In literary and historical analysis, presentism is a pejorative term for the introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past, but in current usage, it also means that only recent events are relevant.
Presentism exists in every aspect of today’s discussions; it is particularly useful to the progressive left. I first came to notice it during the Obama era when his supporters, to make excuses for policy failures and to protect Obama from criticism, they would say that an event was “unexpected” or “unprecedented”, when something exactly like it (or worse) had happened to George W. Bush just a few years distant.
I read an interesting comment the other day, I apologize for not remembering who said it, that captures a lot of the problem with presentism in its current form. When the media rushed to claim that July 4th was the “hottest day ever!” to scaremonger people, a scientist looked at this and stated, and I’m paraphrasing here: “Sure temperatures are a few degrees warmer than they have been in the past 200 years, but if you go back 100,000 years, it was warmer than it is today there was more carbon dioxide. There is a reason they pick the 1880s to start their charts and it all depends on which starting point you pick.”
It is that way with history as well.
Last week I read a remarkable article on the Daily Beast from a guy by the name of David Neiwert who has written a book on right wing extremism. Spoiler alert – the only extremism is on the right according to him. I’m not going to link to it here because it is presentism on steroids, but you can google it using the title How Wingnuts Made Violent Extremism the New Normal (posted on July 4th).
Wow. That’s not a pejorative title at all, is it?
In the article, Neiwert ties January 6th and the Tea Party Movement to Nazism, the Aryan Nation, the Klan, Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombing.
And you know what made it worse?
The election of a black president (who isn’t black, he is bi-racial). Neiwert states:
“By 2008, however, these protofascist elements had found a new focus: the election of a Black president. Suddenly, the hysterical fears about gun rights, fueled by a raft of fresh conspiracy theories, and paranoid claims about “government tyranny” were being circulated widely—and a fresh wave of militia organizing began.”
All that this movement needed was a “glorious leader” – and along came Trump.
“All of these protofascist elements finally found their long-missing key ingredient—their authoritarian need for a “glorious leader” around whom they could realize their dream of returning to national power—in 2015 with the ascendance of Donald Trump to the top of the Republican presidential ticket. The broad range of elements of the American protofascist right—the Patriots, the white nationalists, the conspiracists, and their mainstream enablers—all congealed in unrequited support for Trump and played a powerful role in his ultimate election to the presidency.”
For me, the most incredible aspect of this article is not that this guy is a left-wing loon OR that he has written at least two books (I don’t care enough to see if there are others). Neiwert claims he “witnessed an anti-fascist being shot by alt-right fans of Milo Yiannopoulos on the University of Washington campus” but was curiously, was not called to testify. He is referring to the case of Mark and Elizabeth Hokoana, who were attacked by ANTIFA protesters while waiting in line to see a Milo Yiannopoulos event on Inauguration night in 2017.
Mark sprayed pepper spray at the attacker, 35 year-old Joshua Dukes, and Dukes charged, grabbing Mark and Elizabeth, a concealed carry permit holder shot him. Dukes would not testify at the trial because he “doesn’t trust the justice system”. The Hokoanas were tried for first degree assault, claimed self-defense, the jury was hung, and DA decided not to retry the Hokoanas.
Neiwert also asserts:
“I covered nearly two dozen of these events over three years and observed their unfolding strategy for simultaneously intimidating the general public while generating a phony narrative blaming leftists—particularly anti- fascists and Black Lives Matter—for the brutality they themselves inflicted on these cities.”
Amazing revisionism.
Presentism and his focus only on alleged “right wing” violence (which Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Oklahoma bombing were not), causes Neiwert to leave lots of stuff out in his analysis.
Never mind that it WAS ANTIFA and BLM that burned and looted cities, occupied downtowns and created their own “autonomous zones”, and attacked federal buildings and installations, courthouses, and police stations. None of that is a “phony narrative”.
That’s enough, but he also leaves out about two decades of left-wing violence featuring the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the Students for a Democratic Society, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the violence, murders and bombings carried out by these groups. He focuses on J6 but leaves out the 2017 Inauguration Day violence in Washington where six police officers were injured and over 200 lefty loons were arrested. No mention of the two lawyers who tried to fire-bomb a police van at a BLM march in New York or the burning of St. John’s Church in Washington, and certainly no mention of the four bombings and a shooting that occurred in the Capitol from 1915 to 1983 – all carried out by left wing radicals.
Of course, he didn’t mention James T. Hodgkinson, a Bernie Bro, who shot Republicans at a baseball practice in 2017.
I’m sure he just forgot.
J6 was not an insurrection, Ruby Ridge and Waco were brought about by the US government and extremism is not a solitary and unique feature of “the right”. The fact is, the left’s history of violence is far more extensive and deadly.
My point is that there is no honesty on the left and this is why we can’t have productive discussions about our future.
C.S.Lewis also observed this bias of exaggerating the importance of contemporary events and disparaging study of the past as “chronological snobbery.”
I have reached this conclusion after wasting many years arguing points with my leftist friends.