In the Author’s Own Words — Professor George A. Gonzalez
As a publisher, the Peter Lang Group has the pleasure of working with a huge variety of authors. Some might be considered the ‘traditional’ academic whilst others might share knowledge gained in a more corporate environment. We see academic titles come to us that are the culmination of many years of hard work, and we see those that have been created as an impulsive passion project inspired by a single external event.
Every author, and every title, comes to us after a different journey.
It would be all too easy to think that for some subjects such as politics, education, and media, that they are a valuable read for only a fixed point in time. These are all areas that constantly undergo change after all. Politics and the media certainly never sit still. Here at Peter Lang though we believe that the titles we publish have value far beyond their publication year. Even when the landscape changes, titles from the past can still inform, educate, and support current research. Some titles offer their readers a framework in which to evaluate current events.
Professor George A. Gonzalez shows exactly this in his post below, demonstrating how points made in his titles published in 2021 and 2022 can support the exploration of current political events in the U.S.
So, in the author’s own words…
Disclaimer: The views and opinions below are the authors own and are not representative of the Peter Lang Group. We invite open discussion and response posts on all our blogs.
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It is summer 2023 and the 2024 U.S. presidential election is in full swing. Former President Donald J. Trump is the leading Republican presidential candidate and is making public appearances in his bid to return to the White House.
In my 2022 book Star Trek and Star Wars: The Enlightenment and the Anti-Enlightenment I make the following assertion:
Today, former President Trump and much of the Republican Party invoke hate (xenophobia, white supremacy) and unreason (the putative theft of the 2020 election) to mobilize the public against socialism, social justice. A Republican “victory” in 2024 may mean the end of democracy in the U.S.
Trump — in his effort to recapture the presidency — has taken an open turn toward Nazism. During a June 2023 campaign event sponsored by the religiously conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, Trump publicly propounded: “This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists.” This perfectly parallels Hitler’s war against “Bolshevism” — which in practice meant Nazi dictatorship, and the subsequent persecution and ultimate liquidation of Jews, leftists, and other targeted groups.
Significantly, Trump is expressly invoking the Nazi anti-Bolshevik program — promising “a new law” for so-called communists. The first steps toward the Holocaust were Nazi laws targeting Jews, political dissidents, and other “suspect” groups — stripping them of their citizenship and setting the stage for their harassment, imprisonment, and execution.
If the public today is blind to Trump’s open allusions to Nazism, Hitler, and the Holocaust, it is because Hitler’s and the Nazis’ core principle of anti-Bolshevism has been embraced in the U.S. in the form of anti-communism. In my 2021 book, Star Trek and the Popular Culture: Television at the Frontier of Social and Political Change in the 1960s, I explain:
In the aftermath of World War Two the U.S. state picked up the baton of Anti-Bolshevism from the Nazis. The American anti-Soviet mobilization became known as anti-communism. . . . Anti-communism is the idea of the monolith of global communism/communists — a sinister, dastardly, disciplined unitary movement not to be reasoned with.
This sets the stage for Trump’s 2023 open reprisal of Nazism. As I explain:
By eliding any criticism of Nazi anti-Bolshevism the American establishment (both major political parties, the major media) has in effect tried to whitewash Nazi ideology. The Holocaust is not something endemic to Nazism, but simply a grave political mistake on the part of Hitler and the Nazis leadership — misguided anti-Semitism. (When in fact Nazi anti-Semitism was directly the product of its anti-Bolshevism — Nazi hate of Bolshevism spurs hate of Jews, who are viewed by Nazis as its propagators.)
I conclude by observing that for anti-communists (anti-communism) “Hitler and his government are not to be judged on their political program, but on the number of people they murdered.” This opens the door to Trump’s public embrace of the Nazi (Anti-Bolshevism) program.
The Star Trek original series episode “City on the Edge of Forever” (1967) indicates the unequivocal threat of Nazism. One of the Enterprise’s crew members (Doctor McCoy) inadvertently goes back in time and prevents the U.S. entrance into World War II. The result being that the Nazis win the war, which subsequently destroys the future. (“Your vessel, your beginning, all that you knew is gone.”) In Star Trek and the Popular Culture I go on to point out that “the Star Trek franchise has bucked the U.S. media trend of eliding the dangers of Nazism — pointing to the hate, political violence, and virulent myopia at the core of Nazism. Star Trek expressly argues that Nazism poses a profound threat to civilization.”
George A. Gonzalez
Professor of Political Science
University of Miami
