for showing up today we are so interested in this discussion so Peter at the risk of doing something you've done before why don't you introduce Gene Rosenfeld. Well I've done it before and each time it's a pleasure I hope to do it in the future. Dr. Rosenfeld among many things is a scholar of the history of religions and among her interests are the relationship between religion, religious ideas, practices as we'll see today myths and political movements particularly movements of the extreme. What I've read of her is generally of the extreme right I'm sure she'll have some things to say about the extreme left as well but we invite her back as our local expert in matters of religion and politics so Gene good to see you. I should add that she's a published scholar as well and I encourage people to google she has a superb book about New Zealand and edited and contributed to volumes about terrorism. Okay now you can define the scope of our discussion Peter. Oh no okay I was concerned to see that okay let me just briefly suggest the scope and then I do want to defer to Gene. There are a lot of discussions both in and outside of the academy about how to think about movements like fascism or totalitarianism that movements were all familiar with and there has been I think an increasing interest in looking at these as religious movements. That goes back at least to Rousseau and his concepts of civil religion and all modern political thought as a footnote to Rousseau and Gene in particular is interested in the right and in fascism and the way in which they self-consciously I assume although she may decide it's not self-conscious enact their understanding of the past and reenact their myths. So very exciting very controversial and we have exactly the right person to discuss it. So Gene you want to do a rebuttal on what Peter said you want to agree or disagree with the way you framed it? I've never disagreed with Peter I always learn from Peter. That's a different Peter. That's my twin brother but thank you. It's a difficult segue but let me just begin by saying that American history is replete with what is called the great awakenings. It started before we were a country in New England with Jonathan Edwards and it continued in New York State in the burnt out district of northern New York and then it today it is happening with an obscure movement which is becoming much more important in terms of religion and politics and that is called the new apostolic reformation and there's a line that connects up to all these dots I'm not going to connect them it's a library of information I'm not fit to do that anyway just to let you know that this is nothing new what and these awakenings are characterized by outbursts of emotion this is the key word emotion and you know what happens when you get emotional your thought processes thought processes your rational processes turn off and your emotion takes over but it's not a disorganized emotion it is utilized in ways that religious I should say formations or organizations or new religious movements can utilize and take advantage of by employing really sophisticated techniques and the new apostolic reformation does do that it's located in Texas there's a church that was just profiled in the news called mercy culture it's got 4500 adherents and there it's spreading throughout the country um it does not have the ball and chain of racism but it does definitely have overtones of what you would expect in something like the handmaid's tale and they are hell bent hell bent heaven bent heaven sent and basically taking over the political process as you might imagine these people were appealed to by Donald Trump and if you're interested in knowing more about it just google his speech to the miami religious group I don't have the exact name of it but it's one of the churches one of the nar churches um about a year and a half ago and watch him um I don't want to say manipulate but watch the crowd interaction he himself is in the tradition as much of elmer gantry as he is in the tradition of Benito Mussolini and you put those two together and what you get is let me go once in a lifetime personality that tweaks history that I'm not an aficionado of the great man theory of history that great men make history I think rather that history prepare the the soil for great quote great men men who have an I say man it's most thing that it can be a woman um who sees the moment Trump sees the moment he did this in his inaugural address his inaugural address is strikingly like the opening paragraphs of a myth which I think underlies the whole trumpets phenomenon called the fourth turning and most people have never heard of it but it's probably the most efficacious effective myth that we have today and it's an apocalyptic myth of course but as you read it you won't understand it as an apocalyptic myth except it keeps returning to this notion of crisis and total war and revolution and millennial kingdom and prophecy and the two authors are respected by many people who should know better historians economics professors and other important people actually Neil Howe and William Strauss and they themselves I don't think consciously set out to provide a program for Stephen Bannon but Stephen Bannon saw the potential and if you look at a little film that Stephen Bannon made called generation zero it's on the web you will see how this apocalyptic vision was lifted from the fourth turning and how he lifted the opening chapter of the fourth turning into the inaugural address which is now loosely called American carnage oh so there's intertwining of our own history of enthusiastic movements of new religious movements like NAR of politics and of all coming together in an administration of a once in a lifetime charismatic leader you get you get quite a phenomenon that we've been dealing with well it's terrifying as a matter of fact thank you for that I I feel more terrified than I I felt you know 10 minutes ago look a lot paler don't be terrified I'll tell you why okay we've been through it before maybe not as intense because we have more tools at our disposal the social media and the dark web and all of that but also because I just recently came to this aha conclusion donald web is I mean donald trump is finished he's a failed charismatic leader he can never regain the status he had the influence he had all of the parts that he brought together whether it was the extreme right the neo-nazi movement the racist movement the new apostolic reformation of the far right whatever the conservatives in the republican party you name it all of those will continue on their own trajectories but they won't have donald trump why what's your analysis okay I was you know I've been doing a long-term research project on fascism and trump fitting trump into that and I was reprising the history of hitler's rise to power now I've never seen donald trump's hitler let me just say that I don't pay to see him as Hitler however there are some striking parallels and what hitler did to come to power most people don't know this but hitler was the head of a very powerful party but it was not a majority party this is true in fascist movements they seldom come to power by being the winner of a majority go he was given the chancellorship by chancellor von hindenberg who was president of germany at that time and the democratic government had already failed by that time the right to fact parliament had already been shut down so hitler was chancellor but he didn't have total control and he wanted total control so what he did to make a long story short for total control is he made a secret pact with the military the army and the navy and he gave them what they wanted he had a million man strong army they say up as sturm up to them up to him and he agreed with them they could eradicate it they hit the leaders that the leaders on the night of the long nights the leaders one of whom was his best friend or it's trump were assassinated they were executed and then hitler had the army behind him completely the state army the second thing he has he did he made a silent pact a quiet pact on a ship with the leaders of german corporations the big leaders the titans of industry and he in eliminating or it's trump he also eliminated the northern political leader of his own political party who was a socialist he totally wiped out socialist wing of the national socialist democratic workers party that he had it so he consolidated his power with the army behind him the titans of industry now what did trump do he tried to enlist the army during black lives matter he tried to enlist the army after the election he failed our system worked then with respect to the titans of industry who are the titans today they're usually the billionaires and social media and of course the media he's got to have because that's his megaphone and all fascist leaders have to have a megaphone and they did not they did not comply he was kicked off twitter twitter and there's begun to be some some response and control by the heads of the media and he did not have silicon valley behind him so without the big industrial leaders without the state army and then having lost the election we've forgotten he actually lost not only the popular vote but the electoral college he was reduced to being a subliminal leader and he can never go back now the thing about charismatic leadership that we've learned from the theorists is that once you can't win once you fail and are seen to fail and i'll get back to that in just a minute you can't you you're on a slide you can't recover from that that happened to Mussolini that happened to Napoleon who are sort of you know the the models for charismatic leader and of course it happened to Hitler but the thing was if you remember when when trump got covid this is so interesting he had to look like the virus wasn't going to get him so even though he was dangerously ill he insisted on walking to the helicopter and then he defied his doctors and he went out in the automobile and greeted his supporters to look like he was perfectly okay he left the hospital too soon he made that trip up the back stairs and he paused on the portico in that Mussolini pose of his and took off ripped off his mask and stood there like in duchy that was the moment at which he failed and he could not regain it and he knows it now he's reduced to being in his elbows in new jersey and florida and his rallies which can he can mount an insurrection against the capital with his forces but that's weak power you can never overgrow the american government with something like that and you know that it stimulated the national security agencies who hated him to go after these guys and now they're under uh they're under pressure that is causing them to break apart so i think we need to take a deep breath not fear know that we're going to have lots of squabbles and things they're going to go on but without trump well that's that's a blessing to know that but at the same time you know his legacy is a mess isn't it you know he undermined so many initiatives he made so many wrong decisions um and right now uh joe biden is having a terrible time getting things through um you know the fragmented congress um and the result is we're going to have to live with that legacy for a long time and it is undermining our our viability don't you think um i think we'll deal with it i think things were a mess after the civil war pretty bad mess you know remember reconstruction there was an assassination of the president then ulysses s grant took over he tried to and he tried to install reconstruction and then johnson who was extremely weak uh when he came right after lincoln johnson was extremely winked but then us grant took over but ultimately the southerners won and uh we're paying the price for that today isn't that true i mean those things so peter you want to jump in here and and make remarks about what gene has revealed so far i think the the main point that i would suggest and gene is absolutely accurate about uh hitler as a fascist leader and political theorists uh and historians religion might focus on hitler as a charismatic leader and i can just say it's a complementary not a not a rebuttal not a uh criticism just a complementary friendly amendment um that whereas hitler died uh nazism continues and whether or not trump is elected re-elected and i am far less optimistic than gene is about trump's possibilities i actually see him being re-elected um trumpism exists so my conversation with gene is again it's a complementary one um less so the specific political leader more so the social movement and yes joe biden won the election uh but we still exist with the big lie and this big lie still exists in germany about whether or not germany lost the first world war so big lies outlast political leaders and as far as the major corporations uh we have to remember that this entire big lie campaign that is for example the review of balance in arizona is all being funded by non-tech populist giants this is a very expensive process i highly recommend you read jay mire's piece in new yorker last week where she pulls uh really the carpet from under this she reveals that uh big money is behind us and we're dealing with big money that can manipulate and exploit social values so for example whether or not trump wins we quite clearly see a revived anti-abortion movement whether or not trump wins if we see more people buying guns than ever before so it's a social historian i mean gene and our friends and we have this is what academics do right we fundamentally agree we but we have just a different point of entry right so everything gene said i completely agree with i learned a lot my concern would be with the ism though not necessarily the leader and i think let me just finish that one of the myths which we still live with in the united states and we are going to live with it again in afghanistan is that we could have militarily won the war and i think that the consequences and i don't agree with that that's a myth that's a that's a myth which is no fabrication reality u.s unless u.s we're going to turn to nuclear weapons right it wasn't going to do but the sense of a military victory that eluded one right destroyed france with the dry pits affair led to the rise of nazism and when you look closely at the right and its sense of toxic masculinity it's gun wielding it's unbelievable anti-asian sentiment they very much have in their collective psyche the vietnam war and i fear that we're going to redo that when people start thinking about afghanistan as well well gene i want to talk about more about myths what is a myth what is a national myth and what is the you know the verb to reenact what does that mean and how is that playing with us and i you know i i only from you i heard about the fourth turning and steve bannon and all that what what is that myth is this all kind of an expression of american exceptionalism or is it more or less what are the myths we have to cope with you know to to get rational if you will going forward well again i'm going from theory you know heuristic useful theory scholarship how to put it every viable nation and not every nation is a state we talk about a nation state a nation is a group of people who have in common a language a territory and a history and even though they may come from other shores they buy into it you pluralist unum is what we've got that's a very succinct uh phrase that describes our national myth out of many one that's our aspiration as a nation as well as michelle obama knows the mythology of the united states has a lot to do with what we learned in school but now we're learning that what we learned in school wasn't the whole story and why are we learning that now because the tables are beginning to turn there's a big demographic revolution remember at charlotte's bill the the refrain was juice will not replace us well you could put blacks you can put hispanics you can put whatever you want the whole theory is called the great replacement theory which is embraced by the far right and the racist right and the fact is that the united states is becoming browner you know and we're under marrying and all you have to do is look at the commercials on your tv so this is the time when the national myth of the puritans and the christians founding america is being contested and other founding stories are coming in it's 1619 with the black slaveships coming in for the first time but it could be the akkadians from louisiana it could be the hawaiians with their founding myth it could be the spanish california you know we all have founding myths because that's what binds us together in our civic religion you really can't separate religion and politics as it comes down to it because that's what we all buy into and that's what keeps us together okay so these chaotic elements that peter has given us a litany of and i totally agree with peter they're going to go on and they were they were already going on before trump was president he took advantage of him he's a good con man he's a good elmer gantry he can rev up the troops he knows how to put it all together and it's all about him but it's all about him because he's the embodiment of them and they buy into that go back and read the inaugural address that will show you that the fourth turning the fourth turning is a wonderfully seductive systemic notion that there are cycles in history that history does not progress that civilization does not progress rather we're based on the seasons winter spring summer fall and by the way oh my goodness that's human life isn't it childhood adulthood maturity and old age okay so they take this quad quadruple construction and they give it a history and a scholarship which you can really contest the theory inconsistent and it's not very accurate but it really comes across strong and steve bannon was attracted why because they say that history is divided into these cycles of four 20 year units and the whole 80 year cycles called the secular which is like a human lifetime or a year and what what this means is that each part of that is characterized by historical events culminating in a catastrophe in the fourth turning the fourth quadrant brings about a challenge to its generation who are called heroes in a way that nothing else in history has and they go back and they completely schematize british and american history for 500 years to prove that this is true they don't do it for the world though they don't do it for china they only do it for the history they know when we're taught in school and the fact is they now see a fourth turning from 2005 to 2025 calling forth the heroes and it's going to be even more intense than the other ones and what were the other ones well the last one we had was second world war and the depression and previous to that you know the civil war what they don't include though are some other very important things that any historian would include like the first world war because it doesn't fit their schema so the whole thing is clever but it's not very smart but people buy into it both they what bannon has bought into is that we're in precipitous decline all the things that the litany that peter stepped forth can make you feel very down but in fact if you read history you get a broader view you see it's happened before not the same thing history doesn't repeat itself in the specifics there are patterns but this is not the pattern not the cyclical thing we do have a linear history we don't have a cycler so what is the difference between a relive and a reenactment okay if you this is the best thing i can use to explain it i was struck by it when i saw the videos of january 6th of course i was struck by everything but the thing that focused my attention where they were costumed and they were carrying flags and they would have logos on their shirts it reminded me of what happens in all the little towns in the summertime in the united states in the heartland and in the east part in the small towns these are historical reenactment reenactments everywhere you stand in the united states there's a history you know barbara fritchie or the green mountain boys or you name it and the towns reenact them and there are people who are do this this is this is what they do this is their avocation when they're not working they reenact well that's very interesting because they're all about the myths the founding myths of these little towns everything has to have a founding myth this is a religious principle by the way and so they reenact them and they brings up the emotions of feelings and it finds the audience together and it's mine i'll give you another example when trump celebrated july 4th and he went to um you know the the mountain with all the presidents on it and then the next day he was at the white house what did he talk about he talked about the united states white man's founding myth you know and and when when he had his acceptance of his candidacy in the second election everybody got up and testified they testified to that myth okay and and anytime you try to change that myth like gearing ash did in the 1990s with a whole bunch of national historians and include some of the people who founded los angeles who none of whom were white by the way and other such things are the 1619 that's a challenge that has to be beaten down because that's not a myth but this reenactment revives a sense of belonging finding civic religion and patriotism in the in the generic sense of the word well they're not particularly healthy then these myths and the reenactment isn't particularly healthy so where does it all go do we need new myths do we need to debunk old ones do we need to stop reenacting them we don't do anything with myths myths are something that arise from people out of their living it's it's something human beings do they they have to explain how things came into being how did this happen there's a founding story in in israel it's masada you know the heroes at masada here it's the heroes of the revolution and and the tea party and all of that so every people has to have it it's not negative it's it can be very positive in binding but it can be negative if it becomes exclusive and racist and just generally so it can be interpreted reinterpreted misinterpreted and people will follow it they will reenact inaccurately the true original founding myth no there's no true original founding in mythology mythology is true but on a different plane from history myth and history are two separate phenomena myth is something that gives meaning to your life and it's true i mean people do bible study they do Torah study they you know who who just believes that the gospels and what they convey what they convey is more than the history can ever convey to a person it's values it's belonging it's a truth of a different order okay and it answers different questions so we shouldn't try to mix the two okay well peter let me turn to you this is something that professor sunday schwarz has discussed and that is you know every empire um so far as we know in the world and certainly in the discipline of history has ultimately come to an end like every bacterial colony we know ultimately comes to an end so the question is what where does that fit uh in terms of the um what is it the fourth turning in terms of the various factors that you and gene have been talking about as far as whether an empire is going to survive as an american power i'm not quite sure what you're asking me sorry that that's it okay so um i think the jury is out on the chinese empire it certainly hasn't declined and that may be the next major empire i'm not convinced of the u.s having an empire in the traditional sense of an empire but if it if the empire is uh exercising overseas influence the u.s will continue to exercise overseas influence if that's the question you're asking most empires have a great difficulty reconciling uh domestic and overseas values this is what the ancient world called imperium at libertas there is no empire in history who's exercise of foreign power has not sacrificed domestic freedom we live in that today right the war against terror is a good example uh the fact that the united states turns to the civic islands for military recruiting right and none of those kids get a chance to vote they don't have citizenship so i would to answer your question is if the u.s continues this kind of overseas intervention whatever if you want to call an empire or not it will continue to deny domestic freedoms now as far as the reenactment i love gene's description um there is an excellent book about civil war reenactment a wonderful book in which the person embedded themselves with the reenactors and um whereas i can entirely agree with the notion of a myth there's some other things going on there as well there's a tremendous amount of masculinity in these myths in the way they're reenacted and what worries me um i don't mind the small village reenactments but i think january 6 is different because this was reenactment with live ammunition and reenactment with the intentional intent of violence most of the small reenactments even the civil war reenactments the exercise is in fact not to be violent so something else is going on here and you know my concern about militarism and violence and that that worries me a tremendous amount so i don't equate january 6 with folks in ohio uh going out walking around a little bit hold hold there's gene gene would like to uh interpose i totally agree there's the reenactment that we talked about where they wear the revolutionary war costume or the civil war uniforms right that does not characterize january 6 january 6 is what i call an enactment of it and the type of myth they're enacting they're very open about it's the apocalypse it's gutter donor run it's uh the revolution that they want to set up tim mcbay tried revolution by bombing oklahoma city the right wing is full of revolution and their model of course is the turn of diaries absolutely so this this was an attempt to stimulate a revolution not only by attacking the capital but remember the fears we had that every state capital was going to have the same thing right and do you believe do you believe gene that we will have a revolution and if we have a revolution by virtue of these reenactments um will that threaten the future existence of the american empire i am not in the business of prediction unlike strauss and howl who call their work a history but admit that they are profits i am not a prophet and no historian would ever seek to that but how we can say maybe peter's an exception i happily sing don't worry i'm happy to sing we can only look at what's happening and having the background of the past can be calming it can also be instructive but this i will offer history always surprises we never know what's around the corner if you were to ask me personally what i think i would say give it 10 years maybe maybe a little more it won't matter it won't matter why we have a bigger crisis the climate crisis and that is going to have such incredible fallout on politics and and and what happens internationally and what happens locally i mean it's when it happens locally and it happens internationally people finally get it and this is going to cause havoc that's a whole new discussion but i i that is absolutely over our two points but the two are absolutely linked absolutely yes they are and you don't even need to be grandiose and existentialist they're linked around much the world as far as access to fresh water that's been it i mean water access to water is the crucial strategic issue change everything so peter wow what a discussion we have gone from pillar to post on this one i'm gonna do it again gotta get back to it again gene has to come back whoa so peter can you can you take a moment and summarize and and you know close the show i will i will try to summarize gene left us with a lot um if i had say three points and and samuel johnson always said to focus on three points uh dr rosa belch suggested the power of a text the reading of the fourth turning to generate a a mythic reality or as she would say a mythic truth and that seems to have been spreading and seems to have enabled uh the former president of the united states to make up a populist link uh that'd be one one takeaway for sure uh secondly uh gene's important comment that uh all communities in all nations have something we would call a myth but that what's not about and that myth is a particular view of the past which should be distinct from the historical past so as she concludes it really doesn't do much good to try to punch holes in myths based on history that they're they're different enterprises okay and the third i guess conclusion would be we need to discuss this even further and i would like to see uh her comments and discuss the connections with the political left because a lot of what she suggested can be applied also to the political left and i say that in a loving term as you know so it's not a derogatory term but if we look at the nature of myth and religion and political movements as religious movements we can also i think have a very fruitful discussion discussing the role on the left and we will find out my final point for you is that i do worry not about an organized revolution but in a country where every 17 year old can get an ar-15 i do worry about violence and violence connected to what might be perceived as a revolution and i think we all have the stark point of data of a young white kid going into a church worshiping for several hours murdering everybody in that church and telling the police that he wanted to restart the civil war so it's not as if the entire south is going to come into warfare but and i'm sure gene knows from religion and myth there are copycatters right there are lone wolves that aren't really lone wolves so i'm going to leave you with a depressing point which will make you even paler than you are now okay well i'm pretty sure i worry about the violence that's coming i worry a great deal about the violence well it's always encouraging him all of our shows lead to other shows you cannot ask you have you have left traces on the ground for us to follow in the next discussion you and your audience cannot ask a German Jewish European historian to break into grouch remarks that ain't gonna happen you know me okay sorry about that and we know gene gives us some optimism i i have to be a little more skeptical okay we know two things that we have learned history is here to help and also may i say history is full of surprises ha ha ha history sometimes cannot help uh as we're here as we're going to go we're going to start all right we'll talk about you know hoffenberg and gene rosenfeld thank you thank you both of you for joining us today wonderful thank you of course