While rambling and incoherent, Donald Trump’s speech to his followers on January 6, 2021, made clear that we were witnessing the birth of a new "Lost Cause," a recurrent phenomenon that has plagued modern history. Not only do Lost Causes turn lies into common coin, but they also forge deep and lasting myths.
NEW HAVEN – On January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, US President Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 election, famously addressed a gathering of followers who then joined the mob that attacked the US Capitol. While rambling and incoherent, Trump’s speech nonetheless made a few things clear: leftists had conspired to steal the election by fraud, and the mobs summoned to Washington on his behalf would need to “stand strong.” The implication was that violence might be necessary, because “you’ll never take back your country with weakness.”
Trump then made Vice President Mike Pence the target of collective scorn for refusing to send the Electoral College process back to the states. If “weak Republicans” would not step up and participate in overturning the results, Trump vowed, “we will … never ever forget.” For the next 4-5 hours, in the most recorded event in American history, the world watched as a new “Lost Cause” was born in violence and spectacular lies.
There have been numerous Lost Causes in modern history, usually following defeats in war, where the vanquished glorify their loss as a source of pride and shared animosity toward the victors. Three big Lost Causes have plagued world and American history. Following their bloody defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the French exhibited an intergenerational cultural need to avenge the loss. Then, following Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Nazis gained traction by blaming Jews and leftists, who were depicted as “poisons” in the blood of the body politic. And then, of course, there was the American South after the Civil War, when the narrative of the Confederate Lost Cause yielded a potent brew of twisted history and white supremacist ideology.
NEW HAVEN – On January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, US President Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 election, famously addressed a gathering of followers who then joined the mob that attacked the US Capitol. While rambling and incoherent, Trump’s speech nonetheless made a few things clear: leftists had conspired to steal the election by fraud, and the mobs summoned to Washington on his behalf would need to “stand strong.” The implication was that violence might be necessary, because “you’ll never take back your country with weakness.”
Trump then made Vice President Mike Pence the target of collective scorn for refusing to send the Electoral College process back to the states. If “weak Republicans” would not step up and participate in overturning the results, Trump vowed, “we will … never ever forget.” For the next 4-5 hours, in the most recorded event in American history, the world watched as a new “Lost Cause” was born in violence and spectacular lies.
There have been numerous Lost Causes in modern history, usually following defeats in war, where the vanquished glorify their loss as a source of pride and shared animosity toward the victors. Three big Lost Causes have plagued world and American history. Following their bloody defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the French exhibited an intergenerational cultural need to avenge the loss. Then, following Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Nazis gained traction by blaming Jews and leftists, who were depicted as “poisons” in the blood of the body politic. And then, of course, there was the American South after the Civil War, when the narrative of the Confederate Lost Cause yielded a potent brew of twisted history and white supremacist ideology.