“The first thing every totalitarian regime does along with confiscation and mutilation of reality is confiscation of history and confiscation of culture.”
– Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

Introduction

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When I first walked into the administration building of an Alabama community college in the 1970s, it was a bit of a shock to see the gigantic portrait of George Wallace hanging on the wall. Being young and not so politically inclined, and just maybe a little stoned — it was the 1970s after all and I came back to college after five years of playing rock and roll — I didn’t really understand the feeling. I just remember laughing out loud. It seemed cartoonish to me.

Attending classes, reading text books and library books and learning about infamous characters like Stalin of Russia in the Soviet Union, and Adolph Hitler in Germany, I learned about the “cult of personality” of authoritarian dictators, and my initial reaction came into focus. Only it was no longer funny.

Then in the 1980s when I conducted a senior project for the Political Science Department at the University of Alabama and wrote a research paper about the state’s political history, reading and citing the work of Southern historian C. Vann Woodward of Yale, I began to understand. He claimed Alabama under George Wallace was the closest thing we had in America in the 1960s and ’70s to a “totalitarian state.”

Wallace literally controlled in many cases who got jobs, and who did not. He was famous for remembering the names of people he met, and even had his staff research entire families so he could remember your mother’s name when he shook your hand. But that was not the only reason he did it. Either you and yours were loyal to him, or he would set the world against you.

I saw this in person a few times while working for newspapers when covering his last term in office from 1982-86. The time and research that went into choosing a new judge in a town like Bay Minette was suspicious to me then. It took me awhile to figure out why.

Transferring from the community college to UA in Tuscaloosa with an even larger library collection to devour, then working for newspapers, I realized why Republicans in the state at the time were screaming “corruption” and trying to form a competitive party. Like the other states in the Deep South, Alabama was a one party state for decades – the Democratic Party.

Wallace was instrumental in creating community colleges in the state — not so much to help poor people or minority students, although it eventually did just that. It probably saved my life, as I write in my memoir: Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again.

Like Huey Long in Louisiana, after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed in the 1960s, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote, Wallace was inspired by the votes he could get by building schools and roads to help poor and working people, and he used state taxpayer money to reward his friends and supporters with “spoils,” like giving them a contract to build a school, or making them president of a community college.

He passed “sin taxes” to pay for the construction, beginning with a 2-cent tax on beer.

Established in 1949, George C. Wallace Community College, with campuses in Dothan and Eufaula, is one of the largest and oldest community colleges in the state, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

In 1947, as a freshman member of the Alabama House of Representatives, Wallace introduced legislation that was signed into law as the Alabama Regional Trade School Act of 1947. One of the first trade schools was established in Dothan, in Houston County. Wallace requested that the school be named George C. Wallace State Technical Trade School, in honor of his father, George Corley Wallace Sr., whom Wallace admired for keeping his family together during the Great Depression and for insisting that his children continue their education, as the story is told.

But it was not a portrait of his father that he hung on the wall in every community college in the state. It was his portrait (see above).

Governor “Big” Jim Folsom agreed and named the institution in honor of the elder Wallace.

Pledging to keep schools in the state segregated with his stand in the school house door at the University of Alabama in 1963, Wallace came to dominate the political landscape in the state for three decades.

Wallace was not a stupid man. He had serious political ambitions and learned from history how to achieve them. Deep down I do not believe Wallace was an evil man, like Hitler. He was simply a political opportunist who did what he had to do to get elected and hold power. He never got rich while in office, but his brother Gerald Wallace did. He often held sway over Wallace’s political appointees and state departments, especially the Highway Department, which was rife with corruption.

But we are no longer talking about the corruption of Democrats like Wallace.

Donald Trump takes the cult of personality and the propaganda of authoritarians to a whole new evolutionary level of sickness, and this is not lost on other politically ambitious Republicans. I’ve marveled at seeing conservative men who railed against corrupt politicians their whole lives, but fell in with Trump without a whimper. Trump not only takes the cake as the most corrupt politician ever. He devoured the entire bakery.

Related: How Existential Anxiety Leads to Authoritarianism

If you ever visit Washington, D.C. looking for a museum experience, you might check out the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Or, if you just find yourself online and wondering why Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are banning books and closing libraries, you might read through some of the stories like this one on BOOK BURNING in the 1930s.

“Book burning has a long and dark history,” the author writes, and especially under the Nazi regime in Germany. On May 10, 1933, perhaps the most famous book burning in history took place in Berlin.

“Book burning refers to the ritual destruction by fire of books or other written materials. Usually carried out in a public context, the burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question.”

Bashing Education, Closing Libraries

These days we are not reporting on book burnings, per se. Just banned books and the closing of libraries, with some politicians bashing the very idea of the need for an education. To some ignorant souls higher education seems anathema to their religion. Republicans know this so they go along with the show to get the votes, especially from the one million Baptists in Alabama, nearly a fourth of the population.

The Republicans began to take over power from the Democrats in the South in the 1980s, when the Moral Majority helped get Ronald Reagan elected president in 1980. The televangelist Jerry Falwell’s movement helped turn Baptists away from their history as strong supporters of the separation of church and state, and turned them into a conservative political force.

Now the South is full of one-party states, with all three branches of government controlled by one party — the Republican Party. Their leaders are taking pages from Wallace’s playbook by running a spoils system, and creating even more of a culture war than the 1960s, attacking learning, history and culture.

As we find ourselves here perched precipitously on a knife’s edge — trying to decide to keep a democratic republic, or implement a fascist dictatorship instead — it would seem instructive to consider the question:

Why Do Totalitarian Regimes Often Target Culture?

In this short film, a Holocaust survivor, an Iranian author, an American literary critic, and two Museum historians discuss the Nazi book burnings and why totalitarian regimes often target culture, particularly literature.

It’s Happening All Over

All one has to do to find out what’s going on all over the country on this front now is a simple Google search: “library closings,” or “banned books.”

The wave of book bans in Florida by another authoritarian personality, Governor Ron DeSantis, are now widely reported and known. But would it surprise you to learn that it’s also going on in Jonesboro, Arkansas? Temecula, California? Jamestown, Michigan? Prattville and Cullman, Alabama?

According to the American Library Association, a record-breaking 2,571 unique titles were challenged in 2022 alone, a 38 percent increase from the previous year. The organization recorded 1,269 demands to censor books from various groups and individuals, compared to 729 challenges counted in 2021.

“Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police.”

In some places, where public affairs is no longer discussed in open public forums, like the backrooms of Alabama politics, the public backlash generated by book bans is leading to another discussion that is about to have a massive impact on public education all across the state and country — and along with it a potentially dilatory impact on the future of American democracy.

If you can keep the people uneducated, are they not even more easily manipulated by politicians willing to spread fake news, disinformation, propaganda, distortions of reality and lies to gain votes, power and wealth?

Culture Wars

It’s the board of education, stupid.

When Republican Glenn Youngkin was running for governor of Virginia in 2021, Steve Bannon and other Republican operatives were trying to find a way to help him beat a popular Democrat, Terry McAuliff. They seized upon something he said in a debate, and turned it into political gold.

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe said.

That appeared in millions of dollars worth of political attack ads on television and the web. And of course Youngkin won, upending a long trend of Virginia voting Blue.

This is not lost on other Republicans, like DeSantis in Florida, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or some Republicans in Alabama.

Last year, the Florida legislature passed a parents’ bill of rights, HB 1557, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which was later signed into law. The bill prohibits classroom discussion and “instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” for grades K-3 or that is not age or developmentally appropriate.

Under Arizona HB 2439, parents will have access to all available books in school libraries and to the specific books borrowed by their children.

Illinois HB 5505 would give parents “the right object to and refuse any unit of instruction or required course of study that directs, requires, or otherwise compels a student to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any of the specified tenets.”

Missouri HB 1858 goes further, not only giving parents the right to review all materials but allowing them to request information about who is teaching their child and to “visit the school and check in on their minor child during school hours.” Parents can then “bring a civil action for injunctive relief against the school district or public school” for any violations, which could result in the temporary withholding of state formula funding.

Florida’s HB 1055 goes a step further, allowing schools districts to install video cameras and require that teachers in those classrooms wear a microphone. Parents, school employees and other specified entities would be able to request to view footage; however, it cannot be used for teacher evaluations and is only intended to ensure the “health, safety, and well-being of students in the classroom.”

In March, the House Republicans passed the so-called “Parents Bill of Rights” on a vote of 213-208, although the legislation is dead on arrival in the Senate and President Biden would veto it anyway.

Politico called HR 5 (118) “the cornerstone of the GOP’s education agenda and mirrors several policies that have been introduced or adopted in states across the country. It outlines what parents have the right to in their children’s education, including access to teacher-parent meetings, school budget materials, curriculum and books, and the opportunity to testify before a school board.”

The Education Department, which Trump and other Republicans have often threatened to dismantle, was quick to criticize the bill.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is happy to work with House Republicans on the issues most important to parents. … Unfortunately, looking at Republican officials’ track record on education, it’s not rooted in the reality that parents are living in,” an Education Department spokesperson said. “Whether it be cutting funding for public education, ignoring tragic gun violence in our schools, or banning books to fit a political agenda, Republican officials are focused more on playing politics than helping our parents, kids and schools.”

Down in Alabama

In Alabama, Republican legislators are threatening to cut the funding for the state Archives and History Department for hosting a lecture on gay rights, using the latest political dog whistle by calling it the result of a “woke liberal” political agenda.

A right-wing website released a story quoting Alabama House Majority Leader Scott Stadthagen, R-Hartselle, and state Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville, with both denouncing the event as promoting a liberal political agenda.

“The fact that state money, buildings and resources are being used to promote a liberal political LGBTQ agenda flies in the face of our state’s values,” Stadthagen said. “If this is what they are doing with the taxpayer money that is sent to them, perhaps we should re-reevaluate their allocation in the next budget.”

Kiel said he doesn’t support using taxpayer dollars to fund something the vast majority of the state does not want.

“The woke liberal agenda is invading our culture every day,” Kiel said.

Dr. Maigen Sullivan, co-founder of the Invisible Histories Project, held the lecture about gay and trans history and said the event was funded by a grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance, not taxpayer money.

“I really just went over things that are quite black and white,” she said. “It’s just a record of history, and so I find it mind-boggling that anyone would interpret facts as a political agenda.”

The Human Rights Campaign in Alabama issued a statement about it.

“Alabama has a long history of attempting to erase the histories of marginalized individuals, so the latest statements by certain lawmakers is no surprise but equally concerning. As the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, we stand firmly with the ADAH in their commitment to preserve the history of ALL Alabamians. We’ve already lost countless historical accounts and stories through past attempts to erase history. Events like these are what preserving history truly looks like.”

Closing Libraries

From Hanceville near Cullman, Alabama, I recently received a private message from Robert Davis, a long-time History professor who helped build the Wallace State Community College genealogy program into something of academic renown. He was fired and the department shut down after he was quoted in an article in The Cullman Times newspaper expressing concern over an email that seemed to include a master plan to close the library.

A story appeared under the headline: Wallace State library’s future in question.

“The future of the Wallace State Library may be in question as the college plans for a number of new building projects and continues to expand its ‘digital learning footprint’,” the local newspaper said it had “learned.”

Officials said a number of future building projects will be discussed the next month while considering the long-term goals of the college’s overall campus master plan, although the meeting and unveiling of the new master plan were later canceled abruptly.

Multiple people expressed concern over the plans and what that meant for the future of the library. Some, including Davis, expressed concern that the school may permanently close the multi-million dollar library, and move students to a smaller room on campus with a couple of crappy old PCs and an internet connection, and call it a “learning center.”

An email obtained from college president Vicki Karolewics, who uses the title Dr. in her name even though her degree is a Doctor of Education degree, not a Ph.D., held in very low esteem in academia, said the college would no longer purchase any new “bound books, pamphlets or any type of paper documents.”

“From today forward, it is the President’s decision not to purchase any more bound books, pamphlets or any type of paper documents for the WSCC Library. Since we will not have accommodations to house items of this type in the near future, I will no longer approve requisitions containing documents of the type,” the email reads, seeming to indicate that the new master plan includes closing the library.

Could it be that someone has other plans for the building? Maybe a business school named after a famous local Republican donor?

Several officials at Wallace State, including Karolewics, and the community college board, failed to return phone calls, emails and social media messages seeking comment.

After this story was published, Russell Moore, who lists his title on Facebook as Communications and Public Affairs Coordinator at the Alabama Community College System, called me back and said he was aware of a story in the Cullman Times newspaper, and blamed “a disgruntled former employee” with sending the paper staff emails. But he said he was unaware of any plan to close the libraries in the state’s community colleges.

“I am unaware of that,” he said, in what we call in the news business a “non-denial, denial.”

A number of college libraries, particularly within the two-year community college system, have been gravitating in the direction of moving to learning centers and away from print books and periodicals, according to the newspaper reporting, “due, in part, to the cost saving benefits virtual libraries. The library at Snead State Community College began making the switch nearly a decade ago…”

In later stories, the college denied it was closing down the library, or the genealogy program, although the professor who built the program, Robert Davis, was escorted out of the building and off campus by armed guards.

“We are told that the brick and mortar libraries in Alabama Community Colleges were to be shut down, even demolished,” he told me in an interview. “Each college will have one room and some terminals as a replacement.”

Libraries are often the buildings most used by the students, he said, including at Wallace State.

“They work on projects, study in groups (and as individuals),” he said. “Some expensive national databases will not replace the resources that the state of Alabama has spent millions to create for the students and the general public.”

He wonders how shutting down the libraries will impact college accreditation, and he worries about the jobs provided for some of the most needy students.

“The poorest students (often) work in the libraries as work study students and many of these students go on to do great things,” he said.

Community college libraries such as Northeast Alabama also serve the general public including scholars from across the country, he said.

“I have read that the library at Wallace State – Hanceville is nationally recognized for helping scholars of all sorts, including genealogists,” he said. Research on Bessemer for Hulu’s “The 1619 Project” and the upcoming book “Say Ancha” drew upon research at the library.

“The community college system is proposing to demolish old buildings that are going unused because of enrollments that began declining before Covid,” he said. “New buildings will be constructed” (with new contractors, hired by the Republicans now in charge of the new spoils system).

On Friday, June 23 of this year, Davis received notice from the head of academic affairs at Wallace State, Beth Bownes-Johnson, that the genealogy course he was to be teaching would be removed from the fall schedule. The news came less than a week after the paper reported on the uncertainty of the library’s future.

“Due to low enrollment and the uncertainty of the plans for the library at this time, I have been instructed to remove Genealogy from the fall schedule until further notice,” the email read.

The college administration then claimed it has no “immediate” plans to do away with the library, which houses a significant genealogy archive.

Davis first began voicing his concerns about the future of the library to the college president in June.

In an email, Davis urged Karolewics to reconsider her decision against book purchases, as well as his protest against rumored plans to relocate the library.

“Please reconsider the order against book purchases. If it is true that plans are being made to demolish the library building and to throw away the library’s million dollar research collection, I think that would be a terrible mistake. The library building is the most popular building on campus except those in use as classrooms. Replacing the building with one room in the 1970’s library building by the highway is doing the students no favors,” Davis wrote.

After that, the president terminated his part-time employment as an adjunct to keep the genealogy class and department going. He had retired as a History Professor last June.

“She had three armed security men in a riot vehicle escort me off campus with orders that if I ever came back I am to be arrested for trespassing,” he said. “My AEA attorney said that the president has the right to do that by claiming that in her opinion I am a physical threat.”

Interestingly, he said, about two months ago, the president of the college fully supported him and the library.

“Then everything took a complete 180 turn and the library staff was told that the multimillion dollar library, hugely popular with the public and the most popular building on the campus with the students, was to be reduced to one room in an old building and a couple of computer terminals.”

“I was kept on as an adjunct because the college had no other history teacher and to run the genealogy program that over 30 years I had built into a national gem,” he said. “We have been recognized by the Archivist of the United States, the LDS, and the American Association for State and Local History. I was staying on this summer and fall to create a permanent historical archives.”

That kind of national academic recognition is rare for a community college only offering two-year Associate degrees, which are often seen as technical schools and remedial education for students who attended less than stellar public schools in poorer communities in urban and rural areas in states like Alabama.

Perhaps it’s that history the Republicans want to mutilate, confiscate and erase?

An article in the Oxford American magazine could have alerted some politicians with clout over the community college system. It turns out the character of Minnie Pearl from Grand Old Opry and country music fame was based on a real woman from Baileyton, Alabama. The article was based on research at the genealogy collection at Wallace State.

Research was also done there for projects related to the “1619 Project,” a controversial New York Times Magazine series on the history of slavery in the United States.

In Hulu’s “1619 Project,” research at Wallace State included the history of the site of today’s Amazon Distribution Center in Bessemer, Alabama, Davis said.

Signs had been posted at each entrance of the library announcing that all scheduled genealogy classes were canceled until further notice. In the library’s basement, a second notice was posted on the door to the genealogy department announcing it would be closed until further notice, the newspaper reported.

Then in an another story, they ran a statement from college officials.

“Wallace State is not aware of the source of the sign indicating that the Genealogy Department is closed but that sign is incorrect and has been removed. The Genealogy Collection and its materials for research and reference remain open to the public and staffed during regular operating hours. Visitors should inquire at the Library’s main desk for access to this special collection.”

Vice president for students and chief marketing officer Kristen Holmes then said the college had no intentions of closing the department or denying public access. It is unclear as to who posted the notice on the genealogy room door, according to the local newspaper, but Holmes was adamant it was done without instruction from any college officials.

Holmes said anyone wishing to access the genealogy archives located in the basement of the campus library can request assistance from library staff or visit the front desk in the Bailey building.

It seems the publicity may have changed some minds, at least temporarily. It will be interesting to see what’s contained in this master plan, if it is ever publicly released.

Across the Country

Meanwhile across the country, budgets of colleges and universities are being threatened by a precipitous drop in enrollment during and since the Covid pandemic, as well as a concerted effort by Trump and other Republicans to bash the very idea of an education in public. The vast majority of Trump’s political base of voters do not have a college education, as pollsters have pointed out for years.

But that was not the start of the conservative political attack on higher education. Under George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove famously went on a concerted drive to de-liberalize universities, blaming “liberal professors” for creating the very voters they needed to beat. I was the victim of this campaign myself in the Bush years, screwed out of a Ph.D. and tenure at a prestigious private university by two conservative deans. The University of Alabama hired a new dean for the College of Communications who had been in the Texas Air National Guard with Bush when he allegedly went AWOL in 1972.

Related: George W. Bush’s Lost Year in 1972 Alabama

Alabama still has 25 community colleges. Is it the Republican plan to close down all the libraries?

In Prattville, Alabama, there has been a raucous public debate about whether to ban books with alternative lifestyle content, moving the books to higher shelves, or even hiding them behind the counter.

Prattville Library Board returns books to shelf, declines to move others

Debates are taking place in school board meetings across the country, with Trump supporting white parents demanding a curriculum white-washed of the history of African Americans and gay people.

Charter Schools

Republicans in red states are taking money from public schools to pay for “charter schools.”

In speech after speech, Trump has promoted “school choice,” a term that represents the allocation of federal public education funds to send students to whatever type of school fits their needs the best, regardless of the type (public, private, charter, homeschool, online, etc.). Trump’s plans to incorporate school choice into America’s education system are emphasized on his campaign website, which states he will “immediately add an additional federal investment of $20 billion towards school choice.” According to Trump, this will be done by reprioritizing existing federal dollars.

Christian parents have every right to home school their children or send them to private Christian schools. But many have joined in the conservative, Republican crusade to rid public schools and colleges of diverse ideas and content, and to take public, taxpayer money away from public schools and colleges to private, Christian schools.

Private Colleges

For months Birmingham-Southern College officials have warned of almost certain closure if the college does not receive a financial lifeline from Alabama lawmakers. But despite those warnings, the college’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously on April 5 to keep the private institution open, signaling either an act of faith or confidence in public officials, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Birmingham-Southern, a Methodist liberal arts college, has asked state and local officials for $37.5 million to remain open. Specifically, the college has requested $30 million from the state, $5 million from the city of Birmingham and another $2.5 million from Jefferson County, where the college is located.

But as a spokesperson for Alabama governor Kay Ivey declared, “The state has no plans to use the taxpayers’ public funds to bail out a private college.” As of publication, no bills have been filed in the Alabama Legislature to provide funding to keep the college afloat.

Since 2010, the college has looked to reduce costs while dealing with many of the same revenue challenges faced by other small, private institutions. Birmingham-Southern’s enrollment declined from more than 1,500 in fall 2010 to 1,058 in fall 2021, according to the most recent data available from the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

In some ways, the situation at Birmingham-Southern parallels Iowa Wesleyan University, which recently announced its closure. Bloomfield College is being absorbed by Montclair State University in New Jersey, and the University of Tennessee acquired Martin Methodist College to keep it open, to list just a few examples.

This trend is likely to continue, and the goal of an educated populace in a democracy could be at stake.

Conclusion

With moderate, mainstream Democrat Joe Biden in the White House, and leading in the polls, and with Democrats holding a slim majority in the U.S. Senate, democracy appears relatively stable at this time.

But with MAGA Republicans in control of the House, and now with a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court obliterating decades of established precedents, those who do not seem to favor the idea of a diverse democracy are still a threat of taking power in 2024.

As I’ve already predicted, we could face an “enthusiasm gap” about politics and political participation and activism in the next year, simply because many people are not going to get excited about a Biden-Trump rematch. Voter turnout is likely to drop from what it was during the existential crisis of Trump in the White House in 2020.

Many progressive Democrats are not happy about an 80 something white guy in the White House for another term. Some may gravitate to a third party or simply refuse to participate. Trump’s legal troubles could cause some drop in voter turnout for his agenda as well.

The American People are burned out on politics, and many are taking this opportunity to take a break and travel again after Covid restrictions eased up. Hey, I’m all for it. We all need a break.

Just remember:

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

This is a developing story and more may be added or more parts published in the future.

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