Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] Texas and the Roots of U.S. Fascism w/ Gerald Horne

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Feb 4, 2023 In this episode of Guerrilla History, we unpack Gerald Horne’s explosive and essential work The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism. Horne dismantles the romanticized mythology of Texas independence, revealing it instead as a pro-slavery revolt against Mexico’s abolitionist policies. We trace how white settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and the violent defense of human bondage shaped the formation of Texas—and, more broadly, the reactionary trajectory of U.S. history. This episode challenges the lies we were taught, connecting the dots between the foundation of Texas, the rise of Jim Crow, and the enduring roots of American fascism. A must-listen for anyone serious about confronting the true history of empire. ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE

You don't remember Den Van Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckermacki, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be with you, Henry. How's the weather in Canada right now? I'm still moderate, you know. Winter has not yet come,

but it will. Ah, well, I just was asking because we've got snow today. And also joined by my other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. Have the snowflakes started falling in Nebraska yet? Not yet. Just leave so far.

I'm doing okay overall. The Packers lost last night, so that was terrible. But I had a good workout today. We're going to talk about fascism throughout this episode. Everybody who opposes fascism should work out and stay fit because things are getting a little crazy, but I'm doing well. I'm doing well. It's a great, great way to introduce what we're going to be talking about. And we are going to be talking about, honestly, one of my favorite guests that we have on the show.

This will be his third time coming on the show. It's the inimitable professor Gerald Horn, who, of course, is John Jay and Rebecca Moore's chair of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. We had him on to talk about the counter-revolution of 1776. It was one of our very early episodes of the show. So if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend you go back to do so. And he also joined us for our one-year anniversary live stream that we did about a year ago, just under a year ago at this point. And during that episode, we were talking about an upcoming book, at the time, an upcoming book that Professor Horn was working on, which is going to be the topic of this episode, because it's every time you talk to Professor Horn, he's got two or three more books that have come out in the interim. So we're going to be talking about the counter-revolution of 1836, Texas slavery, and Jim Crow and the roots of U.S. fascism.

Hello, Professor Horn. It's a pleasure to have you on the show again. Absolutely. And I don't say this lightly, and I know that I've sung your praises on episodes that you haven't been here. So I would be remiss to not mention it again while you are here. I personally find Professor Horn to be one of the most important American historians alive. today. So if you're not familiar with Professor Horn's work, you can just go into his bibliography and pick up just about anything. And you are bound to get both a good read as well

as some incredible historical analysis. And this book is no exception. So thank you for all that you do, Professor. I want to get us into the conversation. Again, the book is the counter revolution of 1836, Texas slavery and Jim Crow and the roots of U.S. fascism. You wrote this book over the course of the last, you know, year, year and a half or so. I'm curious of why you decided to take up this project now. People who are familiar with your work know that you look very broad historical periods, broad geographical periods. You, of course, are based in Texas yourself. What was it that made you decide now is the time to take a look at Texas and how it perhaps tells a little bit of the story of the roots of U.S. fascism? Well, after living here and becoming

familiar with the strength of the right wing in this part of North America, I felt it was incumbent upon myself to try to explain that phenomenon. Second of all, people, particularly black people struggle in order to create this position that I now hold, which allows me to do research. And so, in a sense, it's a payback to the people who struggled to ensure that a person like myself could be in a position to try to write history. And also I should mention that particularly in light of the recent election in Brazil, we now see in this hemisphere, particularly south of the U.S. border, the rise of various kinds of left-wing governments from Cuba to Mexico to Nicaragua,

to Peru, now Brazil. And yet, in some ways, the United States is an outlier. And I think it's incumbent upon people in the United States to try to understand that phenomenon as opposed to making excuses or rationalizing or even ignoring this phenomenon. Absolutely. So in your exploration and your decision to go ahead and mess with Texas and its history, You have pointed out in the title, really, that 1836 is a very important beginning point for considering its position in what you've thought of broadly for the United States and its political history as a counter-revolution. So when you say that there was an additional counter-revolution of 1836, perhaps you could tell listeners why this is so important, what happened in 1836 and its consequences and why you frame it as a counter-revolution?

Well, first of all, alert listeners may note that earlier I wrote a book called A Counter-Revolution of 17th. And now it's the counter-revolution of 1836 focusing on Texas. And I think that listeners should infer that I'm trying to make a broader statement about the United States of America, the broader statement being that contrary to what even some of our friends on the left have suggested over the years and decades, the creation of the United States was a preeminent counter-revolutionary project. And if you understand that, then you can understand a blockade against Cuba. You can understand the maniacal anti-communism that fought a genocidal war in Indochina and Vietnam. In other words, there's an incongruity

between, on the one hand, seeing the United States as a revolutionary project. And on the other hand, saying it's counter-revolutionary essence over the decades. I think it's not only in Congress, it's incoherent. And so I'm trying in this book to add flesh to that skeleton. And I'm also trying to make another theme, which is that in order to understand counter-revolution, you have to understand class collaboration. And this is a theme I stress heavily in this Texas, book. That is to say that in 1836, the settlers led by Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston and the

other freebooters and slaveholders who revolted against rule from Mexico, not least because Mexico was moving towards abolishing slavery under a president of African descent. Speaking of Vincent de Guerrero, 200 years before the election. of Barack Obama, by the way, that these men who then revolted against abolitionism and then affixed their names to continuing U.S. cities, such as Houston, Texas, Austin, Texas, etc., were driven by an anti-ab abolitionist impulse. But it was not only that. I think that it's no accident that just in the United States, even though Governor DeSantis of Florida, suggested consistent with certain U.S. historians, that it was 1776 that gave an impetus to abolition

of slavery, which is very strange because in 1776 there were thousands of enslaved Africans in the United States by 1861 when you had the U.S. Civil War, there were millions. So these are some very peculiar and strange and unique abolitionists who preside over an exponential increase in the number of enslaved people, although they're supposed to be abolitionists. And you can say something similar about Texas. That is to say that Texas today has the largest black population in the United States of America. This is no accident. It's a direct outgrowth of the revolt against the Mexican rule. And there is another point that I make in this book that is worthy of contemplation. And that is that even though it has stiff competition,

it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the genocidal impulse with regard to the indigenous population of North America reaches a zenith, reaches an apex in the state of Texas. that there are competitors for that gruesome and ghastly title of being the chief genocides. But I think Texas can make a fair case. And it's in part because the indigenous population of Texas, speaking of the Comanchees in the first instance, were some of the most fearsome warriors. And in turn, that helped to generate a fearsome, a bloodthirsty response. And so what happens is that in order to attract settlers to this part of North America, the leaders of this secessionist enterprise basically dangle before the potential settlers,

the prospect of getting cheap land, land, of course, ripped off. from the indigenous population, and then have that land worked by enslaved Africans. Keep in mind that Texas was an independent country between 1836 and 1845. During that time, the loan store flag of the state of Texas could be found off the coast of Brazil, could be found off the coast of Angola, could be found off the coast of Cuba. In other words, independent Texas was a major slave-owning enterprise. You should also know that there was a rather interesting split in elite circles in the United States during this time about the indigenous question. In some ways, it reminds me of the so-called split that divides Republicans and Democrats today. What I mean is, on the one hand, you had a dominant faction that felt that the The indigenous population should be liquidated and exterminated is the term that they used. And they embarked on that project with a bloodthirsty gusto.

On the other hand, you had the so-called liberal forces who felt that actually the indigenous populations should be placed on reservations, batustans. In other words, they should be swept away from their homelands. and in some ways what happened was that that latter faction had a significant amount of influence actually in Washington more so than in Texas itself. So in Washington, you see that there is established in the late 1820s, early 1830s, Indian territory, which is now Oklahoma. Indian territory was going to be this huge bantustan. You know that the Cherokees and the Chickasaw and the Choctaw and people we refer to as the Seminoles and other indigenous populations were frog marched westward from the southeast quadrant of North America, supposedly to live forever in Indian territory as long as the river shall flow and the grass shall grow.

But alas, that was just one more promise that was reneged on by the settler class. But what's interesting about Indian territory is that in some ways, you should see a kind of competition between Texas and the United States that prefigures the U.S. Civil War. Once again, 1861, Texas was a leader in terms of trying to secede. from the United States in order to perpetuate the enslavement of Africans forevermore. What I mean is that Texas thought that it could surpass the United States of America. That's why it was busily cutting deals with the French in particular. The French had colonized Algeria in 1830. Texas was taking notes from the French in terms of how the North Africans could be

bludgeoned and bludied. And of course, Texas thought that it could further denude Mexico, particularly the prize that's California, before the United States did, and therefore have a running start on the race across the Pacific to the lush markets of China, in the first instance, with an intermediary stop in the archipelago that is the Hawaiian Islands. And I think, and I suggest that when the United States government puts Indian territory on the northern border of Texas, in some ways, it's a maneuver to try to keep the Texans busy, the settlers busy in Texas, battling even more Native Americans, in addition to the Comanches and, of course, the Lepan Apaches out in West Texas. So this is the story that I tell. It's a story of counter-revolution. It's a story of class collaboration. It's a story that, again, not only prefigures the U.S. Civil War, but also prefigures the rise of fascism in the United States of America, which is ultimately a counter-revolutionary project, in essence. In the United States, that would mean turning back the clock with regard to the tentative steps away from U.S. apartheid, it would mean a further bludgeoning of oppressed nationalities, the indigenous population and the black population in the first instance.

And there is also this idea. And actually, you see this in this morning's New York Times, October 31st, 2022, where a letter writer is puzzling over something that. that has befuddled and baffled many, which is that why would all these Euro-American working class and middle-class people vote for Donald Trump? When obviously, when the Republicans take office, it's going to mean an attack on Social Security, an attack on Medicare and government subsidized health care, attack on occupational safety and health. So it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Well, I think that it makes sense if you think in terms of apartheid South Africa, for example. That is to say that people in that sector of the working class, they feel, although I'm not sure that this will pan out, but they feel that there's much more to be gained from joining in this race project, this identity politics of whiteness, than joining. in a class project, that is to say, joining hands with the black working class, the brown working class, et cetera. And that is also a theme of this particular book because one needs to understand that just as on January 6th, 2021, there was a kind of class collaborationist enterprise. You had CEOs jetting in on private planes. You had military, veterans, police officers, shopkeepers. It was a classic kind of class collaboration amongst those of European descent in order to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Class collaboration

has been the essence of settler colonialism, going back to when the English first sent settlers across the Atlantic in the 1580s to the land they called North Carolina. That was a class collaborationist enterprise. And class collaboration has been at the heart of this U.S. project, this U.S. settler colonial project. And until we comprehend that, I dare say that we're always going to be baffled and befuddled. And I'm hoping that this book on Texas will help to answer some of these questions that people have about how we got to this point. of danger. Yeah, as Brett Hobson, I just want to, you know, underscore that there's so much here that

Professor Horn is laying out like, you know, we knew that Texas was independent from 1836 to 1845, but, you know, we're not really told that there was this competition with the United States of America, you know, to get to the Pacific for these reasons that you laid out. But there's one thing that I just want to highlight for the listeners in terms of how to think about Texas at this time, which, you know, you lay out, is that. essentially Texas is where the old south meets the wild west. You have these intersections of this frontier land, this frontier mentality. You have indigenous populations that are being massacred and are putting up, you know, stiff resistance in many cases, but are being massacred

left and right, including by some forces that we wouldn't necessarily expect to be massacring them, which I hope to get to a little bit later. And then also, you know, having a huge enslaved population. These intersections make Texas particularly interesting because unlike in most of the rest of the United States, we have multiple intersecting tendencies that we wouldn't necessarily see where we have an enslavement culture. We have a frontier culture. We have stiff indigenous resistance. It all comes to a head in Texas at this time. Anyway, Brett, go ahead with your question. Well, yeah, that's a great lead in to my question because I'm particularly interested in the relationship between Mexico and the United States through the funnel and the

borderland that is Texas leading up to 1836 in particular. And as you always do, centering the lenses of slavery and settler colonialism and how those played in to the tensions along the border there. Well, yes. Mexico, obviously, in retrospect, made a significant blunder when they allowed the so-called Anglo settlers from the south, such as Sam Houston, a close comrade of Andrew Jackson, a man who earned notoriety with his bloodthirstiness towards the indigenous population, not least in the south of the United States, in his own Tennessee and due south and Alabama, and, of course, presided over the Trail of Tears. And so when Mexico allowed these settlers to come in to Texas, even though there is a

dispute amongst historians as to why, it's probably a fair influence, and I'm choosing my words carefully, to suggest that what was driving Mexico City's policy was their own problem with regard to the indigenous population, and they needed a countervailing force, a counterweight against the indigenous. They needed boots on the ground, as they say in the United States nowadays. But of course, this turned out to be a blunder because at the same time, Mexico is inviting in these so-called Anglo settlers who are bringing enslaved people. Mexico itself is moving towards abolition of slavery. And someone in the elite in Mexico City should have been able to foresee that that was going to cause a severe and significant problem, which it did,

of course, when Mexico then moved to abolish slavery, moved to ally with Haiti by some measures. The relationship between Mexico and Haiti was as close as lips and teeth that they had in mind abolition throughout the hemisphere, starting with Cuba, which obviously was enraging Washington and would then lead to the attempt to not only weaken Haiti, but to denude Mexico of a good deal of its territory. So this was this confluence of settler colonialism based upon seizing the land from the indigenous population and enslavement, that is to say, bringing in more Africans to work that land, and then class collaboration, because of course, what happens is not only do you see in the southeast quadrant of the United States when the Cherokees in particular are expropriated and forced to move west on the trail of terrorists,

you see that the Cherokees were seen to assembly up to an including becoming Christian, becoming sedentary agriculturalists, up to an including sartorial adaptation, dressing like the settlers, and, of course, enslaving Africans. And oftentimes living in commodious mansions as a direct result. But alas, what happens is that you have Europeans coming into Georgia, in particular, sometimes fresh off the boat, who, in a process that I would characterize as a roughhouse. version of Airbnb, basically moving into these commodious mansions of the Cherokee and ousting the Cherokees who then have to embark upon the Trail of Tears. That brings in this other element, the ideological element, that is the complement to class collaboration with just

white supremacy. That is to say, even though the Cherokees were willing to assimilate and accommodate themselves to enslavement, for example, that was not sufficient. That was not enough. They still had to go. And that's one of the reasons why, if I were to leap ahead a few decades to the U.S. Civil War, you found that many Cherokee leaders found it difficult to accept Washington a serial violator of treaties as being this progressive force during the U.S. Civil War. That's why so many Cherokee leaders aligned with the Confederacy, the slave owners, during the U.S. Civil War. So it's a very ugly and smelly story that I tell about Texas, but I think it's important to tell this story because otherwise we will not be able to comprehend why the United States is on the verge, perhaps, of fascism. and the devastation that that could cause globally, considering that by some measures,

the United States still has the largest economy on planet Earth, and by some measures, is still the largest and certainly the most wicked military power. So I do actually have a follow-up. Sorry, I don't know if I'm cutting you off here. I'm actually curious about the Texas Rangers in particular. As this one part of this very complicated story, in particular, I'm interested. Because of the sort of whitewashing, if you will, of that entire concept, we have a professional baseball team called the Texas Rangers. Growing up, me and my grandpa used to watch Walker, Texas Ranger.

Chuck Norris, funnily enough, hardcore reactionary. But, you know, that idea, the Texas Ranger is sort of a mythological concept in the American mind. And I think it's really fascinating how you actually show us what they really were and what they really did. to the point where even naming a professional team these days after them seems grotesque. So can you just kind of talk to us about what the real Texas Rangers were, what they really did, and the sort of role they played in all of this? Well, having a professional baseball team carry the name of the Texas Rangers, they might as well be called the Texas Genocides, the Texas genocide perpetrators.

that would be similarly appropriate and similarly gruesome in terms of a baseball team. So basically the Texas Rangers, you could say, for those of you were familiar with Central America in the 1980s, there are the equivalent of deaf squads, basically. There are the mailed fist of settler colonialism, the vanguard of settler colonialism, the vanguard of settler colonialism, whose primary mission is to liquidate or to use the term used then, exterminate the Native American population. Keep in mind as well that there was a kind of nation, the military industrial complex that was arising. That is to say, because Texas had a very difficult battle in combating the Comanches in particular, there was a felt need to develop weapons that could more speedily and efficiently exterminate Native Americans.

And so that contributes to the developing of certain weapons, handguns in particular, that it reminds me of the development later in the century of the Gatling gun, which was so useful to the British. in terms of mowing down Africans when they came into conflict with Africans, particularly in the southern tip of Africa, in what is now South Africa. So this also brings us to another point, which is, as we speak, there is a movement of descendants of enslaved Africans that are pushing for reparations, for censors. centuries of unpaid labor. It's made a fair amount of progress, particularly in the state of California, although I dare say that if it's going to accomplish its goals, it's going to have to develop more solid and concrete international alliances. But what's going to be a very sticky wicket, if you like, is reparations to the indigenous population because it raises questions of the land. And it raises questions of territory, which goes to the heart of the territorial integrity of the United States of America. It goes to the heart of the sovereignty of the United States of America and will be a much more tricky and complex issue. I mean, with regard to reparations to the dissenters of the enslaved, you could see packages that don't necessarily tamper with the land. You can see packages that call for cash payments. You can see packages that call for scholarships

or even repatriation to West Africa, for example. Dealing with reparations to the indigenous population is going to be much more complex and much more difficult. Right. Well, that raises the issue perhaps broadly of your book's contribution to what we might think of as indigenous histories and its confrontation with settler colonialism. And I was very intrigued by the point that there's some interplay and interconnection here between the independent Texas and France and Algeria, for example, in trying to think about how, what's distinctive and what's broadly part of the pattern of settler colonialism's in this kind of, of period of history in, you know, 18th and early to mid-19th century history. And I'm wondering

if like getting a better sense of, you know, what's shared and what's specific to Texas and the U.S. context versus what you find in European colonial settler colonial projects in other parts of the world, both in other parts of North America, but also in, say, the Middle East. And I just note that the reason why the French are going into Algeria, I mean, they've been near Algeria, just across the Mediterranean for a really long time. But, you know, with the, you know, defeat in New France, you know, the seven years war, the sale of, you know, Louisiana purchase, they sort of had to turn their attention to continue colonial projects into North Africa and then subsequently into the African continent and Southeast Asia. So it's almost as if, you know, they take

perhaps some of what they learn in the North American context, which is an earlier period of their settler colonial experience into, you know, into, you know, North Africa. But I guess my question here is just, do you find that there is a broad pattern of settler colonial histories that you can identify? Or do you see this like a story of Texas as a very distinct and unique kind of story because of its history that conflates, you know, enslavement with, you know, eradication and genocide of indigenous peoples. And I guess the reason why I'm asking is because sometimes people have said and suggested that, you know, the U.S. didn't need to be fascist, you know, in the way that, you know, Europe turned, you know, you know, when we're talking about national socialism and Nazism in the, in the, in the, in the, in the 1930s, because it already had kind of apartheid and it had, um, a particular colonial history. And I'm thinking of Amy Cesar, saying, you know, in discourse on colonialism, that fascism is just what happens when Europe does it to its, to other Europeans. It's already been happening in colonialism. And because in some ways, there was never.

end to this kind of continuous settler colonial hegemony and domination that, you know, it didn't need to, you know, turn ideologically fascist. I'm wondering what you think about that and the place of settler colonialism in, you know, the development of fascism. Well, first of all, fascism, which of course, he grows out of capitalism. And capitalism itself has many stripes. It has many varieties. I mean, I mean, the kind of capitalism you have in Scandinavian is not necessarily on all fours with the doggy dog, bloodthirsty capitalism of North America. Actually, the capitalism in Canada is not necessarily wholly congruent and consistent with the capitalism south of the border of the United States. And so likewise, with regard to fascism, I don't think that we should look at it in some sort of cookie cutter. manner that Italy and Germany created a blueprint that then is followed to a T throughout the world, be it in Chile under Pinochet, be it in what many referred to as fascism during the apartheid years, let us say 1948 to 1994 in South Africa. And so likewise, I think that with regard to settler colonialism, there are also differences and consistencies.

I mean, for example, I would say it reminds me of, you know, the chopsticks where one is flexible and the other is not. Settler colonialism inevitably involves a dispossession of an indigenous population, be it in historic Palestine, be it in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, South Africa, even Algeria, for example, which had a kind of sepulical colonialism there as well. But then there are variations. I mean, for example, you had a kind of enslavement of Africans in Canada, but it didn't reach the level that it reached the United States of America. You had a kind of enslavement of Africans in forced labor at the southern tip of Africa. And, of course, that was a driving force in the history of that country, particularly after the British takeover from the Dutch at the beginning of the 19th century.

And then when Britain moves to abolish slavery throughout the empire, you see a revolt by the so-called Afrikaners in South Africa who then embark on the Great Trek seeking to escape the remit and jurisdiction of London. and that conflict between Britain and Boar becomes a driving factor in the history of what is called the white population of South Africa, although as I point out in my book, the level of whiteness in South Africa really doesn't reach the level in the United States because of this antagonism between Britain and Boer, which then helps to feed anti-Semitism, for example, particular on the United States. amongst the Afrikaner population in which makes a mockery of the idea, to a degree, makes a mockery of the idea of a synthetic whiteness. Whereas the United States, for various reasons, not least the kind of unity that was necessary to subjugate a much wider territory than South Africa with many more indigenous groupings that puts a premium on unity between an amongst the settlers, which then helps to evade to a degree the kind of conflict between Britain and Boar that you saw in South Africa, although, as we know, you did have tensions between and amongst the various European settler groups. You had anti-Catholicism, for example, the burning down of convents in Philadelphia, as late as the 1830s, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish fervor.

which still pock marks the United States, although I think it's fair to say that the intensity of anti-Semitism in the United States did not reach the level of anti-Semitism, for example, in South Africa, even though you would think that the Afrikaners who were grossly outnumbered by Africans and South Asians in South Africa would have wanted to incorporate as many people who could be defined as white as possible. So I say all this to say that when we talk about fascism, capitalism, settler colonialism, we have to be aware of the fact that there are certain consistencies, that is to say, with regard to settler colonialism, the dispossession of an indigenous,

but then there are certain peculiarities and unique aspects. And with regard to the United States of America, which is the topic of the book at hand, I think it's incumbent upon us to pay attention to these peculiarities, particularly in the United States case, this question of mass enslavement, which is insanely profitable, insanely vicious, helps to create a bloodstained, bloodthirsty culture that then infuses U.S. imperialism, which is then visited upon other peoples and nations overseas to their detriment. And in order to understand U.S. imperialism, it seems to me you have to understand these unique aspects of U.S. capitalism and settler colonialism.

Yeah, fascinating. I want to jump forward a little bit now. I mean, there's so much that we can talk about, frankly, and we would have to talk with you for, like, days in order to get through everything that I want to talk about. So I'm just going to pick out something that I think is particularly interesting and I didn't know before. So, you know, we hear about June 10th, June 19th, 1865, but I'm actually going to go two years after that June 19th, 1867. And this is something that I didn't know about before I went through your work, professor. You talk about black American soldiers allying themselves with Benito Juarez's soldiers.

And so that's, you know, one part of the question is, can you tell this story? you know, what does this say about what's going on in this period of time, but also just focusing on the black soldiers themselves that were active within Texas. There is a contradiction that's going on within Texas between East Texas and West Texas as well, which you also highlight. And I think that this is really fascinating. And also, you know, this contradiction can perhaps elucidate a little bit of what the situation is like and what we can learn from, you know, these contradictions that are taking place within society. In West Texas, we have black soldiers massacring the indigenous population at the same time that in East

Texas, we have the KKK running rampant and lynching, you know, the enslaved of a formerly enslaved population at this point. You know, this is some sort of contradiction. In one part of Texas, you have these black soldiers operating in defense of empire against the indigenous population, whereas in East Texas, you have them being killed by people that are operating in defensive empire, you know, the same settler colonial empire that the West Texas black soldiers are working in defense of themselves. So it's a very interesting contradiction. And I'm wondering if you could just take us through those two threads a little bit, because I think that like myself, I'm guessing that many of the listeners probably were

not aware of this history before, you know, going through your work or hopefully, we can encourage them to go through your work after listening to this interview if they haven't already. Well, the first point to acknowledge is the width and breadth of Texas, that is to say, the most sizable U.S. state south of Alaska, for example. I recall when I was doing research for this book, and you cross from New Mexico, which is Texas's western neighbor bordering Texas. And you cross over into Texas, and they're 802 miles to get to the Texas-Louisiana border, which is about the distance from New York to

Chicago, to put it in context, or twice as far as from Los Angeles to San Francisco. So when you're talking about Texas, you're talking about a gigantic piece of territory. That's point number one. Point number two is that with regard to that rather despicable episode that you described in terms of the Buffalo soldiers, the black American soldiers who are massacring indigenous populations, at the same time that their kentucky. folk were being massacred in turn by the Ku Klux Klan. And of course, in my earlier book, Black and Brown, African Americans in the Mexican Revolution, 1910 to 1920, the cover of the book is a picture of Buffalo soldiers who had invaded Mexico in search of Pancho Villa, during the Mexican Revolutionary decade. And so I think that in order to explicate and shed light

on this apparent anomaly, one has to look for responsibility. And I blame a miscalculation by the black leadership in particular, or what Black Gender Report refers to as the Black misleadership class of the 19th century, in the sense of that if you look at Frederick Douglass, for example, the grand abolitionist, before the U.S. Civil War, say, let's say 1850s, to 1846, he spent 19 months in Europe, principally in Great Britain, which at that time was at Dagger's point with the United States over Texas, over the Oregon territory, over so many issues. But he recognized that black Americans needed global allies. Post-1865, Douglas does not get back to Europe until the 1880s. That's after the Civil War is concluded. Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period is drowned in blood, etc. And plus, Douglas seemed to feel that the citizenship of black Americans had been solidified. And so therefore, black Americans had to follow the orders of Washington, just like any other U.S. citizens.

would have to follow the orders of Washington, which included, of course, massacring the indigenous population. And I think that this is an era, not only of Frederick Douglass, is an era in the 21st century as well, whereby despite the fact that we may be on the cusp of fascism and with black Americans being a leading victim of that horrendous process, you don't necessarily see black American organizations and intellectuals seeking to make alliances abroad, even though we have the internet, we have supersonic transport, and so it would not be a minor matter to do so. And then that brings us to Juneteenth, which you started your point with. June 19th, 1865, June 19th, now being a federal holiday, I'm always happy to see a federal holiday.

that means that workers can get paid and grab a bit of the value that they create, which is always a good thing. But in some ways, there is a kind of fairy tale behind Juneteenth. I mean, the traditional story is the June 19th, 1865, the Union soldiers, the Lincoln government soldiers or the U.S. government soldiers, I should say, show up in Galvis in Texas to tell the enslaved that they're free. Now, that's a bit of poppycock because we know that many of the Africans, they knew about the emancipation proclamation of Lincoln January 1, 1863, but the Lincoln government did not necessarily have a jurisdiction in rebellious Texas. It would be as if Congress passed a law abolishing what amounts to enslavement

in Mauritian. Well, Congress has no jurisdiction in Mauritian, Northwest Africa, and Congress did not necessarily have jurisdiction in Texas. And so what happens is that when these soldiers are arriving, what they're really trying to do is to forestall what then unfolded. We refer to France. We can now add the point that in 1862, France, in its hunger, for colonies had gobbled up Mexico. They were ruling Mexico. And the plan was for the Texas settlers to continue the revolt against Washington in alliance with France. And in fact, rolling black back the abolitionist decree in Texas, decades in Mexico, decades earlier, and moving with their enslaved property to Mexico.

That was thwarted by an alliance, as your point suggests, between many black American soldiers and the progressive forces under Benito Juarez, the national hero of Mexico, who then execute a pincers maneuver against the French occupiers and their puppets, which leads to the second June team, June 19th, 1867, when the Mexican puppet ruler, Maximilian, is captured and executed, which I argue brings the abolition of slavery ever closer, much closer than June 19, 1865, because we know that even today, there's all manner of human trafficking that amounts to slavery with regard to children or women, a forced labor of various sorts. And that was continuing to a certain degree in Texas and in the south of post-June 19th, 1865, post-June 19th, 1867, in fact. I mean, the battle against forced labor and free labor is a perpetual struggle because it's basically a battle against the most innervating, the most bloodthirsty aspects of capitalism, basically. Because obviously, the capitalist can gain more profit if they don't have to pay the worker. And so that's going to be an ongoing struggle even in the 21st century.

And once again, let me highlight the negative role that France played in Texas, in fact, up to and including enticing Africans from Africa to, come to Mexico to fight on behalf of Maximilian. And I speculate that some of these Africans did not return back to Africa after the French were kicked out and wound up living in Mexico and perhaps even migrating north to Texas. Yeah. And of course, another, just to add on what you're saying there, another obvious example of continued forced labor and slavery is within in the American prison system, which is, of course, very racialized and a huge extractor of profits for corporations. I know you only have an hour or so this is the second to last question.

I just want to ask, you've talked about the importance of class collaboration in sort of the American and the Texas versions of fascism, and you've alluded several times to the importance of internationalism for black liberation struggles and for anti-fascism more broadly. So I was hoping you could kind of tell us a little bit more about. what we can learn about fascism from Texas history, but importantly, what we can learn about the sort of coalitions we need today to combat fascism in the United States. Well, I would say the class struggle and internationalism or kryptonite to fascism.

It's what causes and can cause fascism to retreat. And we have a bit of that in the United States of America, but I think it's intermittent. I mean, for example, in light of all the police killings of black people in particular, which is a direct legacy of enslavement, settler colonialism, U.S. apartheid, etc., you've seen certain activists take our plight to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. You've had international bodies of lawyers, as an international commission of jurists, that have done human rights investigations of the police. plight of black people in the United States, you've had meetings. So now this is when I turned the coin over between Caracom, the Caribbean community and the African Union, which are developing very close relations, black Americans would seem to be a logical complement to that kind of alliance since the black American population is about 45 million, which is larger than

the population of Canada, larger than a population of numerous African countries. including just off the top of my head, Lesotho, Ghana, Togo, I could go on. And yet, these Black American organizations are mostly missing in action with regard to that pressing manner. And I think that this internationalism is important because to the extent that you would see these potential victims of fascism aligning internationally, that would move them to the left. And it would make them more skeptical

of U.S. foreign policy, make them more skeptical of U.S. imperialism, make them more skeptical of U.S. warmongering. And in fact, I've said more than once that one of the many problems with the Democratic Party, which now controls the executive in the United States, is that There was this Faustian bargain approximately 70 odd years ago when the internationalists amongst the black communities, speaking of the great Paul Robeson in the first place, were marginalized and isolated. And in return, anti-Gimcrow, anti-Gimcrow concessions were allotted through the offices of the NAACP and other liberals and mainstream organizations. And what that has meant is that with the black voice being largely absent when it comes to crafting Democratic Party foreign policy, that empowers simultaneously the warmongers, the Victoria Newlands, for example, of the United States of America.

And then it leads to catastrophes, which has been the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy for decades now going back. to when the civil rights concessions were first granted as the Korean War, which Robleson opposed, was being launched today with wars too numerous and conflicts too numerous to mention. So I think that there is a compatibility between the attempt, the effort to beat back the fascist wolves and at the same time trying to engage in internationalist struggle. And likewise, with regard to class struggle, we know that just as the NAACP was forced to move away from the left 70-odd years ago, the same thing happened with the labor movement. The American Federation of Labor was essential to purging the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the West Coast Longshore under Harry Bridges. well-born in Melbourne before leading a general strike in San Francisco in the 1930s and then

attempts to deport him because of real and imagined ties to the Communist Party. They were purged from the CIA. I wrote a book about Ferdinand Smith, another migrant born in Jamaica, who helps to found the National Maritime Union. That means that the longshore and the sailors have impact on the imports and exports in the United States of America. Ferdinand Smith was an avowed communist, by the way. He's deported. The union is weakened. Now U.S. ships bringing goods into this country or the equivalent of floating slums. And in fact, you see these ships carrying the flag of Panama and Liberian that are then staffed by other workers of color from around the world, paid. pennies for gross exploitation. So certainly with regard to a beating back that profit-teering

impulse, which undergirds class collaboration, undergirds anti-communism, undergirds U.S. imperialism, we're also talking about a process that would be quite useful to put it mildly in terms of beating back the fascist wolf simultaneously. Well, Dr. Horne, you're, as that answer just really demonstrated and represented, your work in history has been to emphasize a class-conscious approach and internationalist connections of phenomena that we often don't think of in an internationalist frame. That hasn't always gone over well.

I think, with the professional historians and at the risk of a somewhat, you know, of a guild-specific sort of question, I wanted to raise a recent controversy that I know you have paid at least a little bit of attention to, which is the president of the American Historical Association, James H. Sweet writing in the, you know, organ, you know, professional organ of the professional historians, the AHA's perspectives, his monthly column, a column called Is History History, which was, you know, a bit of a dramatic title for identity politics and teleologies of the present. And this was a very odd column, and it was bemoaning the dangers of political presentism on the practice of doing responsible serious history, and he seemed to be bemoaning that history is dead because of it. This elicited a huge reaction and caused him to actually withdraw, you know, or at least put a frame. a sort of apology of sorts. And as is the, you know, kind of case in contestations over history today, his apology, the reaction that led to the apology itself created its own backlash from conservatives and so on who bemoaned that political correctness had canceled poor James H. Sweet.

And so I think, you know, while this is, you know, within the halls of academia, normally this doesn't spill out into the public, you know, into the public as it has, into the public sphere, there is clearly something wider going on in our culture and political culture and culture today where history is being contested. CRT is a cause-celebrin, marshalling, you know, concerned parents to vote. out politicians and express their, you know, anger at the system. And so I wondered if maybe you could reflect a little bit on the stakes that are involved in these contested histories from the perspective of someone who has been writing counter histories for quite some time.

Well, you know, it's interesting that column that you referenced by Professor Sweet is a rather strange duck, because on the one hand, he's supposedly trying to do a critique of the members of the guilt, the historians, such as myself, who teach in history departments. But if you look at the article, he's criticizing a tour guide at a slave castle in Ghana. He's criticizing the 1619 project by the journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones, a journalist underscored. which, of course, has become a whipping boy for many professional historians because they don't like the fact that she's trying to, in their minds, vitiate what they see as the immense contributions of the so-called founding fathers, the likes of which we have not seen before since they've veritably walked on water, which then brings us to this critique of so-called presentism. I'm not sure what that means.

But usually it's invoked to try to destabilize or validate critiques of the founding fathers because you can't say that Jefferson was a slave owner or George Washington was a slave owner because that's applying the values of today supposedly to the 18th century. and I'm not sure how far you should take that. I mean, for example, many Africans were objecting to slavery in North America from the inception. So it's not as if they were unaware. It's not as if we only came up with a critique of slavery in the 21st century. People were complaining about slavery then. Even certain Europeans were complaining about slavery then. So Professor Sweet should add more rigor.

to this concept of presentism before he seeks to invoke it. And obviously, this has contemporary relevance because, as your comment suggested, Glenn Yonkin, a member of the 1%, a major investor, became governor of Virginia by running against critical race theory. The novels of Tony Morrison, Nobel laureate, became an issue. during the campaign because supposedly it was making little Johnny feel bad to read about slavery. And I guess we shouldn't talk about slavery. It was very interesting. I recall doing the Balkans wars of the 1990s in the form of Yugoslavia.

You had these U.S. pundits and analysts. They're always turning to Belgrade and saying, you need to face your history, no matter how painful and ugly, that's the only way you can get out of that crisis. But when it comes to the United States, no, no, don't face the history because that makes people feel bad. I mean, I'm laughing, but it's obviously a sarcastic laughter because the joke is really on people like myself because Glenn Yonkin was able to catapult into the governor's mansion in Richmond. You have Governor DeSantis of Florida, who may be the next U.S. president, who is also campaigning against what he sees happening. in the public schools that are making little Jennifer and little Johnny feel badly. And so you've had these laws passed against the 1619 project, and you've had laws passed with regard to circumscribing the teaching of slavery in the United States of America.

So obviously, this is a way to pave the way to come full circle for a further growth of right-wing forces based upon a sanitizing of the ugly history of this country, so to prepare people for an even uglier future based upon fascism, which in some ways is a combination of the worst aspects of both slavery and Jim Crow, by the way. And then there's a peculiar aspect of Professor Sweet that I happen to be familiar with, and that is to say that one of his predecessors at his home campus, the University of Wisconsin and Madison, was the late Philip Curtin, who was also like Mr. Sweet, a historian of Africa. And apparently there's this peculiarity where these Euro-Americans who write about Africa and write about slavery, etc., I guess

they feel they don't get enough credit. I think they think they should be the leaders, intellectual leaders of Black America. But obviously they don't understand Jim Crow. They don't understand the fact that you have such a right-wing political culture in the United States of America, something that they hardly ever mentioned, by the way, that makes problematic and complex the idea that some Euro-American professor in Madison, Wisconsin, becomes an intellectual leader of Black America. I mean, to be frank with you, I don't think that neither is sweet nor curtain deserve to be an intellectual leader of black America, but that's another question for another day. Well, I know that we have so many more questions that we would like to ask you, but we know

that you have to wrap up and leave us now, Professor Horn. So thank you so much for taking the time to come to talk to us again. It's always a tremendous pleasure and honor when you come on to the show. And I really do mean it when I say that you're one of my favorite guests that we've had on the show. And I look forward to having you on. Again, inevitably, when you write another book in like, you know, whatever, two weeks or however long it takes you to, to pump out these books, at least seemingly. I mean, it's, I was joking with Brett before we hit record. You practically write the books faster than I can read them. So it's a little bit tough to keep up, but we do what we can. So again, listeners, our guest was Professor Gerald

Horn, John Jay and Rebecca Moore, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, and author of many, many, many books, including the counter-revolution of, of 1776. Again, listen to that episode if you haven't already and the book that we were talking about today, The Counter Revolution of 1836, Texas slavery and Jim Crow and the roots of U.S. fascism. Thank you so much, Professor. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. And listeners will be right back with the wrap up. Listeners, we're back with the wrap-up. We just finished our conversation with Gerald Horn talking about the

counter-revolution of 1836. And as usual, just a tremendous conversation with a really tremendous scholar. I appreciate Gerald Horn's work so much. And before I turn it to Brett for the initial thoughts on this episode, I just want to say that, you know, we got to talk to him just over an hour. And some people take podcast episodes where they focus on one particular work as a, you know, We read this book so you don't have to type episode. No, no, no.

We read this book so that we can definitively say, you have to. This is a 600-page book. And as with all of Gerald Torren's books, the narrative is fantastic and they are absolutely brimming with information. So, yeah, we read this book so that we can say you have to. There is no getting out of reading books like this in order to really digest the material. So don't think that this one hour conversation that we had with the professor, as great as it was, don't think that it was something that you could substitute for the experience of reading this book. Think of it as a little supplement. So if you haven't already read the book, this is my call to you to go and do so. All right, Brett, what are your initial thoughts coming out of this conversation that we just had with the professor? Yeah, so many things to touch on. But one of the things I really wanted to make sure I mentioned was I'm kind of piling on his already great argument against what he presented. as presentism or this idea that is, you know, gaining some currency, I think even in right-wing

circles more broadly and has always kind of had this idea that you can't judge historical figures by the moral qualifications and standards of the present day and to do so is somehow fallacious. But what Professor Horn was getting at, particularly around the issue of slavery, because this argument is often marshaled in favor of defending our founding fathers against these moral critiques. And I just wanted to kind of add on to what he was saying is like, it's not like these people lived in a context in which slavery was never criticized. Moreover, these are the intellectual leaders of like, of the West, the most informed, the most, you know, richest, so they're able to sit back and engage in philosophy and

science and literature and the men of letters who wrote argumentations to each other and had the, you know, logical arguments for every element of American society and the functions of government, that these people were somehow unaware or, you know, not able to be swayed by arguments against slavery because contemporaries of them were abolitionists. Thomas Payne was a famous abolitionist. And when Thomas Jefferson went to purchase, Louisiana, a purchase from the French, Thomas Payne was speaking to Thomas Jefferson, begging him to make this new territory slave-free. And, you know, Thomas Jefferson wasn't ultimately.

going to have it. But not only did they have contemporaries presenting arguments to their face about why this stuff is bullshit, they had abolitionist movements or, you know, countries that have already abolished slavery. I think the UK and Mexico are two examples of countries that abolish slavery before the U.S. So these are two very close, Mexico geographically and Britain culturally and intellectually, that have already done the damn thing. So to try to protect a Thomas Jefferson, you know, by this argument of, of president, presentism is absolutely the real fallacy, the real fallaciousness. Thomas Jefferson knew exactly what he was doing.

He knew exactly the critiques. And even after he died, he refused to free his slaves, which a bunch of his slave-owning contemporaries at least had the decency to do. All right, take care of me. But when I'm gone, I'll let you guys go too. Thomas Jefferson didn't even do that. So you really got to push back on that argument that we can't hold historical figures to present standards because it wasn't a present standard.

It was a standard in their own time. Yeah, that's a great point and well-reasoned. What I would build upon that is say that even the idea of trying to judge those figures individually, I mean, one can, as you said, make a case for the fallibility there of Thomas Jefferson and his culpability. But the point is, is it's really only because this fascistic orientation wants to have these great noble figures of the past. to say that there's this glorious American, you know, history that should be recovered and celebrated. That's this great man history that already privileges these people well outside of what we should understand is the real dialectical material conditions and structures in which history is really, you know, being forged. And so I would say it's not even as important to determine whether or not these figures were noble and just versus whether they should be condemned for slavery. The point is, is that they were living in a slave society. And we need to

move beyond that. And the fact that we lived in a slave society has all kinds of consequences that can't be ignored for the subsequent history and unfolding and experiences of people in the United States. So, you know, whether or not you want to condemn the so-called founding father, there's the institution of slavery, the social system of slavery, a form of government that accommodated itself to that, you know, was developed. And that is what we need to appreciate and understand in our analysis. And so some of the importance of the work of somebody like Professor Horned is to bring to mind aspects of history that have been suppressed and ignored because it doesn't fit into this celebratory national myth as a narrative of history. And that's really what's at stake

and why in the final question that I had for him was about the stakes of history. This turned towards fascism. It's no accident that is being framed so much around questions of U.S. history and how it's going to be taught to children because there are some groups that want to celebrate these figures as you know they don't necessarily care about their ideals what's important you know whether they had democratic ideals because in fact actually you know these groups are not particularly democratic in their orientation right so there's one view to say to celebrate that their ideals they were great enlightenment figures who believed in democracy and secular government and so on and sometimes those people ignore the fact that it was kind of limited by certain sorts of interests

and that you had to be propertyed, you know, and that they accommodated slavery and so on. But they look to the ideal that they can see there and believe that it should be extended. That's the liberal American kind of view. These conservatives, however, aren't interested in those ideals of democracy, of equality, of fairness, of, you know, what they are interested, however, is perpetuating the system that they established in, you know, of privileging a certain community and group of people. And that's what needs to be confronted. And that's why there's so much contestation. And you could say that the stakes of history are so important in our contemporary political culture because the fascistic orientation really needs to ignore and suppress these counter histories that are very, very

uncomfortable to recognize and that basically we're talking about, you know, reestablishing or maintaining a certain power over not only the narrative of history, but in contemporary conditions. So who is most presentist as those who want to suppress these narratives so that they can maintain their present political power to the exclusion of the working people, black, folk and so on. So that's, I think, what really needs to be appreciated and what Dr. Horn's work really helps us take a part, I think. Yeah, just to jump in on the same topic that we're talking about in terms of this criticism of presentism, you know, if you don't look at what society was like in the past, you can't have a historical materialist conception

of society and see what is actually driving history. By not having these sort of analyses. And, you know, in some terms, you can criticize them. Yeah, I understand the moral thought of society back in the days, not what it is today. That is not something that it's true, but that doesn't mean that we can't criticize it. We should criticize it. When we see movements in modern day political movements and societal movements, we have to understand that they're coming from something. They don't just exist in a vacuum. Fascism doesn't come out of nowhere.

If we can't analyze society and see, hey, you know, the fact that Thomas Jefferson, I know we keep beating up Thomas Jefferson, we could say it about basically any of the founding fathers, other than John Adams, notably, but even John Adams had his own failings in terms of race relations. He just wasn't a slave owner, but that's neither here nor there for this conversation. The point is, is that we could look at Thomas Jefferson and say, yeah, Thomas Jefferson had slaves, but it was acceptable in his society. So, you know, there's no problem there. Well, we have to look at what the problems are that we're facing in society today and

understand what the roots of those problems are. Without doing that, we can't properly analyze it. All of the different components of society interlock with one another. And this is what we have to understand in order to have a historical materialist conception of history and understand. where why we are where we are today. I just listened to a lecture that David Harvey gave relatively recently. Actually, it was on his podcast, the anti-capitalist chronicles, where he was going through

the different components of society that Marx was laying out in a footnote of one of his works in terms of you have to analyze these different components of society in order to properly analyze society. He didn't use the term historical materialism, but he was basically laying out. are the things that you should be looking at. And one of the things that they, that he said that you need to look at is, you know, the moral, the moral thoughts, the moral norms of those, of that day. If you don't think about what was acceptable in that society's standard, you can't

understand what are the processes that that society is going through. And you can't understand the roots of movements that go forward in the future. We can't just look and say, you know, we have this class collaboration on January 6th, uh, And, you know, this is looking like American fascism, but what, it came out of nothing? Of course not. We can't look and say, yeah, the race relations in the United States in terms of white and black relations are very bad in the United States today. Hmm, I wonder where that came from.

Because the people who set up the United States had this moral foundation that allowed for slavery and then allowed for Jim Crow as we went forward out of slavery. This is the legacy of America and without analyzing these sorts of things, we can't understand how we ended up where we are today. So Professor Horn is absolutely correct in order to look into the past, to see where these currents are that we can then trace throughout history and up to the present. And historians looking today and saying, you know, tut-tut, you can't look at the past and give moral judgments based on what people were thinking back then or doing back then, you know, based on today's moral principles, of course you can. Without doing that, you can't analyze what the problems in society are today. Anyway, yeah, just throwing some things out there.

Is there anybody that wants to follow up right now? Yeah, I mean, I would just say great points all around. Absolutely agree. And just some other things in the book, like I would just say like, you know, anybody, especially in America, anybody interested in the subject, anybody interested in history, should definitely check out this book. But I also would say, like, if you live in Texas in particular, especially if you're somebody organizing in Texas, this is a great historical account of so many forces that are so

obviously still present in Texas to Henry's point. The reactionary nature of the Texas elite is not new and it doesn't come out of nowhere. Understanding its history can help you better combat it, at least understand it. But there's so many parts of this book, again, 700 plus pages that we could have talked about. He mentions various things like Hitler being inspired by the U.S. And he makes his wonderful sort of symmetrical claim of the 1830s and the 1840s in the U.S. being the inspiration for the 1930s and 1940s in Germany. Also, he makes this really important point about oil wealth in Texas in particular and how that has gone on to fund reactionary politics. We might say today that oil, while still definitely on the scene, natural gas is sort of the direction people are moving in. And there's huge shale deposits all around Texas in and into the Gulf as well that Texas.

is continuing to exploit. So even if oil proper were to end tomorrow, natural gas, would continue funding this very reactionary elite political atmosphere in Texas. Also, this history helps us understand the Texas obsession with secession. You know, it's not something that just like Texans are like, you know what, we could strike out on their own. It has this deep and profound history of literally being an independent country for a decade or so. And so there's so much to learn. And it's always in the service, as Horn's work is, of building up the forces and educating the forces necessary to push back on these fascist movements that are only gaining speed. Just to hop in for a brief second before I let Adnan come back in. You mentioned Texas and secession. This is something that Horn has brought up, not just in the aftermath of this book, but also just in recent interviews going back a few years. a lot of this is particularly present within a, you know, liberal thought in the United

States. There's all this talk of, you know, Texas is going to succeed again. And these liberals are like, go ahead, Texas. You know, we don't need you. You can go off somewhere else. Horn always points out that this is a particular, and I know I'm, you know, paraphrasing our guest now, which is always a dangerous thing to do. But I'll do my best to be, you know, accurate to what I've heard him say directly. He says, this is a particular. dangerous thing to do because with the power, with the population, with the wealth of Texas, and with this deep-rooted reactionary politic that is present within Texas, particularly within Texas elites, you know, if Texas succeeds, it's not necessarily just going to be like

Texas in isolation from everything else. Texas could very well be an ideological and political leader of reactionary political forces in the Western Hemisphere more broadly. I had heard an interview that he did maybe a, you know, a year ago or so where he was saying that, you know, if a Texas had seceded, who's to say that Texas and Bolsonaro's Brazil? Of course, Bolsonaro were recording this the day after the election. This is October 31st, 2022, where Lula came out victorious in the election. But if Bolsonaro and a independent Texas were allied with one another, you have a far right reaction. elite, potentially, that could, you know, band together and press against any even moderately left governments in the Western Hemisphere and lead and support reactionary politics within Latin America in particular. So this is something that would be very dangerous in terms of having, you know, a renegade, Texas out in the Western Hemisphere, doing whatever it wanted, not confined by, you know, federal

policy of the United States where Texas is essentially able to dictate its own foreign policy in some way. So that's just something that I wanted to bring up since you mentioned secession and Texas with the conversation being rooted around Gerald Horn and his analysis. And just really quick, just to bounce off Henry's point really quick, it's like letting the South succeed instead of going in and abolishing slavery. You don't let them succeed and become like this little hot house of slavery for several more decades.

You go and you put them down and you can end. slavery period. And so that's a similar sort of dynamic with the Texas. Totally. Totally. Well, I just want to also encourage readers to get a hold of this book because, in fact, I'm in some ways surprised that he didn't write this book earlier. Some aspects of it wouldn't have perhaps been emphasized if it weren't for the presentest, you know, historical concerns about things like voter suppression, the emerging U.S. fascism and so on. But because Texas seems to bring together pretty much every one of the key themes of Professor Horn's work over the last several decades, it is quite an amazing study. He's located there, so it has personal meaning as well.

And that's another additional layer that I think is really interesting to see of what it means to do public history in your community and to really talk about the place that you're, you're in, but the fact that it's a breakaway republic of its own that is involved in the genocide of indigenous peoples, the reassertion, you might say, of an enslavement, you know, economy and culture, not only locally, but internationally, because it continues to be part of the slave trade, as he was pointing out, with ships, you know, flying the Texas Lone Star flag off the coast of Angola and so on, a borderland, you know. So, when we think about the history of the border and immigration discourse and how significant and important that is to, you know, right-wing thinking and politics in the United States today,

that component is there, you know, as well. It really is. And then the pet, you know, the, you know, kind of, it's not the area area that's covered fully in the history, but it's as part of his conclusion, of course, the, you know, the Petro State that you were just talking about, the fact that it brings together so many crucial components of the right-wing capitalist America and its global kind of positioning. It makes this book just an absolute handbook for understanding, you know, the United States and the present world. So really do recommend it because regardless of your interests or where you want to find analysis about contemporary issues, you see a history that's truly relevant.

Yeah, absolutely. And just to underscore that this book is, you know, between six and 700 pages long, there is a lot of history in it that we weren't even able to touch on, including a lot of history of Oklahoma as well, which is something that, you know, I guess I was expecting to see a little bit of it, but, you know, it was much more present within the narrative of this book than I was perhaps expecting when I first got it. But really, you know, tremendous work. And is there anything that either of you guys want to say or should we go into the wrap, wrap this up now? All right. Well, it looks like on that note then, I'm just going to appreciate Gerald Horn one more time. It's really

great that we have the opportunity to talk to him. And this book really is, you know, in some ways a continuation of his counter-revolution of 1776 project and is essential for people that either people that themselves are in interaction with people that have this deep-rooted feeling that America is like this progressive beacon on the hill and is founded on progressivism and is in some ways better than other countries in terms of where it comes from. And, you know, yes, there's warts and bumps and all of that associated with any country's history, but the project of America is a bright project. These books are essential reading in order to, in many ways, dismantle this notion and give us a much more sober understanding

of where the society that we live in, well, you know, I don't live in the United States now, but the society that the United States is today, you know, where it actually came from and where it came from was right from the founding and early on in its history. This is not something that is only a recent phenomenon within the United States' history and something that's coming from nowhere. This is something that is rooted from the beginning of the United States history. So on that note then, Brett, why don't you tell the listeners how they can find you and your other excellent podcasts that you do? Sure. You can find everything I do, including my work on Red Menace and Rev. Left Radio at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. And at the turnover of

the of the year, 23, we're going to enter it by doing a three-part deep dive series on Red Menace on the origin of the family, private property in the state by Frederick Engel. So if you've ever been curious about that text or really want to dive into its details, definitely stay tuned after the New Year's to Red Menace in particular. Really looking forward to that. I have my copy within three meters of me at the moment. It's just to my left here. All right, Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other podcast. Well, listeners can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain-H-U-S-A-I-N and check out the M-J-L-L-I-S. Come out, you know, at least once a month, sometimes twice a month. And if you're interested in the Middle East, Islamic world, Muslim diasporic culture, you might

find it fun and interesting. Upcoming episode is a panel discussion that we had. after a watch party of Ms. Marvel, the Disney Plus series. And we talked about it in terms of ethnicity and religion. And it was a fun conversation. So look for that. And also, I don't know when this episode will come out. Perhaps my course that I'm teaching currently will have concluded by then. But if you're interested in the Crusading Society,

the roots of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and white supremacy, and the medieval European transformation. Check it out. You can still join. But otherwise, if it's after the end of that course, I'll be finding a way to put the discussions that we had at the 10 sessions, you know, on some format for people. And I'll be doing other future courses online, free, open to the public.

So go to my website, www. www.adnanhussein.org slash courses to find out more and to register for future ongoing guerrilla history endeavors. Yeah, absolutely recommend that. And I like that the first few were recorded because some of us are in vastly different time zones than you, Adnan. So it's great to have that availability for those of us that have to, you know, check it out some other time. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. By the time this comes out, my co-edited work with Salvatore Engel de Mauro, a new translation of Domenico Les Sordo's book on Stalin. Stalin, the history and critique of a black legend,

should be pretty close to coming out. We're just slogging through final edits right now. So by the time this episode comes out, it should be close at hand. but yeah, for any other projects that I'm associated with, you can find me advertising them on Twitter at Huck1995. As for the show, you can find Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-Score. You can support us on Patreon,

which, of course, keeps the lights on for us and allows us to continue to expand what we're doing. And we have many, many great ideas for the next year or two ahead of us. We just, you know, go to patreon.com forward slash Gorilla History to help us out with that, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And we have a free newsletter that you can subscribe to at GorillaHistory.substack.com. Again, Gorilla with two R's, and I will stress that since it's pretty,

you know, a lot of people mess it up and it doesn't show up if you only type it in with only one R. So on that note, then, until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you. You know,