Civil War Historians: Trump Is Disqualified + Report from Eagle Pass, TX

Civil War Historians: Trump Is Disqualified + Report from Eagle Pass, TX

Refuse Fascism Episode 188

Sun, Feb 04, 2024 2:44PM • 49:04

Dr. Manisha Sinha 00:00

The case rests on the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The people who wrote this clause are very clear that this was going to be a bar on anyone in the future who might commit a rebellion or insurrection or treason against the United States. We think these laws and amendments are not just empty words or fancy dressing, they should be implemented. I think many historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction who watched the January 6th insurrection immediately thought about the 14th Amendment, immediately thought about laws passed immediately after the Civil War, the enforcement acts the Ku Klux Klan Act, to prevent and to contain political violence and domestic terrorism in the country.

Sam Goldman 01:08

Welcome to Episode 188 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. First off, thanks to those who filled out our survey. If you still have thoughts you want to send us about topics guests questions that are on your mind, DM Refuse Fascism on your favorite social media platform, reach me on Twitter @SamBGoldman, or send me an email at [email protected]. We love hearing from you.

Sam Goldman 01:59

In today’s episode, we are sharing an interview with Dr. Manisha Sinha, a scholar of Civil War and Reconstruction and one of the 25 historians who signed on to an amicus brief in support of Trump’s removal from the Colorado ballot under the 14th Amendment. We’re also sharing an interview with Coco Das, who has been traveling to Eagle Pass, Texas, the epicenter of the escalating war on immigrants and the Neo Confederate attempt to usurp power from the federal government.

Sam Goldman 02:29

But first, we need to talk about just some — a few — developments from this past week as they relate to the fascist threat. While we don’t have time this week for a full theocracy update, I just have to mention that while Floridians are now prevented from changing their gender on their license, forcing trans folks to flee the state like it’s Germany 1933, Christian theocrats gathered for the second annual National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance this week at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.

This hate fest featured over a dozen Christian fascist members of the U.S. Congress and a flock of Christian fascist activists. Repenting for what? The ways in which the bans on abortion they’ve helped pass have killed women or kept them at the hands of their abusers? or the ways that anti LGBTQ laws they’ve ushered have sent kids to their early graves and fueled a resurgence of overt bigotry? Of course not. Instead, they repented for not yet inshrining fetal personhood into law, and not yet having erased LGBTQ people.

This celebration of cruelty was sponsored by notorious theocratic hate group, Family Research Council, a Christian fascist juggernaut, which recruits and mobilizes pastors and congregants to promote law and policy dictated by the Bible. In a surprise to no one, who played a key role in leading this event? None other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, who brought up all the congress people on stage who had attended and delivered a prayer followed by Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, praying over all of them.

For those who still want to pretend that the threat of Christo-fascism is so 2016, just take a look at who participated and the framing of the event itself. As images of federal government institutions and symbols played on slides, key players in the New Apostolic Reformation called out the demons, and speakers participants in the January 6th coup attempt and the preceding Jericho March were central players at this event.

In other news, if you’re trying to make sense of the horrific Levittown MAGA man beheading his father, issuing a manifesto cribbing Fox News Trump Republi-fascist, hate drenched vitriol, and attempting to shoot up a National Guard Station, recommend you go back and listen to last week’s episode: The White Power Movement in 2024.

Meanwhile, the genocide and Gaza is reaching month five with Rafah, one of the IDF ‘s last “safe places” being bombed, with desperately needed aid being torn away by major powers, and the continued suppression of righteous protest and solidarity across the western world. This week, the Wall Street Journal published two articles, naming whole communities in the United States as “terrorists”, starting with, “Chicago votes for Hamas,” in response to the Chicago City Council voting for a ceasefire, and, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s jihad capital,” because that town has one of the largest concentrations of Muslim and Arab constituents in the country.

This is an escalation from their normal op-eds, calling Islamophobia a myth and saying people who recognize Islamophobia are suffering from truth-phobia. For months now, The Wall Street Journal has been at the leading edge of media equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order to target and incite violence against anyone who speaks out against genocide. But they haven’t been alone. This week, The New York Times published a column by Thomas Friedman titled, “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom,” equating the people of the region with pets and insects, making the media’s dehumanization of people from the Middle East literal.

Beyond the opinion pages, reporters and journalists for both of these publications have been exposed by third parties to either be former IDF or have family ties to IDF, while others have been fired, taken out of print, and off the airwaves from merely being Arab or Muslim or expressing solidarity with innocent people being murdered. It’s not only Fox News and OAN, but the liberal mainstream media establishment, skipping down the road to fascism.

In today’s interview, we discuss some enlightening amicus brief filed in the case to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot. The series of long sat on legal cases against Trump are not the silver bullet to stop fascism. Instead, they may at best be a helpful mechanism in a context where the fascist MAGA movement is not merely being ridiculed and dismissed by delusional liberals but being delegitimized and disgorged nationwide. This is part of the goal we must be working towards. It cannot be stressed enough that Trump’s general legal strategy on these cases, besides immunity, is to delay the proceedings until he wins the election, and then dismisses the cases. A strategy which now is being helped along by the so-called “liberal” D.C. Circuit Court.

As we said last week, how many times have people been convinced that: Aha, this is the moment that the whole nightmare comes to an end? And yet he keeps bouncing back. That’s not a fluke. Trump and his fascists thrive on playing the victim and his opponents in the halls of power and in the media thrive on maintaining decent people’s passivity and submissiveness to their mis-leadership. Trump is embraced and backed not just by a rabid and heavily armed fascist base, but by a legal movement that has tried and tested strategies for suppressing the vote, subverting the vote, and the law.

While no gag order, legal conclusion or criminal conviction can stop someone hell bent on climbing the ladder to fascist rule, there is something they have yet to face: A mass movement of the people resolved, unwavering in their refusal to accept a fascist America, taking over the public discourse and public squares to make that demand real. Together, that’s what we’re working for. With that, here is my interview with Dr. Manisha Sinha.

On February 8 — that’s next week — the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson, the case that will evaluate the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to exclude Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot. To examine this and the larger echoes of civil war and the specter of a new civil war. I want to welcome Dr. Manisha Sinha.

Dr. Sinha is the Draper chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is an author, and one of the 25 Civil War and Reconstruction historians who signed an amicus brief in support of Colorado’s attempt to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrection participants from running for office. Her work was cited in an additional amicus brief from another set of historians. In both these briefs, historians marshal the overwhelming historical evidence that: Yes, it was an insurrection. Yes, the President is an officer of the law. And, yes, he should be off the ballot. So welcome, Dr. Sinha, thank you for joining us.

Dr. Manisha Sinha 10:05

Thank you for having me, Sam, and for that generous introduction

Sam Goldman 10:09

All true things, and I’m really looking forward to having a conversation with a historian on this one, because we’ve talked about these cases with other guests previously through a legal lens, and I think it’s important to also look at it through historical one, and what the implications of removal or the lack thereof would be in this fraught moment. For those who are not familiar with this case, can we start with what is being argued by Trump’s lawyers,

Dr. Manisha Sinha 10:42

The case rests on the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was one of those Reconstruction era amendments passed after the Civil War, and one section, section three, of that amendment says that if you have been an officer in the United States government and sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, and then participated or incited an insurrection against the United States or government, then you are disqualified from holding office, unless you are pardoned by a law of Congress. This is actually a self-executing part of the Constitution; a person does not need to be tried or even impeached, as Donald Trump was impeached twice, even though the Senate then did not convict him, and he’s been tried in over 90 cases on various charges all over the country. But this is a very serious charge of insurrection against the government of the United States.

History, they say, occurs first as tragedy and then as farce, and however we may look at the January 6th insurrection, it was very much one aimed to disrupt the functioning of the United States government. It was not a peaceful and an ordinary protest gone haywire. It was a very deliberate attempt to overturn the functioning of the Electoral College in electing a new president. People call it a coup, a putsch, an insurrection, and I think it really does fit the bill. Now, Trump’s lawyers, as your question alludes to, arguing that Trump, as president of the United States, was not an officer of the United States government, which is a very odd argument, because, indeed, the President is a Federal officer, and he does a swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

Then, if you commit insurrection, as the clause very clearly says, you are indeed barred from holding office ever again, or running for office. This was mainly directed to former Confederates, but the people who wrote this clause are very clear that this is going to be a bar on anyone in the future who might commit a rebellion or insurrection or treason against the United States. Trump’s lawyers feel that the President is above the law. But we are a republic, we’re not a monarchy. There is no such thing as the king can do the wrong.

We know after Nixon and Watergate, that the President is very much liable to the rule of law, and if he infringes that, he should be convicted. He can be pardoned, but he should be held responsible for it. So Trump’s lawyers reasonings — one that he is not an office of the United States government, and two, that somehow the executive, the President, can act with impunity, and never be held liable for anything he does — which very much echoes Trump’s reasoning that: I can shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and my followers will still vote for me. That kind of reasoning belongs to monarchical governments, to authoritarian governments, to fascist governments. It certainly does not belong to a constitutional democracy, which is what the American Republic is.

Sam Goldman 14:05

Thank you for that really clear breakdown of what is being argued, that most people if they just hear it can hear how ridiculous and outrageous it is just on face value. I wanted to examine why, as historians, did folks feel that this needed to be crafted that there needed to be a official statement as part of the legal proceedings on what historians of Civil War and Reconstruction had to say on this and why in particular, you decided to be part of that?

Dr. Manisha Sinha 14:43

That’s a great question. We don’t have extensive case law on the section three of the 14th amendment, and that’s a good thing. It means that there haven’t been many insurrections, domestic rebellions, against the United States government. We also know that many conservatives on the Supreme Court, some of whom have been appointed by Trump, believe in this doctrine called originalism. They want to find out the original intent of the people who wrote the Constitution or proposed the amendments. If they’re true to that faith, and it’s just not a political device in order to implement their own views on whatever the case may be, if they’re true to that intent, it is really important to recover the historical context of the section three disqualification under the 14th amendment.

I think many historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction, who watched the January 6th insurrection, immediately taught about the 14th Amendment — immediately thought about laws passed immediately after the Civil War — the enforcement acts the Ku Klux Klan Act — to prevent and to contain political violence and domestic terrorism in the country. We think these laws and amendments are not just empty words or fancy dressing, they should be implemented.

Then, when we compare what had happened immediately after the Civil War with January 6th, and Trump’s attempt to propose the Big Lie, that he has somehow won the election and that it was somehow stolen from him. This is a recipe for 20th century authoritarianism. We’ve had precedents in American history, when a group of bad actors, mainly slaveholders, confederates, secessionist than ex Confederates, tried to overturn the normal functioning of government through either lies — the loss cause mythology of the South — or through political violence, that we saw on January 6th. Capitol police officers were killed, were injured in that insurrection, so to argue that this was not a serious event is ridiculous.

To me, personally, I found it offensive to see the Confederate battle flag inside the halls of the Capitol, something that did not happen during the Civil War, even. So this is clearly evoking that time period, evoking those kinds of tactics, also evoking those kinds of ideas and values; a belief in the kind of government that would completely not allow groups of people to participate, or see them as illegitimate citizens; the way in which Trump constantly talks about poisoning the blood of the country. These are very familiar fascist kinds of tropes. They are extremely dangerous.

So I do think that most historians looking at this history within the United States of authoritarianism — because that’s what you get in the South after the fall of reconstruction, you have a state of racial apartheid — it’s a one party system, there is really no functioning democracy. And till today, we live with those legacies with voter suppression, with all kinds of things. And for Trump to take these ideas and weaponize them means that we should have a similar adequate legal response to it. If indeed, these constitutional provisions and the rule of law is upheld, then we suck the wind out of his sails.

Those are fascist sails as we have seen; he wants to weaponize the government, he wants to take revenge on his enemies, he wants to deport even citizens of this country. At one point he even talked about doing away with national birthright citizenship of the 14th amendment through an executive order. This man clearly does not understand the U.S. constitutional order. You can’t do that. You can’t overturn the Constitution with a presidential executive order. You could if you were in an authoritarian state, but we are not there yet. So I think it’s very important for us to invoke these Civil War protections against these kind of new threats and dangers to American democracy.

Sam Goldman 19:04

I wasn’t planning on going here, but something that you said just brought this question up for me, which was: Are you surprised that here we are so long after the insurrection? That there hasn’t been any accountability or real measures to prevent this from happening again?

Dr. Manisha Sinha 19:25

After January 6th, I really did think that perhaps there might be a group of Republicans who finally see the light. There were some of them but they were a minority. I think what shocks me is that in a two party system, one entire party, virtually, can support these kinds of authoritarian actions and excuse the January 6th insurrection. That surprises me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, because in a way, if you think of Watergate, the Iran Contra scandal, the constant application of race baiting, from the Willie Horton ads to the welfare queen, there’s just a history of the Republican Party going down a road that they should not have been. They were playing with fire, and now in a way the fire has consumed them.

I really do think that it is a tragedy that the Republican Party is enabling a defiance of the rule of law. It is enabling this kind of authoritarianism. They have even revived rhetoric from the Civil War era, which we thought was dead in the battlefields, which is the alleged right of states to nullify federal laws to nullify federal authority, and to urge even secession. And recently, even the so called moderate candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, like Nikki Haley, has supported those outrageous ideas. I’m not surprised. It was called the South Carolina doctrine because John C. Calhoun, the pro slavery planter politician from that state first propounded them.

I am actually rather stunned that the Republican Party has become this kind of neo-Confederate, neo-fascist, authoritarian party around the cult of one man. I see a buffoonish kind of character who can barely string a sentence together, and who has absolutely no empathy, no intelligence, who just speaks off the cuff, and sometimes sounds ridiculous, and that’s why he’s been such good fodder for comedians and late night talk show hosts. For us to even take this man seriously, and for the Republican Party to do so, I think is actually the shocking part of it. And I think that’s the real danger. The danger is that this minority of a minority would hold the entire country hostage, pretty much the way that slaveholders did before the Civil War. And before the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Sam Goldman 21:59

There is so much to respond to you in what you just laid out. There was one thing that I wanted to lift up that I find just striking: Here we are with him running again as the assumed nominee for the GOP, is that all the things that you laid out are the very reason why a whole fascist movement love him. The misogyny, the white supremacy, the overt hatred of people that are outside this nation’s borders, the idea that he can just say whatever he wants without regard for anything or anyone, those are the very reasons why he’s so loved, and that is deeply concerning to me, that there is that big of a movement in this country that hears that and fully embraces it.

For so long, he was only the fodder for comedians, and it was so easy for people to dismiss and laugh away at the sheer buffoonery that he displays every time he opens his mouth. We didn’t take him seriously soon enough and we thought it doesn’t happen in America and I feel like we’re still paying the consequence for that. I wanted to get deeper into the arguments that you and other historians have marshaled around this case that will be heard this week.

One of the core claims that you tackle, one argument that Trump’s lawyers are making that you spoke of earlier, is that because he wasn’t convicted for an insurrection by the Senate, the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply. And the other argument is that somehow presidents aren’t officers of the United States. I was hoping that you can provide some history and why that isn’t so, besides it sounding so obviously wrong to any reasonable person.

Dr. Manisha Sinha 24:01

The notion that he has to be convicted is just plain wrong. Section three of the 14th amendment itself executing in the way that the qualifications for the presidency are. For instance, you have to be 35 years of age, you have to be born in this country. I can’t run for the American presidency, because I was not born in the United States. There are very clear qualifications that are put into place in order to run for the presidency. One of them is — and I think that’s a pretty mild qualification — is that if you’ve committed insurrection against the government, you can’t head it; that you are actually disqualified on the most elementary ground of being the President of the United States.

This newfangled notion that somehow the President sort of hovers above like a king, like a monarch, that he’s not a Federal officer, as any other Federal officer who swears to uphold the U.S. Constitution is, is also wrong. He may be the first officer, the highest, but he’s still a Federal officer. What you said earlier actually is really a good point. That is that why he is rather buffoonish, he does, in fact, channel the dark forces in the country. We have a history of flirting with racial authoritarianism; a strong history of that, especially in the south with slavery and Jim Crow.

Let us not forget that that was overturned only in the 1960s. That’s the recent past. These forces may have been vanquished, they haven’t disappeared. I’m not one of those who believes that he has a massive popular following. I don’t think so. If you look at his meetings, there are sometimes those stadiums are empty. There are few, committed few, and the mainstream media in this country will always interview them. And one gets the impression: Oh, my God, there’s so many people. And then they’re like: Oh, but you know, 70 million people voted for him — 10 million less than for Biden, but still — so many voted for him. But he was the Republican Party presidential candidate in a two party system. There are some people who just vote the Republican ticket no matter who gets it. That’s become quite clear.

But as of now, I don’t see it. As of now, the loudest voices are the most unprincipled, the most traitorous, if one could put it that way, the most completely lacking in any values or any higher sort of patriotism to the American republic; people like Elise Stefanik, like Mike Johnson, in the Senate, you have Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz. Some of them are even worse than Trump. Look at people like Marjorie, Taylor Greene, etc. It’s a shame that we have people of that caliber in Congress. These people are complicit, and they are the loudest voices, and they’ve been able to weed out all the centers like Lynne Cheney, like Adam Kinzinger, for whom enough was enough. And other Republicans who just out of sheer cowardice said, we’re just don’t want to fight it, they just not running again, but we can’t take Trump.

This is very much what happened in the Democratic Party in the 1850s, where slaveholders had loyalty tests. How loyal can you be to slavery and its expansion and its permanence? Those who weren’t were read out. Those northern Democrats who refused to kowtow to the slave power were read out of the party. The Republican Party is behaving a similar way. By 1860, the Democratic Party had split over this because many northern Democrats who were very much pro-South, very anti-abolitionists, at one point they balked. They said: We don’t want a federal slave code. We don’t want to reopen the African slave trade. Slaveholders just became more and more outrageous in their demands, pretty much like the Trump cult, or what people call the MAGA Republicans are today.

The question is: Will there be a larger segment that eventually wakes up? I do think that disqualifying Trump, or even having him convicted in one of these cases — that is there are so many against him — might actually give those Republicans who would vote the ticket no matter what some wiggle room to get out of voting for Trump. But you know, all those things have to happen, and we have to wait and see how the Supreme Court rules on this because even the Trump appointees except for someone who is totally bereft of principles like Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginny Thomas participated in the January 6th interaction, and who should really be recusing himself from this coming case — most of the Supreme Court justices did not entertain Trump’s lies about the 2020 elections. I’ll give them that.

After that, they’ve done pretty bad stuff in terms of revoking rights and precedent in this country. I wonder what they’re going to do in this case. Are they going to stick with originalism as they claim to believe? Are they going to interpret the 14th amendment for what it was written? Precisely the kind of scenario that unfolded on January 6, 2021? Or are they going to simply carry on and just make a very political decision? But then we will know that the commitment to conservative originalism is merely a political tactic. It’s not a deeply held principle for them.

Sam Goldman 29:22

Can you talk about the impact of the clause at the time it was written, in the aftermath of war. What different made then?

Dr. Manisha Sinha 29:30

After the Civil War, if you look at the debates in the congressional globe — and you will see that a lot in the brief, written by Lepore and others, you will see that they debated all kinds of disqualifications for former Confederates, because instead of accepting defeat in the Civil War and accepting emancipation and a modicum of civil rights for newly freed black people, they were coming up with all kinds of — including violent ways of — undoing the results of the Civil War and emancipation.

The clause was clearly written keeping that in mind; that these people are still not defeated. And there were some people who posed harsher penalties, like depriving them of the right to vote, even. But that was done away with. All they came up with was disqualifying them for office. And that was also for senior confederates — not if you were a Confederate soldier, and you didn’t hold any office for the Civil War. If you had held federal office, and you had sworn an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, then you were disqualified.

That seemed targeted at high Federal officers who had betrayed their oath of office. People like Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, who was actually the Secretary of State. Or the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens, who had been a senator before the Civil War. So, it targeted those people, not ordinary Confederate soldiers even. But it was also written, I think, as the Lepore brief really shows quite well, with an eye to the future. Because they were seeing after the Civil War, that even after that defeat, these people were continuing to oppose emancipation and to oppose Black rights.

So they could visualize a future where this would happen, and so the people who wrote the 14th Amendment very clearly said that not just the protections that they had put into the 14th Amendment — equal protection under the law — would be used at some future point for rights that they had not conceived of. And indeed, in the late 20th century, it was, in Roe v. Wade; right to privacy comes from the 14th amendment, or gay marriage comes from the 14th amendment. Similarly, with a disqualification, they didn’t say ex confederates, they didn’t say just that specific moment, they said: Any potential insurrection against the United States government in the future. And that’s why I think it’s so important for us to actually implement that clause when we have witnessed an insurrection.

Sam Goldman 32:02

This case will be heard by the Supreme Court next week — we’re recording Friday, February 2 — and we can expect with a case like this, having to do with an election, that they’ll decide quicker, although they get to decide when they decide in all things. Right now, without some major shift, I don’t know how the Supreme Court will decide, I don’t have a crystal ball, but it seems like, not just that so many of them were appointed by Trump himself, but aligning with his aims, that there’s a lot going for them wanting him to stay on the ballot.

There’s still all the cases that you mentioned, however, Trump’s legal strategy of delaying seems to be working, as the D.C. Circuit still hasn’t decided on the immunity claim, which should have been thrown out as bogus immediately. It’s seeming more and more likely that, as unbelievable as it is, he will once again be on the ballot as the Republican nominee unless some major shift occurs. For me, reading what you and other historians have written in addition to the brief from scholars of fascism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and others taking a different approach, it seems that a big part of it is not just influencing or hoping to influence the justices, but taking a role in educating the people who might learn about these through the media, other mechanisms for that desperately needed education on American history, and world history.

I really, really appreciate, and I know that many others do too, the alarm that you and others have sounded. Thank you so much Dr. Sinha for coming on, for sharing your expertise, your perspective and your time. In the interest of spreading more history and people learning more, you have a forthcoming book. I wanted you to just share the title and let people know where they could get it, and where they could learn more from you if they want to read more and follow you.

Dr. Manisha Sinha 34:11

My book is coming out in March, this year, from Liveright/Norton and you can already preorder it in Norton, in your favorite bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, big chains, even Amazon. It’s called The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic. It’s a history of reconstruction that spans from 1860 when Abraham Lincoln is elected President of the United States to 1920 when the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, is passed — which I see as the last reconstruction amendment because it is modeled after the 15th Amendment, giving Black men the right to vote from 1870.

When I wrote this book, I never thought it would be so timely or relevant to tell you the truth. Now, suddenly, it is being referred to in amicus and people are very interested in getting it, and I’ve heard that the preorders a bit off the charts because of the current moment that we’re in. I do think that when I wrote it, at least the latter half of the book, it was well after 2021, when I saw things unfolding, and after the awful Trump years, and I was able to kind of tell that story and put those into context, without always directly referring to what was happening at the present moment.

I think people will find it useful as a kind of a historical background to where we are today. And it is written for a broad audience. I actually had my undergraduate students in mind when I wrote this book, it’s published by a commercial publisher, not a University Press. I wanted to make sure that this history would be accessible and intelligible to a broad public audience. Yes, you can preorder it and hopefully get copies of it by March this year.

Sam Goldman 35:51

Thank you. Do you want us to link to your website? Or is there social media that you prefer we link to in the show notes?

Dr. Manisha Sinha 36:00

You can link to my website. And you can also follow me on Twitter — I refuse to call it X — @ProfMSinha. I’m also on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Facebook where you can follow me. I don’t do Instagram, which is very popular, because I always thought that was for celebrities, to post pictures and videos and not for us ordinary academics. But I may change my mind in the future, so you can follow me on social media. I use Twitter a lot to put present day political events and problems in a historical context. I begin my tweets usually with historian here, which some people find irritating, but I think it’s useful for people who don’t know who I am or where I’m coming from.

Sam Goldman 36:45

Thank you so much.

Dr. Manisha Sinha 36:47

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me, Sam.

Sam Goldman 36:49

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Sam Goldman 37:13

We couldn’t run an episode reflecting on the echoes of a Civil War and the neo-Confederate fascists spoiling for and positioning for another without talking about Texas. Eagle Pass, Texas continues to be a flashpoint in this escalation as we learn of more migrants nearly drowning, unable to get help. As Texas’ government continues to defy the federal government and the Supreme Court, and as the Biden administration cedes to Texas, continuing to be not only the biggest deporters, increasing obstacles to seeking asylum, expressing willingness to sign a bill to shut down the border when it becomes “overwhelmed,” but failing even to cut down the wire the Supreme Court has authorized they remove.

Dan Patrick, Texas Lieutenant Governor, vows to continue putting up razor wire along the border in defiance of the Supreme Court, stating in a recent interview: “This is an invasion from third world countries. They’re coming here with health issues. They’re uneducated, unemployed, and all they do is commit crime on the streets.” And MAGA mom fascist convoys have begun arriving in Texas, donning assault rifles and Trump paraphernalia, holding mass baptisms, decrying this “invasion” of desperate people from lands the U.S. has literally militarily invaded over and over throughout history, and claiming that there are, “terrorists coming across the border being funded by Jewish money.”

This white supremacist delusion in particular is what fueled the murder of people at the Tree of Life synagogue. In the aftermath of his failed presidential bid, Ron DeSantis has gotten back to his roots as one of the most effective fascist politicians on the state level. He’s found it within his power to pledge 1000 Florida National Guard troops to support Texas governor Abbott’s anti migrant campaign. He’s leading the pack of GOP governors, leaping onto Texas his revival of state rights doctrines, which throughout U.S. history have been used to justify and enforce slavery and segregation and today undergird fascist state government programs of enforcing abortion bans and trans bans beyond their borders. Representative Mike Collins, Republican from Georgia, Thursday suggested via social media posts that immigrants should be given rides on “Pinochet Air” a reference to Chilean dictator whose Armed Forces tossed kidnap dissidents out of helicopters on “death flights” over the Pacific Ocean.

Today, as we’re recording, Governor Abbott is gathering 14 other GOP governors for “border security” press briefing at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass Texas. No stranger to Nazi anti migrant slander, seeking to whip up mobs to further terrorize immigrants, Elon Musk has jumped into this fray, using his billionaire pulpit and social media platform to spew ignorance to support the fascist actions at the border. He pinned a tweet claiming, “You basically have to be a convicted axe murderer to be deported. That’s because every deportation is a lost vote.”

We couldn’t find any evidence of 140,000 axe murders to align with the 140,000 deportations in 2023, let alone the unprecedented 3.6 million removals, returns, and expulsions at the hands of the Biden administration. Instead, we have loads of evidence from Elon’s feed that his intent is to paint undocumented people as violent and criminal, justifying fascist state and mob violence against them. Elon has either posted or engaged with over 26 tweets just in the past 24 hours, about half of which espouse some part of the great replacement conspiracy theory.

Elie Mystal, for the nation, correctly warns that “Texas is not a sideshow. It is ground zero in the battle to reassert state rights over individual rights and the federal government. And with the help of Republican judges and a Democratic administration that still seems bound by a rulebook Texas is eager to torch, Texas is more or less winning the first battle in the Civil War reenactment.” Going on to say: “The Confederates didn’t think they could win through strength of arms. They thought the union wouldn’t have the will to stop them. They were wrong about Lincoln, but their gross descendants may be right about Biden.”

Sam Goldman 41:35

We’re sharing an excerpt of an interview with a frequent guest and guest host of the show, Editorial Board Member, Coco Das, who has been traveling with a team of revolutionaries to Eagle Pass Texas. She provides important insight on the landscape, mood, and stakes that we find helpful. Annie Day’s interview with Coco Das originally aired this past Thursday on the RNL show.

Annie Day 41:55

So I’m here in studio with Coco Das. CoCo was part of the team of Revcoms that went down to Eagle Pass. She’s a writer, a revolutionary, and has been on the editorial board of Refuse Fascism. So Coco, welcome to the RNL, Revolution, Nothing Less show.

Coco Das 42:10

Thanks. Great to be here.

Sam Goldman 42:12

So Coco, what was it like to go down to Eagle Pass Texas?

Coco Das 42:16

First, we really didn’t know what to expect. We knew we had only read in the newspapers and heard sort of about the showdown at the border between the Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard. We were very excited and apprehensive. We didn’t know what the scene would be like. When we first got there, there was sort of this eerie calm and quiet over the town. This is a very small town with a small downtown area, you can see the International Bridge, some cars and people passing over. But the thing that you notice immediately is Shelby Park, which was the cultural and natural environmental community center of this town is completely under lockdown. It’s surrounded by walls, razor wire — military grade concertina wire, humvees, armed guards from the Texas National Guard.

One thing about this town is it’s really encircled at this point, between the Texas National Guard that’s taken over the park — it’s occupying the park — and border patrol, which is further out. In terms of a showdown, it’s not apparent. In fact, it looks like Texas National Guard, the fascists that Greg Abbott has coalesced here, have all the initiative and border patrol is pushed further out, at their own checkpoints further north from the river.

Annie Day 43:49

So you guys spent the weekend there and talk to a lot of people that live in Eagle Pass. Can you talk about that?

Coco Das 43:55

Yeah, it actually didn’t take long to uncover this turmoil beneath this calm exterior. The town of Eagle Pass has been a binational bicultural, integrated, international border. The most of the people we met have family on both sides. They may even live on both sides. A lot of people are U.S. citizens. They work in Eagle Pass, but they live in Mexico because it’s cheaper to live there. We spoke to Jesse Fuentes. He’s a business owner and an environmentalist. He runs kayaking tours on the river. His family’s been there for three generations. He’s very rooted, not only in the culture, but in the environment of the river — knows it really well. He said since National Guard put eight miles of razor wire up along the border, took over Shelby Park, and has really brought down brutal, brutal repression, which is caused the deaths, not just a few migrants, but several migrants, including a mother and two children a little over a week ago, he said, everything’s been ruined by this.

We talked to other people who have a lot of deep sympathy for the migrants, but there are certainly questions that they raised. For example: Should they make better choices? You shouldn’t cross the river when the flow is so heavy, when it’s dangerous like this. You should wait till it’s safer. We were taking this message to the people that we don’t have an immigration problem, we have an imperialism problem. And we need and we demand a whole new way to live a fundamentally different system. This was provoking to a lot of people. We got into a lot of conversations, not just about the causes of this migrant crisis and the standoff — this fraught situation between the federal government and the Texas National Guard, but also, is revolution possible? What would make this a world worth living in? So we got into a lot of really deep, interesting conversations.

Everywhere we went with our banner that said, “We don’t have an immigration problem. We have an imperialism, problem. Revolution, nothing less.”, it caused a huge stir. We took it to a skatepark, and there was an immediate reaction. But then through some struggle, we found out that, among these youth, they are questioning, there is division. Some of the young women said: Yeah, we want revolution. Whereas, one really vocal young man said all the Trump fascist talking points about migrants being rapists and drug dealers. It’s a beginning, but it’s really been important for us to step into this scene and bring revolution. There’s no actual visible force that standing up to these fascists.

Sam Goldman 46:56

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. If you appreciate the show and want to help us reach more listeners to understand and act to stop the fascist threat, please become a patron today. Whether you can give $2 or $20 a month, it all makes a difference in producing and promoting this independent, all volunteer weekly podcast. Give today at patreon.com/RefuseFascism or by visiting RefuseFascism.org and hitting the donate button, selecting recurring donation to make it monthly.

Thanks to everyone who already is a patron, and thanks for becoming one if you can today. Have thoughts on the show, questions, ideas? Reach me at the site previously known as Twitter @SamBGoldman, or drop me a line at [email protected]. We are on Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook — I’m probably forgetting something else — @RefuseFascism, so you can always follow us DM us there. And yeah, I now have a TikTok even though I still haven’t figured it out yet. So join me, help me on that journey over at TikTok @SamGoldmanRF. You can always share your thoughts with us via voicemail as well, so see the show notes to leave us a voice message.

Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne, and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to the RNL team for letting us share this interview with Coco. And thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. Until next Sunday, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!