Christina Morina (#1: What was, what is, and what can be done?)

(The New School / University Bielefeld)

Moderators introduction

I grew up in a dictatorship. I was 13 years old when the East German regime crumbled. I know what it feels like to be afraid of the government. After witnessing the fall of the Wall in 1989, I thought I would never have to be afraid again to say what I think.

What I find most disturbing about this moment in the United States is not the authoritarian policies implemented by the second Trump administration; we all could have seen that coming. What I find most disturbing is the extent of people’s fear and how rapidly it spreads in this country. Students and colleagues telling me they are concerned about their safety, about visas being revoked or even being arrested. Intellectuals pondering not the content of their speech but the risks it might entail. Weighing consequences as people do in the autocracies we know from history or other places in the world? That is something I never could have imagined and that I find impossible to accept.

So, we have many things to fear today, not least fear itself.

As a historian, I can handle this fear by thinking critically about analogies, comparisons and contingencies. Critical historical thinking doesn’t offer generalizations or simple lessons but quite the opposite: the ability to differentiate. History forces us to be precise.

That means to realize that there is no such thing as a global history of democracy or a global crisis of democracy. Rather, there a many local stories of democracy, with specific, often nationally framed paths and traits. Democratic states are interconnected and can reinforce or undermine each other. But each democracy is tied to a unique physical, political and cultural territory.

Therefore, I look at this moment not through the prism of 1933, but of 1776. Next year, the American republic will be 250 years in the making. Its ideals of equality, liberty and self-government based on “reason and choice” have yet to be fully realized. But this republic, however flawed, is built on a centuries-long tradition of democratic institutions, practices and sentiments, a commitment to the rule of law, and on a lived concept of citizenship based not on blood or pure self-interest, but on the idea that the “pursuit of happiness” is fundamentally a human right.

This centuries-old tradition of democracy stands in stark contrast to the short-lived Weimar republic, one of the most common historical analogy used these days. This contrast should never be forgotten when thinking about the roots and realities of this moment or when weighing the appropriate responses to it. I would even argue that, in this case, the contrasts are so stark that the analogy obfuscates more than it illuminates. It diminishes the history of right-wing extremism, White Christian nativism and even fascism in the US while amplifying the notion that Trumpism is some sort of aberration rather than one entirely logical outcome of the foundationally ambivalent American experiment.

But there are parallels: Democracy in the US is being challenged by a political movement that shares some of features of the fascisms of the past: an unquestioned leader claiming a total mandate and ready to cultivate and exploit the lowest, most vile and violent instincts of men; a deep resentment of pluralism, compromise and critique, and a ruthless determination to intimidate perceived enemies as well as the weakest in society. Crucially, the political violence of the 21^st century is not being brewed up in beerhalls but in online forums reaching millions of followers and funded by billions of partisan dollars.

I believe, that we can best grasp this current moment if we don’t treat history as a playbook. It is a source of knowledge about past experiences and a horizon revealing the most useful questions and the most relevant specificities about present experiences. One conclusion might be that given its long tradition of self-government, however imperfect, hardly any other country in the world is as well positioned to overcome fear and to save its democracy as the United States. Publicly debating such questions, as we want to do with this series, is one way to counter the spread of fear.

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