Cabletelevision companies as a public service, and brought to you today by your Television Provider here. Welcome to this Virtual Event with historian Heather Cox Richardson about her new book how the south won the civil war oligarchy, democracy, and the continuing fight for the soul of amerca i am joanne freeman, a professor of history and american studies at yale university, and this afternoon i have the pleasure of being in conversation with heather about her book and other matters political. This program is being produced by the Brooklyn Historical society which has been a cultural have for civic dialogue and committed outreach for over 150 years. Thats some real history. Now, her book has got a lot of critical praise, for example, the Washington Post writes Heather Cox Richardson and professor of history at Boston College explains gold wonders crusade and the trajectory of modern conservatism in her masterful book. A timely book that sheds light on preps what was the most important Political Coalition of 20th century. And Publishers Weekly says their richardson and emphasizes the prevalence problems of racism, sexism and inequality in other parts of the country during and following the civil war, she marshals of evidence to support the books provocative title. Conservative will cry foul but liberal readers would be persuaded by this lucid jeremiah. Now i would is really excited to dig in your but first i want to invite those of you in the world listening to share your questions for heather, and you can do that by typing into the q a box that if think you all see at the bottom of your screen. We will take as many as we can in the second part of the program which has hope will last about an hour. Now its my great pleasure to introduce Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, author of six books about american politics and writer of the very popular newsletter, letters from americans. Welcome, heather. Thank you, joann. I was trying to undo to myself. I want to stop and think a first Brooklyn Historical site for doing this, but also to city people watching that im incredibly excited about this because this is a first time that joann and ive been able to our own a history thing together. I have asked her to open this way beyond my book, dont want to talk about her new book as well, but also to talk about how to pass speaks to the current moment and to talk about whats going on in american politics today. So we certainly will talk about my book and will talk about her book will also talk about the first moment. The fact its a limit to an hour is such a grim thought but thanks for giving it a shot, joann. Im excited to be here, so this will be fun. Let me start with and assist with the obvious question but its probably one of love people wondering about right now. So even in just the two little bits that i read about responses to your book, they use words like provocative, timely. I want to stop asking, how is it that you came to write this book . What brought you to it given the time it is . You never know its when woe times when you start fighting but one of the things i study is the zeitgeist. I read politics fulltime and i say how are people thinking about things . Ill explain later where i came to end up on that but what happened was when i was writing my last book in the history of the Republican Party, when i read conscious of a conservative i was gob smacked because its a summer to james hendry hansons speech in 1858 in 1858 in whics about really government is run by a few good people and the government cant get involved in things because its going to be unconstitutional and going to destroy certain peoples liberties. They were very, very, very similar. I had never seen a comparison for when i was writing the book i was also teaching the trail f tears, the 1830 movement or the pushing out of the native americans out of the southeast into oklahoma. I was at rotational rate the congressional creation but thay it was a good thing for the indians to lose their land into force on the stump in march and which so many of them died of why this happened to become way congress had to do this, why does good things of the indians. It happened to be the same way that some Football Player, an adult member which one it is, but some Football Player was caught on nvidia striking his girlfriend girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair. I dont member in the characters involved but we hit me about those two things was that the language was the exact same. The same excuse for this man dragging his girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair. She wasnt listening to it. It was for the good. All those things. The same thing eyes reading in congress about why the indians deserved to be pushed into oklahoma. This all said to me that there was something about that day now that echoed other power struggles in the past. What it wanted to get to was what created those power struggles and how do we end up in a moment today that sounded so much like the confederates had saudi, like the elite confederates have found in the 1850s . That of course reinforced to my mind what i decide was this had to do a lot with language. With this book about a trip is about is how language great power structures and decides to permit certain people to take power. That to me one of the reasons, that to me speaks very much to what you did in transept talked about the importance of emotion and how the field of blood you focus on the early part that i did really had to do with emotion. How did you end up writing that book . Well, youre right, that innocence of the book is about physical violence and u. S. Congress and the logic and the impact of it, what struck me and when i begin that book was i knew was going to be looked congress. I knew is going to give up violence. I did know how much violence there was but the language that people were throwing around and the response to language, even just in the historical records, you could see how any case of my book, they were really strategically and deliberately using language to intimidate or silence or manipulate people who disagreed with them, in light of work. It worked really well. Its hard because it really relied on emotion. Intimidation is something that often works. Fear or humiliation are things that if youre in congress under performing before national audience, if you want to you can manipulate that to really shape what someone is able to do. Kind of along the same lines of what youre talking about, i was interested in doing in my book was looking at the real dynamics of what was going on in congress and how that was shaping politics overall. Use the word bullying again and again and again. Bullying behavior. What im arguing is the way bullying takes shape, at least not even anissa, the way bowling always takes shape is to language. The way you put things come the way you say things. We talk nowadays about about gas lighting but really what youre doing is your shaping a worldview through the use of language to establish dominance over somebody else, to bully them. It is astonishing to me the parallels between the pass, the 1850s, not not all the past, but the 1850s and where we are right now. For sure. I think about all the time. Even just in the realm of bullying. What bullying is about and the reason why its particularly effective in politics is because you dont have to exert force. You have to make clear you could exert force if you want to. Its about the threat. If youre a bully you are suggesting you could do really ugly things. If you wanted to do that to them. You just have to be sure that the person being bullied understands that and will respond to that. Its a brilliant way to manipulate people. And when it works it really works. I need you to do me a favor now. The threat that, ill do that but but i need you to do me a favor though. A fight i could do this to you,. Or i i could do something to you. Right. Or we could get a long. Yes. As long as you do what i want you to do. Yes. Whats an example in your book, you talk, one of the things i think we both share in our books is his fascination with language and the power of language and the ways in which we take it for granted but its such a force of shipping politics. What is an instance into book of a moment when it really struck you that language in and of itself was having a shaping influence . There are two places that really shows up. Kind of everywhere if you think about it. One of the reasons people start studying it, its very hard to say this matters because you cant quantify it. We all do it matters. Summary said once to one on the books, you never quantify how this talk was important. I said i understand i didnt do that but can you stand the right now this wouldve been in the 80s or the 90s, can you stand the right outcome Rush Limbaugh doesnt matter . Of course the matters that we cant measure. Does that mean we shouldnt study . The places that jumped out at me out at me in that if it were come it cracks me up you with a 19 feet for professor because so much of it in 1954, in 1954 right after joe mccarthy goes, crashes and burns in the mccarthy hearings because people once and for all i could see him come they dont use seeking. Its not the language, the actual seem and rather than say hes a a crusader for anticommunism, they look at him come hes a thug, both with a lot of any part of it. After that, shortly after that, buckley junior and his brother, with the book mccarthy and his enemies. In that they say mccarthy mightve been the front edges but he was right. We conservatives, this becomes a Birther Movement for conservatives cannot pause because Movement Conservatism was that ever really traditional. He was a radical mood to undo the deal. We see play out right now. They write this book and they say we conservatives have to stand against what the call liberalism. By liberalism payment everybody else. They made all the democrats, all the eisenhower republicans. This is the time in 1950 went eisenhower republicanism looks terrific. Regaining interstate highways, we have g. I. Bill, putting a blood into middleclass jobs. Not everybody, it didnt nearly as much a people of color but a lot of people i grew up with the weather been probably not even skilled workers because of the g. I. Bill vaulted into the middle class, engineers or as printers was any number of things they could do without it now education is not attainable for them out of the depression are at this moment we met buckley junior writes his book and they say we conservatives are standing against all these liberals. Basically everybody else. They do Something Interesting in that book. Thats the time for the first time when they capitalize conservatism and capitalist liberal. Tabletalk general about we are all liberal. A literary critic says you cant talk or liberalism because everyone is liberal these days. They make it in this general we believe the government has relatively regulated business and providing basic social state of promoting infrastructure like the interstate highway. All agree. Republican democrats have different ideas about which parts of our more important. Everybody thought of themselves as liberal. They capitalize it and they say these guys are essentially like the communist party in china. They are a party, taking over america. That powerful construction, as of the time it was, the book itself was not terribly well received. Really, mccarthy is a good guy . By now the idea of being a liberal remember liking 80 people started to call the l word . Literally remember that. Dont call them the l word. Now if this epitaph. You could see it being constructed. That was one moment and the other moment was in the 1990s Newt GingrichsPolitical Action committee literally they were in charge of we use the word and docketing but a word like that. They were the coaches for the new republicans, newly elected republicans to socialize them into the Republican Party. What they do is they actually circulate a document with all the words that they should use when you talk about democrats and those are words like trader and lacey and special interest and angry and all these really negative words, and then they had a list of what words they should use when the talked about republicans and republican policies, and they were patriots, fiscally responsible, family, happy, all this good stuff and you could literally see the Republican Party under Newt Gingrich was the mode in which they bite out of the park all the real republican, called traditional republicans that they even label rhino even though its the other way around, Newt Gingrich and the Movement Conservative again very powerful use of language. You could literally see them using the language to divide the country and into label half ofs negative and half of it as positive. So those were the two touchdowns for me, but unkind remember, u talked about a similar touchdown i think in the field of blood, did you. Was certainly. Wit you describe what i talked about an the snake just described with language is a small group of people creating a new lead. So capital, says sitting, just capitalizing those words helps to suggest there is in it there. Conservatism and liberalism are not just words. They are capitalized. They are in it. The power of that is, in a way however is leading doesnt necessarily have an awareness of the power that they become and it just by looking at it. That gets back to the power of language and politics. Because if youre really effective at that scale, then you basically finding a way not just great and us and them but to plug people into functions and emotions that are going to play well through you. Because words are like a drill that can be righted emotions come responses. Why do things that you are not going to nestle the process . One example in my first book, and its which is called the fears upon it by the way. I loved. Thank you. Whats interesting, in part one of the factors of democracy and full of the was a democracy is how important which is because democracy is about negotiating power which is about persuasion. By definition is more vulnerable and flexible as i can be used for good and bad. So all of those dash at the beginning of the republic they are playing these games with words. Even in the first few years of the government, theres a federalist and the Federalist Party in the 1790s is in the sense more elitist and more big money driven and are discomfited by democracy, and theres a letter from the federalist talks about if you go out and give a a speech in front of the public, and anyone uses the word aristocrat, you are done. Thats a privilege, elitism and denial of rights. Theres a whole cascade of things from that one word that ten years earlier didnt have the baggage attached to it. Part of being in the sense respond to the same thing which is the intense power that Something Like a work could have and in which that shapes power and politics. In the late 20th and early 21st century that were less taxes. Paul said people were not that concerned about taxes by the the 1980s, but if you talked about taxes, it conjured up this idea that somehow the taxes of hardworking white people who going to go to the pockets of lazy people of color and feminists. We even have a conversation by one of the political operatives, lee atwater, who talks about it and he says, by 1968 you cant use racial epithets, although uses the racial epithet in this quotation. Says you can recycle out and say vote for me or you have to deal with this. He says we generalized it. We started talking a blessing. People know what youre talking about. He said then you can take one more step back and user talk about taxes, and people are like yeah, like i care about taxes. When to talk about taxes, it is not, you ride on the paper or you studied it in congress. It is not carrying the baggage of this long history of American Fear of an underclass redistributing wealth. But the reality is, by 1980 when americans here from republican politicians where they will never raise taxes, and the democrats want to take money from the makers and give it to the takers, it is absolutely coded racial language. All you have to do and even now to some degree all you have to do to make sure the wood on a social welfare legislation is to say do you want your taxes raised . There you go. When 150 years of american hists right on the table with a three letter word, and deploying it is the key to certain kind of politics. Its so effective because its so snake. He said all the time now. Someone will Say Something and youll see on social media people will say dont wiggle. Thats a dog whistle. Another people say no, its not. The person she is referring to x, y and z. It is probably a dog whistle. It is popping into a coded message but the fact that can be argument shows the power of that kind of attack. Also that the purchase because you can say i dont know what i did. I remember when people started using what we know as the okay symbol as a white power symbol. Right. I remember the first time i bet that thinking no, i been doing that my whole life. Its time you start seeing it in all these places like youre right, that that is a dog whistle. Its a treat of ambiguity where, if you said it was a white power symbol, especially older people looked at you and what you people are social justice warriors. It was a way to deploy that symbol in such a way that it was doubly powerful, not only were you calling your people to you but anyone who called you out on it then had come and follow people say no, youre being paranoid which is one of the way languages work. Thats why we keep talking the kazakh gas lighting. Thats exactly a gas lighting works. Just as you are saying in the early days there was that weird ambiguity about this means okay does it mean something more. In that early. But it is to forget says it means something more, by some logic, some people, you declared your loyalty to them. Just ask a question which is a fair question but which buys