♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hello new york. thank you for joining us live at a town hall in new york city for this very special edition of why is this happening? he is incisive, he is big hearted, he is very, very smart. and, admit it, he is taller than you expected. please give a warm welcome to my friend, a beloved colleague, msnbc's, chris hayes. [applause] >> thank you! oh, stop. stop it. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> how are you? good? thank you. thank you, thank you, thank you. sit down, sit down. thank you, that is extremely kind. i hate attention and positive feedback. it's a hard 20 seconds for me. thank you for cutting it short. it is amazing to be here in my hometown of new york city. i have family here. tonight, we will talk about democracy. that word, we have probably talked more about democracy in the last four or five years that i had in all of my time as a journalist. even that, as a topic, seems we are. we all know, america is a democracy. there is a certain history you are taught that, i think, is part of american, civic culture, deeply. almost a civic religion. which, roughly, goes the following. the founders rebelled against the tyranny of the crown. the injustice of the modern-day. they conceived, in liberty, a new nation, founded on a government buy, of, and for the people. that is the lincoln, gettysburg address version of it. they rejected, basically, the idea that there is some authority, above all of us, that has dominion over us. that each of us are imbued with the ability to determine our own fate, collectively. that is a difficult, messy process. fundamentally, in the eyes of some founders, it's god given, others, unnatural truth. we all decide together what we are going to do. that, simple, fundamental, and at the time, radical notion is what separates us in the western hemisphere from the old world of europe where you had monarchies, kings and queens, tyrants, and as time went on, various forms of blood and soil authoritarianism. ultimately, fascism, culminating in the second world war. you don't really get democracies in that part of the world, in the way we think about them, until afterwards. there are some, obviously. there are some democratic forms of government that exist before them, failed revolutions, compromises that are worked out in the uk, and in poland, and in different parts of the continent. basically, we are the model for the world. we are the first ones. we figured it out, we sloughed off the yoke of tyranny, and we have seized our faith. now, the other part of the story we know is a complicated one. as one british critic at the time said, the loudest cries of liberty come from the americans as they with their slaves. which, by the way, is an important point that they saw at the time. people understood, at the time, there was an incredible, ridiculous tension in american rhetoric about self determination, and democracy. but, the general story we have is we start with an imperfect democracy, and work towards a more perfect democracy. a more perfect union, in the preamble. i think there is something to that story. i don't think it's a crazy story. i think it is the civic religion we have. there is another way of thinking of american democracy, which is that america is the ongoing, dynamic sight of a per perpetual contestation of democracy. it is the site of a constant, pitched battle, between forces on the side of democracy, and forces against it. the forces against them are not fringe, and sometimes the forces against them are the most celebrated people in the country. andrew jackson, viewed as a small d democrat because he railed against the elites. he founded the modern democratic party with his populism, and invited people into the white house on the day of his inauguration, and they all got drunk. he was not, in any recognizable sense, a democrat that we think of today. he thought there was a cast of people who should rule over another. he was one of the major pursuers of the ethnic cleansing that made the continent what it is. he did not think that everyone had a universal, inalienable right, that all of, us collectively, should rule, all, collectively. he thought the white man should rule over slaves, and over indigenous people that populated the continent. i'm not saying this in an andrew jackson's canceled way. i mean, he should be, to be clear. i'm actually talking in a very specific way. how would you characterize the ideological belief system of andrew jackson? is it accurate to call him a small the democrat? is it accurate to call andrew jackson a believer of democracy? i think it is tough to say it is. at least, in a modern sense. theodore roosevelt, on mount rushmore. what does he believe? he believes, and rights, and says, often, that the white race is there to rule the others. he found, what becomes, the american empire in the pacific where we will rule these people. they won't get to vote, they aren't citizens, they are subject to authority, from on high, and they are forced to be under that authority, and not that different of away as the remote king at the time. again, with all of these examples i'm giving, there are people at the time who recognize this. one of the most pitched debate in american history, on the floor of congress, is about the trail of tears. people come to say, they didn't have the term at the time, ethnic cleansing. this isn't just. we cannot do this. these people have inalienable rights. at the same time, when we started to fight our wars under theodore roosevelt, and pursuing american empire, there are people at the time, mark twain among them, saying that we are doing the thing we hated the crown for doing at each moment in american history, you have these, fights these frictions, over what the meaning of democracy is. there are contemporaries, on either side of the debate. it is not tea lows, a need to park, where we start out confused, and don't understand that slavery is wrong, but walk into the light. no, they knew. they knew. they knew the trail of tears was wrong. they knew the wars in the pacific, in the philippines, what we were doing, it was all wrong. there are people who, clearly, saw what it was. that is true at every point. it is true up until the period, and the run, up to world war ii that story, we learn, is basically the following. because of the trauma of world war i, the u. s. is reticent to get in another war on european shores. fair. we dither this, and fdr comes up with land lease. this is the basic version, because he straddling, he realizes something will need to get done, but it's hard to get americans into this idea of a second war in europe only a few decades later. then, pearl harbor happens, we win, fascism is over. go us. that is basically the story. that story, also, masks the exact same thing that is masked in those other moments from the country's founding, to the trail of tears, to jackson, to the creation of u.s. empire in the pacific under theodore roosevelt. the contemporaneous debates, within society, about what democracy is, and whether it is good. whether what we actually want to see for everyone, collectively, as individuals, with sovereign rights over ourselves, collectively, to come together, and transfer that sovereignty into a collective. to decide, as a democracy, how we will mark our faith. how we will go forward. whether what we want to something else. dominion. ruled by some group, or some person. that is an eternal debate in american politics. we are realizing this in a way we didn't appreciate, until we found ourselves in this moment now, and we are debating it again, every day. if feels we are, it feels alien, it feels like it landed from mars. how do we all come to a consensus on this? didn't we all agree we are a democracy? wasn't it a fact that, in the old days, we would fight on the 40 yard lines? that's the cliché. we didn't have extremes, we weren't debating. no, the debate was there the whole time. one of the most useful interventions in understanding the debate being there the whole time comes by way of this up and cooling talent that i spotted. i have a good eye. in this remarkable podcast called ultra, coming out a year ago. [applause] if you have not listened to, it go download it. subscribe to my podcast to, while you are doing it. but, download ultra. it is the story of, basically, fascist sympathizers in the u.s., prior to the war, and their efforts. the incredible lights they went to. i won't spoil, it will talk about it in a second, that, subsequently, turns part of it. i want to urge people, because i read the book this week, because i've been under the gun, deadline wise. i want people who listen to the podcast to read the book. this book, prequel, see it? it is not just a podcast in the book, it goes so much further. it's an incredible read. it is, kind of, i think, a skeleton key for this particular moment. so, without further ado, let me reintroduce the author, and my dear friend, my beloved colleague, rachel maddow. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> there are a lot of people in this room. >> there is. for those on the podcast, there is 20,000 people. i've never seen anything like it in my life. >> i am wearing my reading glasses. you are all just a little blobs. can't see you at all, which is helpful. i want to start in your way into this material. i must say, it is an incredible talent you have. this has been true on your television show, for years, at finding these unexplored nuggets in american history. the stories that people don't know, and then you tell them and they say, what? really? that happened? ultra was an incredible example of that. i know who father coughlin was. a right-wing, antisemitic, populist preacher. i knew that, i knew that there was -- there is this america first movement with limburg. i read the novel. that was kind of my cannon, for those things. i knew those things. i knew nothing else. so, i want you to start by just saying, what was your way into this material? really, it is not available on the surface. >> i never set out to tell a history story, i'm looking for something that is going on in current life. always something that has sprung from things that are happening in the news. the thing i am dinged for, rightfully, and the way i do my work is that if i want to tell you about something happening in the world today, everything must start with, first, a meteor hit the earth. then, the dinosaurs died. when their body is dissolved -- i mean -- >> that's a good bit. >> if that is not your way of thinking on the world, i understand why it is alienating. i understand i'm not everyone's cup of tea. thank you, i love you too. that is the way my brain works. i was as unnerved as everybody, but confused, and interested, that we were seeing all of this alt-right, neo-nazi, antisemitic, and holocaust an aisle stuff around the rise of trumpism. trumpism is happening in the electoral space, and for a minute, we called at the all right, i don't know if we call it that anymore. it was seeing them rise alongside trump, seeing them cheerleading for trump, seeing them as parallel movements, i didn't understand why that was. i wanted to figure out how not just antisemitism, but specifically, holocaust denial has functioned in the united states before. that was the starting point. if you go back far enough, in terms of american holocaust oral, which is what i did, you go back to 1948. holocaust an aisle does a lot of terrible things, but one thing it does is weird. it does something strange was so much evidence, how do you say it doesn't happen? in 1948, there are people in the world who are witnesses to what happened. so, how can it be that it is a source of denial for a political movement? well, it is not that they earnestly believe it didn't happen, they are using that denial as a reason. they're using it to further a political project. that is what i got into in the 40s, and how i found my defendants, and how i learned, they all got put on trial, and all got off when the judge denied. they thought, you know, i'm going to tell a different story, but i'm going to tell this one. i didn't know any of it. you trace in the book different strands. pro fascist, antisemitic, nazi aligned actors within the u.s.. -- in some ways, it is a little bit of a misfit toys situation. there are some odd ones in there. also, they are operating in a discursive environment that is not closed off to what they are saying. >> correct. >> tell me about public opinion around the question of fascism, and the rise of it, in 1930, 31, 32? some of the people you document in the book are trying to, and sometimes, at the behest of the german government, cultivating empathy. this >> fascism was the movement of the future. fascism did not have the cast that we associate it now, respectively, with not see germany. the number one selling book in america, in 1941, was written by charles lindbergh's wife. it was about how fascism was coming to america, and wouldn't it be fantastic? finally, we could get something done. it was, in fact, a lot of people, who have looked into it, i can't say this definitively, but believe it was ghost written by a guy named lawrence dennis. he was a leading intellectual fascist of his time. he wrote a book called the coming american fascism. one of the things we found was nbc radio archives the from town meeting of the air. a great debate show they used to host on nbc radio networks. one of the first ones they did, they brought lawrence tennis on to argue for fascism, against others were arguing against, and he wiped the floor. >> fascism cross fire? >> fascism cross fire. totally. it was a popular thing. by the time you get to 1940, 83% of the american public are against joining world war ii. 83%. that is what fdr was up against. some of it was, we don't want to fight a war. some of it was, the people you want us to fight against have the better idea. >> how do they go about cultivating -- let's talk about dennis for a bit. he's worthwhile spending a bit of time on. >> there is lots to talk about in regards to him. >> talk about him a little bit. >> lawrence tennis was a state department official. he had gone to harvard, he was an area, date articulate, guy. he had a substack contrary next to him. you could not complimenting him without him insulting you for doing it. in his gruffness, in his contrarian as, made everyone fall in love with him. men, women, old, young, they all had a crush on dennis. he slept his way through the 1930s. in a way, he didn't understand why his wife minded. there are many interesting things about him. he was writing speeches, and books, for the isolationists. the isolationists we're not calling themselves fascists, over late, but had the, leading intellectually, from a self-described fascist. dennis was a favorite of the naughty -- nazi government in berlin. they brought him over for the nuremberg rally, they brought him to germany, and they gave him access to everyone, including hitler. he used it to, essentially, become a well networked, very influential, person. he interviewed mussolini, he interviewed hitler, he spent all of his time with important diplomats of the time, and he wrote speeches for isolationists, and others, and isolationist books wives and heroes. he was one of the sedition trial defendants, and was so arrogant he not only defended himself in court, but insisted that there should be mental examinations of his codefendants. once they realized that was a way out of it, agreed. they all wanted mental examinations. he is the leading fascist intellectual, you mentioned. there is also -- the seed is planted and somewhat fertile soil, for many reasons. can you talk a little about why that is the case? there is the fact that world war i was brutal, and awful. there is an interesting thing that happens in this book, and in ultra, which is that people who totally, understandably, reasonably, say that it was a disaster being prepared to say, we will never do that again. that posture, which is not at all a crazy posture, irrational one, completely, being that slippery slope through which they end up, first, isolationism, and then, outright fascism. in that, you have the depression. then, you have this sense of the broken-ness of the american system, slash the messiness of democracy. all three of those things run themes in the people who are pushing for, proposing, or in the case of huey long, embodying in, alternate to that. >> it is easiest to see it when you look at what the germans were secretly telling us. one of the things we now know, this is an ultra, and the book, that there was a very big, very aggressive, very well funded, secret, german, propaganda effort targeting the american people. what were they trying to do? they were trying to do three things. i guess you could narrow it down to that. one was to support isolationism, however they could. however you want to hear it, they would hear it. any argument against americans joining the war, they were for it. they also wanted to turn us against our allies by making us see fascism as preferable to every other form of government. they're arguing, we should not go to war to defend our ally, britain. in what sense are they, really, our ally? they are corrupt, they are an empire, they are cruel, they are weak. the germans, who have a much better idea, will run over them in a matter of weeks. why do you side with the failing empire you should resent, and not the germans with a better idea? they're also trying to make us believe that we, are inherently, weak. that we should change our form of government, and that by having a democracy, we open ourselves to be controlled by the jews, by international forces, by those who would send us into the meat grinder of war when, really, we should just let germany win, and then side with them. they were trying to articulate all of those things through any american voice they could put their words in the mouth of. so, it is members of congress, it is u.s. senators, it is people like lawrence tennis, who they are funding. george sylvester, an american the nazi agent, who's running 12 publications. it's publishing houses they bought, it's magazines. the messages they were trying to sell us, to me, is just unnerving, and clarifying, to see. it is so much the story we are sold by those who would prefer we became a strongman government, instead of a democracy today. the exact same message. 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