Last week, President Joe Biden sat down with a group of historians to discuss the continuing erosion of democratic norms.
The Washington Post characterized the August 4 meeting between Biden and the historians as a “Socratic dialogue.” The historians included journalist Anne Applebaum, Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, University of Virginia historian Allida Black, and presidential historian Michael Beschloss, among others.
“A lot of the conversation was about the larger context of the contest between democratic values and institutions and the trends toward autocracy globally,” one person familiar with the discussion said.
Biden was COVID-19-eligible at the time. two-hour meetingThe entire event was televised, with Biden appearing on a TV screen to speak with academics.
Biden was warned by historians about the danger of events in recent years indicating a stronger trend in anti-democratic values, aspirations, among right-wing groups both here and abroad. Similar sentiments were evidentThey noted that in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, as well as in the years preceding World War II they observed that autocratic and fascist leaders rose in power in countries around the globe.
Most historians who participated in the event have also publicly warned of the threat to democracy within the U.S., focusing on the rise of far-right movements and the attack against the U.S. Capitol by a mob consisting of Trump loyalists.
Some Republicans derided the meeting — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who described the historians that met with Biden as “snobs” and “elitists” whose interests are against those of “everyday people.”
But democracy is at risk, Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair of Scholarship in Public Interest in English and Cultural Studies Department, says. Noticed in an Op-Ed Truthout Last month.
The GOP’s “attack on electoral integrity, judicial independence, critical education and voter rights, coupled with its unabashed defense of corruption, white nationalism and support for oligarchs” is causing the U.S. to become “more closely aligned with the nightmare of fascism,” Giroux said.
“As language is stripped of any substantive meaning, and reason is undermined by conspiracy theories, falsehoods and misinformation produced by the right’s disimagination machine, the ideological and institutional guardrails designed to protect democracy begin to collapse,” Giroux added.
