"Inclusive Patriotism": How Radicals Are Retconned into Liberal Champions of the American Project by Citations Needed Podcast published on 2022-02-09T20:04:08Z "Why We Need Inclusive Nationalism," the journal Democracy declares. "Inclusion is patriotism of the highest order," cries The Washington Post. "Try patriotism," Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Smith proclaims. Contemporary liberals repeatedly tell us – amid events that should make us impugn the foundations of the United States, like police killings and the absurd panic over Critical Race Theory – that American patriotism is inherently good, only sullied by "bad apples" and the Hard Right, and that the Center, Center-Left, and sometimes even the Center-Right, must "reclaim" this proud patriotism from the clutches of those who harm its noble reputation. In this framing, everyone, from 19th Century abolitionists to Indigenous land protectors to anti-war protesters, no matter their positions on the American project, is hailed as a "patriot," serving to make America the very best it can be. Meanwhile, some popular PBS documentaries, NPR broadcasts, and many other forms of ostensibly "progressive" media alter the stories of radical figures and movements in the United States to promote this notion of "inclusive patriotism." Instead of highlighting and elucidating the political principles and goals of indigenous peoples, Communists, anarchists, socialists, anti-colonialists, and other activists, dissidents, and combatants throughout the past, mainline U.S. media offer a revisionist history in which these figures are either invisible or proudly American, Constitution-abiding liberals participating in some imaginary, high-minded national project. In this episode, we examine how media routinely defang radical political figures as noble patriots in service of reformism and incrementalism; how they erase the power dynamics between oppressor and oppressed; why there can't really be such a thing as "progressive" or "inclusive" patriotism–– and why that's perfectly okay for adults to accept, and how the fiction of inclusive nationalism exist to narrow the confides to what is political possible today. Our guest is organizer and writer Charlotte Rosen. Comment by Graeme Scott that reminds me of how the Mormon church posthumously baptizes people 2022-02-23T14:49:35Z Comment by SilkiePJ What's wild is that Roland Emmerich double downed on Stonewall. In 2016, Emmerich blamed the failure on "one voice on the internet who saw a trailer and said, this is whitewashing Stonewall. Stonewall was a white event, let’s be honest. But nobody wanted to hear that any more." 2022-02-20T06:12:00Z Comment by Joshua Marx 100% correct. The Empire lives on.. 2022-02-12T21:46:37Z