On January 8th, Governor Kristi Noem was published in The Federalist, where she condemned the violence in the US Capitol the day before. She also said the Republican party had failed Americans and that that needed to change, and called the incoming democratic senators from Georgia communists. She said that few American children have been taught the history of our decades-long fight to defeat communism.
All this came a day after tweeting:
How do we define communism, socialism, fascism, and authoritarianism? And, how do these terms impact our civic discourse?
Nicholas Drummond, assistant professor of history and political science at Black Hills State University joined SDPB’s Lori Walsh to help us answer these questions.
Lori Walsh:
This is not new to you, and I'm sure you have many students who come into your class confused about some of these definitions. The political rhetoric is always high, it seems particularly high right now. So first I want to ask you how important are shared definitions in politics do you think? Where do you want to begin with that?
Nicholas Drummond:
Yeah, where do you begin? Words are fluid. I was thinking about this today. We may be reached a point in time where words like socialism mean something far different than they used to. Think about the word liberal and how different it is. Once we used to associate this with something like individual rights, probably something more akin to libertarianism, but now liberal certainly seems to mean something more than that. I think socialism may be evolving.
And this is true, not simply in terms of how politicians use the word, but when Gallup and Pew, actually some interesting studies, have shown that there are more people identifying as socialism or viewing it favorably. But when you ask them, "Well, what does that mean?" This isn't your grandfather's socialism, this isn't the government's control of the economy, it has something more to do with equality, fairness, and maybe government doing more for people... services.
So I wonder… words change, the meanings change, and we may be seeing that happening before our very eyes with socialism.
Lori Walsh:
So one of my questions is, from a practical application standpoint, is that a really good way to begin a conversation with someone with who you might disagree or who might trigger an emotional response, "Hey, when you say that word, what do you mean by it?" And really then listen, it seems like a good way to start. Yeah?
Nicholas Drummond:
Sure. I probably ran the wrong way with that. So I think what you have in mind the concern is that what we're doing is maybe a form of character assassination, we're trying to delegitimize someone's political views, right? If you call them a socialist or a Nazi, you're essentially saying that "Look, you are beyond the pale. I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe what you say is wrong but you mean well. I'm not even going to give you the benefit of the doubt there. You're just someone I'm not going to treat seriously at all."
And I think that does happen too often in politics, we tend to try to shut down conversations or to push someone, again, beyond the pale, by saying, "Look, you're a socialist. You're a Nazi, you're a bad, evil person." Yeah, I think that happens far too often.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Let's talk about the word communism. What exactly is it?
Nicholas Drummond:
Yeah, good question. Complicated because Marx and Engels themselves were always clear on this, communism and socialism get used interchangeably at times. Let's start with socialism. Socialism probably boils down to a kind of government control of the economy, in particular, what Marx has called the means of production, so factories, farming, the machines.
Communism, many see socialism... Marxists would say that it's a necessary stage you must pass through before you get to communism where you get into this question of property, and maybe property rights and no need to have that because the workers, the people will own everything in a kind of collective ownership. That's kind of the economic academic interpretation of communism and socialism, which is different than Marxism.
Marxism includes those things, encompasses those things, but also offers a narrative of world history. History is a struggle of classes, in particular economic classes, and there is a ruling class that dominates and it's controlled etiology to legitimize itself as the ruling class. So that's kind of the Marxism, socialism, communism, those are the terms and how I would best define them for you.
Lori Walsh:
What about this notion of democratic socialism? When you take someone like Bernie Sanders who self-identifies as a democratic socialist and has been called all kinds of other things, what do we mean when we say democratic socialism?
Nicholas Drummond:
Well, what do we mean? What should we mean? I think if we look at policies instead of words and labels and what they connote, what the policies are, are what, an expansion of Medicare, the Green New Deal, maybe healthcare or college education, daycare, these types of things.
Really New Deal, but maybe expanding upon those New Deal policies, which really makes things complex, I think, in terms of a political conversation, because there are these programs like social security, Medicare, Medicaid, that maybe also could be considered a part of that. But would we call that socialism or democratic socialism? I don't know. There's a lot of these gray areas now, it's very difficult to talk about politics.
Lori Walsh:
Right. A little Adam Smith and capitalism and him talking about the purity of capitalism being bad for people and that there would have to be checks on it. So tell us a little bit about capitalism, what it is at its core and some of the criticisms and celebrations of it?
Nicholas Drummond:
In the spirit of capitalism, there's an emphasis on rugged individualism. That individual, they have the capacity to succeed if they work hard. And when we think about the critique of capitalism, maybe the market doesn't always lead us to a better place, or maybe there are times when people are down on their luck and it's through no fault of their own, there are bad things that happen to people's lives and they do need assistance.
Lori Walsh:
So, Nicholas, I have this question and I'm wondering, we're talking about Marx and other philosophers, we're talking about Adam Smith, why do we go back that far? I mean, are there current thinkers that have vastly different definitions or are all our conversations founded on people like Karl Marx or Adam Smith or others?
Nicholas Drummond:
Hmm. I suspect so, and maybe it's because if we get back to the political arena, these individuals have baggage. And maybe it's really an indictment of our education system, that Americans don't know much about history. But we do know that Stalin was bad, Mao was bad, Hitler was bad, and we will then use these terms, communism, Nazi, and we throw them around at each other probably far too casually, without precision. I wonder if that's to our detriment, right? We want to take these terms seriously, know what they mean, and know what they connote. And again, Americans today, we just throw these things around too casually, perhaps.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, I'm reminded of some of the rhetoric now, and I've said this a few times already with four years ago and people comparing Trump to Mussolini. One of the concerns that people had then, and that people who dislike Joe Biden, is this concept of a slippery slope or this concept of if we do this in the days ahead like we're holding the line against something in the future, even though there are clear distinctions between all these people and the people they're being compared to in history.
So I just want to ask you about some of those comparisons and how they are shorthand for political action or they are umbrella terms for this is how we trigger an emotional response in people. How are these terms and comparisons leveraged in that way?
Nicholas Drummond:
Well, I think probably authoritarianism, right? When someone accuses, "What you're doing is fascist, it hearkens back to Nazis or Mussolini or Marx, Mao." What you're doing is you're assuming too much... or you're abusing that power, and I think maybe in that sense that it's effective and it does alarm people in a way that maybe they should be. Maybe we ought to be alarmed about abuses of liberty, abuses of power, and it's one way to get people to sit up a little bit taller in their chairs and pay attention. But certainly, it can be abused.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. When students come in, you're teaching political science and history at a time when there's a whole lot to talk about and what's happening in the world today, what are some of the questions that they ask you, and what are some of the ways that you see the way they think about government shifting?
Nicholas Drummond:
Hmm. Well, I just had my first class today and then they were a little shy, a little timid, but they will start asking those questions as the semester continues. I think on their minds more than anything is really the COVID and what this is doing in terms of their job opportunities, what that's looking like and what should government do or not do to help them. I think that's probably front and center on their minds. They see their future in this economy as being uncertain.
And that's something I want them to think about, I want them to realize that there used to be this intergenerational compact where every generation would make things better for the next generation, right? It was kind of, "My parents helped me, and it's going to be a better America waiting for me," but that isn't what's waiting for these kids. Probably starting with the Millennials, and even now more so than would be the iGeneration or whatever we call them these kids, Zoomers. I think that compact has been broken and they need to pay attention. They need to tune in and realized that their future is on shakier ground than it's ever been before for previous generations in modern history.
Lori Walsh:
Do you think that is making them more politically engaged or politically active at this point? Are you seeing signs of-
Nicholas Drummond:
I hope so. I hope so. What I think is making them more politically engaged is this generation is the first where the internet, the internet is all they've ever known. They can't imagine a world without it and they are constantly plugged in wherever they go, right? Social media, YouTube, TikTok is the new one. They are encountering politics all the time, even if they don't want to.
And I'd suspect some of them don't want to, they'd rather check out of politics and just put it to the side. But it's everywhere now, for good or for worse it's pervasive, and what that means for this generation, we'll see. I think it will... They're going to be a very interesting generation, the Zoomers.
Lori Walsh:
That takes me back to something that the governor's been talking about, and which is... I'm not picking on the governor because we hear it a lot, which is what kids learn these days and what kids don't learn these days, which is something every generation says about the generation that comes after. But there is this sense of what history do we know so as not to repeat it, what do they understand about politics, and what do we understand about their actual lives. Do you feel like there are great concerns for education in South Dakota K-12, as far as how students come to you prepared to learn?
Nicholas Drummond:
Hmm. Well, this is my third year in South Dakota, so I'm probably not the best person to ask, I'm still gauging that. At BHSU, we have a lot of first-generation students attending college, and they're great, right? They're eager to learn, they're here, they want an education. But I think this is probably true of everywhere, there may not be a deep appreciation of knowledge itself. I think for many students it's, "I want that piece of paper so I can go get that job."
But what keeps me teaching is we do get those golden students who, wow, I mean they're not only learning what I put in front of them, they bring stuff to me, right? When you have students who are engaged and they are hunting things down and they send you an email, "Hey, Professor Drummond, look at this, this is interesting." I mean, wow, that is what keeps me going every day, is those types of students who are fully engaged, excited about what's going on, and enthusiastically pursuing politics.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Before I let you go, any other terms that you think that you're seeing used kind of casually or without precision that you really think people should pay attention to, know this word before you sling it?
Nicholas Drummond:
Nothing comes to mind. I think we hit the... ones. Just the casual use of socialism, Nazi, fascist, authoritarianism. There may be kernels of truth, but I think when people stop and appreciate the full meaning of these terms in the historical context that something's lost there, maybe these aren't the best words to use.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Nicholas Drummond is an assistant professor of history and political science at Black Hills State University. Professor Drummond, thank you for being here today, we'll talk to you next time.
Nicholas Drummond:
Thank you.