In 1969 faculty and students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology founded the Union of Concerned Scientists to urge government to move away from industrialization and the military toward a worldview that favors solving environmental and social problems. Now, as the most powerful nation in the world teeters at the edge of a dictatorial cliff, we note the absence of a similar union of concerned historians.
This is not to suggest that historians have been silent. A group of leading academics filed a statement with the Supreme Court opposing the administration’s effort to gain immunity for the president. Others have spoken out against the “comprehensive internal review” of several Smithsonian museums in an attempt to realign them with the reactionary right’s cultural bigotry. Yet there remains more they could do to raise a collective voice — crucially important, given what history tells us about the present day.
As the United States is just weeks away from what is expected to be a year of celebrating the 1776 Declaration of Independence, history itself will become a battlefield, as the right seeks to rewrite it in its favor — accuracy be damned — in an effort to promote so-called Americanism in place of fact-based interpretation. One can understand the right’s fear. Even a cursory look at past repressive regimes, particularly at how they came to power, shows clear parallels to the Republican slide into authoritarianism — when entire political parties become in thrall to one man. The coming year, 2026, will be one in which those who study history must be heard.
Looking beyond the obvious comparisons to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party is important. Decades before Hitler’s rise, nationalistic nostalgia and antisemitism swirled in the German states well before the beginning of the 20th century. Much as it was in early 1900s Germany, the core ideas contained in the Make America Great Again slogan played on a rural antagonism to urban elites, art, architecture, gender fluidity, in fact, to modernity itself. A desire to mandate familiar norms, values, and national identity — the opposite of freedom — reigned.
In the lead-up to World War II, control of newspapers by ideologically aligned business leaders rose. An alignment of the civil service and military with nationalist aims took place, pushing out doubters. We once again hear made-up ideals of racial purity. This should sound distressingly familiar to us today.
To understand the present moment, we must also turn to the work of philosophers. As in Germany at that time, the present desire for “the good old days” reflects a sense that the country has descended into moral depravity and that immigrants and other “enemies from within” are trying to destroy the American way, one keen observer recently wrote. Karen Stenner, a political psychologist and behavioral economist, observed two decades ago that “liberal democracy has now exceeded many people’s capacity to tolerate it” — a terrifying thought.
If the U.S. is not going to join repressive nations like Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, El Salvador, North Korea, and Russia, and is to remain on the side of fairness and respect for human rights, the voices of historians and philosophers are needed now as much as ever.