Protracted Counter-Revolution - Gerald Horne on Slavery, Settler Colonialism, Texas and US Fascism

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

In this episode we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Gerald Horne to the podcast.

Dr. Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

The author of over 30 books, just a few of Dr. Horne’s most notable titles include The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, Fire This Time, Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary, Confronting Black Jacobins, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, Race to Revolution, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro American Response to the Cold War, and White Supremacy Confronted.

In this particular discussion we focus on Dr. Horne’s recent book The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of US Fascism. Given that it is over a 600 page book, and our interview was just about an hour long we did not get into many of the threads in that fascinating text. The book examines the specific set of relations and contradictions that led settler separatists to create the Republic of Texas, as well as those that led to the return of Texas to the Union, Texas’s role in the confederacy and the relationship of Texas settlers to slavery. It also examines the completely genocidal position Texas settlers held towards indigenous populations, and their relationship to Mexico which abolished slavery all the way back in 1829, exacerbating some of these contradictions among their slaveowning settler population in the northern part of Mexico that we now know as Texas. The book also extends beyond the Civil War period to look at the development of Jim Crow in Texas after Reconstruction. We strongly recommend people pick it up if they’re interested in learning more about the forging of some of the most fascistic tendencies in US History.

We also talk to Dr. Horne about some of the critiques of his book The Counter-Revolution of 1776 and about the right wing assault against the teaching of US history in this country.

This is our sixth episode we’ve published in this short month of February, and a lot of hours of reading, developing questions, interviewing, and editing have gone into that. The best way to support our ability to continue to bring you this content along with the ongoing study groups that we hold is to become a patron of the show. You can do that for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. And if you already support the show, or if you’re not able to support financially, retweeting, reposting, sharing, and liking episodes on social media does help to connect the episodes to more listeners.

Now here is our conversation with Dr. Horne on US History and counter-revolution.