Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

Content Warning: The guide and source text discuss hate speech, racism, enslavement, racial and gender prejudice, genocide and displacement of Indigenous Americans, anti-Black violence, and systemic inequalities through American history. To refer to the collective of Americans who are not of European descent, Heather Cox Richardson uses the phrase “people of color,” which this guide preserves. Both the guide and the source text are specific about race and ethnicity where applicable.

Using a false or mythological history to influence people’s ideologies or perceptions of the country is a key strategy Richardson identifies in The Throughline of Authoritarian Sentiment in US History. In her foreword, Richardson says that after World War II, social scientists, historians, and philosophers rallied to explain how authoritarians in that era “harnessed societal instability into their own service” (10). These professionals identified that the “key to the rise of authoritarians […] is their use of language and false history” (10). These two strategies work in concert to convince people of the validity of an image of a mythological past free from the social struggles of their present. Especially in Parts 1 and 2, Richardson discusses how American politicians have manipulated this strategy to maintain power, leading to a trend toward

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