Now that Trump is going, we will have Biden with his call for “duty, honor, service, country.” In the wake of a global pandemic, abandoned industries, decaying infrastructure, deteriorating environment, and a declining standard of living, the 99% can be offered the promise they can merge with the glorious American democracy, the beacon for the rest of the world, even if this democracy is ruled by an oligarchy. Soldiers can kill and die for freedom-the freedom of Exxon-Mobil to invest anywhere in the world.

In this webinar, Yale Magrass and Charles Derber, authors of Glorious Causes, consider how elites galvanize people for war and bring them to adopt political-economic identities which contradict their rational self-interest. Their book offers historical and contemporary cases: Why poor White Southerners, few of whom might ever own slaves, fought in the bloodiest war up to its time to protect the right of a few thousand to own vast plantations with hundreds of slaves? How the Nazis gained control of one of the most developed countries in the world, not with a promise of personal prosperity, but “discipline, fidelity, and honor?” How workers abandoned after the New Deal came to identify with neoliberal Reaganist elites who exploit them? How America came to be torn between 1) “cosmopolitans” who, in a broad brush, tend to identify as secular, value critical thinking, preach multi-culturalism, accept racial diversity, entertain state welfare systems, and are cautious about going to war and 2) “traditionalists" who, again in a broad brush, typically champion community, authority, God, family, and their race and nation.

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Yale R. Magrass is Chancellor Professor of Sociology/Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He is the author of eight books and about 80 articles, and frequently makes public appearances and presentations.

Charles Derber is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. An internationally renowned scholar and public intellectual, he has written 26 books, translated into eight languages, and more than 100 articles, including op-eds for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Newsday, Truthout and others. He has spoken on hundreds of television and radio shows.