Historian explains why more people aren't in the streets protesting

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat spoke with former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance for her Substack just as the United States began a bombing campaign against Iran.

Ben-Ghiat had spoken to Vali R. Nasr, an Iran expert from Johns Hopkins, on Friday about the possibility of a war. He noted that it was a war that Israel wanted and that it was something that Benjamin Netanyahu and Mike Huckabee advocated for. The latter to men believe in the rapid expansion of Israel as part of a Christian nationalist agenda for a holy war.

Vance added that those online arguing that this is a "wag the dog" kind of war may not be wrong, as both President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have their own reasons for a distraction. Trump is desperate to dodge the continuation of the scandal around his connections to trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Netanyahu is facing his own charges for fraud, breach of trust, and bribery in three cases.

The two celebrated some of the resistance efforts evident in Minneapolis and across the world, in which knitters have begun creating the Norwegian red hats that were a sign of resistance during the Nazi uprising.

Ben-Ghiat mentioned the "human chain" in Minneapolis that has been photographed, in which parents lock arms to help protect children entering or exiting their school and walking home. There is an ongoing concern that federal agents will continue to use children as bait against their parents, who may be undocumented.

In the history of resistance, Ben-Ghiat said things like rituals can involve every part of a person's body, hats on heads, arms linked, hands joined.

"You can use your body, which becomes like a mobile messaging unit everywhere you go to show your sympathies and show your support, even if you're not taking up arms against a foreign occupier," she explained. "And that's why, of course, that [the red hat] was banned, but how these things travel through time and space. And so here we have it being revived in Minneapolis. And that's very beautiful."

The protests in Italy against Silvio Berlusconi also involved those willing to link arms and surround the Ministry of Justice. In Hong Kong in 2019, when China decided to take it back, "these civic rituals that involve — embodied witnessing and making public space into a place of solidarity. And they're really moving."

Vance recalled those who were willing to link arms in Alabama during the Civil Rights era in which fire hoses and dogs were used as weapons against protesters.

Going through the history of resistance, Ben-Ghiat noted "the mothers of the plaza" and "grandmothers of the plaza" during the Dirty War in Argentina, gathered in public with nothing more than sticks with photos of loved ones who had disappeared.

"They didn't want them to be forgotten. So they came there and many of them had photos on sticks. And this spread to Chile. And in Chile, people actually had life-size photos of their loved ones or people they didn't know, but they were human rights activists disappeared," Ben-Ghiat said.

She said that America is "ripe" for a return to that kind of analog activism that includes public art and meaningful display.

Vance closed by asking Ben-Ghiat to help talk her off the ledge, noting she doesn't understand why there hasn't been a larger uprising.

"A lot of folks, I mean, we live in tough economic times. People are struggling to make ends meet. Yeah. I do understand that reality," Vance said. "But I also worry that we are yet again like the frogs in the pot being boiled, becoming complacent about Donald Trump's worst abuses."

Ben Ghait said that she looked at various movements and when such protests began in relation to movements against authoritarianism or fascism. She noted that in many cases, it took years before there was an uprising like the ones seen in Russia. Turkey was the same, she said, noting it was 2013 when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been prime minister for 10 years, when an uprising began. In Hungary, it began earlier because Viktor Orbán began changing the country's constitution immediately.

So, the two women urged those to join the March 28 "No Kings" protest, an organic movement that has grown since Trump began sending federal agents and National Guard soldiers into states.

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