The Very American Roots of Trumpism
About this episode
Historian Steven Hahn places Trumpism in America's long illiberal tradition, arguing it is 'deeply embedded in our history, not at the margins but very much at the center.' He traces the lineage: Andrew Jackson's expulsions of Native peoples, the Palmer raids, the 1924 Immigration Act's racist quotas, the second KKK's early 'America First,' McCarthyism, Japanese internment ordered by liberal hero FDR, Eisenhower's Operation Wetback, and mass incarceration. Liberalism and illiberalism, he shows, are braided together in the same figures — FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama. Illiberalism isn't mere backlash but a satisfying way of life, which is why suppression fails all at once and beating Trump can't end it. The hopeful note: a biracial populist republic in 1890s East Texas, built by former enslavers and freedpeople, proves durable coalitions are possible — though there are no final victories.