Throughline - The State of Disunion

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Is the U.S. on the brink of civil war? It's a question that has been in the air for a while now, as divisions continue to worsen. Beyond the political speeches and debates in the halls of Congress, it's something you're likely feeling in your day-to-day life. Vaccines, school curriculums, climate change, what you define as a human rights issue, even who you call a friend. Some say we've moved beyond the point of discussion. But when words fail, what comes next? In conversation with Malcolm Nance, Anne Applebaum, and Peniel Joseph, we take a deeper look at what we mean when we say civil war, how exactly the country reached this political moment, and where we go from here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Do you believe the violence on January 6th was justified morally? Take the step. Do you believe the violence on January 6th was justified legally? Yes.

General Flynn, do you believe in the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America? Yes, sir. Thank you. Yeah, just for awareness, be advised, there's probably about 400 Proud Boys. They're marching eastbound towards the United States Capitol. Since Trump left office, the big lie has only gotten bigger. Americans are more divided than ever when it comes to the causes and solutions to climate change. Talk of civil war ignited by the Mar-a-Lago search spiked a whopping 3,000 percent.

Something's gonna happen. Who speaks? Our speech! Can we walk back from this type of precipice. Political polarization in the U.S. has been steadily increasing over the last 40 years. And these divides have only magnified as they've moved beyond the halls of Congress into our day-to-day lives. And we're hearing the term civil war thrown around more and more. It's become something of a shorthand for the intense disagreement over major social and political issues.

You have now freed us from the shackles of Roe versus Wade. We thank and we praise you. In Jesus' name, amen. Overtuning Roe is not progress. It's all about controlling women. People, stand up. Rise up. Abortion. Guns. Voting. Immigration. School curriculums. The DEI program is a Trojan horse that will bring in critical race theory, white repentance, and the McDonaldization of America's students. It's like, if this is your attitude, I don't respect you now. I don't.

And our divisions have at times boiled over into violence. El Paso, Texas is remembering the lives lost when a gunman opened fire inside a Walmart, the deadliest attack against Latinos in modern U.S. history. According to the FBI, white supremacist extremists are the greatest domestic terrorism threat we're facing at the moment. A horrific scene in Charlottesville, Virginia. A racist attack on Buffalo's east side

left 10 people dead. He reportedly posted a racist screed online. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence and chaos. With the midterm elections around the corner, the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, and the Supreme Court likely to weigh in on voting rights next year, many are worried about what the future holds. Candidates who ran on the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen won primaries up and down the ballot. He lost the election and he shouldn't be in the White House.

We had a corrupt, stolen election. What if something like January 6th happens again? This insurgency is well under its way. Will there be violence? We are talking about something that could look very violent. Will American democracy survive? There's a rhetoric of secession. Could the U.S. really be at the brink of another civil war?

Today, we invite you into our Zoom studio for a conversation with three people who've been thinking a lot about what history tells us about the state of our union. Peniel Joseph is a historian and founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at UT Austin and author of the new book, The Third Reconstruction, America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century. Great to be here. Anne Applebaum is a historian and expert in disinformation, as well as a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of the book Twilight of Democracy, The Seductive Lore of Authoritarianism. Hello. Anne Malcolm-Nance, a retired intelligence officer and former senior chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy. He's the author of a new book called They Want to Kill Americans, The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology

of the Trump Insurgency. And he's currently part of the International Legion Fighting in Ukraine. So joining us from Ukraine, welcome, Malcolm. Yeah, it's my pleasure to be here. Coming up, our panel takes on a big question. Is the United States at a breaking point? You're listening to 3LINE from NPR, and I'm Kristen from Los Angeles, California. I think the heart of the divisions that we're seeing in this country are really because America is not a monolith, and it never has been. It's a gigantic country with so many different microcultures and so many different ways of living within it. So I don't find it

all that surprising that we are truly deeply divided. Visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Part 1. Crisis of Legitimacy When we hear the words civil war in this country, many of us likely think of the capital C, capital W civil war, which consumed the United States from 1861 to 1865. It's still the bloodiest conflict in American history. But while that civil war is confined in our textbooks to four horrific years, the tensions and disagreements that led up to it

were simmering long before it erupted. Looking around today, it's easy to wonder, are we again sitting in the pre-boil? Is civil war even the right way to talk about this? And that's where our panel of experts, historians Anne Applebaum, Peniel Joseph, and former U.S. intelligence officer Malcolm Nance come in. Okay, so according to a recent poll by The Economist and YouGov, 40% of Americans believe that a civil war erupting in the U.S. in the next 10 years is at least somewhat likely.

Given that polling, do you think the U.S. is at the brink of a civil war. Malcolm, what's your take? The things that I was seeing between 2017 and 2020 and the run-up to the election and then the insurrection had all the hallmarks, not of a civil war. I think we're using that term just a little too freely. We saw all the hallmarks of what I would call an insurgency. And when I call it insurgency is a political and paramilitary series of insurrections in which they take a rejectionist position and try to destabilize a legitimate government to the point where it collapses. And if that could be considered the beginning steps of a civil war, and I've seen several civil war participated in trying to end several civil wars, then we may be headed there. But I think right now this slow boil political, particularly the

political component of this insurgency, is well under its way. Anne? I would agree that the expression civil war brings up the wrong connotations. It does make us think of armies on a battlefield fighting one another at Gettysburg or somewhere like that. But I do think that what we are in already, and there are ways in which it could get worse, is a crisis of legitimacy. In other words, there is doubt about, you know, is Joe Biden really the president? Did he really get elected?

And a significant part of the country seems to believe that. It's sometimes hard to tell whether they really believe it or whether they're playing at believing it, but some of them clearly do. And we can also see a part of the Republican Party preparing for a second wave of increasing that kind of illegitimacy and preparing perhaps to, you know, either to change the results or change the outcome of a presidential election in 2024, or find some other way to cast doubt on whoever next becomes president. There are several scenarios in which there could be a president of the United States who was literally illegitimate and which, and who was not accepted by a large part of the country and was not accepted even by law enforcement and by normal constitutional bodies. And that has been unthinkable, actually, in American history up until now.

This can lead and has already led to outbreaks of sporadic violence. And so we are talking about something that could look very violent. It could look like a contest. It could look like, as Malcolm says, an insurgency. It might not have one side in blue and one side in gray fighting on a field somewhere, but it may feel to a lot of people like a violent conflict. Peniel, you're a historian of race and democracy. From that perspective, what do you think? I don't think that we're on the verge of a civil war in the same way that occurred that preceded the period of Reconstruction. I think Anne and Malcolm, I agree with what both of them have said. And I would say that Anne's phrase, the crisis of legitimacy, is apt. And I want to take us back to the first Reconstruction, because I think that that crisis of legitimacy haunts that entire era, that entire era. So

the period of 1865 to 1898, there's a crisis of national legitimacy that does lead to successful insurgents by redemptionists, right? I talk about reconstructionists versus redemptionists in my book. Reconstructionists are supporters of multiracial democracy. Redemptionists are advocates of white supremacy. But when you think about redemptionists, some of them are nonviolent advocates of white supremacy. Some of them are violent advocates.

So they're a potpourri. And we could be headed towards something similar. And that's why I say I agree that we're not talking about civil war so much as a political insurgency that creates such a crisis of legitimacy and destabilization in order to achieve its ends. During the first reconstruction, the ends that were achieved were rigid, codified segregation and ritualized violence that no federal power or local or state power interceded in. And so we don't know exactly how that would look into the 21st century,

but that's the closest thing. In other words, in the Civil War of the 1860s, the armies put their guns down. The war was over. Enslaved people were emancipated. But the conflict still raged. And for many people, that war never ended. So here we are in the 21st century, and people all over the U.S., not just in the media, but everywhere, on street corners and barbershops and the gym, are talking about the possibility that things will completely fall apart. Malcolm, I want to move to you here about the question of sort of the why now. What is it about what's happening in our culture and our politics right now that you think is

bringing up this question, this idea of civil war, even if it's the wrong term. The fact that it's triggered, it's becoming kind of something that you said is kind of being thrown around. Where do you think that's coming from at the moment? Well, it's the terminology that I can tell you right now is being used on the extreme right with – I don't even want to use the word alarming regularity, with just regularity. You know, in the beginning of your program, you made a very good point that we've been seeing this rise of extremism for about 40 years. And that 40 years coincides with Newt Gingrich's, you know, rise to power in Congress and the politics of personal destruction. And the 1980s, up until now, was the big heyday of, you know, right-wing

extremism in the United States. But the funny trick that Americans do is that they manage to convince themselves that political violence in the United States that any one of us in the counterterrorism world would call terrorism anywhere else is just violence in the United States. And I've actually seen, I monitor the forums of right-wing extremists. And that's how I got in the run-up to 2020 that win, lose, or draw, this country was going to insurgency. But the people who engaged in this used the term civil war. They came there for civil war. They came to overthrow American democracy. And there are many people, I read them all the time, who constantly ask each other, what's that breaking point? What's our breaking point?

They are constantly quizzing each other as if trying to stoke themselves into an event. And there will be an event. And it will be a mass murder event in the United States. And it's going to do one of two things, and put it beautifully, a crisis of legitimacy will occur, but not at the federal level. It will occur at the state level. And it will be a question of, do they occupy an armory? Are we going to see another Shays' Rebellion? And does the governor side with them against the government and give them a micro-rebellion, which will lead to a cascading series of micro-rebellions? Malcolm, you're pointing to the right-wing Trump insurgency and the FBI report supports the idea that the low levels of violence that we're seeing kind of around the country

are fueled by the right. But, and I'm curious to know what you say to people in the country who might argue that, you know, left-wing extremists or rhetoric on the left are in some way inciting the violence, questioning the legitimacy of elections. Is there anything to that? It's certainly true that there was violence, you know, in the summer of 2020, and that some of that violence has been, you know, was subsequently interpreted as left-wing violence. And there's just enough of it on the fringes that it makes for, you can film it, you can put it on television, you can use it in campaign ads.

There were the insurrections in Portland, for example. It's not on the same scale as on the right, and it's not planned and organized the way it is on the right, and it's not planned and organized the way it is on the right. There has been enough of it, though, to feed the obsession on the right that, you know, that there could be more, that there's something to fight against. You saw that occasionally, you saw it in Oregon, for example, at that time, you know, people in provincial Oregon preparing themselves to fight back against Antifa, which of course never appeared.

But there was a grain of that truth that bothered them. But I really think before we continue, it's important to understand that the kind of polarization that we're seeing in the U.S. and the kind of political divisions and the kind of doubts about institutions that we're all faced with, I think it's important to understand that they're happening in other countries right now too, in other similar democracies. And that leads me to think you asked about origins and why this is happening now. And that leads me to say that it was very normal and natural for Americans to immediately look at our own history, especially our own history of racial division, as an explanation for everything that happens in our contemporary politics. But there are some other things happening, too. There is some technological change.

There's a change in the nature of the information system. There's a way, change in the way that people talk to each other and communicate with each other that has deepened and expanded political division and also has helped what previously obscure extremist movements become mainstream. And you can now see that in European countries, but you can also see it in South American countries. You can see it in, you know, Asia. I mean, you can, it's mean, it's not even unique to the West. It's not unique to democracies. And understanding how that's happening, I think, will also help us think about dealing with it. So it's not just about pushing back against the extremist right, although, of course, we have to do that. It's also about understanding how the role, a huge role, played by anonymity now in political discourse.

I mean, there's always been some role for anonymity in American politics, but that it's now, you know, the governing principle of a lot of conversations means that people behave differently than they would if they were being identified by their real name. So there's a whole series of changes in the way we talk and the way the public sphere functions

that I think are also encouraging these deep changes, the deep anger and the propensity to violence, and not only in the United States. Peniel, I'm curious to know why you think the division, in terms of the way we talk about it, is so often centered on, you know, left wing, right wing, often excluding those other factors that Anne was referring to. Why do you think that narrative has formed where it's almost solely talked about as an ideological thing, and that's all there is to it? Well, you know, I think, you know, on some levels, you know, I agree with Anne, but I think the narrative has been bigger in terms of the division. So I'm going to give an example.

Black Lives Matter, when you look at the policy brief that they released in 2016, they talked about neoliberalism. They talked about violence that was happening globally. They talked about neoliberalism. They talked about violence that was happening globally. They talked about inequality. They talked about climate change, immigration, violence against women that was happening in the United States, but that was also happening globally. So I think a lot of this is who is sharing the narrative, right? So one thing, I think the mainstream media, whether it's Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, a lot of times has a very domesticated narrative and viewpoint. I think that a combination of things have occurred.

One, the United States, starting with Vietnam, has left white disaffected veterans angrier and angrier and angrier. Two, and we see this in Thomas Piketty's new book, what's happened globally to us in terms of inequality becomes expanded in the United States, especially post-1980 and in Europe post-1990. And he examines all these indices there too. And in three, finally, sort of, you know, there's an ideology of neoliberalism and sort of the privatization of public goods, the militarization of the police, a sort of rampant inequality that we hadn't seen in the United States since the Gilded Age that becomes normative and becomes mainstream and leaves millions of people disaffected and searching for something, searching for another way out. So certainly the racial divisions are key, but they're connected, I think, through a through line of sort of this global authoritarianism, and why autocrats are drawing people in around the world.

Stay with us. Hi, you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. I'm Golden from Virginia. It's not that we are just headed to civil war. It's that we're being deliberately pushed into it. Those in power have to see the left versus right at each other's throats because that means we don't focus on them causing all the problems we are facing. This is class war. This message comes from NPR sponsor, the NPR Wine Club, a place to explore the exciting world of wine, including wines inspired by popular NPR shows, like Weekend Edition Cabernet.

Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, all purchases help support NPR programming and fun quality reporting developed to connect people to their communities and the world they live in. More at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Hey, it's Ramteen. I just want to take a moment to talk about ThruLine+. Subscribers to ThruLine+, help make shows like this one possible. And they get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. To find out more,

head over to plus.npr.org slash ThruLine. And to everyone who's already signed up, thank you so much. Part 2. The Deep Appeal

of Autocracy. Today we're talking about growing political divisions in the U.S. and what that could mean for our future. Joining us are former U.S. intelligence officer Malcolm Nance, professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas Austin, Peniel Joseph, and Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy, the seductive Lore of Authoritarianism. Anne, so this question's for you.

A lot of people talk about the divisions today in the U.S. You know, even in my own life, people mention it as if it's something new or something unique. Is there an argument that not only is this not new, but it's kind of just the nature of American democracy to have this kind of strife and division. Is this maybe just how a democracy works? It's true that all of us are used to the post-war era, post-Second World War era, during which there was an unusual degree of consensus, at least between the two main political parties in the United States. Really, though, if you look back into American history, and not just the Civil War, if you look at, for example, the period right after the Revolution, you see unbelievable political strife. And all the people who we think of as the founding fathers, and, you know, they wear that, you know, we imagine their faces on Mount Rushmore looking like they all agree with it. They hated each other, you know, and they wrote terrible things about one another. And they tried to, you know, you know, make sure that one another

didn't stay, you know, they didn't stay in power, you know, you know, Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. I mean, so, and there was, there was a lot of that that went on all the way up through the Civil War. And then after the Civil War, as Pina has also said, you know, there was ongoing strife over who should be the president, which group should dominate. So so the idea that there was some, you know, that there's a there's a there's an idyllic long period of American history that we've now lost is incorrect. And it's also true, I think, that we had and this is more to do with the successful end of the Cold War and our feeling that democracy had triumphed in other parts of the world as well. We made the mistake of assuming that there's something inevitable about democracy. That, you know, that it's a, you don't really have to do anything.

If you just sit still, it will come because it's the natural way that human beings are. And, you know, we forgot about, first of all, how turbulent our own democracy has been over 200 years. And we also forgot about the deep appeal of whether it's the election of Obama or whether it's racial integration or whether it's rapid economic change, you know, that dislikes change, wants it to stop, dislikes political strife, wants it to end, and prefers to be within a homogenous movement where everybody's united. There's a kind of deep human desire for unity. And this is what autocrats see and intuitively understand and why some of them have been able to hold power. But, you know, we forgot about that. I mean, we assumed that our system was the best. And that had another side effect, which was that, you know, for us, democracy became a little bit like running water. You know, it was just the thing that came out of the tap and you didn't have to do anything in order to get it. And now it turns out that it's

not really like that, that, you know, it's not water coming from the tap, it's water from a well and, you know, everybody has to go and get it. That's a better metaphor. Democracy doesn't work. It becomes fragile and it fails if there's no participation. You said something, Anne, that I think is really that I want to dig into a little bit more. Maybe Malcolm, you can dig into it first. You said that people are drawn to autocrats. There's something about them that is compelling for people. So, Malcolm, do you agree that there is something that is drawing people to autocrats now and in the past that builds that charisma around the autocrat? When the Trump administration was, or I should say, when Donald Trump was running for president, you know, I started taking a look

at the world from a very different perspective, right? I mean, most of the time, my outward view as an intelligence collector was always global. And I started taking a look at how I was seeing trends that I had seen in places like Egypt, places like Libya, countries that we had actually gone to war with who had had strongmen dictators and had always drawn these strong tribalist feelings from their people. And they would scapegoat people, they would ridicule, mock,

and victimize entire sections of populations. But my point, getting to it, is that we were seeing, while we were watching this animated character in the United States, there was this rise of autocrats in the belief that autocracy was a much more viable alternative to in the rest of the world. And what fueled that? Well, I'm going to give it to you from an intelligence perspective. I watched all of the variables that were impacted in the United States, the misinformation that was coming from Europe, all of these conservative groups, and they all had one very clearly defining component to it. They were being backed and pushed by oligarchs, right? Enormous quantities of money being used to subvert and undermine every underpinning of what you and I and probably the average listener to this program thinks is the decency of democracy. And I saw a rise of an axis of autocracies, of people who were almost a global collective

where democracy is a failed experiment that should be replaced by totalitarianism and strongmen. And almost as if on cue, Vladimir Putin came out and said, the liberal democracy is a failed structure. And Donald Trump was the Western wing, you know, the character who was going to lead that banner in America. What I am curious about, because that global context is super helpful, but I am curious, like, Peniel, from your view, looking at kind of the long view of American history and what has driven Americans over the last few decades, but potentially even longer than that, towards this direction of autocracy? Like, what is it in our specific past

that you think, for the average kind of supporter of Trump, would be driving this gravitation towards autocracy or something like it? We're really locked in sort of this narrative war about how do we explain sort of what's happened, right? And so during the first Reconstruction, redemptionists win that narrative war. So instead of saying, hey, the Civil War was fought over racial slavery. We're going to really hold on to that emancipationist vision. We do the exact opposite and say, you know what? The Civil War was a mistake.

And it was about states' rights. It wasn't about racial slavery. And we erect these hierarchies of racial segregation and violence. The second reconstruction is really kind of why we're all here, because it's through that period that we come up with a new narrative about American history and American democracy. And what the new narrative says is that we actually are a multiracial democracy. And that's the narrative of John Kennedy on June 11, 63, obviously MLK, but Ella Baker, all these different people start saying, America is different. This is who we are, right? And what's so interesting when we think about the country is that there becomes a

consensus around racial justice that's a bipartisan consensus. It doesn't mean both parties think about it the same way, but when you think about Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, when you think about Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, all those administrations support voting rights, rhetorically at least, right? Even they might have their departments of justice think about it differently, different tactics, but they support it. And so there becomes this sort of racial justice consensus and a consensus around who we are as Americans, at least for about a 50-year period, between 1963, a June 11th JFK speech, but then June 25th, 2013, the Shelby v. Holder decision, right? And so in between, though, we think about the period of the New Deal and we think about the period of the Second World War, there were calls for more autocracy. You know, there were people who wanted and admired what Hitler was doing here.

It's not just Charles Lindbergh. It's other people. There's too much poverty. There's too much inequality. There's too much dissension here. But they're saying it in a specific historical context before World War II and before we come to a consensus post-World War II, we're against totalitarianism, right? This idea that totalitarianism is bad. And really, it's because of that post-World War II anti-totalitarian consensus that even with the limits of the Cold War, we're able to craft a narrative about the moral and political good of civil rights, right? The fraying consensus around, I think, civil rights

for all people, racial justice, is one of the reasons why now people are interested in more autocracy. It's connected to inequality. It's connected to neoliberalism. But I think people are at their wit's end. So I just think that the reason why we're so susceptible to autocracy now is that we're no longer telling ourselves this positive story of the nation. And I think Trump was brilliant in this way. He told us a very divisive, anxiety and fear riddled view of the nation state. But what most Americans don't understand is that historically, they've really gravitated towards that view. Historically, we gravitate

towards the anxiety and the fear more so than this progressive notion, what Reagan called us, a city on a hill. And remember, even Reagan's first run in 1980, it's not a very optimistic run. It's in 84, he's talking about more optimism. But in 80, he's telling you Jimmy Carter, he's talking about the Soviets might attack you at any day. If you go back and look at those commercials and you look at the debates, it's a very negative campaign. But people gravitate towards that. So I think the explanatory power of autocracy is where to ancient Egypt. You can see it in other countries that have completely different histories and different demographics from the United States. It is some part of human nature. And one of the things we need to think about as we think about reconstructing our

democracy and reinforcing our democracy is how we create a sense, as P&L says, how we build a unifying narrative that's around democracy and how we build a sense of security that keeps everybody who's bothered by conflict and bothered by loud argument, keeps them inside the fold. If I can make one really quick adjunct to this, the image that we had, the narrative that we had, that democracy was good, America's march to democracy was good. Having wars to defend democracy were fundamental to our being in the post-World War II order was upset on 9-11 by Osama bin Laden. And Osama bin Laden was a big believer in the theory of the clash of civilizations between Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations. Only it almost seems that now with the rise of Donald Trump,

bin Laden's belief that there would be a clash of civilizations is taking place in reverse. And it's created a war of democracy versus autocracy, but was fueled on both sides of the Atlantic by anti-immigrationism, Latinos to the south and Muslims to the east in Eastern Europe. And it boggles my mind. Coming up, what does this all mean for the future of the United States and our place in it?

Hi, this is Sylvia from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Part three. It's all about the meta narrative. Today, we're talking about the growing political divisions in the U.S. and what they could mean for our future. Joining us are former U.S. intelligence officer Malcolm Nance, historian Anne Applebaum, who specializes in Central and Eastern Europe, and Peniel Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction, America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st century. We've talked a lot about how we make sense and, you know, diagnose,

you know, these shifting political and social landscapes in the U.S. around the world. But I want to shift gears for a second because I think what a lot of our listeners might be thinking right now is, okay, we've sort of diagnosed the problem. So what's at stake and where do we go from here? So, Peniel, I want to start with you. Given what we know now, what do you anticipate are the big issues that are going to face the U.S. when it comes to this divide? If it's not civil war, what do the next few years look like? You know, I think it depends on what we do creatively and what world we co-create as Americans. So we need to tell a different story that allows our young people and citizens of all

backgrounds and people who are non-citizens as well to fit and have a place and a space in that American narrative. Because the divisions that we are facing are based on this other story, right? It's a story that really is a divisive story. It's a story that accuses anybody who talks about social justice of fomenting dissent and fomenting division, right? And so I think it depends on the story we're going to say. And that's where I do admire Obama, where I think Obama told us a fantastic story, but I just don't think he told us some of the bitter parts of that story enough. And that's where I love Black Lives Matter. But you need both. You can't have just one side of the bitter parts of that story enough. And that's why I love Black Lives Matter. But

you need both. You can't have just one side of the story. You can't say, you know what, we're the greatest country in the world and we just keep getting better and better. That's the story of American exceptionalism. But you can't also say, we are a terrible country and there is no hope for this country because you leave people towards the fear mongers and the people who are stoking anxiety, right? So we have to tell both. My final comment here is Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church, he speaks out against the Vietnam War. People push back against King. They tell him he's not patriotic. In that speech, he says that there comes a time when silence is betrayal. He says he's about to say this criticism because he loves the country, not because he hates the country. He also, in the

same speech, says America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, but he says it's going to be a bitter but beautiful struggle to transform America, because he says the goal of America is freedom. Now, that's perfect. That's brilliant. That's beautiful. He's telling us all the different sides of our country, and he's inspiring us to do something about it, right? But he's also not calling us villains. He's saying that we can actually transform and create and build this beloved community, but King wants us to tell the story of poor people, farm workers. He wants us to end militarization and materialism and racism. So what I think, again, I think everything comes down to storytellers and the story.

Everything. And I'm serious about that. And so we need to tell ourselves a different story about America. I will say it's almost like a surprisingly hopeful take that you just had, Peniel, that there's still hope that things might change course. And I wonder, Malcolm, is that how you see it kind of the next few years looking and how this divide may play out? You know, I think Peniel's take was incredible and it was uplifting and it was historically accurate and some information that people need to know. And then Martin Luther King was shot to death.

That's where I need to bring things back to a little bit of the reality. What you call a story is truly how we should look at it. Unfortunately, the people who are opponents in this struggle for the story of what the new American narrative should be, they're using information warfare. And in my world, where I come from, where information warfare is key, where intelligence is the keys to all success, and where information is truly power, and we kill people with it, we call these metanarratives, these frameworks of information, whether they are true or not, okay, are built around to create a narrative that you want to influence people in order to mobilize or demobilize

them. And I've noticed that the people in the ultra-conservative extremist right right now have built a new metanarrative around America. And it started with the rise of the election of Donald Trump. But that metanarrative was anyone who does not see strength in America is weak. Anyone who opposes us is an enemy. Anyone who gets in our way will be trampled. We will not govern as a nation of equals. We will govern over and rule over people. Democracy is losing the metanarrative story. We are literally in a period where democracy could end in the United States if certain elections go one way or the other in the next electoral cycle. I do not use this rhetoric to excite people.

I am telling you as dispassionately as if this were an election in the Central African Republic or, you know, someplace in South Asia. The United States is not immune to the negative forces of autocracy in this world. The people who are exciting the use of the phrase civil war think that they are armed better than the government. They are armed better than the average citizen in these, you know, protests where they carry those guns around. They are designed to intimidate you. This is like one half of the definition of terrorism, to influence an audience beyond the immediate victim.

At some point, someone is going to use terrorism and view it as patriotism. So since we've talked already about civic patriotism and narratives and so on and trying to create unity, let me just focus briefly on another set of possibilities and ideas. And these are legal changes that can make sure we have a legitimate election in 2024. There has been a couple of, it's not done yet, but there's been a conversation in Congress about changes to the electoral law in order to make sure that, for example, a given state, Pennsylvania or Arizona or Wisconsin, couldn't change the outcome of an election by having the

state government change who is the representative of the electoral college. So technical changes, making sure that it's harder to do what Trump tried to do after the 2020 election, thinking carefully about where the weak spots might be in our institutions. You know, we were very overconfident about these institutions and how well designed they are. Then it turned out that a lot of what makes American democracy work happened by, you know, it was really norms rather than laws or a general agreement, you know, that, for example, that the president publishes his tax returns. You know, that wasn't a law. It was just a habit. You know, maybe it's time to make it a law. So thinking carefully about what changes we can make to ensure genuine legitimacy and also to ensure people's feelings and belief in legitimacy. I think that's another important addition to the conversation. Just finally, before we wrap, we want to end this discussion on something a little more practical, which is quickly, we want to hear from all three of you. We'll start with you, Peniel, about what people, everyday people can do to start to combat some of these forces that are either dividing or bringing our democracy under question.

What kind of practical applications are there? I know you all are historians and it may not be like your thing to do this, but we wanted to offer this space so that we could leave on somewhat of a note where listeners could take away some kind of practical advice on either how to think differently about this or potentially, you know, view it in a different way or maybe, you know, go about their lives in a different way to kind of combat these things? Yeah, you know, I would say that part of what we've lost is sort of this love for each other, right? And I use that word not, you know, hyperbolically, but that's what it takes.

There's a kind of love for your fellow citizen and just fellow human being, because there are people here who are undocumented. There are people here who might not enjoy the protections of American citizenship and who need to understand where they fit in. And we need to understand where they fit into our larger story. I would encourage everybody listening to involve themselves in public life and politics to some extent. You know, democracy doesn't just function by itself. It needs people to make it work. And so whether that means working in the polls, whether that means joining a party, whether that means running for a local office, whether that means helping somebody else run for local office, think of politics as something that you

can be in and you can be part of, and you can play a role in, because that's actually what will determine the outcome. And Malcolm? I love this country deeply. My family has served nonstop in the armed forces since April 1864. Nonstop. There has always been a Nance defending this nation. My problem today is that our metanarrative has been hijacked to embrace the potential of hate, to embrace the potential of murder.

This nation is entering a period of darkness, and you, the listener, must decide what part of American history, culture, that you love, you love, that you will not lose to the powers of authoritarianism. We've been speaking to Malcolm Nance, author of the book, They Want to Kill Americans,

the militias, terrorists, and deranged ideology of the Trump insurgency. And Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy, the Seductive Lore of Authoritarianism. And Peniel Joseph, who has a new book out called The Third Reconstruction, America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century. And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. I'm Ramteen Arablui.

And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and... Lawrence Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Yolanda Sangwini. Casey Minor.

Christina Kim. Devin Katayama. Sanjukta Potar. Olivia Chilkoti. Thank you to Tamar Charney and Anya Grunman. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell. Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Anya Mizani, Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara.

And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org or hit us up on Twitter at ThruLine NPR. Thanks for listening. This message comes from Grammarly. Back-and-forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their points clear the first time. Better writing, better results.

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