They say history repeats itself.
I don’t know who “they†is, but somebody said it. Maybe it was Mark Twain. If I put that on a T-shirt, or a coffee mug, I could sell it. Somebody probably has. That’s because, at our core, Americans are gullible people.
We buy pet rocks and fidget spinners. We drank Tang because the astronauts did. If there is a diet fad that involves eating dirt, we would probably try it.
Also, some of us aren’t very good at using Google, or generally looking up information online. Sen. Josh Hawley appears to be one of those people.
On the Fourth of July, Missouri’s senior U.S. senator did what a lot of politicians do. He tweeted a quote, purportedly from one of our nation’s forefathers, to make a political point about his version of history.
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that the great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here,†Hawley tweeted.
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He attributed the quote to Patrick Henry.
But Patrick Henry didn’t say it. Instead, it was a sentiment written in an April 1956 edition of The Virginian, in an article that was about Henry. By the time Seth Cotlar saw Hawley’s tweet, other Twitter users had reported the quote, and it had an editor’s note. The mention of The Virginian caught Cotlar’s attention. He’s a history professor at Williamette University in Oregon.
Among Cotlar’s areas of expertise is the rise of the far-right movement in American politics. He recognized The Virginian as a publication that was part of that movement in the 1950s. The publication was “a cesspool of racism and antisemitism,†as Cotlar explained to Hawley and whoever else was paying attention on Independence Day.
It’s a chilling history.
“I just looked through my archive of stuff and thought it would be worth sharing some context,†Cotlar says.
We talked on Wednesday, after his tweets had been shared widely. “It’s part of that old right Christian nationalist world view that traces back to the ‘30s and ‘40s. There is an American fascist tradition, and The Virginian is a part of that history.â€
Not only is this a fake quote from Henry, the source is the April 1956 edition of the virulently antisemitic & white nationalist magazine "The Virginian." It was reprinted in The American Mercury in 1956, the year that antisemitic rag hired George Lincoln Rockwell.
— Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places (@SethCotlar)
Another fascist publication of the time was the American Mercury, which, Cotlar says, published a piece in 1957 by George Lincoln Rockwell that lamented how the American military wasn’t “manly†enough. Rockwell is, Cotlar says, America’s most famous Nazi.
“That’s not a great look,†he says, noting that Hawley recently published a book about being more manly and has shared criticisms of the military.
Is history repeating itself, with today’s Republican Party going after “critical race theory†and censoring LGBTQ books and using George Soros (who is Jewish) as a bogeyman for everything they find wrong in American society?
Not necessarily, Cotlar says. But it’s worth noting that Hawley has a history degree from Stanford University. So while misattributing a quote is something many of us do, failing to understand the history behind that mistake is something else entirely.
“The problem is when you feed into that, it can be really potent,†Cotlar says. “Hateful, scapegoating propaganda can be really powerful and damaging.â€
Hawley, of course, knows this. It was brought to his attention by the Anti-Defamation League four years ago, after the senator gave a speech before a conservative group in which he quoted Jewish scholars out of context and used the sort of language about “globalization†and “cosmopolitan consensus†that historians have long equated with being a dog whistle to white supremacy.
At the time, the ADL asked Hawley to apologize for his actions, even if unwitting. He didn’t. Nor did he this time when Cotlar called him out. Instead, he tweeted about his views on Christian nationalism triggering “the libs.†Manly men never say they’re sorry. They just own the libs.
Never mind that Hawley shared content from a publication that pushed a form of Christian nationalism that was clearly racist and antisemitic. That act, the sharing of not just the inaccurate quote but the context of where it came from, should matter to somebody who studies their history, Cotlar argues.
“To me, what Hawley’s doing is irresponsible because he’s really giving permission to folks who really do have antisemitic and racist beliefs,†Cotlar says. “He says one thing and there are a whole lot of folks out there who hear something else.â€
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