national myths, national psychoanalysis
We need to grasp why the more progressive side of mainstream politics utterly failed in challenging this appeal. I will suggest it was based on an inability to acknowledge harming, to admit that such destructive anti-democratic forces are and have always been part of our legitimated political structure. That is, we can think about how this inability to fully face and work through the history of slavery and genocide is related to the inability to admit that economic exploitation—the use of others to make a profit—involves harming, especially when unchecked.