Notices by Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social), page 8

Why the Right Has a Problem with Juneteenth
 
This, from last year, certainly holds up: Today’s Republican Party is dominated by reactionaries who stand in the political, ideological, and spiritual tradition of the (neo-) Confederacy.
 
With an added voiceover option:
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/why-the-right-has-a-problem-with

You’ll find the recording of me reading the piece at the top of the post. You can just click on it and either play it on the web or in the Substack app, if you are using that. The voiceover hopefully makes the piece more easily accessible.

Please consider subscribing:

https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/why-the-right-has-a-problem-with

I also reflect on how the Right’s critique of Juneteenth and insistence on a white nationalist version of U.S. history compares to the German struggle to work through the Nazi past - and specifically the struggle to establish May 8, 1945 as a Day of Liberation rather than defeat.

A year ago, I wrote about the direct line from those who fought for their right to enslave others in the name of “freedom” to today’s reactionaries who insist they have a right to define the national story and American identity in a way that upholds discriminatory traditional hierarchies.

Sunday Reading: The Right’s Politics of Revenge
 
The responses to the Trump verdict offer an instructive - and alarming - reminder of what defines the American Right today: They are out for bloody retaliation, all dressed up as patriotism.
 
Thoughts from my new piece:

1/
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-rights-politics-of-revenge

In this crusade to entrench and maintain discriminatory hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth, conservatives are deploying “originalism” as a key weapon to dismantle the civil rights order. 4/

In a functioning system, citizens should be able to trust the institutions that are nominally tasked with upholding democracy. In America, the rightwing supermajority on the Supreme Court acts as the spearhead of a reactionary mobilization against multiracial pluralism. 3/

Over the weekend, Madiba and I talked about her book, the past and present of the Supreme Court, the role of the Reconstruction Amendments in American history, the rise of “originalism” since the 1950s, and the struggle to establish egalitarian democracy. 2/

The “Originalist” Supreme Court vs Democracy
 
As the Right is using “originalism” to re-impose a reactionary order on the country, I exchange letters with Madiba Dennie about the dangers of judicial supremacy – and how to get out of this trap
 
Some thoughts from my new piece:
 
🧵1/
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-originalist-supreme-court-vs

By the 2000s, originalism had morphed from a tool designed to function as a bulwark against the extension of rights to a sledgehammer working to dismantle existing rights and safeguards – all while vastly expanding the privileges of those in positions of power. 8/

Originalism’s rise was part of a broader mobilization against the progressive changes of the 1950s and 60s – tied to the institutionalization of the conservative legal movement as well as the grassroots mobilization of rightwing activists. By the 90s, it had become dogma. 7/

We start our conversation with the, excuse me, origin story of originalism: It rose in response to Brown v Board in 1954 – deployed by those who rejected integration, part of an attempt to delegitimize the idea of multiracial democracy from the beginning. 6/

They are trying to turn the clock back – as far back as to before the Reconstruction Amendments that were adopted after the Civil War – by repealing whatever racial and social progress they say is not in accordance with the Constitution’s “original public meaning.” 5/

The reactionary political project seeks to turn the clock back to *before* the Reconstruction Amendments – to re-orient government towards privileging the rights of those already at the top, to deprive government of any tool that could serve to level discriminatory hierarchies. 11/

If the “originalists” got what they wanted, what would America look like? “The endgame,” Madiba Dennie says, “would be a country where the people who have always had rights continue to have them and everyone else can fend for themselves.” 10/

Originalism’s trajectory mirrors a broader story of how the Right has been embracing an increasingly authoritarian form of minoritarianism: As “real America” is under siege, the Right has no more patience for “judicial restraint,” not even rhetorically. 9/

In this situation, Madiba Dennie’s new book “The Originalism Trap” makes an absolutely crucial intervention: It not only dissects the originalist creed and the political project behind it, but also charts a better way forward - towards “inclusive constitutionalism.” 15/

As (small-d) democratic America – and Democratic leadership, especially – struggles to move past a mythologized understanding of the Court and come up with a counter to the reactionary Court majority’s assault, it can be really hard not to despair. 14/

Yet somehow, they got the legal establishment, mainstream political discourse, and liberal America to accept “originalism” as a coherent intellectual project and the dominant philosophy of constitutional interpretation - rather than the partisan instrument it clearly is. 13/

Originalists talk a lot about “history and tradition” – yet from a historical perspective, what they are offering is complete bunk. It is an opportunistically deployed tool intended to generate whatever policy outcomes conservatives prefer. 12/