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"Nations, to understand each other, need a kind of agreed past," writes Jill Lepore in her latest book, This America: the case of the nation. "They can get it from scholars or demagogues."
We know that Lepore thinks that American national history deserves to be studied and written. Last year, she published a historic epic of over 900 pages in a single volume in the United States, which NPR described as "magnificent". The purpose of this much thinner book – she calls it "a long essay, really" – is a lot less clear.
The main argument of Lepore is that, while the champions of liberal democracy celebrated the dawn of a multicultural, interconnected and multicultural world community, a hateful and xenophobic nationalism was taking root and to be reborn as a powerful political force. This is a well-researched idea in recent books, and rightly so, because a populist and autocratic global wave shows no signs of weakening. This America contribution to this booming genre: an argument that supporters of liberal democracy have ceded the field of study and interpretation of American history to nationalists – and, in so doing, inadvertently fanned the fire that they thought completely extinguished.
There are two terms that deserve to be spelled here. The term "liberal" does not refer to leftist political views, but rather the broader geopolitical term defined by Lepore as "the belief that people are good and should be free, and that they erect governments to ensure this freedom ". As for the difference between nationalism and patriotism, Lepore expresses it as follows: "Patriotism is animated by love, nationalism by hate".
To fight against populism and traditional nationalism, Lepore argues, supporters of a free, fair and inclusive Liberal government can not just wait for voters to realize that course democracy is better than autocracy, and of course immigrants should not be vilified or ostracized. They need to engage in better storytelling – both in the political arena and in academia.
"In American history, liberals have repeatedly failed to defeat illiberalism except by calling for national goals and objectives," she wrote. But the argument in favor of a more national story writing is often drowned in the condensed history of the book of nationalism in America's book.
And the story that Lepore tells in this little book does not exactly inspire patriotism. It details the United States constantly illiberal and xenophobic. She releases the refusal to recognize Native American citizens. Slavery. Xenophobic laws to ostracize Chinese immigrants. The draconian immigration law of 1924 codifying racial prejudice in federal politics. Violence of the era of civil rights. Throughout the pages of this essay, there are more contemporary incidents: the violent racist demonstrations in Charlottesville; mass firing motivated by the Charleston and Pittsburgh races; and above all, a president who said last year: "You know what I am? I am a nationalist."
In this context, the recent resurgence of nationalism seems to be the logical continuation of a tension that drives US history since the first day, rather than the aberration that opponents of Trump, like former Vice President Joe Biden, describe as follows.
Nevertheless, it is true that, over the centuries, the United States has taken many steps – its often chaotic approach – to achieve this idealized vision of itself that inspired the Declaration of Independence. and motivate generations of protesters and activists. The tension between America's aspirations and realities is summed up by a poem by Langston Hughes, quoted by Lepore at about halfway through the book:
"The land that has never been again –
And yet, must be – the land where every man is free. "
To better understand this country, a reader would be better served by discovering the ambitious American history of Lepore, These truths rather than this follow-up test.
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