Political Propaganda Parallels: Reconstruction and Trumpism Eras

• In Event: Poster Session: Politics and History & International History and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Politics and History

Abstract

This is a time of political instability and change, a time of fear and uncertainty, and a time of massive inequalities and racial resentment. Our current “Trumpism” era has been marked by the indelible impact Donald J. Trump has had on the Republican party since he announced in June 2015 his candidacy for the American presidency.
However, political instability and change, fear and uncertainty, massive inequalities and racial resentment can undoubtedly describe the American political culture during the years following the end of the American Civil War known as the Reconstruction Era.
To be sure, there are many differences between the two eras. One of the most obvious differences between these two eras is the development of modern technology. Although racial tensions and institutional racism still exists, relations between people of different races and rights for minorities are markedly better than during the post-war period. Transportation, economic, industrial and financial systems, political parties and elections, medicine, and communication technology have transformed dramatically in the more than 150 years since the Civil War’s end.
Yet there are important parallels that remain to be examined between the two periods. This paper will focus specifically on comparing the political rhetoric used in these two eras by those seeking to promote ideas central or related to white supremacy. It may be a difficult task at first blush to compare white supremacists of the post-Civil War years when the Ku Klux Klan first formed in Pulaski, Tennessee and spread throughout society to combat advances made by Freedmen to those of today, when invoking “The Klan” conjures severe societal deviance. However, the differences are of degree, not of kind. White supremacy is a dangerous but perennial idea that has been dampened and reignited multiple times in American history. White supremacists may wear business suits or t-shirts with catchy slogans in modern times, rather than white sheets and conical hoods, but the camouflage of modernity and ostensible respectability is what makes their ideas an important threat to current society.
Another reason to pay attention to the parallels of political rhetoric in these time periods is that while reconstruction-era language was less coded, the ubiquity of social media allows white-supremacist rhetoric to form a miasma in American political society beyond what any 19th century newspaper editor could dream. Therefore, what white supremacists lack today in blatancy, they make up for in pervasiveness and speed. Although they do not break down the front door, they sneak in through a back window and make themselves at home before anyone notices their presence.
An important rhetorical tool of white supremacy in both eras is what I will call “projection propaganda.” The Oxford Dictionary defines propaganda as "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view." Combining that with the psychological concept of projection, in which an individual claims his detractors are enacting the very behavior for which he has been accused. This political projection is a form of gaslighting that Trump and his allies use constantly. It is a way of deflecting any blame for obvious and observable behavior that is anywhere from unkind to immoral to illegal. This projection propaganda was also used pervasively by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists in the Reconstruction era to justify the murder, assault and otherwise oppression and intimidation of Freedmen who tried to exercise basic rights.
This paper will conduct a textual analysis comparing the projection propaganda from these two periods of political upheaval. The goal is to raise an awareness of the lessons of political history, that as Mark Twain said, "may not always repeat itself, but it does rhyme." In order to make informed political decisions about important government structures and processes, we must remember the songs that we have learned in the past and not condemn ourselves to repeating the same bad refrains.

Author

• Sari Krieger Rivera, Alfred University