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Only recently, almost four decades after his death, I discovered that my father still liked to have some of his friends call him "major." That was his ultimate rank in what was then known as the U.S. Army Air Corps, not the U.S. Air Force, for which he volunteered within days of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (He would, symbolically enough, die on Pearl Harbor Day in 1983.) Here was the strange thing, though: in our family life, my father essentially refused to discuss his wartime experiences as operations officer for the First Air Commandos in Burma. In the 1950s, he would even take me to World War II movies and sit without comment through those endless scenes of American glory and triumph, while I assumed that I was seeing World War II as he experienced it. But except for angrily denouncing a local grocer as a "war profiteer" (who knew why?) and refusing to take his family to a Japanese restaurant, his war with the rarest of exceptions was forbidden territory in the years when I grew up. Of course, male silence was then treated as a heroic trait. Perhaps, however, as Kelly Denton-Borhaug suggested recently at TomDispatch, my father had experienced some version of "moral injury" in World War II. All these years later, I simply don't know. But perhaps in some silent fashion, even though he fought in "the good war," he led me to the antiwar stance that I've taken when it comes to America's wars, from Vietnam on.
In that context, I'm struck today by TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis's description of her own father, Athan Theoharis, a man who did crucial research on the crimes of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In a recent New York Times obituary, Richard Sandomir described him as "a pre-eminent historian of the F.B.I. whose indefatigable research into the agency's formerly unobtainable files produced revelations about decades of civil liberties abuses under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover." Today, Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, offers a moving reminder of what an anything-but-silent and deeply involved father could teach his daughter about a country some of whose politicians were perfectly capable in his time as in ours of considering tossing democracy into the nearest toilet, of a world in which a major political party could move remarkably easily toward stolen elections and autocracy.
And there was one more thing that Athan Theoharis could offer her: that parents can use their own life experience to lead their children into at least the idea of a better world. Tom
Generations of Struggle
Lessons on Defending Democracy
My father, Athan G. Theoharis, passed away on July 3rd. A leading expert on the FBI, he was responsible for exposing the bureau's widespread abuses of power. He was a loyal husband, dedicated father, scholar, civil libertarian, and voting-rights advocate with an indefatigable commitment to defending democracy. He schooled his children (and anyone who would listen, including scholars, journalists, and activists from a striking variety of political perspectives) to understand one thing above all: how hard the powers-that-be will work to maintain that power and how willing they are to subvert democracy in the process. His life is a reminder that much of American politics in 2021 is, in so many ways, nothing new.
He grew up poor in Milwaukee, the son of an undocumented Greek immigrant who ran a diner out of the first floor of his home. He returned to his hometown in 1969 as a professor of American history at Marquette University. There, he would take part in political campaigns and local democratic efforts and, of course, raise my siblings and me. After he retired as a professor committed as he was to opening up space for new scholars and researchers he remained involved with the Wisconsin ACLU and its campaigns to protect democracy and civil liberties. He became the chair of the board and (how appropriate given this moment of voter-suppression laws) worked to oppose the 2011 Wisconsin voter ID law, while aiding the recall campaign against then-Governor Scott Walker.
Although it seems long ago, in many ways that battle over democracy in America's Dairyland set the scene for the Trump years and the national crisis unfolding around us now. In 2010, Wisconsin Republicans, fueled in part by a rising Tea Party Movement and having gained control of the state legislature and governorship, immediately passed a host of anti-democratic laws, while instituting regressive economic policies. This in a state that had once been a beacon of American democratic experimentation.
As anyone who visited our family would have learned on a driving tour my parents loved to offer, Milwaukee had a first-class park system because of its (rare) history of socialist mayors. Although Wisconsin was also home to that notorious anti-communist of the 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy, and also the John Birch Society, it had striking progressive roots. However, in 2011, at a hearing on the state Senate's version of that voter ID law, one political-science expert testified that "this version of the bill is more restrictive than any bill we've had in the past" Indeed, if this bill passes, it would be the most restrictive in the United States."
That same year, a major campaign to recall Governor Walker began, partially in response to an "austerity budget" aimed at poor Wisconsinites. It would slash pensions and health benefits for public-sector workers and impose new statewide restrictions on union collective bargaining. When that budget was first introduced, Democratic legislators and this should sound familiar, given recent events in Texas fled the state to stave off a vote in its senate, while thousands of protestors besieged the capitol building in Madison. For a moment, Wisconsin commanded the attention of the nation.
That recall campaign unfolded over 18 long, bitter months, with Walker eventually holding onto his governorship. Mitt Romney, then on the presidential campaign trail, lauded him for his "sound fiscal policies" and swore that his victory over the recall would "echo beyond the borders of Wisconsin." And he was right.
More than just a win for a beleaguered politician, the Wisconsin experience signaled a growing anti-democratic strain within the Republican Party and American politics coupled with an extreme economic ideology that benefited the rich and powerful. Even then in the years when Donald Trump was no more than a businessman and TV show host that ideology was already masquerading as populism. And in doing so, it echoed the development of so-called welfare reform more than a decade earlier, when former Governor Tommy Thompson's "Wisconsin model" laid the basis for ending welfare as Americans knew it.
My father watched the fallout from these events with grave concern. For more than 50 years, he had researched and exposed how the FBI's surveillance programs threatened civil liberties and weakened democratic expression. He knew what was possible when the levers of government power were in the wrong hands and recognized the emergence of the attack on democracy earlier than most. He taught us that wherever you were was ground zero when it came to voting rights and, sadly enough, the truth of this has only become clearer since his passing. Indeed, right now, amid a wave of voter suppression laws unseen since Reconstruction and the continued obstructionism in Congress, the fight for democracy is everywhere and, whether we like it or not, we're all on the frontlines now.
A Multi-Racial Democracy from Below
American history is punctuated by eras of dramatic democratic expansion but also of backlash, especially in response to any encouragement of a multiracial electorate coming together to lift society from the bottom up. In the wake of the Civil War, Reconstruction was a first great elaboration of American democracy. To this day, it remains the most radical experiment in popular government since the founding of the republic. After 250 years of slavery, the share of Black men eligible to vote across the South jumped from 0.5% in 1866 to 80.5% just two years later. In many of the former Confederate states, this, in turn, at least briefly inaugurated a sea change in political representation. In 1868, for instance, 33 Black state legislators were elected in Georgia.
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