The Freedom to Dominate Jefferson Cowie

Sun, May 26, 2024 10:59AM • 49:29

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

freedom, fascism, fascist, federal government, american, dominate, history, george wallace, white, state, domination, episode, wrote, ways, idea, power, world, convict leasing, federal, fact

SPEAKERS

Sam Goldman, Dr. Jefferson Cowie

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  00:00

When I say freedom to dominate, it means taking the land of others, the political power of others, the labor power of other people, and call it freedom. The Freedom Caucus, the right wing of the American house, that is a group of proto-fascists who are using the term as, in fact, it has been used for 200 years. If fascism wins in America, it will march under the banner of freedom.

Sam Goldman  00:44

Welcome to Episode 203 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m 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, I want to thank you, thank you to everyone who rates and reviews this show, like Blaspehemous Bill, who, over on Apple podcasts, reviewed the show, titling their review Absolutely Essential Info and Analysis, gave us five stars, thank you, and wrote: “Fascism is coming to the U.S., we need to be prepared to resist.” So if you’re feeling like Blasphemous Bill, help us reach more listeners at a time when refusing fascism is needed more than ever. After listening to this episode, be sure to share it with others. Click the share button in your app to send this episode to a friend, or ten, or let the world know why you listen by rating and reviewing on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice. Thanks as well to all the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join the community today over at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.

Sam Goldman  02:11

Today we’re sharing an interview with Dr. Jefferson Cowie, discussing themes from his 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning book, ‘Freedom’s Dominion, a Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power.’ I am so eager for you to hear it, but first, there is a lot to discuss regarding developments in the advancing fascist threat in the United States, so I’m going to speak to a few of them since we didn’t get to some things last week, and there’s a lot to chat about. let’s start here: Back in 2020, as people rose up in righteous outrage against the most blatant murders of Black people by the police, the fascist movement was sending out the National Guard, military and militarized federal task forces to brutalize and disrupt protests. They were attempting, and in some cases, succeeding, to criminalize and demonize all kinds of protest activity, and they were whipping up their fascist base into a gunned-up paranoid frenzy to violently attack dissenters. In that atmosphere, Daniel Perry rammed his car straight into a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas, and shot dead, Garrett Foster, who was protesting against police brutality. There was no legal or moral ambiguity about these actions and there is no ambiguity in Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision on May 16, to pardon that white supremacist murderer, Daniel Perry. As you’ll hear more about in the interview, Governor Greg Abbott is the hallmark of American “freedom,” the freedom to dominate, the freedom to kill with impunity. He does so in proud defiance of federal powers, courts, rule of law, and of course basic humanity. This pardoning is a signal that not only is it the fascist Republic of Texas, but it is also throwing down the gauntlet, calling on red states, and a potential fascist presidency, to join him, once again, showing the world what kind of violence they intend to enact and support nationwide if the Republi-fascists regain power. Trump’s account on Truth Social shared a video that used the term “Unified Reich” in reference to his next term in office. No, he didn’t make the video. No, he probably didn’t even share it himself or know about it. It’s not just him. Instead, this experience should signify just how much this movement and his organization are saturated with literal Nazis. Isn’t that worse? For more on this, read the latest from Religion Dispatches, where Annika Brockschmidt, a previous guest of the show, writes about how this supposed gaffe is a feature not a  bug, of Trump’s campaign — see the show notes for that link. In our nation of laws, the federal Food and Drug Administration determines what products are safe to consume and in what circumstances and how to regulate those products, but similar to fascist states like Texas deciding to take over border enforcement from the federal government, the state legislature of Louisiana has decided it is their prerogative to classify the abortion pills, mifepristone, and misoprostol, as controlled dangerous substances. The Louisiana State Legislature has approved this bill and it was signed into law by Governor Jeff Landry on May 24, this past Friday. It will go into effect on October 1. This first of its kind legislation is an example of the creative cruelty Merle Hoffman and I discussed on episode 197. This law will enable the state to track even people who were given the pills by hospitals for life saving abortions, and the prosecution of anyone who “unlawfully distributes, obtains or uses” the pill, which in a state where abortion is flat out illegal would be almost anyone. This new classification will require doctors to have a specific license to prescribe mifepristone and misoprostol. The drugs would have to be stored in certain facilities that, in some cases, could end up being located very far from rural clinics. Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would carry a punishment, including hefty fines and jail time. This law will undoubtedly kill women in need of miscarriage care, as doctors are prescribing misoprostol for this, and we know laws like this one will likely chill that care and kill women in a state with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in this nation. As Mark Joseph Stern tweeted, “Less than two years out from Dobbs, Louisiana criminalizes the abortion pill, teeing up the surveillance, arrest and prosecution of individuals who share or possess a medication that’s approved by the FDA.” I really just don’t know how many ways I can say this, but the existence of abortion medication is not some magical workaround to abortion bans or a fascist movement that will not stop until they ban all abortion, all contraception, and any and all right to control reproduction, unless we stop them. The only workaround is to fight to legalize abortion nationwide now. And, I’ve just gotta say that we have to be there for the people of Louisiana in desperate need now, and the people all around the country who do not have abortion access, and we need to stop accommodating and conciliating to attack after attack and really start rising up in profound ways to win legal abortion nationwide on demand and without apology.

Sam Goldman  08:04

Shifting gears a little bit, recently, it was uncovered that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito does, in fact, let all of his freak flags fly — that he flew a U.S. flag upside down at his residence in clear support of the January 6th insurrection. This week, it was also discovered that Alito had the “Appeal to Heaven” flag flying at his beach home last summer. To learn more about the theocratic vision this flag represents, we recommend checking out our conversation with Matthew Taylor on episode 181, and a special episode that just came out from Straight White American Jesus — the episode is titled Justice Alito Lets his Appeal to Heaven Flag Fly — Bradley Ohnishi, previous guest of the show, gets into the subject with Matthew Taylor, Andrew Seidel, Anika Brockschmidt, all also previous guests, and Reverend Angela Denker, all experts on Christian nationalism — see the shownotes to listen to those. With these actions, Alito is signifying his identification with extreme elements of the American fascist movement, and he’s signifying that he does not care who knows it. This is normal in his view, and that there is no way the Democrats or any other institution will hold him or any of the fascist justices to account. It’s not simply that we’re living through a situation where the Democrats continue to show up to a knife fight with pool noodles, but in fact, the Democratic leadership’s obsession with maintaining order and reinforcing the norms is leading them to sanctify these justices’ untouchability. In their logic, the highest priority is reinforcing the institutions of a democratic society, but in reality, they are empowering a thoroughly illegitimate Supreme Court, an institution that’s already been weaponized to advance the fascist agenda. Because they knew this episode about white freedom and white domination was dropping. The Supreme Court this week gifted us a horrific example of exactly what we’re talking about. In a majority decision written by Alito, the Court sanctioned a racially gerrymandered state electoral map for South Carolina. The Voting Rights Act was written into law precisely because southern states had used many guises to obstruct Black people from voting and to minimize the political power of their votes. But why? It wasn’t only to dehumanize black people, it was also to ensure that the candidates and parties Black people preferred could not win, especially in the decades after the Civil War, it was specifically to stop the party of Lincoln, the Republican Party, from holding power. Now, six members of the court have signed on to a statement that turns history and reason on its head, saying that states can use redistricting to essentially nullify the voting power of Black people, and it doesn’t count as racial gerrymandering, because black people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Up until now, the court lived by the lie that they had no power to stop political gerrymandering (redistricting geared to help one party maintain power), but in the very first sentence, Alito functionally endorses the practice. Up until now, the Supreme Court has ruled that if those politically gerrymandered maps had the effect of diminishing the voting power of Black people, then the federal government had to intervene to rectify that, But the rest of the opinion adds up to saying that even when the results of that process categorically disenfranchises Black people, more power to them, literally! For more on this, read Ian Millhizer’s new piece for Vox, titled “The Supreme Court’s New Voting Rights Decision is a Love Letter to Gerrymandering,” linked in the show notes, or listen to our interview with Ian on Episode 184, or read the book we’re about to discuss.

Sam Goldman  12:23

Now, an update on election subversion efforts underway in Arizona. They finally indicted a number of fake electors and MAGA strategists this week for trying to overturn the 2020 election results. One notable indictment was against a January 6th conspirator, who is since been appointed by the Republican National Committee to lead their Election Integrity Task Force. Yes, you heard that right. The takeaway should be that the GOP’s efforts to supposedly root out voter fraud are not simply hypocritical. They are not just running cover for voter intimidation, but these efforts are part of paving the way to overturn any election they do not win. With that, here’s my conversation with Dr. Jefferson Cowie.

Sam Goldman  13:12

Today I’m honored to be speaking with American historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Dr. Jefferson Cowie. Jeff is the James G. Stahlman Chair in the Department of History at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book, and our jumping off point for discussion, ‘Freedom’s Dominion, a Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,’ won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in history. Jeff was recently honored with a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, in part in anticipation of his upcoming project, tentatively titled Crosswinds of a Common History. Welcome, thanks for coming on.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  13:52

Thanks for having me, Sam. It’s good to be here.

Sam Goldman  13:54

In the history of the United States, calls for “freedom” have reached their highest pitch in their pursuit of brutal, unvarnished domination. It’s beyond mere hypocrisy, but instead a conception of freedom rooted in violent and total subjugation of the oppressed. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where this comes from? And what brought you to look at that question?

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  14:21

Well, I liked what you started with there, which was that the use of freedom in systems of domination hasn’t just been window dressing or kind of a false flag or something like that, but it’s actually, I think, absolutely integral, part and parcel, of how freedom has worked in American history. We can take freedom apart into a variety of things, many of which are positive, like civil liberties, or the freedom to participate in your political community, civic life, but what I’m focusing on here is what I call the freedom to dominate — what other people have called white freedom. How that works is somewhat ironic because in the case study I use, the first two elements of freedom, the civil liberties, and the political life, are actually mobilized most effectively, to bring about the freedom to dominate. When I say freedom to dominate, it means taking the land of others, the political power of others, the labor power of other people, and call it freedom. But I really want to stress that this is not a false freedom, this is not kind of window dressing, this is the practice of American freedom in the United States. If we think about where freedom, like democracy, comes from, we have to go all the way back to ancient Athens. That city state was sort of the place where both freedom and democracy were born. What we often forget about, because the United States, as a republic, looks to Athens as the previously existing Republic in the world in which they can sort of base their ideas and structure on, Athens was a slave society. These great Western concepts emerged in a slave society. These are great Western concepts, I don’t want to dismiss them, but to be free back then was to not be enslaved. Then, if you take that one step further, to be free, was also the ability to enslave. And if you’re willing to make that jump, it opens up a whole new problem. Let’s pretend we see that sort of marching all the way through Western history, and then we end up in the United States or the American colonies. Then you take this idea of freedom that has this troubling dimension, and you put it in a settler colonial setting, plus a chattel slave setting, and then that freedom to dominate becomes a very powerful, virulent concept. It is really, in a lot of ways the dominant expression of freedom that we see, at least in the Deep South, but really not limited to that at all.

Sam Goldman  16:48

I really appreciated that breakdown. It’s so much of what I valued and learned about through your book, in particular, one of the things that I guess, deeply disturbing, yes, but also like, wow, why have I never heard about this? Were ways in which the — I’m gonna use the word mob, I know that’s not the precise term or whatever, but — the white mob going beyond the terms of even state domination. I think the way that the Muskogee Creek people were treated was terrifying — you know, there’s no way to justify, and even that wasn’t good enough — and yes, you learn about the white mob going even further, but you learn very little about, at that point in history — or I did I should say — about the state then trying to combat that, and the struggle that was waged there. To me, that was absolutely fascinating. I’m not like: Yay, Jackson or anything after reading your book, but — it helps you understand things so much deeper and have a greater appreciation for this very American sense of freedom.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  17:51

Just to be clear for the listeners, what happens is the locals assert this kind of freedom to dominate over indigenous lands or freedmens’ votes or whatever the case may be. The intervening variable is the federal government, and the federal government comes in and says, occasionally, in a checkered, blinkered, limited way, says: No, you shouldn’t do that. And even the Jackson administration says: You ought not be taking Native Americans’ lands in this particular case. I end up with this very strange hero in the book, which I’m guessing you’re very uncomfortable with, which is this kind of waffley weak-kneed, clay footed federal government comes in, and it’s not because the federal government so great, it’s just because if you’re in a local situation, if they’re at the hands of all these masses of white intruders pouring into their land, they have no other possible ally, short of a full uprising, which it ended up in. So they looked to the federal government, they beg Jackson and said: Hey, support us, please be on our side. Jackson’s like: We are on your side, and we’re punishing the white intruders. But in the end, it all collapses, of course, and then the federal government, eventually sides with the settlers and moves the Muscogee Creek people out of Alabama.

Sam Goldman  19:01

The sense that you get after reading your work and after listening to you just now is that white American freedom boils down to the freedom to dominate others. It’s so deeply ingrained that most of us don’t realize there are other ideas of freedom beyond this “Don’t Tread on Me” mindset. On the show, we’ve talked about the conception of freedom being influenced by, and intermingled with, fascist concepts around the world that I will butcher in pronunciation, don’t worry, concepts like herrenvolk democracy and lebensraum. I wonder if there was anything that you wanted to add on that understanding?

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  19:42

I don’t use those terms, although herrenvolk democracy very much, which translates as master race democracy, very much works to explain what I’m talking about. In the book, I really sought to be the best writer I could and that includes using sort of plain vernacular as much as possible, staying away from buzzwords, but those words do work. If you buy my argument, for instance, that means that the Freedom Caucus, the right wing of the American House, is not just stealing some name so that people will like them better. No, that is a group of proto-fascists who are using the term as it has, in fact, has been used for 200 years. It’s very resonant, I think, with the themes of your show and your long inquiry and struggle against this. I’ve said this before in other podcasts, but I think if fascism wins in America, it will march under the banner of freedom. That’s something that really kind of opens up a world of political kind of bewilderment, I think, to a lot of people.

Sam Goldman  20:45

I think that that’s really captured well in your comparison to point out what the Freedom Caucus means and is. I think that there has been, and there continues to be — and hopefully this will change soon — a compulsion to look for call out hypocrisy, where that’s not actually what’s at play. You know: They’re not really for freedom. No, you’re not really understanding what they mean by freedom. There’s a difference there, and how you understand that difference has everything to do with what you’re going to try to do — how much you’re going to appease, and how much you’re going to oppose. How much you’re going to try to reconcile this and find a way to work with, and how much are you going to just repudiate.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  21:27

So many people, when I was writing, but we said, oh, yeah, these people don’t understand what freedom really means or what the real America means. I’m like, No, that’s not my argument. My argument is, this is part and parcel of the American ideology. And so remedies become a different project.

Sam Goldman  21:42

Within the general concept of the “freedom to dominate,” there lies a specific freedom, the freedom of white people to take a life with impunity. I was hoping you could give us some examples of how this has been practiced throughout U.S. history, and shed some light on how this may animate forces today through vigilantes like George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  22:08

Throughout the book, there’s a great number of points where there’s the taking of lives in the name of freedom. Whether it’s during the so called intruders, war — we didn’t even talk about this, but the book takes place in one particular county in southeast Alabama called Barbour County, which is most famous for giving us George Wallace, who is this kind of right wing populist figure who helped transform the political system in a lot of ways, but — whether it was stealing the lands of Native Americans in the first part, shooting voters in the streets during Reconstruction — voters were lined up to vote under what they thought was federal protection…white people from the town just pulled guns out of every nook and cranny and mowed down voters in the streets — at least 80 people were shot maybe as many as 150, we don’t quite know this goes on and on. But the most horrific part of this and the one most connected to what you call mob violence, I have a chapter that was very, very difficult to write called Lynching as an act of freedom. It took me a long while sort of to get there intellectually and emotionally, that I could see lynching connected so fundamentally to this core American value of freedom. As you said, if you can take a life with complete impunity, that is, in fact, a form of freedom — you are free from the courts, you’re free from the law, you’re free from sanction. That idea that under whatever pretext, you could kill, maim, mutilate people is kind of a horrifying thought. I talked to a lot of scholars about this idea, and we’ve only begun to grapple with this question. A kind of light bulb would go on, and go: I never thought of lynching as an act of freedom, and they go: It works. I really vetted this manuscript with a lot of experts…sort of stunned surprise, the: Oh, that speaks to the sort of sacredness of this idea of freedom in the American mind. Specifically the American mind, too. It has some unique dimensions, I think. The emotional impact of that political framework is a real gut punch.

Sam Goldman  24:17

When you look at the terrain today, are there echoes of that understanding of freedom that you think people should look at and say: This is what I’m talking about, as a current day example?

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  24:30

It’s all over the place; it’s on bumper stickers, it’s in political slogans, it’s in the Freedom Caucus, it’s in the sort of Neo Confederate secessionist version of freedom we saw in January 6th, it’s in right wing rhetoric all over the place. The whole framing from DeSantis to Trump to all these characters is: The government’s gonna come in and take something away from you, and your freedom depends upon your freedom from that federal government that’s gonna do something nasty like, make your kids change their gender or their pronoun or read a book that might open their mind. All of these things are frightening. This was kind of the way politics was framed in Barbour County. George Wallace built his career early on being the fighting judge, and the fight and judge was fighting the federal government that was right over the ridge with bayonets poised ready to take over your rights. This is an old thing. I might say: It’s also a little bit true, because if you look at during the Indian Removal section, or the reconstruction section, or the Civil Rights section of my book, the federal government is coming in and saying: You shouldn’t do that, you can’t do that, and we’re gonna punish you if you do. Like I said earlier, in a kind of namby pamby way, but they did say it, and they did try to enforce it. Again, we’re at this point, a little like freedom, where we’re in this gray zone where it’s mobilization is false, but in essence, there’s something there, that is actually true that the federal government’s job has been sometimes to discipline this idea of white freedom.

Sam Goldman  26:01

There’s so many examples, you’re right, that can come up as illustrations, and I was thinking about how, in my opinion, Governor Greg Abbott is a great expression of this sense of American freedom — I think he really epitomizes it. It directly does go with the freedom to dominate and the struggle with the federal government is a great illustration.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  26:22

The border skirmish, perfect, perfect example.

Sam Goldman  26:25

The border, I think, is spot on, except it’s like: What would happen if the federal government did less than a mamby pamby job at resisting. In fact, they said, we’ll deport more than any other president — or, went down and said: You know, we’re willing to work with you. They didn’t go down and say: Yeah, we’re gonna remove that wire, because that’s not what we’re gonna do. Nonetheless, the idea that the government is preventing them from dominating is just as important as whether they actually were in the minds of the Greg Abbott’s of the world.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  27:00

And guns map right onto that, too.

Sam Goldman  27:02

Exactly. And the other example that was last week, or the week before, was when he pardoned Garrett Foster’s murderer, who not only drove through a protest — talk about freedom there — but then shot and killed someone. I thought that that was rich, for lack of better words. Returning to your book, as you mentioned, you focused your book on one largely rural county in Alabama, and suddenly read this history and come away thinking that this vision of freedom was something evolved by nobodies in the middle of nowhere; that it’s somehow isolated. But what happened there, alongside the whole confederacy, claim the mantle of Washington and Jefferson, and they had a valid claim. I was wondering how the view of freedom is in line with Jeffersonian democracy, and much of the forefathers conception of America.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  27:57

I wouldn’t necessary put Washington on the list, but I’d definitely put Jefferson on the list. The Federalists — that’s Washington and Adams, and the party more or less died after that — were much more about centralized authority. The Jeffersonian trend, which is more in tune with the Declaration of Independence, which he mostly wrote, talked about access to land is a core dimension of American freedom. When the Louisiana Purchase took place. Jefferson called that the Empire of Liberty. This is where the freedom of white people would be made manifest, in the land out west. He thought it last for generations and generations, but we’ve filled it up pretty quickly with white people and masters and slaves. So, it’s interesting, even if you go back to the Declaration of Independence, one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence is that the king would not let colonists go over the so called proclamation line of 1763, which was a line drawn across the top of the Appalachian Mountains that said: Colonists can’t go past this because there’s nothing but trouble out there and we can’t police that, so don’t do that. Right in the Declaration of Independence. It says: No, we want the right to get out there and get that land. Fast forward to Jackson, which is very much an expression of Jeffersonianism, you see this really getting a heightened in the kind of hothouse of chattel slavery and settler colonialism. If you need the perfect ideology to validate a kind of settler colonial and chattel slave worldview, freedom’s perfect.

Sam Goldman  29:26

The white freedom, the freedom to dominate that we’ve been discussing, is white supremacist through and through but as read, as you think about your book, and you look at the world as it is, it’s not only that. This is a conduit through which white supremacy meshes with other things — individualism, theocratic urges in this country, anti-government sentiment, shredded gender roles, how do these fit together in the idea of freedom?

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  29:55

It can become quite a capacious ideological framework. I saw a very powerful element of patriarchy, which, maybe if I dug even deeper would be the actual kind of substructure of the entire thing, to a certain extent, because I think in a lot of ways that domination comes out of patriarchal structures. But the other thing: “god given liberties” — this phrase came up all the time, “god given liberties.” You have this confluence of American, god and liberty. It was a constant cluster, almost as if it were one word, especially by the time the Cold War came. I mean, George Wallace used it all the time, because, of course, that sets you apart from the mean, nasty commies. But it was throughout. Even in the Civil War, when the South secedes, when Barbour County secedes, they basically say: This is an act of freedom. These are slaveholders, remember, saying: Our God given right to own slaves is being taken away by a tyrannical government, and we need to fight them. That’s essentially the framework of the whole idea. If you think about American history is a fight over the nature of the compound Republic — that is that there’s sources of political power on the federal state and local levels, the mobilization, all those things you mentioned become very powerful when fighting for that kind of autonomy; an autonomous world in which you can control everything you want to control because you can be free from other sources of political authority or dominions.

Sam Goldman  31:23

Jeff Sharlet, who we frequently have on the show, and who does a lot of work that our listeners have read, paints a picture of Trump rallies as nasty balding, middle aged white men gyrating to classic rock, and contrasts that to the regimentation of German Nazi rallies. He does it, not to say that Trump isn’t a fascist, but to illustrate how fascism forms around the history and traditions, the culture and mythology of individual nations. I wanted to talk a little bit about the American fascism, rooting itself in the ideals of individualism, freedom, even a certain brand of “rebellion,” even while embracing this unrestrained violence and racial and gender domination.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  32:07

For fascism to work in any setting, it’s going to have to make sense of the local ingredients; it has to bring together whatever is on the ground. I mean, there are commonalities amongst fascist governments, beyond a shadow of a doubt — the sort of corporatist idea that we’re all unified as one, but how do you do that, especially in a country that doesn’t have the same kind of blood and soil style of nationalism that mobilized Nazi Germany? What do we have? We have a kind of wild, ragtag, individualistic kind of claims against federal authority, which is the beginnings of the Republic. There’s a historian who wrote all the way back in the 60s and 70s named Bernard Bailyn, and he saw the American Revolution as kind of a almost paranoid concern over colonists’ freedom being taken by the crown — to the point that it was irrational. It makes sense to me that whatever comes of this very dangerous moment in American history today —  yeah, there’s people acting like Nazis and carrying Nazi flags, but those guys don’t scare me nearly as much as the homegrown version. The ones, as you say, listening to classic rock and driving cars through mobs. What greater American symbol than driving a car into a group of resistors? That’s the perfect sort of American metaphor, and so is freedom.

Sam Goldman  33:29

Only made better if it’s a pickup truck.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  33:31

With a shotgun rack in the back, preferably. But freedom is like that, too. No nation makes claims about its freedom more and bigger and more boldly and loudly and more ignorant than the United States. So it makes sense to me that this kind of fascist movement would use those kind of local components, those national components that we have, and that’s to me the scary move more than kind of the swastika on the armband, because that just kind of looks… I hope to god, it still looks silly to people.

Sam Goldman  34:04

In the process of writing this book. Was there any historical incident or detail that you came across that, as a historian, shocked or surprised you? Anything that felt a little too on the nose?

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  34:18

Well, we already talked a little bit about the lynching as an act of freedom. That wasn’t necessarily a fact that found in the archives, but sort of framing. I talked a little bit about that Federal Registrar. That was kind of the scales falling from my eyes. That was all the pieces right there, while George Wallace is screaming that the Civil Rights Act is a assassins knife in the back of liberty. Realizing these sorts of scales of citizenship — that the white power structure wanted it local, Native Americans and Black people wanted it national, like that kind of framework. But in terms of actual jaw dropping stuff, it would have to be the convict leasing section. The third part of the book is called Federal power and repose. That’s when the federal government, sort of after the collapse of reconstruction, gets out of that kind of whole managing the South business, and lets them do whatever they want, and that’s when we get the most heinous aspects of race relations in America besides slavery, of course, which is lynching and Jim Crow constitutions and all these horrible things. But the convict leasing, kind of is shockingly neoliberal in a way, like it has this contemporary resonance, because what they basically did was one of the guys who stayed in Barbour, county, an old planter family, he, after the planter economy is falling apart, he goes: Oh, I got a great idea, let’s throw a lot of Black people in jail, and then let’s lease those convicts to the mines up in Birmingham. Mining is horrible to begin with, but if you don’t care about the lives of your miners at all, because in some ways, it’s worse than slavery because if you were a master, you had a financial incentive in keeping your workers alive. Up in the convict mines, you are just chest deep in freezing water, loading call in all temperatures, just absolute misery, death all the time, people buried all over the hills up there looking at the convict leasing records — they were meticulous records of some 15 year old kid, commits a crime, gets thrown in jail. What that does is create the demand for putting people in jail, and that becomes a way of controlling the political population; don’t act out or will throw you in jail. That also helps pay for the state coffers. And then it also keeps the minds non-union, because now you’ve divided the workforce between convict and free labor — all you’ve gotta do to win the labor relations game from the top is divide your workers. Experiencing those documents and those occasional letters I found of convicts writing from inside the lease system, or complaints to other authorities, very chilling, very horrifying.

Sam Goldman  36:48

As I said before, there was a lot — even as somebody who knows a decent amount of U.S. history, not being a historian, just a person who cares about what happened — I was interested as the person who was researching it, what you had stumbled upon where you were like: Wow, this puts it together, this is it.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  37:06

It took so long and make sense of Jackson. Because the person we know Andrew Jackson to be is, in fact, the person Andrew Jackson was. I don’t deny any of the subjugation of the entire Southeast and all that stuff. But in this particular case, when he sends federal marshals and troops in to burn this white settlement, and kick the intruders out of native lands, you’re like: It took me a while to put those pieces together. Then having all the white voters turned against Jackson was telling because in some ways, as much as we want to vilify the individual of Jackson, the white intruders were way ahead of him in doing really nasty things. That’s really disturbing when you think about it, because we’d like to say: Oh, we’re victims of a bad guy. What if the problem is the citizens of the United States?

Sam Goldman  37:51

Yeah, I think that there’s still a lot of thinking about one individual, or one individual have disproportionate influence or political power, and I don’t want to negate that — there are people in power, who do disproportionate harm, and I know that you’re in full agreement there, but it’s also that recognition where you realize that while these awful ideas that people have of domination, meaning elimination, that minority is very large. That is not a new phenomena that this shining country on a hill is full of people who do have that belief, and that is incredibly troubling. What do you do about that? There’s some people who I think go to the wrong conclusion that you are seeking common ground. That is bloody soil. That is literally the ground of slavery, the ground of genocide of native peoples, it’s the ground that soaked the blood of lynchings passed, it’s the same ground of how many Black men shot a year by the police. It’s the same ground that is not a stable foundation for any common ground to exist upon.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  38:58

What’s fascinating about this moment, as an historian, or somebody thinks way too much about this place, is that everything’s being reconsidered now. I actually have a piece coming out soon on this, that there was always a sort of progressive idea of what America was. It was maybe born flawed, but defeated slavery and defeated fascism abroad, and finally gave people civil rights and it’s an upward trajectory. Now we’re kind of looking around going: You know, there’s some enduring, deep, problematic aspects to even some of the most fundamental, what we would otherwise think of as virtues in the United States, and freedom is certainly number one in the book I wrote. It’s a powerful moment for reconsidering what our political values are.

Sam Goldman  39:43

I am so glad that we got to have this conversation today, Jeff. One more time, I cannot recommend this book enough. If you haven’t read it, you’re gonna go to the show notes, you’re gonna click on it, you’re gonna get it you’re gonna read it and then you’re gonna let us know your thoughts. Jeff, where else can people go to read more, connect more with your work, and if there’s anything else that you wanted to mention in terms of projects or anything, go for it.

Sam Goldman  40:11

I’ve written several other books, mostly on labor stuff and working class history. I’m doing, as you mentioned in your very well researched introduction, I’m now working on a, for lack of a better word, kind of non-western constructed historical story using the work of this Uraguayan journalist Eduardo Galliano, who wrote three volume history of Latin America called ‘Memory of Fire.’ [SG: I love that book so much.] Really, well, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be like him and do an American history in his style, because I was so taken with it myself. So I’m glad you’re familiar with. [SG: He’s so poetic.] You’re killing me, Sam, cause I’m not gonna make that level, but I think he’s got that little magic journalist flair, you know, magic realist kind of journalism that just really sings.

Sam Goldman  40:53

I’m excited for that. And do you have a website or anything else?

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  40:58

www.JeffersonCowie.info. All my stuff’s there.

Sam Goldman  41:01

I want to thank you just one more time for coming and sharing your expertise, your perspective, your insights, and your time with us. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  41:09

It was good fun, and I’m glad we were able to have an exchange of views. Too many of these things are just kind of like one sided. I like more of an exchange. So it was great talking.

Sam Goldman  41:16

Yeah, that’s how people learn. It needs to be a society wide struggle over questions like these.

Dr. Jefferson Cowie  41:21

And to begin with, talking about it, and then acting on it. Get involved!

Sam Goldman  41:25

In the interview you just listened to, we largely discussed the ways that American fascism is rooted in this peculiar American freedom. It’s a powerful insight, but I also wanted to draw listeners’ attention to another element of Jeff’s book: How the white South, and much of the United States as a whole, responded to the first wave of fascism in Italy, in Germany in the 20th century, because I think there are valuable lessons here as well. For one thing, up until the U.S. joined the war in 1941, there were horrific levels of widespread support for fascism across the U.S., and a real threat that fascism would come to power in America. We’ve discussed this in past episodes, but those forces and those values didn’t just dissipate once America chose to join the Allies. Think about it: The United States, a genocidal white supremacist, patriarchal, jingoistic country joined a war to stop the antisemitic, genocidal, white supremacist, ultra-nationalist, neotraditionalist fascism spreading through Europe. How did they justify this to the racists at home? How did they get white people from Eufaula, Alabama to send their sons to die to stop white supremacy? One big element of this was to rebrand fascism as “totalitarianism,” stripping it of its ethno-nationalist nature and reframe it as the Southern racisits’ greatest fear: federal government overreach. Jeff directs our attention to Birmingham columnist John Temple Graves. Jeff writes that through Graves’ remarkably twisted logic, the war against fascism was not a war against a genocidal Nazi ideology that revered America’s history of slavery and genocide. Instead, it became, in Graves’ words, “A war for states’ rights; of the right of individual lands not to be invaded by outsiders, not to be dictated to or aggressed against.” In large part, this reframing worked. It worked so well, that after the wave of fascism was defeated, it gained even greater value as a way to identify communism and the Soviet Union with those hated fascists; to frame them as totalitarian, while continuing to downplay and distort the actual nature of fascism. And all the ways that the U.S. Empire was, in fact, much more closely related to fascism in both its history, and its bloodsoaked strive for profit than communism ever was. In fact, the parallels between the myth of the lost cause, cold war, anti-communism and today’s continued “anti-totalitarianism” are striking. So many of the complaints, mythologies, and paranoias of historical white supremacists echo word for word slanders against Bolshevism and the Cultural Revolution. At one point, Jeff writes that the period of reconstruction after the Civil War, when the federal government briefly made muddled, and often self sabotaged, attempts at ensuring rights for Black people freed from slavery had become in the imagination of George Wallace, a, “ghost story, a fiction haunting the freedom dreams of white people.” To fight this evil, we don’t need ghost stories, whether they are the slaves rising up in Alabama in the 1860s or if peasants and workers rising up In China, and Russia in the 19th century. We need to recognize the real horrors in front of us, and we need visions of a truly better world, even as the American conception of freedom as freedom for white people to dominate has survived and is part of driving the fascist threat against our society to all of humanity’s detriment. This conception of freedom is so deeply tied to the foundation of this country that it is also become embedded in American liberal and even “leftist” dogma. This misconception of fascism as totalitarianism is one form of that. A second is the goal of simply expanding the same disturbed notion of freedom. For many liberals, many people of color, and many others for whom this idea of white freedom to dominate is repulsive. Instead of a liberating vision of freedom for all of humanity, there has evolved a multicultural version of this American freedom to dominate that embraces Americans of all nationalities, but turns that domination towards the third world. To create a world truly worth living in, and even to effectively confront the imminent fascist threat, we’ve got to recognize and address how our own ways of seeing and talking and dreaming about the world have incorporated these mythologies.

Sam Goldman  46:19

One last thing before we close out: I just had to share some recommended reading what I think is essential reading for this long weekend. It’s a two part series up on Thomas Zimmer’s Substack — another favorite previous guest of the show. Part one is titled: “Fascism in America?” And part two is titled “The anti-liberal left has a fascism problem.” They’re linked in the show notes and we’ll likely chat more about it soon, but in the meantime, read and share your thoughts. Sseriously, this series is giving me life.

Sam Goldman  46:54

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. If you’ve got thoughts or questions off this episode, we wanna hear ’em! Iideas for topics or guests? Yes, please! Send them to us. Have ave skill you think could help? We want want to know all about it!  You can reach Refuse Fascism on the socials, @RefuseFascism. You can reach Refuse Fascism also via voicemail, if you want to share your thoughts, see the show notes for that button. And if you want to reach me personally, reach me over at Twitter @SamBGoldman. Drop me a line at [email protected]. Find me on TikTok @SamGoldmanRF. And if you want to help the show reach more people, when it is urgently needed, awesome. As people rightly agonize over the fascist threat, help publicize this show via podcast ads and social media by becoming a patron for as little as $2 a month at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism. Whether you can give $2 or $25 a month, it all makes a difference in producing and promoting this independent all volunteer, weekly podcast. If you aren’t in a position to give monthly, but want to support, we totally get it and appreciate you! Visit RefuseFascism.org and hit the donate button and see the show notes for other methods to give. Thank you for your support. And if you can’t give now, share the show with others, rate and review on Apple podcasts, wherever you listen or comment on our socials or YouTube at Refuse_Fascism. It makes a difference and is so appreciated. And of course don’t forget to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode. Major thank you to Mark Tinkelman for all the research and writing and booking to help make this episode possible. Much thanks to Richie Marini and Lina Thorne for also helping produce this episode. 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!