Welcome to Liberation Road Throwback Thursdays
by the Liberation Road Newsletter Editorial Team
Is history “just one damn thing after another”? No. Like so many before us, we think it’s a battleground. And it’s a source of inspiration. As the political common sense of the last 50 years continues to unravel–or the last 150 years, depending on how you tilt your head–the stakes and meaning of history are heating up.
Every political and military struggle is in fact two struggles. The first is the fight itself. The second is the fight over the meaning of the fight. For instance, in the long arc following the defeat of Reconstruction, the U.S. populace was drowned in a deluge of Confederate sympathizer media and culture; for almost 100 years, 9 of 10 films made about the Civil War leaned pro-Confederate. We live in the resulting world, where many monuments to Confederates and slave owners still stand and the lost-cause mythology lives strong, despite the hideous brutality and traitorousness of the Confederacy.
Fast forward to the 2020s, and the neo-Confederates of today are fixated on erasing or distorting history. Right-wing legislators in at least 44 states have introduced or passed bills that would ban the teaching of “divisive concepts, creating a “minefield” for teachers figuring out how (or whether) to discuss topics like slavery, Jim Crow laws, sexuality and gender, or the Holocaust. Some of those same right-wing bills require teachers to denounce ideas like Marxism or socialism.
Which stories are told and which are omitted, whose voices are lifted and whose are silenced, what it all means is itself a political struggle. Even the slogan “make America great again” is a statement about our past. The history we tell has great bearing on who we understand ourselves to be, and what we believe to be justice and right and possible. With a New Confederacy on the march and a new spring for socialist and liberation politics, history is more of a battlefield than ever.
There’s a great popular tradition of setting the record straight and telling history from below–making history a practical guide to those who are seeking to change the world. In keeping with this tradition, we’re pleased to introduce a new column of the Liberation Road newsletter. Each week we’ll publish a “Throwback Thursday” column, telling a story of history from below. To begin, many of these stories will be told by Carl Davidson, who has more than a few stories of his life to tell. Then in the weeks and months ahead, we will add other writers telling other bits of history. If you think a certain story is interesting enough to share with friends, we urge you to forward it on, and ask them to subscribe as well. And fear not, the newsletter will continue publishing its regular current reflections on politics and culture on other days of the week.
We look forward to diving back into time with you.
In solidarity,
Liberation Road Newsletter Editorial Team