A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America

In 1938 the American literary critic Howard Mumford Jones published an article in The Atlantic titled ‘Patriotism – but How?’ As Europe teetered on the brink of war, Jones observed how fascist dictators were skilfully manipulating their nation’s myths to rally their populations. By contrast, the United States seemed culturally adrift – its mythic heroes discredited by a generation of cynical writers and ‘debunking biographers’. Bemoaning this trend, Jones called for a ‘patriotic renaissance’, encouraging its writers and historians to unearth ‘thrilling anecdotes’ from their nation’s past. ‘The only way to conquer an alien mythology’, Jones wrote, ‘is to have a better mythology of your own.’

A response show more came, fittingly enough, from Hollywood, America’s myth-making capital. Yet while Gone with the Wind (1939) was hugely popular, critics worried that the myths it promoted were more likely to encourage American-style fascism than fortify democracy. Drenched in nostalgia for the slave-owning South, the film invoked the ‘Lost Cause’ myth of the Civil War, romanticising the Confederacy’s role as a noble effort to preserve a virtuous way of life rather than a violent rebellion to maintain slavery. Many implored the film’s producer, David O. Selznick, not to make it. The Jewish actor Hyman Meyer wrote that such a film would ‘be welcomed by the Fascists ... of this country’, including the Ku Klux Klan. Sure enough, it quickly became a favourite among Germany’s Nazi elite.

It was also popular with southern segregationists (and, it should be said, the filmgoing public). During the 1950s, Gone with the Wind’s Lost Cause mythology was invoked to energise a ‘massive resistance’ to the civil rights movement. More recently, as Richard Slotkin notes in A Great Disorder, the Lost Cause myth has been embraced by Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. When insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on 6 January, many did so waving Confederate flags. At a 2020 campaign rally in Colorado, Trump criticised that year’s Academy Awards by asking his supporters: ‘Can we get, like, Gone with the Wind back, please?’

Read the full review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/great-disorder-richard-slotkin-revie...

Sam Collings-Wells is Junior Research Fellow in American History at the University of Cambridge. show less

A really thought provoking American History book that studies the roots of our current divisions in politics today. It is based on the different interpretation of several historical myths including the founding myth, the frontier myth, the lost cause myth and others that MAGA folks and the right are in my opinion are reading incorrectly. In a sense MAGA has taken up the South's side we are still fighting the Civil War.

The fiction writer, social critic and historian Richard Slotkin has discussed, in earlier non-fiction and academic writing, the uses of violence as portrayed in popular writing and viewing (cinema and broadcast media) in the USA. His academic employment was/in in "English and American Studies" (apparently in the humanities of language and literature). The author in his career had discussed the theme of legitimate violence by colonial settlers and their descendants against opponents identified as "savage" (dangerously violent): indigenous people, enslaved, indentured or organized workers, members of "inferior' "races", and ethnic groups. His method is to study the creation and perpetuation of myths in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries - show more stories shared by individuals who vary in wealth, power, education. age, gender, appearance and other physical characteristics.
In this book he presents a theory that stories that present Americans as striving to protect themselves against military opponents, competitors and dissidents have been successful in making money for writers and publishers, and have a role in the alignment of individuals into political factions.
The book is long at 400+ pages of densely printed text, plus notes - an academic style. The book goes into details of the stories told in book and movies, like literary criticism. It is interesting for readers with the time to read the book. show less

RN 2024
James Curran mentioned

Global Roaming 06:07:24
Review in the …NY?? Review of books - Hamish … …