We’ve progressed as a society beyond some dark chapters in our history; periods of virulent of xenophobia, nativism, segregation, and the hatred and violence of the KKK.
Yet, how is possible that in the year 2016, someone like Donald Trump, who has refused to disavow the support of White Supremacists and has no problem being associated with quotes by Fascist dictators, be winning presidential primaries?!?
This is in addition to his vile misogyny towards Fox News reporter Megan Kelly, his mocking of a man with disabilities, his racist characterization of Mexican immigrants and Latin American refugees, and all kinds of other manifestations of demagoguery and fear-mongering.
In her 2012 book Christianity After Religion, author Diana Butler Bass nicely summed up how eras of awakening and progress can swing culture in two different directions; in one direction, those who are trying to move into the future and in the other, a counter-awakening backlash of people who are very afraid and are trying to reinstate what they knew in the past.
“The world is currently in the throes an awakening; a larger cultural event where the whole of a society or group of people become changed, transformed, reoriented toward something new.
For an awakening to happen, old institutions have to go away. I think you can look at the first decade of the 21st century and see that there has been a massive failure of religious, social and governmental institutions.
When you have this kind of institutional collapse and large groups of people who are demanding a different kind of society and moving out, taking risks toward an unknown future—that’s actually going to terrify a large number of people who are happy with the way things have been.
On one hand, you get movement toward the future, with people taking risks; you get people who are willing to engage new ideas. On the other hand, you get a counter-awakening movement; you get people who are very afraid and are trying to reinstate what they knew in the past.
I think that both of these parts of the pattern of awakening are clearly visible in our culture. When I see people stepping outside of the accepted boundaries, and then I see the people, who are what I would call “the old lights,” I think, ‘Well, that’s a pretty typical pattern in the midst of cultural change.’ It helps me to say, ‘Okay, this is really where we are. We can expect this kind of counter-movement.’
There’s a reason for the phrase, ‘It’s darkest before the dawn.’ So often in American history the greatest movements toward social justice and greater democracy only happened in the wake of the very dark chapters in history that preceded them.
In American history you get, at the very same time, the unfolding of the progressive movement and the strongest expression of the Ku Klux Klan at the beginning of the 20th century. What we know 100 years later is that the progressive movement actually won in that era. People turned around and said, ‘We don’t want to go there. That’s really bad.’ Sure enough, counter-movements ebbed away and [Progressivism] became the dominant story of American culture.
I’m hoping we’re in a moment of that kind, and I hope we get there quickly, because I don’t like it when people get hurt. That’s what happens with these backlash movements. They can express themselves in violence. And that kind of violence also does harm to the people who are in the mode of the fearful—it’s a devastating cultural moment."
