churchwell and her look at the phrases america first and the american dream. their discussion on the political situation in great britain and the e.u.. bill nelsontor gives his farewell address on the senate floor. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," sarah churchwell discusses her book "behold, america." churchwell, your

book is "behold, america." you start out your acknowledgments by saying that this is not a book you planned to write. prof. churchwell: i actually was writing a book about henry james and then politics efforts happened. i think a lot of people have that reaction to the outcome of the 2016 election. for me, i had a very strong feeling that some of the ways that people were reacting to trump's rhetoric, in particular his use of the phrase america first in his campaign slogan in the way that was picked up, and his unusual use of the american dream, a much more familiar phrase, that's the stories that were coming out in the media and the commentary were inaccurate. they were distorted. it seemed to me that those meanings were very alive in the kinds of ideas that trump and his advisers were putting

forward. i thought it was important to bring up the prehistory of these i thought it was important to bring up the prehistory of these phrases. brian: why have you been doing this research? prof. churchwell: i wrote a book about the great gatsby. i did a deep dive into the world of the 1920's, especially what f scott fitzgerald was encountering in new york. the way all this really began was we think of the great gatsby as the quintessential novel of the american dream. but we realize -- we do not realize that that was not a catchphrase when he wrote that book. if you had said to him in 1924, are you writing a book about the american dream, he would have said, what exactly do you mean? fitzgerald was not familiar with that phrase. it did not become a catchphrase until the 1930's. i was also in a tangential way looking into the history of the phrase. what it came to mean. something i found striking was that the book that popularized

the phrase, nobody seems to notice that he used the phrase to mean the exact opposite. he said the american dream is a dream of high wages and motor cars and houses. not the dream of social mobility. it is a dream of higher aspirations. higher ideals. this founding ideals of the nation. in fact one of the details that , i like the most from that book is that he says in 1931, his symbol of the american dream is the public library. the library of congress. the general reading room. he says that is the perfect

symbol of the american dream. it is a space provided for the betterment of individuals, free and supported by the government. rich, poor, black, white, christian, jew. everybody is there to improve. he says that is the american dream. i think pretty few people would first think of a public library when they think of the american dream. brian: take us through your childhood in chicago to living in europe. prof. churchwell: i grew up watching bugs bunny and sometimes i say i took a wrong turn at albuquerque. i did not intend to move there, it just sort of happened. i went to england as an academic. i studied english literature at princeton. that is where i did my phd.

i have been gradually moving east from the chicago area where i grew up. i did all of my schooling in the new york area. then took this job in england over 20 years ago. thinking i would do it for a few years and come home again. but events overtook me. i learned that, and i was young enough that i did not understand it, i thought you could go have an experience, pack it in your back, and take it home with you like a souvenir. i did not understand the ways those experiences are transformative. you are not the same person on the other side. that changes the way i look at america. i think i have this stereo view now, to use an audio metaphor. this kind of insider/outsider perspective. hearing what people outside of the usa. knowing our own national myths of national values.

they say travel is broadening. certainly has been from a. brian: what is being director of the being human festivals like? prof. churchwell: it is a lot of fun. the festival is the uk's only festival of the humanities. the idea is a simple one. we invite researchers from all over the united kingdom. any university and even independent researchers. to think of creative and celebratory ways to share with the public their research into any area of the humanities. it is there to showcase this area of research that people think of as self-involved or a luxury, that does not have any real meaning in people's lives, any daily value, to show them how much humanities research is important.

how much change their idea of their identity. we try to bring that alive in a fun way. get the researchers off campus, out into the community. we encourage them to do simple things like pop quizzes, walking tours. creative things that get people read connected with the ideas behind humanities research. it's a lot of fun. brian: here is some videotape from january 20, 2017. >> from this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. from this day forward, it is going to be only america first. america first. brian: have you ever heard anybody say britain first? prof. churchwell: they are just

starting to say it on the back of trump. there has become a britain first movement. i am happy to say it is not gaining very much traction. as your question implies, it does not really work the same way. when trump said he had a new vision to govern the country, that was very untrue. america first is not a good idea. it is not a new vision. that is something i go into great detail in the book. the phrase does not even begin with charles lindbergh, as many people said it. it all but ended with them. it actually began in 1915 when woodrow wilson urged america to stay out of the first world war. he campaigned on that slogan. so did harding. he tried to pass a permanent protectionist tariff. think about that.

in the name of america first. it was invoked to keep us out of the league of nations. to keep us from ratifying the treaty of versailles. there was this idea that we would be giving up our sovereignty to european overlords. there was this cabal of european elites and globalists who would want to take charge of america. that isolationist strain and political protectionist strain of america first is a century old. it was very associated with some other ideas that trumps advisers have thought to bring brack. the idea of economic

nationalism. that was a phrase used around the america first debates during the treaty of versailles. that is what steve bannon has said he believes in. that he was promoting with trump. these are very old ideas. they are not new at all. in many ways, trump and the gop are playing right out of the republican playbook of the 1920's. brian: you said the sucker punch for those who thought this woman was more ready for the white house is that a female candidate did not even carry the female vote. a staggering 53% of white women voted against clinton and for the man who brought misogyny kicking and screaming into the light. you obviously feel strongly. prof. churchwell: i have not hit my opinions about this. i think it's an advantage of being an academic and a historian and not a reporter.

i think what you have to do is to allow your political passions of values and beliefs to be spoken explicitly. i'm not trying to hide where i came from. but you cannot let it skew your vision of the facts. you don't get to cherry pick your evidence. that is what being trained as a good historian and scholar is all about. that does not mean i don't have views on what those facts are. i do my utmost to be intellectually honest and tell the truth. brian: where do you vote? prof. churchwell: in the state of illinois. brian: how can you do that when you have lived in 20 years for london? prof. churchwell: i have an absentee ballot. but for this election i went home and voted early.

brian: let's go back to august of 1944 some video of charles lindbergh talking about america first. caller: in the past, we have dealt with a europe dominated by england and france. in the future, we may have to deal with a europe dominated by germany. we deserve to keep america out of war. we must take the lead and offering a plan for peace. that plan should be based upon the welfare of america. it should be backed by an impregnable system of defense. it should incorporate terms of mutual advantage. but it should not involve the internal affairs of europe. brian: why did so many people get upset about charles lindbergh? prof. churchwell: that was a

rather benign version of some of what he said. if you listen to that out of context, does not seem particularly upsetting. except for a couple of things. by that point, it was very clear, even in america, the degree to which have clear was persecuting jews in particular but also communities. no one knew the extent of the atrocities, but they knew the camps were there. they knew there was terrible violence. americans were aware of the nazis doing very bad things. and lindbergh was aware. to suggest that we might have to deal with the germans is already problematic for someone who does not want to support the persecution of entire communities. that is an appeasing idea.

in other speeches, humidities more clear. he said in his first radio broadcast in 1939 but the conflict of europe was not a conflict of white races needing to band together to repel an asiatic intruder. he said if that were the case, america would need to come to the aid of the other white races. it is explicitly eugenicist. about who is supposed to be in charge. he said if we have to band together as the white races, then america should play its part. but he said, because it is just the battle between two white races, then america should stay out of it. the implication being very strongly that it did not matter which white race was in charge, even if it was the nazis. that is problematic.

brian: have you decided to stay in europe forever? prof. churchwell: no i have not. i learned not to make plans about forever. certainly, as events have continued to shift around me, i'm even more reluctant to make those plans. brian: do you have a family? prof. churchwell: i have a husband. a british husband. when we got married, i said you have to be able to move to america. he was happy. he made a joke about getting a green card. he has a slightly different view of that right now. but he is as angry as i am about what is going on and i do not think he would want to live under the current government of the u.s.. he would be an immigrant. it is a pretty hostile environment for immigrants, even the british. he doesn't want to be a part of that. he doesn't believe in what is happening here. brian: you feel very strongly

about what is going on in britain. i want to show you some video where you are talking about a man who is very prominent in the british political system. prof. churchwell: i also find it extraordinary that anybody finds his antics and buffoonery amusing. the comments he made about libya, a country mired in civil war, he said it has nice beaches that would be good to invest in once they cleared up the dead bodies. that is not a joke. it is not funny. it is not appropriate for a foreign minister of great britain to say. he should have been sacked instantly. brian: boris johnson, you are talking about. why are you any happier over there? prof. churchwell: i am not. i'm not happy about what is going on there as well. for me it is not a binary. i did not leave america for political reasons.

i was an economic migrant. i went for a job. and then my career started and i married a brit. but i am angry about what is happening there too. these assaults on the basic tenets of democracy are happening there too. the catastrophic, farcical negotiations over brexit are very worrying. i don't know who is working out contingency plans. on march 29 when brexit happens, nobody has any real sense of where the british economy will be. there is a very real possibility that the british economy will fall off a cliff. i know people who are trying to figure out where they have passports for other national eligibility. i became a dual citizen.

i got british citizenship in the spring of 2016 so i could vote in the european referendum. i did not want to be disenfranchised of the place i had lived. i cannot actively vote on the things that were affecting me and my loved ones. i thought i would have all of these options. i got that wrong as well. i thought very much that suddenly the two countries i loved decided to jump off a cliff together. brian: here is donald trump on the campaign trail. you read tweeted a mussolini quote but not know who it was. "better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep." >> it's ok to know it was

mussolini. it is a very good quote. a very interesting quote. i know who said it. what difference does it make? it is a certainly very interesting quote. >> do you want to be associated with a fascist? >> no, i want to be associated with interesting quotes. brian: what are you hearing? prof. churchwell: the idea that it is an interesting quote but it is separate from being spoken by mussolini as part of a fascist platform, that is a disingenuous thing to say. i do not think he believes that for a second. of course he admires the strong-arm tactics of mussolini. he clearly mimics him in many ways. he wants military parades. he has demanded that cult of personality. making jokes about being president for life. there are many reasons that he

would admire and emulate mussolini. and you see him not repudiating that idea. he is not stupid enough to walk straight up and say i am a fascist. i would support fascists values and ideologies. he knows he would get too much pushback for that. so he walks up to it but tries to dodge the bullet. brian: do you ever find anybody in your classes -- i assume you're still teaching? prof. churchwell: i do not teach much as well. mainly postgraduates. and i work on fitzgerald with my that i do a lot of work around that with my students. brian: you find anybody in london who likes donald trump? prof. churchwell: no. he is all but universally reviled in the united kingdom. i assume there must be a handful

of people who admire. but no, he is absolutely, and not just by the liberal elite, he is widely reviled in the united kingdom. brian: so when you and your husband are talking about donald trump together and you both don't like anything about him, how do you work your anger out? [laughter] prof. churchwell: i worked mine out by writing a book. and going around and doing a lot of talks. trying to get people to understand what these coded statements are about. why i think trump presents such a danger. i think my husband is happy for me to be doing that on put of us. he was almost as upset by the outcome of the election. brian: what does he do? prof. churchwell: he is a businessman.

brian: you have several people in your book that you have tell the story. one of them is walter lippmann. dorothy thompson. f. scott fitzgerald. who was dorothy thompson? prof. churchwell: she is the hero of my book. she was a foreign correspondent in europe during the rise of fascism. she was the first american reporter to interview hitler. she got kicked out of germany. she came home and had a syndicated column. she and lipman were the most influential columnists of the day. by 1939, time magazine said she was the most influential woman in america after eleanor roosevelt. she became the voice of anti-fascism in america.

in warning that it could happen in the u.s. brian: who are these people in this picture. prof. churchwell: that is dorothy thompson, her husband, the author sinclair lewis. he wrote the novel it can't happen here. that novel was very influenced by her european circle. the debates in the arguments they were having and the concern over what was happening in europe. he wrote a novel provoked by huey long, the louisiana senator. it's was a vision of what american fascism would look like. a lot of what lewis predicted his trump to a t.

brian: let's catch up with dorothy thompson first. >> the real issue between the foreign correspondents of the german government is the nature of journalists. the german government wants its own press. only to publish official news. news it's believes to be in support of the presence regime. it seems to have the attitude that the foreign press should also share this point of view. brian: you said she was american. where did she get that accent? prof. churchwell: she grew up on the east coast and lived in europe for a long time. she kind of sounds like katherine hepburn. she is talking about the freedom of the press. the idea that a free press is almost another branch of government. a cornerstone of democratic freedom. germany was involved in a wholesale assault on the freedom of the press. that is part of a fascist

regime. they are only going to have a naturally approved press that would share propaganda and stories that are flattering to the current regime. and would suppress anything critical. that is why people are so worried about any kind of assault in the -- on a press in the democracy. like trump or sarah sanders calling the press the enemy of the people. that is a very fascistic phrase. reporters are not the enemy of the people. it is a bulwark of american democracy. brian: how often has he actually done something to eliminate speech? -- free speech of the press? prof. churchwell: people are

going to have different views about how fox news plays into this. the complexity of the american debate over whether there is a liberal bias to the mainstream media and that is being corrected by fox news. in my view that is very inaccurate and distorted. when you look at the mainstream media, they are always having conservative voices. explicitly conservative voices. they hire conservatives. when is the last time fox news had a liberal on? fox news worries me. it does not make any attempts to be objective or balanced. their deliberate blurring of the boundaries between entertainment and news, that is always there excuse. that sean hannity is not pretending to be the news.

it is entertainment. to be a little bit academic, i would point out that walter benjamin, who was a german jewish refugee and a great philosopher, he talks about fascism as the aestheticization of politics. making it a spectacle. if you think about the films of leni riefenstahl. fascism as this impressive spectacle. i think fox is moving in that direction. and trump letting fox tried his statements. i find it very worrying. i think it is a bellwether for an assault on the press. brian: what is the difference between that and reading the new york times editorials everyday

and believing everything you read there. prof. churchwell: the difference is the washington post and the new york times have conservative voices. they are part of that conversation. they have those debates. they have ross douthat. david brooks. people who are making the conservative case. it is not clear to me that that liberal bias exists. that the truth has a liberal bias. people are doing their best to tell the truth. and on the other side they are not trying at all. brian: with billions of videos on youtube and abc, nbc, i can keep going. why do so many people get upset about fox news? prof. churchwell: it is creating

an echo chamber where people are only hearing distorted versions of what is happening. some big story will break. i will be able to think of an example of the top of my head. the new york times story about trump's inheritance being based on tax fraud. that was a big new york times story. huge investigative report. stood up on all kinds of ways. you see every contemporary media outlet leading with that story except fox news. they are telling you about the caravan. that is what i mean. their unwillingness to be critical of trump. it's what starts to make it look like a propaganda arm. a state agency. rather than a free and fair press. brian: but why do you care?

there are all these other outlets second to the other side. cnn is now viewed as someone who is always banging on trump. while fox's always supporting him. with the viewership so low, they only have 2-3 million people watching. prof. churchwell: well the vote was also low. there was evidence that people were influenced by what was happening on tv. trump was good at sucking up the oxygen on tv. anytime hillary was try to give some earnest policy speech, the camera would go to trump and his carnival.

he could say anything because it was outrageous and entertaining of people would watch it. brian: jeff zucker, who runs cnn, said that when we leave the trump story, our audience leaves us. so who is at fault? prof. churchwell: sure. we are at fault too. les moonves said that trump is bad for america but that he is good for cbs. in america, we have allowed our political coverage to be commercially driven. it has to have a competitive advantage. you do not see that in any other liberal democracy. in britain, they have outlawed negative campaigning. you cannot pay for television coverage. the state gives every party so many minutes.

there are all kinds of controls over what a political party is allowed to do. they do not have anything like citizens united. that is keeping all of that money and financial interests out of campaigns and out of coverage. brian: how do you deal with all of this when you have a first amendment? i assume there is no chance that will ever be changed. prof. churchwell: who knows. we did have a fairness doctrine. 1987i think is when it was overturned. it said you did have to present both sides of an argument. there was supposed to be some attempted objectivity. that was in place until reagan reversed it in the name of free speech. saying the fairness doctrine was somehow against free speech.

obama was asked about it and he said he had no intention to try to fight that particular battle. so i don't think it will be reversed in the near future, but that's not to say that it could not be. in the 1970's, the most trusted man in america was walter cronkite. the idea that today a journalist could have that kind of trust, that everybody knew he was doing his best, he did like it's everything right but people believed he was trying to be fair. now we have liberated everybody from that obligation. i find that really worrying. brian: what would you think of a fairness doctrine was applied to bookwriting. two -- brian: what would you think of ? prof. churchwell: it is applied to newspaper writing in the case of stories like a new york times story that i mentioned about trump's taxes. mostly by the lawyers. they will make sure that everything they say is not

defamatory or libelous. because they have to. but also, good reporting. i don't have to tell you about good reporting. you stand up a story by making sure it is not just one view or opinion. you make sure that the facts are robust. brian: you write about citizen kane in the book. why? prof. churchwell: trump has said it is his favorite movie. we can assess that as we will, but citizen kane was a movie that orson welles made specifically as an anti-fascists, anti-american fascists story. he saw william randolph hearst as the newspaper magnate who spoke on behalf of america. he would put america all over his masthead. he was an ardent isolationists. he thought america needed to stay out of european affairs.

he was the model for charles foster kane. wells was very worried about hearst's decision to meet with hitler's. he felt that hearst was a latent fascist. he made citizen kane as a satire is that kind of cult of personality. the way wealth can drive power politics. brian: 34 seconds of citizen kane. >> the next governor of the state. with one purpose only. to point out and make public the downright villainy of political bosses and machines. now under complete control of the government of the state. my first official act as governor of the state will be to appoint a special district attorney to arrange for the indictment, prosecution, and

conviction of boss geddes. brian: trump aside, people have said this greatest movie ever made of america. prof. churchwell: i think it is. it has a lot of reasons for that claim. but it is interesting to think of how trump plays into it. that scene shows why his admiration for the film matters. that's how he presented himself. that giant picture of himself. the cult of personality. the way in which he wants to be loved as a dear leader. not as the current political incumbent who will be removed. that is not the way he wants to view things. brian: here is some footage from a german-american nazi rally in 1939 in madison square garden.

before we got into the war. >> i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands. one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. brian: what was your point of using this in the book? prof. churchwell: to point out that there was a very active american fascist movement. it was associated with the phrase america first. lindbergh did not create this. on the contrary, there was a long history. they had a lot of traction. the american nazi party had 20,000 supporters who came to a rally at madison square garden.

that rally was for george washington's birthday. and there are people giving the nazi salute. the point is to make it clear that it can happen here. we have this tendency to think we are inoculated. our democracy is a special. that we are immune to fascism. that is not the case. history shows that it isn't. brian: this is from your book. "riots in new york when the ku klux klan and american fascists clashed with onlookers in new york. seven men were arrested, one of whom was 21-year-old german-american fred c trump. the "c" stood for christ." why did you put this in here. prof. churchwell: there is a very open question about what

trump knows of this history. he is not a big reader. but he says all the time how much his father taught him. he said over and over again that his father taught him to believe in gene theory. which is to say, and you can look at the interviews, there are dozens he has given over the years, he believes when superior people meet, they produce superior people. that is a eugenicist view. he does not use that word. but it was very prevalent view in the 1930's. fred trump was arrested with five self identified klansman. it was a normal memorial day parade. the clan had controversially been allowed to march. and then am riot took out.

the police made six arrests in queens. five for card-carrying klansman in the six was fred trump. his later record in race relations would not suggest that he was there to protest the clan. we cannot say he was a card-carrying klansman, but i think it is fair to say that he grew up where this is common. this was a worldview. this eugenicist view of america first. that a white protestant man was more american than people who are not like that. that other people were less american. i certainly think donald inherited that worldview. that's what i'm trying to show there. brian: did you find any reason by his middle name was christ? prof. churchwell: it was more common than we might think at the time.

that was maybe an unfair dig, but i could not resist it. i do think that trump's narcissism is so blatant and so disabling. it is messianic. the way he comes in and says only he could save america. only he could reverse the economy. it just kept making me think of donald as well. brian: when you were growing up, what kind of family did you have an winnetka, illinois. prof. churchwell: my parents divorced when i was very small. but they still stayed in the same town. so i was one of those lucky children of divorce who had a father who was still very active in my upbringing. my sister and i grew up with my mother, but we were only a few blocks away from my father, who remarried. brian: what did they do? prof. churchwell: my mother did all kinds of things. and my father was a lawyer who became a businessman. brian: at what point did you develop your strong views? prof. churchwell: good question.

i have become more politicized as an adult than i was as a young person. i was very caught up in books. i was happy living in the world of imagination and literature. my political convictions were always there. i was raised in a household that taught me these values and that they are fundamentally american. but i was not as able to fight for those as i have been as an adult. brian: why did you write a book on marilyn monroe? prof. churchwell: he came out of my phd thesis. i got interested. i ended up with a crusading spirit. all of my books have ended up with that in some aspect. i became aware as i was reading of these biographies of her that

there were these consistent lies that were being told. i had this feeling that i wanted to be the truth teller. a debunker. to say this is what we need to understand. the way the cultural myths can be distorted and ways we are not aware of. in retrospect, i realize that all three of my major books have been about the american dream. i have been writing about it all along. i only became conscious of that with this one. brian: you say this was a significant moment in donald trump's life. we have shown this several times. i want to get your take on it. the speck in 2011 at the white house correspondents dinner. >> we all know about your credentials. [laughter]

for example, just recently in an episode of celebrity apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from omaha steaks. there was a lot of blame to go around. but you recognize that the real problem was a lack of leadership. so ultimately you did not blame littlejohn or meatloaf. you fired gary busey. these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night. brian: many people have said that was the moment he decided to run for president. do you think that is true? prof. churchwell: i do. i cannot be inside his head. and i do not want to be. but i think there is a real possibility. but soon after that he launched the birther conspiracy. or he really got behind it.

the idea that obama was illegitimate as a president because he was not a real american. which goes back to these ideas of white nationalism. about who counts as a real american. just recently he said he wants to go after the birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th amendment. which was a specific reversal of the dred scott decision that said african-americans were less than american. that they had fewer rights and did not have access to full citizenship. and of course that goes all the way back to the constitution. the idea that black people were 3/5ths of a human. brian: i want to show a photograph. not pleasant to look at. but you write about it in the book. and ask you why? prof. churchwell: it is not pleasant to look out at all. i have several photographs like that.

i decided to include this after charlottesville. i was already writing this book. i was assuming a reader who knew how bad the kkk was. in my earlier drafts, i had just said that what was wrong with america first is that it was the slogan of the kkk in the 1920's. and then charlottesville happened. and we had a president who stood up and said there were many fine people on both sides of the protest. when one side was entirely made up of klansmen and neo-nazis. i do not view those is very fine people. that is an affinity that goes way back. i saw people dismissing the kkk as not that bad. just a few burning crosses.

nobody is defending harassment. how bad was it really? and i wanted to show how graphically it was. so we can understand the violence we are talking about. human beings who were burned alive in front of crowds. crowds of 10,000, 20,000 grinning white people. until 1934. we are talking about torture, dismemberment. was roastedgton over a bonfire for two hours until he died. in front of school children who were on their lunch break. this was in waco, texas. we have to understand that these are atrocities. and they were done in the name of america first. in the name of being 100% american. this white crowds in the forefront that you are allowed

to do something like that to people who you declared to be less than 100% american. in my view, we are not out of that cycle of violence. i am among those people who think that the summary execution of black people on the streets by police officers who are not held accountable is modern lynching. i really think that it is. we are speaking not long after 11 jews were killed at a synagogue in pittsburgh. the greatest massacre of jews in american history on american soil. the violence is real and it is still happening. it is happening by proxies. but it always has. it is in the name of these beliefs. we have a tendency to believe our democracy will save us. but also that we are benign. we treat violence as if it is an anomaly. i want to show how deep the history goes. brian: as a native hoosier, this

is hard to read some of this stuff, because the pictures from marion, indiana. you quote from a newspaper in indiana, that this photo was taken there. they were hanged from trees in the courthouse yard. they had been badly beaten. all of this picture shows. what stopped this? prof. churchwell: there were several things that finally grounded it to a halt. the kkk started to lose influence and power. brian: why? prof. churchwell: they had financial scandals. sexual scandals. that helped bring them down. they were infiltrating government. indiana had the highest concentration of klansmen in the 1920's. illinois was right up there. i cannot one up you on that.

people do not realize the extent to which it penetrated into the midwest. the extent to which lynching was traveling up. there were lynchings in california and oregon. they boasted that they had mayors from portland, oregon, to portland, maine. they had real political influence but then it started to wane because they had corruption scandals and sex scandals kind of --, as i say. then the crash happened. and people could not afford the $10 you had to pay to be a klansmen. and they did not have the spare time. and the targets of violence were shifting. the naacp was getting more access. rosa parks got her start as an investigator into lynching. finally, the federal government started to clamp down. roosevelt got involved.

more than two hundred anti-lynching bills were put on the floor of congress in the first half of the century and not one of them passed. but roosevelt finally got one. brian: i want to read this quote from your book to ask you why you put it in their what it means. "i am a nationalist. i am opposed to the league of nations. i am a nationalist by birth, my conviction, by thought, and for prudential reasons. when this country was established, it was a homogenous nation. we are not such a nation now. but a conglomerate of racial groups, and none outweighing any other. we are not people as the french are. or the italians. until we become homogenous in blood and purpose, we cannot

become the greatest nation possible. a distinctive race in the world. not america first in italy second. america only should be our slogan." prof. churchwell: i put that in there because the idea that america's once a homogenous nation racially that this wonderful bygone state should be recovered is totally untrue. america was never racially homogenous. there was the genocide of native americans. the small matter of the fact that we had forcibly imported black people from africa. and miscegenation happened from the beginning. this idea that we were ever racially homogenous is fancy and a dangerous one. what worries me is, we are hearing very similar lies.

it is a eugenicist argument. that we need to have it purification of the racial pool. that is a very aryan idea. something hit her would have been happy with. would'veing hitler been happy with. he got his ideas for his race laws from our race laws. the problem is now we have people prepared to use violence to bring about something that is impossible. you cannot have racial purity. that ship has sailed, if it never existed. if it ever existed, it is gone. you cannot reverse biological genes. unless you are prepared to wipe out entire populations of people. that is the implication. that is why people are talking about this being fascism. it is a slippery slope to actual genocide.

to trying to remove to people you see as tainted, by not being you are enough. not being the right kind of people. who keep your nation from being a fantasy of homogenous blood. which doesn't even mean anything. they will use violence to try to bring about this fantasy. brian: you sound like you are not so sure that you ever want to come back to this country. prof. churchwell: that is not true at all. i'm just trying to show that this was always there. we fought this before and we can fight it again. i believe very strongly that if you love america, you do not walk away from it. i am not ceding this country to those people. i will not give it to them. i believe profoundly in the ideals of our nation. we never lived up to them. but that does not make the ideals there bad. it means that people have never been good enough to make them real, but it is the striving to create a more perfect union.

to try to protect liberty and justice for all. i believe totally in those, and i'm not walking it away and giving it to these guys. donald trump cannot have my country. brian: but you do not live here for 20 years. prof. churchwell: that was an accident of profession. if i felt like my moving back here would actively turn the tide, i would do it in a heartbeat. brian: would you come back and run for office? prof. churchwell: i don't think so. i think my skills are used that -- better in a different way. i am far too outspoken. i don't think everybody needs to run for office. we all need to put our shoulders to the wheel in different ways. brian: is living in britain a better deal than living in the u.s.? prof. churchwell: that is a good question. i don't know. i have done it for different reasons. i like the career i have and i'm notere,

sure i could have done it here. brian: why not? prof. churchwell: because what american academia and what it supports and what media wants and needs its professors to do is different. there is more room for being a presence on television there. that stuff has developed for me there, and it is not clear i could have something similar here. brian: one last question. you call this book "behold, america." who named it? prof. churchwell: it is my editor who came up with using the phrase. but the phrase comes from one of the earliest iterations of the american dream. it was a commemorative service in honor of ulysses s. grant. it is a speech that show the

american dream was being used at that time to describe those older founding ideals. ideals of self-government. opportunity for all. a set of aspirations. that is what the american dream means for me. not free market capitalism. that is an important line through the book. i was struggling to find a title for this book because it is about ideas. it was not obvious how to do that. it is my editor who said what about behold, america. here is this history. she is actually an american as well. we thought there was a very nice pun there. it works in two ways. you can look at america in different ways. you have an american flag next flag.azi

so you are beholding and america you have not seen before. but it is also a statement to look at itself. look at this story. brian: our guest has been sarah churchwell. the book is "behold, america." we thank you very much. prof. churchwell: thank you. ♪ >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments on this program, visit our website. programs are available as c-span podcasts. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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