Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)
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Welcome to the new Books Network.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Morteza Hajizadeh from Critical Theory Channel. Today, I'm honored to be speaking with Dr. Stephen Hahn. Dr. Stephen Hahn is a professor of history at New York University, and he's here to talk to us about his most recent book called Illiberal America, a History, which was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. And it's a very, very timely topic to talk with, to talk with Dr. Stephen Hahn. Stephen, welcome to New Books Network.

Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. It's a fascinating topic. The book was a fascinating read. And I don't know when exactly you started working on writing the book, but I guess it's become even more timely and topical, the issues you discuss in the book. So can you just very briefly tell us about how the idea of the book came to you? Sure. You know, in many ways, I've been writing about

In liberalism, my whole academic and scholarly career, but mostly from the point of view of those who have been on the receiving end, most of my work was on humble white people, humble black people, and, you know, how they were excluded, marginalized, repressed.

But I got interested in writing the book the way it turned out in 2015-16. And it wasn't so much Trump per se, but it was the way in which journalists and other, you know, thoughtful observers discussed.

about how he was violating liberal democratic norms. And having watched what had happened to American politics and political culture for the previous 30 years, I

I was wondering what those norms were. You know, the Supreme Court was busy intervening in American political life, gutting the Voting Rights Act, opening the spigot of big money in politics. You know, of course, more recently in the Dobbs decision ending reproductive rights and

And the Republican Party had been moving in a really right-wing direction since the 1980s. So that was one part of it. And I thought that, you know, people had kind of a misunderstanding about how American politics worked. And also, you know, I was really struck by how observers often characterized the right. You know, they would use language like a backlash.

which means it's rage and it's irrational and it's unsubstantiated. And I knew as a historian that the reactionary currents in American life were very deeply rooted. And I think we have fooled ourselves by

imagining that, you know, the liberal tradition was sort of at the heart of how American society and history developed. So I decided I would write this book to challenge that view. Thank you. I'll come back to this question because this is one of the most important part of the book that we need to discuss about this illiberal tradition, whether it's

a one-off thing or it's an infrequent occurrences here or there, or is it that there is a consistent, let's say, history or trend of that? But before that, let me get to some definition, illiberalism. I think last year there was a book, Oxford Companion to Illiberalism. I haven't read it. I just had a look at the table of content and it's a handbook. You know, there's plenty of, there are plenty of articles that

But what is liberalism exactly? Is it just anything that is not liberal? Is it anti-liberalism? What are its defining features if you want to come up with a

framework to understand what it is? Well, that's a really good and important question. Obviously, the term illiberal and illiberalism is of relatively recent vintage. I recognize that. And so I'm writing a history of a liberal America, which really goes back before liberalism itself. And

How do you do that? And, you know, part of my argument is that what I call illiberalism isn't sort of a simple thing. I see it as kind of a constellation of ideas, of relationships, of ways of understanding the world that are probably more clearly tethered to an early modern or neo-feudal world than

that have a kind of logic of their own. They have developed in different ways over time. But what I would say is that there are a number of characteristics that I think tend to emerge again and again. One is a belief in inherent inequality, right?

One is a belief in what you might call assigned or ascribed hierarchies that are basically innate. A desire for cultural and or religious homogeneity. A marking of internal and or external enemies and

and the use of expulsion or violence as a way of attacking them. I see a liberalism as not rejecting all ideas about rights, but seeing rights as limited and what you might call particularist, meaning

I have my rights, you have your rights, but you don't carry your rights with you. You may have your rights over there, but you don't have those rights over here. Illiberalism and illiberals accept violence as a means of both attaining and maintaining power. And one of the things that really has struck me is what you might call the will of the community over the rule of law.

invocation of a community under siege that has its own devices for rectifying and mediating threats as they see it. So again, these are characteristics that you kind of see pop up. And what I would say is

is that these are pretty deeply embedded, not only in the United States. I mean, I wrote about it in an American context, but, you know, these are certainly part of a Euro-Atlantic world, if not way beyond that. And I think they are deeply embedded and they oftentimes run close to the surface of

political life. They can erupt on many different occasions. Sometimes they become a central and centrally powerful current of political ideas and behavior. Sometimes they are under the surface, but they're never very far from it.

And so I thought it was really important to point out that what we're looking at is not kind of epiphenomenal. It's not a kind of thing that is, you know, a one-off thing.

Or that can be easily extracted. I think one of the reasons that observers reacted to Trump and his movement that way is that in some ways early on, it was more comforting to think that he was just sort of a strange person.

occurrence in American political life, kind of a noxious weed that you could pull out and return to some notion of political normalcy when these kind of liberal ideas would once again prevail. And I was really struck by the refusal to recognize the

how little that had to do with political life in the United States. When you were defining illiberalism, I was just thinking maybe you're describing the status quo right now in terms of conformity, and I will come to that. So if I want to paraphrase what you're saying—

When, for example, when the Capitol riot happened, I think it was January 6th or 4th. Yeah. January 6th. A lot of people said this is an attack on democracy as if it was something unprecedented. There were some historians who came up with a precedent of that in the 18th century. But again, it was always unprecedented.

let's say, put it as something, an outlier in the history of the United States. But I'm guessing part of your argument is that, no, we have a long history and it's not just, let's say, periodic occurrences of such events. And that's a core part of, let's say, America since it's established. Am I right to assume this? Yes. You know, in some ways, what happened on January 6th

was unprecedented. I mean, we have not had at least until since the British, um, attack during the war of 1812 and burned, um, you know, the Capitol. Um, but I think it is important to recognize that this kind of stuff was happening on the state and local levels on many occasions. I mean, people might say, well, look, we did have a civil war and it was, you know, um,

a war of enormous political disruption at violence. But the kind of overthrow of duly constituted

governance has happened on many occasions. I mean, probably the best example is what happened during reconstruction in the United States where black officials or Republican officials were elected to office and then were murdered or driven off or were expelled from their seats in legislatures or at local councils. But these kind of things happen

you know, were not uncommon in many places when, you know, you sort of had what one scholar has called authoritarian enclaves. You know, one of the things about American politics and political culture is that decentralization has sort of been very much part of it for most of our

And the term state rights is usually invoked as a way of emphasizing not simply local control, but local power that is built on local hierarchies and local forms of administering politics, oftentimes in a repressive or paramilitary manner.

And, you know, we don't like to think about it too much, but this has really been as much a part of our history. If you look at descriptions, you

you know, even of elections, especially in the 19th century. I mean, they were, you know, riots, you know, in cities and towns, especially if, you know, religious differences or cultural or ethnic differences were involved. And legislatures were oftentimes rife with,

with threats and violence and duels that took place. So in a sense, you know, the American Republic and the democratic means of providing for representation existed not as an alternative to, but was very much tied up with all of these sort of illiberal practices.

And you're not completely... Because when... I've read some reviews of the book, and I think there are obviously a lot of... Not a lot of... Some journalists might take offense at what you write, because as you're mentioning, the way they portray the history of America, or even the more progressive ones, they're always...

try to treat these episodes as something of an outline. But I'm just curious to know, and I think this is what you put in the book as well, you're not completely dismissive of liberalism because the United States takes pride of its constitution of being the first liberal constitution. But you're arguing that this liberalism had always had this kind of shaky foundation. Well, there's certainly that. And what I would also say is that

Even people who are very critical of American liberalism and how American liberalism has developed nonetheless see liberalism as kind of at the center of the American historical narrative. And what, you know, what I was trying to do in the book is not dismissing that.

Because there's no question that liberalism in different forms has been a central current in American society and political life. But what I want to do is decenter it.

Because I think the centrality of liberalism and the difficulty that historians, scholars, observers, journalists, and so on have with seeing a world outside of it that is not simply marginal to what's happening or backlash to what's happening prevents us from understanding really the multiplicity

of political currents that have been part of our history that are not necessarily liberal, nor are they illiberal. They have their own dynamics that are set to it. Think about social democracy and socialism, certain forms of 19th century populism, certain forms of abolitionism or women's rights and feminism, certain forms of popular nationalism that have emerged. And I guess part of what I'm saying is that

You know, decentering liberalism not only enables us to take illiberal currents seriously, but to look at the kaleidoscope of American political ideas and practices more fully that I don't really think has been adequately appreciated by most of those who

who grab onto the idea of a liberal tradition. I mean, the book starts with a chapter on what I call the invention of the liberal tradition. And it's a reminder that whatever we want to say about it, you know, historians and others who are trying to interpret American history from the 19th century on never talked about a liberal tradition. This is only something that happened before

beginning with the, you know, World War II and the Cold War. And it was an attempt to talk about a certain idea of American political and cultural exceptionalism, and therefore a liberal tradition that emphasized consensus

whatever other disputes happened in American politics, everybody agreed on capitalism, on individualism, on private property, middle class values in general. I mean, the only way in which Americans like talking about class is the middle class. They'll talk about the...

white working class, but it's really in a derogatory way. They might talk about the oligarchs, but there's not a really fully developed idea of what that is. When the term class is invoked, except for Bernie Sanders...

You know, the adjective is middle class. And so I think this is, you know, it's been attacked. But what's interesting to me is that even the attack on the idea of a liberal tradition has in many ways embedded liberalism itself.

And so that you could be a critic of liberalism, but you're not necessarily disputing the idea that that has really been at the center of how of the American historical narrative. Dear old work platform, it's not you, it's us. Actually, it is you. Endless onboarding, constant IT bottlenecks. We've had enough. We need a platform that just gets us. And to be honest, we've met someone new. They're

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And that centrality part of that, I guess, was the idea of constitution. Because I was myself reading a book some time ago about what's called the hidden history of liberalism or liberalism hidden story.

and the interaction between France and America and the politicians and how they use the lessons of Landlady or how they use French ideas to build the Constitution of the United States, which is one of the most liberal, let's say, or maybe the first liberal constitution. But again, your book, you argue that you don't deny the fact that it's a liberal constitution. But again...

there were flaws. And I guess that's something that is not really highlighted because you always have that story of the founding fathers of the United States and all these liberties that are enshrined in the Constitution. But the institutions, the Constitution, sorry, some time they had the flaws and it also protected or maybe enabled slavery. Can you broadly talk about maybe what is the other side of the Constitution that we're not told? Right.

Look, the Constitution is part of our origin story, and it's not surprising that especially now that

when the Trump administration has so flagrantly disregarded any sort of constitutional boundaries. You know, for good reason, we're kind of grabbing onto this framework, which at the very least establishes an idea of a republic, does have a Bill of Rights, which is more about what the government can't do to you than exactly, you know, what sort of rights do you really have?

But nonetheless, you know, it was an attempt to establish a, you know, a form of governance based on representative institutions. And but as you say, there were all sorts of compromises that were involved. There were elites in different parts of the country whose power was based on different kind of property regimes, slaveholders regimes.

being among the most important. And, you know, it's liberal in the sense of providing for the choosing through certain kind of democratic means of those who are going to be governing. But it gives, you know, most of the power to decide who can participate and who can't participate to the states, right?

And that means that the rules of politics vary from one place to another. And it does mean that in certain parts of the country, the black working class is enslaved and they have no standing in civil or political society. Generally speaking, in the United States, people of African descent have few, if any, rights, certainly few political rights. And as it turns out, a lot of the new wage-earning working class people

in other parts of the country were made up of women and children who also had limited civil and political rights. You know, the compromises with slavery and the rewards that were given to enslavers and the power that they were able to establish because of the Constitution, that

were obviously of enormous importance in the first 80 years of the American Republic. And it is important to understand that

That in many ways, the Constitution was rewritten by the Reconstruction Amendments that changed the whole dynamics of power. The 13th Amendment that abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment that established birthright citizenship, the 15th Amendment that established that the right to vote could not exist.

be denied based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These, you know, gave powers to the central government that it had never had before, that slavery was destroyed without compensation to enslavers, that an idea of citizenship that really didn't exist in the United States. And insofar as black people were concerned, you know, whatever idea of citizenship existed was not them.

You know, then you have birthright citizenship. And now, of course, at this particular moment, something that had been really central, you know, to what it meant to be an American and what sort of rights you might have that could not be denied to you. And that, you know, minority groups ever since the Civil War have, you know, been able to use the 14th Amendment.

as a way of expanding rights in the United States. You know, it's now, of course, in jeopardy, but that was, you know, that's a fundamental change to the way in which the Constitution sort of was framed. And we still fight about, you know, who has power to make decisions. I mean, the United States is a little unusual because there, you know, there's still a decentralization process

of political life and how political representation is determined. And of course, who can vote and who can't vote? How do you register to vote when elections are going to be held? And so on and so forth. So these are aspects of American politics and governance that have always been

you know, pretty complicated and remained so even after the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act and then especially the Voting Rights Act that made it much more difficult to disfranchise certain groups of people. Of course, African-Americans who had effectively been disfranchised since the end of the 19th

Century because of poll taxes and literacy requirements. But they affected poor people in general. Poor people have always been kind of at the margins of American politics and the political arena. And when you were talking about the decentralization of power in the United States, I think it was last week that even a judge tried to block

deportation of some immigrants, but the federal agents went ahead with it. And I don't think it got enough media attention. To me, that's... I'm not an American. I've never been to America, but I've studied the history of America, and one of the things I've always admired was that independent judiciary system.

I do remember that when Obama was in place, there was this right-wing priest who wanted to burn Koran. And Obama was asking him or pleading him not to do that. And I said to him, I said, well, if it was in a country in the Middle East, this guy would not even think about it. But at least you have that level of freedom that even the president cannot intervene. It's your personal freedom to do what you want. Right.

Right or wrong, you can exercise that. Right. Right now, this has been students with what's happening with students or even professors in Columbia, for example. Of course. Look, you know, on the one hand, the courts and the judicial system in general have generally over the course of American history had a conservative influence on.

On American politics. I mean, there is the period of the Warren court from the, you know, 1950s and 60s. There are moments when the court behaves in a more progressive way. But generally speaking, the courts have been hostile to labor. The courts have been fit much more favorable to employers generally.

to corporations where, you know, basically birthright citizens, you know, the 14th Amendment was a rule that did not only apply to individuals, but to corporations as well, which protected them from adverse legislation. But I think, you know, there was sort of a sense that,

that you, that there were separation of powers, that the judiciary had, you know, it's always been politicized, but had a certain kind of independence.

And the expectation was that when they ruled, that the rulings would be accepted. And I think we are moving into a moment when the executive branch is, you know, is it wants is provoking.

a showdown so that it, you know, no one really understands, well, what happens if even the Supreme Court issues a ruling? I mean, they did issue a ruling, you know, but it did in a way that, you know, was not exactly forthright. But what's going to happen if, you know, the birthright citizenship comes up and the Supreme Court decides that in fact,

Birthright citizenship is fundamental to the American constitutional order. And then the Trump administration says, no, you know, that we're going to do what we want. We haven't, you know, in a sense, we haven't really been there since the Civil War when, you know, there was a rebellion on the part of slaveholders who rejected the authority of the, you know, federal government and said, you know, we're going to have our own.

We're going to have our own country. And to that extent, rejected whatever rulings courts might have about the powers that the federal government had and whether or not, you know, states or groups within states had any right to

you know, to leave the union, to rebel against the federal government. The only cases that ever came up were after the civil war, when the Supreme court ruled that you couldn't do that. It was the Lincoln administration that you couldn't do that. The union is perpetual. You can't, but since then, you know, obviously when the court ruled that, that,

you know, segregation education was unconstitutional. There were states decided or localities decided that they were going to try to resist this as much as possible. It was called massive resistance. They closed down the public school system and so on and so forth. But they didn't, you know, I mean, they may have objected to the ruling, but they, you know, and they were looking for ways not to carry it out. But the level of defiance was not quite there.

But it is important to recognize that there has been defiance before, and the court in the Brown decision had to make a, you know, kind of go back to that.

And provide for some kind of enforcement mechanism because states were saying, tough, you know, we're not going to do this. So there is a there is a certain history and there is a backdrop to this. But we're obviously moving in directions that are even far beyond what had prevailed in the past, at least since the Civil War. Yeah.

We have spoken about illiberalism, its manifestations and its features. I'm interested to look at some episode of history in the United States.

And your book is fantastic. There was a lot and it was difficult for me to choose one. So I mainly went to the ones that I thought that I wasn't familiar with. One of them was Jacksonian democracy, what it was and how illiberalism gave rise to the idea of white terrorism. What was that white terrorism? Who were the victims of that?

It would be great if we could talk about that part of the American history. You know, one of the things I try to do with the book, you know, it's not meant to be an exhaustive history of illiberalism in American in the United States or in North America. What I tried to do is not pick out the most horrific examples of which there are many.

But I try to pick out episodes that we tend to associate more with the development of liberalism and to try to unpack what's going on. And, you know, look, the Jacksonian period has customarily been

been associated with American political exceptionalism. This is when the political system was being democratized, when property holding requirements for office and for voting were coming down, when more and more at least adult white men were able to vote. And it seemed to be a step in the direction of a more liberal society. Andrew Jackson was the first president from west of the

you know, Appalachian mountains that he kind of presented himself as a representative of the common man, so to speak, and,

And, you know, I mean, a lot of this stuff has been sort of, you know, this the has been a call to account before. But one of the things that I felt was not adequately treated was not simply the expulsions, not simply the violence, not simply the terrorism, as you point out, actually

as parallel developments, but actually were intimately connected to the rise of white democracy in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s. And not for all whites. I mean, certainly anti-Catholicism has been a very, very powerful force in American political life for a very, very long time. Attacks on Catholics, attacks on Mormons,

you know, who were never regarded really as Christians, attacks on black people, attacks on abolitionists. And so I think the rise of so-called white democracy and the punishment of people who didn't fit into that kind of democratic vision and democratic system was really important. And, you know, I use Lincoln and Tocqueville, you know,

precisely two people who are associated with American, you know, kind of liberal political life and show their deep worries about what was going on. Lincoln was worried about mob rule. Tocqueville was worried about the despotism of the communities and how they took matters into their own hands and so on. I mean, he was worried about slavery, you know,

And so, you know, I wanted it to be clear that this is really one of the things that was kind of happening is that it's not. Well, some of it was liberal and some of it was illiberal, is that it was hard to disentangle that. And so I think what you end up having as a result of this is an illiberal democracy, right?

when, you know, the democratic politics for some people was built upon the exclusion of others. And it wasn't regarded as a temporary thing. I mean, the way in which this was usually treated is we were on a steady march toward a real democracy. And, you know, it's we started with this and it's always expanding. It's always expanding. And I don't think that that's really a useful way of thinking about what was going on.

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And I think this is the best description of the book. You exactly talk about those episodes of the United States history, which is it's feathering the cap, abolition, suffrage movement, for example, Jacksonian democracy. But you shed light on other aspects of those episodes that we don't know much about. And I myself, when I was reading about the history of...

First wave feminism and, you know, what happened in the United States. There were a lot of names there. And they joined forces with black people to advocate against the abolition of, sorry, against slavery. Yeah, right. Exactly. But then you read that some of them said, okay, yeah, they can be free, but they're never, ever equal as us, as women. They can't exercise the same rights that we do. Right.

Right.

No, you're never my equal. It would be great if we could talk about that part, the suffrage movement that I really enjoyed reading about in your book, the limitations that were put in place even for black people after the abolition of slavery. I mean, you know, you pointed out a number of important things. In terms of the fight against slavery, the women's rights movement was very important and became an important ally.

And in terms of pressing the federal government for the 13th Amendment, because it wasn't entirely clear what was going to happen when the Civil War ended, because the legislation and the proclamations against slavery were kind of wartime acts. And the concern was that once the war ended...

it would be possible to go to the courts and say, yeah, but that doesn't apply now that hostilities have ceased. So amending the Constitution was important. And of course, the suffrage movement did see this as a revolutionary moment when, in fact, the arena of political life could be expanded very dramatically. So they were in favor of

of expanding black rights, but they also wanted to make sure that the issue of gender as well as race and slavery were kind of bound together. And certainly one of the things that happened was that women's rights were marginalized at this particular period. As Wendell Phillips put it, it's the Negro's hour now. And part of it was

uh, rights that were long overdue. And part of it was a political opportunism because the Republican party needed votes in the South. And it was unclear where else that they were going to get them. But it, well, you know, certainly what it did over time was it, um, uh, created real tensions so that middle-class educated women, uh,

you know, were kind of, some of them were appalled that, you know, these formerly enslaved, uneducated black men were going to get rights that they weren't. And, you know, it's a complicated history from that. And one of the things we do know is that the crusade for women's suffrage was sometimes

by racism. And although in the end, I think there was a kind of more progressive thrust, nonetheless,

when the 19th Amendment was enacted, that, you know, black women like black men were still fundamentally disenfranchised. And there was not much of an attempt to take that on. So I do think that, you know, this is some of the ways in which kind of illiberal and liberal sensibilities kind of get tied up and where people who seem to have liberal credentials are

end up, you know, embracing illiberal ideas when things don't move in a direction that they like. I think this has certainly happened when it comes to issues about

when it comes to issues about social disorder, when, you know, we've seen, especially in recent decades, with the rise of mass incarceration, how people who regard themselves as liberal in their perfect respect are, you know, perfectly happy to impose an incredibly repressive, politically and otherwise, an expulsive regime as a way of, you know,

trying to soothe the concerns of their constituents. So this too, I think, is something that's been very, very dangerous. And although...

Toward the end of Trump's first term, it looked like things were moving because of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, that they were moving in a better direction. Even on mass incarceration, we're now back in a sort of very hostile environment.

I'll just have one final question. And before that, I do want to highlight to the listeners that there are lots of different other episodes that you talk about, such as the rise of Nazism in the United States, a

and how that idea of freedom of speech was not really for everyone there. But there is a lot, I guess, to unpack there. But I do like to ask you one final question. And I know that you're a historian. Historians usually hate to talk about the future. That's okay. It's fair. Yeah. So given that what's happening in the United States nowadays, how the administration is putting pressure on universities to limit the freedom of speech or freedom

Even deporting students who are not only students, but also people who have green card or legal status in the United States. How do you see, are you optimistic about the future in terms of at least that those liberal institutions that have been put in place can retain their independence and fight back?

I rarely get a positive answer, but I'm keen to know your thoughts. Well, you know, I wish I could be more positive. I'm not feeling very optimistic at the moment. It's very clear that the Trump administration has a plan to crush Trump.

institutions in the United States that could be sites of independence or opposition. They have always been very suspicious and hostile to universities because they see them as centers of progressive or liberal or woke

ideology, however they want to put it. And, you know, I think not only Trump, but J.D. Vance in particular, his vice president has said for quite a long time that universities are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. And I do think that part of what's going on is the is an ethnic and political cleansing of

I think they are starting by going after the most vulnerable people who are international students, who are students who have engaged in political protest over the last year and a half and may not have as much public support.

as others in the country who might be more tolerant of the crackdown that's taken place. I think that they're trying to instill fear

which is the kind of Trump notion of what is power. Power means that you make people fearful. And this might mean, you know, I do believe that they're looking to crack down well beyond people who have a complicated status in the United States, even if by law.

You know, they have are perfectly legally based. And, you know, universities, I think that they saw withholding federal funds as a kind of entering wedge issue.

to go after other sections of the university and other sections of the kind of progressive end of the political spectrum. And I, you know, I think their plan is to do a lot more. I mean, they've asked for dramatically increased funding for detention centers. And they're talking about, you know, sending American citizens away

Expelling them from the country, you know, if they commit, you know, especially heinous crimes. But being an enemy of the people is a pretty heinous political crime. So I'm really worried about this. Now, you know, there is pushback. I was at a demonstration on Twitter.

On Thursday in New York, and, you know, we had a pretty formidable demonstration that's happening elsewhere. I do fear that they're looking for an opportunity to call, you know, basically declare a national emergency and call out the army. I don't know how well that'll work, but, you know, they're basically going up against the

all sorts of expectations and institutions. So I think we also need to understand that this is not just an American thing. I mean, we are in an international illiberal moment. This is happening in one form or another everywhere, and the forces of reaction are being emboldened, empowered.

And I do believe that every place will have its own version of this. Some will be more extreme than others. But unless we do recognize this as an international phenomenon, and, you know, I've always been very hesitant to talk about historical analogies. You know, this is, yes, this is exactly what was happening here. It's, I mean, if I think about any period of time which seems like

to bear similarities, I would think about the 20s and the 30s, you know, when liberal ideas were under attack, when fascists and other kind of right-wing authoritarian regimes were coming into power, when the repression of the left was very widespread. And as you pointed out, one of the, you know, chapters in the book is

about what I call fascist pulses in the United States in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, you know, the very positive views of fascist leaders like Mussolini, eugenics and, you know, and the like. So I think this is worrisome, but I also am trying to be hopeful that in some ways the

gains that have been made over recent decades, the expectations that social groups have had in the United States who in the past have been marginalized but are insisting on being heard and who will be leaders of this, I think may end up making an enormous difference. Yeah.

Thank you very much. I think it was a good, I mean, the valid point you mentioned that it's unfortunately a global phenomenon. It's a very populist right-wing zeitgeist around the world. And I live in Australia and there's an election coming up on May 3rd. And there is one political party, one of the major ones, who's trying to copycat exactly what the policies in the United States are.

Fortunately here, the situation is a bit different. Nationalism in that sense never existed in Australia. And there's been a lot of pushback against even from people in their own party. But I've been in Australia for 10 years and I've seen things now. I'm seeing things recently that wasn't here. That you hadn't seen before. Yeah. And it's worrying. You're right. Yeah.

Professor Stephen Hahn, thank you very much for your time. It's a fascinating book, Liberal Interest. Thank you very much. It was terrific. Thank you. It was a great discussion. I appreciate your interest in my work. Thank you. I hope to be able to talk to you soon about your future work. Yes. Thank you very much. I'm going to write about socialism now. Great. I can't. No more liberalism.