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THE MONITOR

Professor Nigel Westmaas

The American Elections, the Threats to Democracy and the Academy


The upcoming U.S. elections present a moment of grave consequence, particularly if a candidate of alarming pedigree ascends to power. We are reminded of the peril of complacency and the failure to unify through the words of German pastor Martin Niemöller, who issued this somber reflection after his countrymen and women failed to confront the rise of fascism:


“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”


Niemöller’s cautionary words still echo today, highlighting the dangers of turning a blind eye to obvious threats. They harmonize with the insight from James Baldwin in Stranger in the Village: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Baldwin, with his typical eloquence, laid bare a chilling truth: that the price of ignorance is complicity in one’s own undoing.


As this election season looms, recent efforts such as the College's national elections response program (and its “what if?” engagement) underscore the urgency of community engagement, dialogue, and civic action. These measures are timely and essential, given the many assaults on democratic values we now witness: a deluge of disinformation, a resurgent and strategic authoritarian plan, increasing xenophobia, deepening polarization, and an open readiness to erode voting rights in plain sight—all while the planet reels from a climate crisis exacerbated by unbridled production of fossil fuels.


Historically, the rise of authoritarianism is tied to the manipulation of public sentiment. Sarah

Churchwell, in her work Behold America, notes how “reactionary populism in the United States has historically defined itself against the same enemies – urban elites, immigrants, liberals, progressives, and organized labor; and for the same beliefs – evangelical Protestantism, traditional ‘family values,’ and white supremacy.” It is an ugly cocktail, and one that has been served before, with disastrous results.



Spectacle, Deception, and Enduring Allure of Falsehoods


The present situation, where a notable portion of the electorate is willing to back a candidate marked by a history of open racism, xenophobia, misogyny, criminal convictions, personal vileness, and a readiness to use violence to seize power or remain in power as witnessed on the Jan 6, 2020 Capitol riot should be enough to induce a national crisis of conscience. The Washington Post documented over 30,000 false or misleading statements from this individual during his last tenure in office—a testament to how disinformation is more than a tactic, but a strategy to erode truth itself.


Yet, it would be simplistic to place all the blame on this presidential contender alone. The deeper issue lies within a society that permits and rewards such brazen audacity. This candidate draws support from institutional racism and powerful interests prioritizing profits over people, whose influence permeates the media, local and federal centers of power, and the most openly partisan Supreme Court in America's history.


But this tragic farce has a background in this country. One figure from American history offers a pertinent comparison: P.T. Barnum, American showman, businessman, and politician known for his influential role in popular entertainment (circus) during the 19th century, perfected the dark arts of deception and manipulation for the sake of spectacle. By 1930, the United States reportedly boasted 40,000 advertising agents, whose role had evolved from promoting goods to reshaping desires, beliefs, and even realities. Advertising was not just selling products; it was selling perceptions—a sort of “imperialism” over the public mind. Widely regarded as the “father of public relations,” Edward Bernays took the lessons of Barnum and elevated them to new heights, applying psychological theories to mass persuasion. Drawing from his uncle Sigmund Freud’s insights, Bernays understood that to manipulate the masses effectively, one had to appeal not to reason but to unconscious desires and anxieties.


The parallel to today’s disinformation machine is striking. Just as the public once bought patent medicines that promised miracle cures, they now consume political narratives carefully tailored to exploit fears and prejudices. And as Barnum thrived on the principle that “there’s a sucker born every minute,” so too do modern-day demagogues and media manipulators operate on the principle that lies, once launched, can easily outpace truth. To borrow an old adage, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on.” Around the same time as Bernays, Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated American aviator, was an outspoken antisemite and Nazi sympathizer. This reveals how disinformation and nativist ideologies have long intertwined in American society. In the 1930s the American Nazi Party, known as the Bund, was so active and influential that it held an"Americanization" rally in Madison Square Garden, drawing a crowd of 20,000 people in 1939. Anything familiar in this season?



The Academy's Crisis: Navigating Disinformation and Preserving Critical Inquiry


In the field of Africana Studies, which occupies a crucial space within the humanities, one finds the unenviable task of confronting the stark and brutal facts of history. The realities of genocide, oppression, systemic disenfranchisement, and racism are not abstract concepts but concrete, historically verifiable experiences that we must sift through with an unflinching eye. The very nature of this discipline defies neutrality, but demands that its scholars/faculty strike a often precarious balance between truth and interpretation—a balance rendered all the more fragile by the persistent attempts to undermine academic freedom (and even what people read) in today’s United States.


In this charged atmosphere, the role of academia assumes a heightened importance. Our institutions of higher learning, as repositories of critical thought, are called upon to expose and challenge the manifold deceptions that now permeate the public sphere.


Today, faculty, students, and the broader community face an inescapable imperative: to struggle to dismantle the machinery of manipulation in all its guises—whether it manifests in the flagrant distortions of political advertising, the insidious climate crisis denial, or the cynical and xenophobic rhetoric that promises to “keep out the immigrants” with its accompanying parade of manufactured threats and deceitful claims. Take Haiti, for instance as it is a country whose people have been in the news cycle of this presidential campaign. The presidential contender and his VP hopeful spewed a grotesque racist fiction suggesting that Haitians are eating pets. This vicious lie does more than just malign the Haitian community in Springfield Ohio where it was directed; it actively stokes the fires of xenophobia against Haitians living in the United States, perpetuating an insidious cycle of dehumanization and exclusion. And we must take pause on what Haiti means to the region and the world. This is a country that achieved the unprecedented in 1804 by being the first people to overthrow slavery and establish the world’s first Black republic. Yet today, it is a country ravaged by severe human rights abuses, many of which are the direct result of repeated Western interventions. These interventions have not only deposed democratically elected leaders but have also propped up a succession of gangsters and dictators, resulting in widespread suffering and the systematic erosion of civilian rights.


The essential question for the academic community, therefore, is not merely rhetorical but existential: How can we meaningfully address both local and global issues when falsehoods are not simply tolerated but entrenched in the public consciousness?


The mission of higher education rests on an unwavering commitment to truth. Yet today, we see national and international events not merely misrepresented but distorted through outright fabrications. The normalization of these distortions by professional news outlets—many of which uncritically elevate serial liars to the status of legitimate commentators without so much as a cursory fact-check—poses an existential threat to the integrity of the academy and society. Under such circumstances, will universities be able to preserve their role as bastions of rigorous inquiry, or will they be dragged into the same mire?


Now imagine, if you will, an academy where lying has received the highest sanction—enshrined within the very office of the Presidency. What then becomes of our role as educators? When we stand before our students, will we be implicitly licensed—or even obligated—to distort and mislead in our teaching, given that the most powerful office in the world has normalized falsehood as a legitimate form of discourse? This is not some distant hypothetical assessment; it is the grim reality of a potential standard now being advanced and endorsed by influential institutions and a significant portion of the electorate. If deceit at the highest level becomes the accepted norm, the implications for education, scholarship, and public discourse are nothing short of catastrophic.


The stakes are extraordinarily high. The influence of billionaires is already unmistakable. This election season has devolved into a theatrical farce, exemplified by a South African multibillionaire (Elon Musk) who has turned weaponized racism into a social media pastime. As a result, the democratic process risks becoming little more than cynical mockery at the expense of the disenfranchised. This consolidation of wealth and power not only distorts elections—it reshapes the cultural landscape, determining which voices are amplified and which are silenced, which histories are preserved, and which are erased.


In this context, the threat to academic freedom is clear. Research agendas could be twisted to fit ideological molds, with funding directed only toward projects deemed acceptable to those pulling the strings. What results is an environment where critical engagement is stifled, where dissenting or transformative ideas are starved of resources, and where the academy risks degenerating into an echo chamber for a dominant ideology intent on creating an authoritarian if not fascist society.


This is the grim reality we face: a reality in which the academy must decide whether to passively accept its descent into irrelevance or to mount a vigorous defense of its core mission—the pursuit of truth, sustained through rigorous verification and fearless inquiry.



Critical Hope


One of the most essential functions of academia in this moment of dread is the cultivation of resilience and, to borrow from the great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, “critical hope.” Amidst the fog of uncertainty and the pervasive climate of fear, it falls to students and professors to nurture a sense of possibility—a recognition that while the future is indeed precarious, it remains, for now, undetermined.


These looming American elections and the series of interconnected crises confronting the globe demand more than passive concern or a nod to the abstract goodness of civic duty; they require nothing less than active, vigorous engagement. The overwhelming dread that many feel is understandable, but it is precisely within the intellectual and institutional frameworks of academia that the potential for transformative action resides. It is the duty of students and professors alike to seize this potential, given their unique capacity to interrogate, to question, and to dismantle falsehoods.


To the extent that the initiatives launched by our college gestures in this direction, they are welcome. But we must be candid: they are insufficient. We must do more, and we must be willing to put our principles to the test. We must not overlook marginalized communities, including immigrants. This requires creating programs that go beyond theoretical engagement to actively involve these communities in practice. It means investing in interdisciplinary research that challenges the status quo and encouraging scholars to pursue work that is not just intellectually innovative, but socially impactful.


Now, imagine this: What if we were the first college in the nation to establish a discipline or field of study dedicated to the rigorous exploration of Truth in all its manifestations? Such an

endeavor would not simply be a gesture towards academic purity if there is such a thing; it would be a defiant stand against the erosion of facts and the insidious normalization of falsehoods. In a landscape where disinformation proliferates and mendacity is not merely tolerated but celebrated, the creation of such a discipline would serve as a vital corrective—a defender of inquiry committed to disentangling fact from fiction, reality from illusion.


This new field could potentially draw from philosophy, Africana, history, media studies, political science, and other areas, forging connections across disciplines to interrogate how truth is constructed, contested, and often deliberately subverted. It would oblige students and scholars alike to grapple with the profound implications of a post-truth society, to confront the deceptions that shape public discourse, and to seek out ways to hold power accountable when it swerves into the territory of outright fabrication.


But we are not there yet. These are dangerous times. As a Guyanese poet once observed, “real trouble, it would seem, has only now begun.” And if the academy cannot rise to this challenge, then it will have abdicated its most fundamental responsibility: to brighten the path forward in a darkening world.

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