Heather Cox Richardson:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.

Joanne Freeman:

And I’m Joanne Freeman. Today, we’re going to talk about a subject which in a sense won’t be a surprise by any means because we’ve all in the United States and around the world been watching what’s been happening in Ukraine over the course of the last week. We’ve seen Russia invade Ukraine. We are watching strangely enough on a daily as it happens basis, thanks to technology, what’s happening there. And have, I think, many of us very strong emotions about what’s happening there. Some of that emotion is in part bound up with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The 44-year-old president who has been brilliant in the way that he is, among other things, communicating not just with the people of Ukraine but with the world using social media and a variety of other formats. So what he is doing is really pleading his case in the case of his people and highlighting the degree to which Russia is trying to crush them, is trying to destroy them, is engaged in this violent invasion.

And in appealing and highlighting this for his people and for the public, he’s making it quite plain that it’s the Ukrainian people fighting for their rights, and in a sense, fighting for justice against this Russian invasive force that is invading for no reason and is just violently bombing left and right. He’s making a case to the public, in a way that when you combine the fact that Ukraine is being invaded in the way it is, when you combine the fact that there’s no reason for it and it’s just Putin showing power. And Zelenskyy being so skilled at standing up and representing something of the spirit of what’s going on among the people of Ukraine, it seized Americans in a really powerful kind of a way. And for any number of reasons, partly Zelenskyy, partly because also there’s another component of this, which is in many ways, it’s embodying authoritarianism versus democracy.

It’s being acted out in front of all of us, and that component of it makes it even more meaningful. For all of those reasons, it’s become immediate and it’s grabbed us, and I think a lot of Americans among others are emotionally engaged with what’s going on there. Are investing a lot in it, personally, as to what they think about it, how they think about it, the amount of emotional and political space that it’s taking up. So what we wanted to do today was look at other moments when other figures from other countries seized the imagination of Americans, how it happened and what that suggests about the United States, and what it is seeing in these various leaders in these moments and what that shows about the United States itself.

Heather Cox Richardson:

One of the things that’s really interesting about this moment, I think is the fact that so much of the rise of fascism and of authoritarianism depends on the way it is depicted. They’re entire books written on how fascists use classical imagery, for example, Big Columns. They have moments in which somebody is called out and either punished or pardoned to illustrate the fact that the authoritarian leader has power. And there’s all kinds of ways in which there are visual and sort of mythic trappings of an authoritarian or a fascist leader. And what’s interesting to me about President Zelenskyy in this moment is of course, that he was trained as an actor and as a comedian. He was also trained as a lawyer, but in his career he’s been an actor and a comedian. And he has in a sense, given us a visual, a myth, a story of democracy, and it works. When they sit down at negotiation table for example, and on one side are the Russians who are working for the authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, and they’re all wearing suits, but on the other side of the table were the Ukrainian lawmakers.

Now these are lawmakers and they’re all dressed in battle clothes. It just was this incredible visual, or the fact that the Ukrainian parliament continues to meet in whatever clothing that they can pull together. Like Winston Churchill, continuing to have the cabinet meet in London during World War II. The fact that they are continuing to go about representing the people of Ukraine in a way that works so viscerally for the people watching it is in many ways, an illustration of a kind of democracy that it’s hard to illustrate democracy without it looking confusing.

Joanne Freeman:

That’s fascinating about the way you just framed that though, Heather. Is, I’m sure everyone has this image now in their head of these sort of stoic, pillars and the sort of hard-edged images that represent fascism. As you’re suggesting here, these people wearing either combat clothes or even just their normal everyday clothes, sweatshirts and fatigues, it’s the anti-authoritarian image, just as you’re saying. It’s relax and it’s personal. You see images of the landscape with his arms around a variety of the different people who he’s working with. It’s showing what democracy is, but it’s showing it particularly well because it’s the anti-Putin. It’s the anti-Russians. It’s the anti-authoritarian.

It reminds me of early America when Americans were like, “Well, how do we show what we are? There’s nothing. What is American? What is small, our Republican? How do we do that?” And part of the answer was, well, anti-England. We don’t know what it looks like, but it won’t look like that. So if we definitely do the opposite of that, that’ll make an impression. You’re absolutely right. That’s kind of what we’re seeing now in the coverage and communications coming from Ukraine. And just as you said, it’s remarkably effective. It’s setting a mood and an ethos, and sending a message in addition to communicating information.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and it’s interesting because as a leader, he was not overwhelmingly popular going into this invasion. That is, he was elected in 2019 on a platform of ending corruption and of sort of cleaning up the country. There was a lot of criticism that he wasn’t doing that fast enough. Now as having stepped into this role as the democratic leader, if you will. He has this extraordinary moral authority, that moment when the Russians are shelling and they’re moving across his border. And of course, I won’t say expectation, but certainly people would not have been surprised if the government had left. He did that wonderful video from the center of Kyiv, where he’s there with is top cabinet officials, and they’re all in clothing to where to fight. And he says, “We are all here. Our military is here. Our citizens are here. We are all defending our independence and our state, and it will be that way going forward. Glory to heroes.”

And in this era when so many of our lawmaker seem like they would hop a plane and get out of the midst of things the minute something happened, the fact that he’s like, “No, I’m standing for what matters. I’m standing for my people. I’m standing for my country, and I’m standing for democracy.” Has, as I say, taken on an almost mythic quality, although God helped them. It is not at all a myth, if you’re on the streets.

Joanne Freeman:

Just as you’re saying, for all of the reasons that you just said and the reasons before that I just said, there is a power to the presentation he’s making. The demeanor of it, the mood of it, the method of it. In that not only have people absolutely absorbed the message that this is a man standing with his people to defend democracy, but they’ve taken that to heart in a way that is precisely what he wants, right? He wants the world to side with him in this battle to defend democracy, and he’s making that message at a moment when democracy is under attack in many places, and certainly is under attack in many ways in the United States.

So it’s a message serving him and his people at this moment, and it’s a message with currency that is grabbing at Americans for good reason, and thus leads us to what we want to talk about today. There have been other moments in which a person and a message come to take on a meaning, not simply because of the events happening in that person’s country, but because of what’s happening in the United States and how Americans read that person and the message that they’re sending. So that’s what we want to explore today.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I think it’s probably important to note that we’re taping this on Friday, March 4th, and that the situation on the ground in Ukraine could change quickly in any number of ways. So when we first started talking about this, the very first thing that both of us said, and it might even have been in unison was Lafayette.

Joanne Freeman:

Lafayette.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I feel like every city in America has a Lafayette street or a Lafayette square or a Lafayette statue, or maybe all of the above. So who is he?

Joanne Freeman:

America’s favorite fighting Frenchman, I think is what they call him.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, that sums it up, doesn’t it?

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah, it does. So Lafayette, the Marquis de Lafayette was a person of noble birth. His family had long been involved in one way or another in military action. He is drawn to what’s going on in America during the American revolutionary period. He’s inspired by it. He wants to take part in it. So purely born of his sort of spirit of embracing what he sees going on in the United States at the age of 19, he comes to the colonies with a ship in 1777, bringing things with him. He arrives as young nobleman. He’s 19. I am here. Then he arrives, honest and inspired by what’s going on. And that just oozes out of him, right? He’s so enthuse and excited to be taking part in this. He says roughly at the time he arrives to the Henry Lawrence, who at the time was the president of Congress.

“The moment I heard of America, I loved her. The moment I knew she was fighting for freedom, I burned with the desire of bleeding for her.” Right? So that gives you a sense of this young man who’s like, “I want to take part.” Now granted, he also was ambitious and he was making a name for himself, but he was very much wrapped up in the American cause. This is happening at a moment when the French are pretty much saving the revolutionary cause for America, we were not necessarily doing very well. We desperately needed foreign aid, and it’s the French who came to our aid after we won a great battle at Saratoga. So Lafayette, individually as a person, was inspiring and charming in a way. He was young, he ends up sort of treating George Washington, the commander in chief, as a kind of father.

Washington kind of deals with him in some ways, an adopted son. The entire… I don’t want to quite say mythology, but the ethos of the whole thing, even at the time, grabbed people. But what happens is he goes back, the revolution, he fights at Yorktown. He serves his duty. He ultimately ends up going back to France and becoming engaged with what becomes the French revolution.

Heather Cox Richardson:

What I’m hearing from you about this is if I’m looking at this as a colonial, I would look at this as sort of the son of a noble aristocracy from France has seen the brilliant light of America and has come and sort of apprenticed himself to this older father figure to learn how to be a democrat. Am I making that up?

Joanne Freeman:

That he was learning how to be a democrat by fostering himself?

Heather Cox Richardson:

If I’m living in the colonies, I’m saying, “Look, this is nobleman from Europe who thinks we’re so great that he has sort of thrown off the trappings of Europe and is coming to America to learn how to reinvent democracy or reinvent government.” Almost Shakespearean. It’s almost like the Tempest.

Joanne Freeman:

It is, but I would say the other side of that, and this is an important side of that for where we’re going with Lafayette. Is that there’s this nobleman from the old world, who comes and is charmed and embraces us and our cause. What does that say about us? What does that say about our cause? So not only is he in a sense, walking away from what he had, the comfort and the ease and the aristocratic lifestyle he has in Europe, but he’s coming to a country where there’s no need for him to be here. He’s not drawn here by anything other than his desire to come and help. And he’s recognizing what’s going on in the colonies as being worthwhile, as being something that’s noble and that deserves to be fought for. So that spirit that’s coming off of him, particularly given that he’s an aristocrat, that really may matters to these colonial Americans, even at the time.

Heather Cox Richardson:

What does his family say about it?

Joanne Freeman:

Well, his wife wasn’t really charmed with it because she was pregnant.

Heather Cox Richardson:

He’s already married and she was pregnant?

Joanne Freeman:

He was 19. He was married.

Heather Cox Richardson:

She’s pregnant, and he gets on a boat to go fight a war for no reason?

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah. He does.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I would be really off.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, in his mind he had a reason, but yeah, he writes through all of these letters saying it’s really important. It’s really important. They’re fighting for Liberty. But yeah, he does.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Does he go back to her?

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Does she kill him? I’m sorry.

Joanne Freeman:

No. She does not kill him. But here’s the thing about Lafayette. So he’s loved during the revolution. He goes back to France, gets involved in the French revolution, is involved with the declaration of the rights of man. He gets basically what’s going on in France during in Revolutionary France that appears to have been born of the spark of Liberty in the United States. He’s part of that. So he goes on to France and in some ways, once again, makes Americans believe like, “Look at that. The French, they’re inspired by us. And there’s Lafayette our guy in the mix, and they are overturning monarchy and they are spreading the spark of Liberty set off by the United States. Look at that. He’s our guy, he’s our hero yet again.” And then in 1824, he’s invited back to the United States because the anniversary of the revolution is coming up.

And president James Monroe, given that the United States at this point is… I don’t want to say it’s in crisis, but lot going on though. Missouri compromise of 1820, a financial panic. He invites Lafayette back and says, “Why don’t you come back and just go on a tour and celebrate the coming anniversary of the fighting of the American revolution.” Which he does. And the outpouring of love for Lafayette would be hard to exaggerate. He’s met by thousands and thousands of people. People in some places take the horses off of his carriage so they themselves can drag a carriage that he’s in because he’s the beloved Lafayette. And what’s interesting about this, and the reason why it ties into what we want to talk about today is, some of that emotion and joy is absolutely bound up with the fact that he appears to be justifying and ratifying and celebrating, and proving the power and nobility of what’s going on in the United States.

He’s kind of a model Patriot. He’s a kind of servant of the United States. He becomes an agent of what some would’ve seen as the American mission to France and the world, spreading Liberty. He does all of these things and becomes to a lot of Americans, a kind of embodiment of republican virtue, an apostle of Liberty who’s loved and celebrated. Heather, you are now shaking your head, and I can’t decide whether it’s because I am waxing overly enthusiastic or if I have said something goofy.

Heather Cox Richardson:

No, no, no. I’m back on the fact, I’m with you. I totally get this. I’ve read a lot about Lafayette. I’ve had students who’ve written papers on Lafayette, but the idea that Republican virtue, republican virtue involves leaving your pregnant wife so you can go to another country and fight a war, kind of has me back here going, wait, wait. There seems to be a slight disconnect between what we’re trying to encourage our people to do and what we are lionizing in others. His visit I know is huge in establishing the 1820s, is a period known as the era of good feelings, and everybody pours out to see him. And some veterans get unhappy because they feel like they’re kind of pulling him out so that rich people can spend more time with him than the poor people, and they feel that’s not what the revolution’s about. There’s all kinds of things that are bound up in that 1824 visits that I know are hugely important.

Joanne Freeman:

The significant part of this for what we’re talking about today, of course, is because of who he was, the way he presented himself, his manner, the way in which Americans experienced him, the story that he seemed to present. For all of these reasons, Americans grabbed what he represented and basically made him into this symbol proof of the nobility and power of what Americans liked to celebrate about themselves.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s such an important lens. It made them understand themselves. I mean, one of the thing that jumps out to me when you think about Lafayette in this period is that even Andrew Jackson, who one would think would not have been one to embrace a French nobleman gives this executive order after Lafayette dies. In which he describes him by saying he came in his youth to defend our country. I mean, doesn’t that, honestly, you almost hear Shane, right? The movie, he came in his youth to defend our country. He came in the maturity of his age to witness her growth in all the elements of prosperity. And while witnessing these, he received those testimonials of national gratitude, which proved how strong was his hold upon the affections of the American people. One melancholy duty remains to be performed. The last major general of the revolutionary army has died. And then of course, Jackson has to talk about himself. Himself, a young… I’m sorry. With this such a serious topic, and yet it’s so funny because it’s the difference between the image and the myth and why those things are so incredibly important.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, and it highlights Jackson talking about himself. It highlights the degree to which this isn’t really ultimately about Lafayette, it’s about America and Americans.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And everybody wants in on it, even Jackson has to say, “Lafayette was this incredibly noble figure, and I was part of it.” Even though Jackson was himself a kid during the revolution. He says, “Himself, a young and humble participator in the struggles of that period, the president feels called on as well by personal, as public considerations to direct that appropriate honors be paid to the memory of this distinguished Patriot and soldier.” So he’s highlighting for me the difference, not only between this noble man and that everybody wants a part of it, but also the difference here between sort of image and reality. The image of Lafayette versus the reality of politics, and the fact that people want in on that image.

Joanne Freeman:

So Lafayette the real person, but Lafayette the myth, Lafayette the image, Lafayette the champion of democracy, what he represents ends up having a lot to do with how Americans want to understand their own identity as a country. He ends up serving a sort of superhuman role because of all that he seems to represent, and that goes on for quite a long time. I mean, when he comes back in 1824 in his old age, they’re making gloves and dishes, and handkerchiefs, his image is all over the place. They’re celebrating him in every way that they know how, but it’s because of what he represents and what he enables Americans to believe.

Heather Cox Richardson:

More and more, the things we’re talking about make me think about Western movies and Western books, and the idea of these great heroes. And in Owen Wister’s, The Virginian, the old lady who lived through the revolution, who is the emotional and principled stalwart of the book. That’s one of the things that distinguishes her is that Lafayette kissed her when she was a little girl. And this is a book that was written in, it’s around the turn of the 20th century, dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt. And that’s how you know she’s a true Patriot, is because Lafayette kissed her when she was a little girl.

Joanne Freeman:

I mean, a sign of how long standing this love of Lafayette and all that he seems to suggest about the United States, and equally important, its founding, is in World War I. The commander of the American expeditionary force, general John Pershing, he and his staff actually visited the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette in 1917. There was a large French crowd assembled to see him. To see what was going to happen. To watch this meeting, this somber meeting of Pershing and his staff coming to the resting place of Lafayette. And Pershing’s aid, Charles Stanton gives an address at that moment. And at one point, finally turns to the grave, phrases his arm, and dramatically says, “Lafayette, we are here.” Right? So even at that moment, they are returning and holding dear this image of Lafayette, the defender of Liberty, the sort of honorary founder of the United States and all that he represents.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And the next person that we chose was, again, I think another obvious one, although we had a lot of things to choose from. And this was Simón Bolívar, who was born in 1783 in Caracas, Venezuela, which at the time was a Spanish colony. He’s from a wealthy family and they enslaved other people, and they owned both gold and copper mines. Bolívar moved to Spain in 1799. And when he was in Spain, Napoleon took over the country. And in 1808, Napoleon named Joseph Bonaparte the king of Spain and as of its colonies, which included Venezuela. All this backstory to say that Bolívar’s country now was under the control of a European Monarch, a French Monarch in that case. And Bolívar joined the resistance movement.

So Bolívar pulls together an army and he invades Venezuela in May of 1813. During this period, he was received a nickname that was going to become iconic. He became known as the liberator. In 1815 government forces caused Bolívar to flee to Jamaica. And when he’s in Jamaica, he pens a letter. It’s called The Letter from Jamaica, and it is a public statement in which he laid out his hopes and his doubts for an eventual Latin Republic that would sweep together all the Americas, and he would be at its helm.

Joanne Freeman:

Bolívar says, “More than anyone, I desire to see America fashion into the greatest nation in the world. Greatest not so much by virtue of her area and wealth, as by her freedom and glory. Although I seek perfection for the government of my country, I cannot persuade myself that the new world can at the moment be organized as a great Republic. Since it is impossible, I dare not desire it, yet much less do I desire to have all America a monarchy.” So he wants to do his part, to push what’s going on here in the new world, in the direction that he thinks it should be.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So Bolívar then returns to Latin America, and in 1821, he wages a massive campaign against the Spanish. He manages to capture a lot of what is now Venezuela, Columbia, Panama, and Ecuador, and he names the entire area grand Columbia. Then in 1824, Bolívar captured Peru and declared himself emperor. So right about that same time, that’s when Lafayette was in America during his big triumphant return that we just talked about, and he is together with a number of descendants of George Washington at Mount Vernon. And they get together to deliver to Bolívar a portrait of Washington and a number of relics from the revolutionary era.

And Bolívar then wrote a thank you note to Lafayette, which really you can only kind of describe as euphoric. He says, “The family of Washington honors me beyond my hopes. Even those, the most imaginative, for Washington presented by Lafayette is the crown of all human recompense. He was the noble protector of social reforms and you were the citizen hero, the athlete of Liberty who with one hand served America and with the other, the old continent. Ah, what mortal would be worthy of the honors which you and Mount Vernon have seen fit to heap upon me.”

Joanne Freeman:

And the crux of that, the thing to notice there that link with Lafayette, is a perfect way to understand what happens to Bolívar in the United States and how Americans come to see him. Because in very much the same way as we just discussed Lafayette, Americans begin to see him as indeed the liberator, someone fighting the old world, the monarchy on behalf of these countries in Latin America. Fighting for republicanism, fighting for democracy, and he becomes something of a cultural icon. So they begin in the United States in the 1820s, particularly the first half of the 1820s. Merchants begin selling Bolívar hats for ladies and girls. They’re creating songs in honor of Bolívar. The most striking thing, and I have to say that this bit of research comes from one of my former students, Caitlyn Fitz, who, who did the research for this? She discovered that Americans, and by this, I don’t mean elite Americans, but largely farmers and craftsmen, began to name their babies Bolívar.

Now think about that for a minute, because what that’s suggesting is these average Americans are feeling inspired enough by what they see as this liberator fighting for democracy and republicanism. They’re inspired enough by that to name their children after Bolívar. That’s quite a tribute. And that’s again, as we’ve just been saying before, such a powerful way of indicating how personal this becomes to people, and the ways in which Bolívar becomes far more than he was. Becomes a symbol, becomes something that Americans in a sense are taking possession of as representing what they like and admire about the United States. And here is someone who’s a champion for those things, spreading it to other countries.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and they also, according to her work, began to think about an American democracy as stretching beyond what the time were the states of the United States. So Dr. Fitz estimated that 55% of all the large independence day celebrations that were held between 1816 and 1826 included, what she called a hemispheric toast. That is a toast to democracy in America. But by that, they did not mean the United States of America so much as the north American continent and the south American continent.

Joanne Freeman:

Not only are they embracing Bolívar, but Bolívar is changing their understanding of the United States and its place in the world, and its connection with other countries. Again, Lafayette and Bolívar are people who did big important things, but Americans, and not just elite Americans, average Americans embrace them with a passion and a fervor that shows that they came to mean a lot more than their individual actions.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So if Bolívar came to represent the spread of so-called American values across the north and south American continents, the other person that really jumped to our minds, and we talked about people who took on a particular resonance for people who lived in the United States was Nelson Mandela. Now Nelson Mandela of course, is a big jump forward in time. He was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18th, 1918. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress, which by 1948 was resisting the imposition of apartheid by the national party, which ruled the country. In 1956, he went on trial for treason, and he was acquitted of treason in 1961. Two years later in 1963, a number of the leaders of the African National Congress were arrested, and Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. When that happened, he gave a statement from the doc at the trial, which received an enormous amount of international publicity.

Nelson Mandela (archival):

I have dedicated my life to this talk of the African people. I have fought against my domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an idea for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But my Lord, if it needs be, it is an idea for which I am prepared to die.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So the court finds Mandela guilty on four charges of sabotage and sentences him to life imprisonment, and he serves 27 years of that sentence. But things are going to change on the international stage while he is in prison, and that’s going to change the way this comes out.

Joanne Freeman:

Beginning in the early 1980s, American support for the anti-apartheid movement begins to grow. You have famous people, you have famous athletes like black tennis star, Arthur Ashe, and singer and actor, Harry Belafonte, creating artists and athletes against apartheid. Then in 1985, a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Steven Van Zandt, who actually also played Sylvia Dante on the Sopranos and was a recent guest of Stay Tuned. He helped to organize another protest group called Artists United against Apartheid. And apparently, he wanted to understand what was going on in South Africa. He says, according to an interview, “I went down there to do research in 1984 to see it firsthand. It was so shocking that I said, ‘this needs to be its own song.’ But it’s not just going to be another song on my album. I need this to be its own thing and get some attention.”

And he says, “I was going to maybe have five or six artists on it, and it turned into 50 different singers performing on it, all of them coming together to make the claim.” And it’s the chorus of this song, ain’t going to play Sun City. Sun City was a gambling resort in South Africa that catered to wealthy white tourists. And there were a lot of famous entertainers performing there despite the apartheid policy. So this song in which all of these artists are coming together to say, basically, I’m not playing there. It’s apartheid, and we need to declare. That is a strong statement. It’s noticed. It has all kinds of big names associated with it. Peter Gabriel, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards, Jackson Browne. I mean, it’s an amazing collection of people who come together to take part in this protest song.

What you end up with is on a popular level. Again, thinking about the people buying Bolívar hats and naming their babies Bolívar. Thinking about the Americans taking the horses off the carriage so that they can pull off its carriage. Now we have Americans who are becoming aware of what’s happening in South Africa in part because of popular movements, popular protest organizations, music, and it’s getting Americans engaged emotionally and personally in a new kind of a way with Nelson Mandela and what’s going on in South Africa.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and what’s interesting again about that in terms of the sort of societal patterns we’re talking about, where an individual comes to symbolize so many things is that, Nelson Mandela stance against apartheid, which people around the world are paying attention to and are arguing should not be part of a modern democratic society, and needs to be fought against, coincides with the key years of the Reagan administration. So the announcement that somebody is not going to play Sun City is largely about apartheid and racial discrimination, but it is also about a reflection of America and the sense of America in that same period that our system was being rigged against African Americans, and that we were losing democracy at home.

So while you had sort of powerful people that we’ve talked about, the greed is good era. The idea of America becoming much more consciously a white state and a white nationalist state with Ronald Reagan, giving that speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for example, and cutting so many social welfare programs. And really rolling back the racial progress that America had made since the 1960s to say, “We’re going to lionize this African man who has spent all these decades in prison as a great hero. Says not only we want to stop apartheid in South Africa, it also says we want to reclaim democracy at home in all of its different forms.”

Joanne Freeman:

After all of the popular culture is highlighting Nelson Mandela, you then end up getting politicians coming into that wave, including a lot of Democrats in Congress, marching in front of the South African embassy. Again, making the same kind of message is partly about South Africa, it’s partly about what’s happening in the United States. In all of the cases we’re talking about today, there’s something going on in another country that grabs people, it has to do with democracy and it intimately connects with something that’s going on in the United States at the same time. With the Marquis de Lafayette, it’s no accident that in the late 1790s America is very much deciding how democratic a country it was going to be. With Bolívar, you’re at this moment where among other things, a Missouri compromise of the 1820s is raising a lot of issues about what country and westward expansion, what kind of country the US is going to be. Now we’re looking at this period when Americans are thinking about and watching what’s going on, the rolling back of certain rights and what’s going on in the United States.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And that pressure to release Mandela from prison and to push back against apartheid gets traction. And it starts to change the way that the Reagan administration is going to talk about Nelson Mandela, and is going to continue to increase its support for getting him out of prison. In 1986, Reagan talks about Mandela sort of being an enigma, as he says, “He is undoubtedly a leader in ANC. He was incarcerated because he openly advocated violence.” According to Reagan. “Now there seems to be some word that he has indicated that he may be stepping back from that position. So I think it’d be worth talking to him.” Now two years later, Reagan said, “On the occasion of his 70th birthday, we renew our appeal to the government of South Africa to release Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners.” The pressure of people paying attention and speaking up for democracy based on the iconic figure at this point of Nelson Mandela, changes the political needle, changes the political equation and gives people an icon to rally around, to talk about reclaiming democracy at home.

But as the rhetoric of the Reagan administration shifted toward Mandela, he still faced an awful lot of official suspicion in America. In August of 1988, the state department officially listed the African National Congress among, as it said, organizations that engage in terrorism. Five months later, the defense department included the ANC in an official publication titled Terrorist Group Profiles, and president elect, George H.W. Bush actually wrote the forward to that. And it referred to Mandela as part of the leadership, even though by then he had been in prison for more than a quarter of a century. Nonetheless, in February of 1990, the president of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk agreed to release Mandela from prison. He was 71 years old.

And in June of 1990, three months later, he visited the United States. He stopped in New York city on June 20th, where three quarters of a million people gathered to watch him receive the key to the city and then to be part of a ticker tape parade. Five days later, he met president George H.W. Bush when he welcomed Mandela to the White House. Bush contextualize his release alongside the democracy movements in China and the crumbling Soviet union with was going to fall apart the following year. President George H.W. Bush said-

George H. W. Bush (archival):

In this past year, freedom has made great gains. A terrible chapter of oppression has ended for millions of men and women in Eastern Europe, in Asia, and in this hemisphere. People have defeated through peaceful means dictatorships that promise freedom and progress, but delivered only poverty and repression. The triumph is far from universal. There are still those who rule through force and terror, but the events of this past year have been clear. The future belongs not to the dwindling ranks of the world’s dictators, but to democracy.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The next day, Mandela became the third private citizen ever to address a joint session of Congress, in which he gave a passionate plea for South African democracy and got just a huge ovation. He said on June 26th, 1990.

Nelson Mandela (archival):

Our people demanded democracy. Our country, which continues to bleed and suffer pain needs democracy. It cries out for the situation where the law will decree that freedom to speak of freedom constitutes the very essence of legality and the very thing that makes for the legitimacy of the constitutional order. It says for the situation where those who are entitled by law to carry arms as the forces of national security and law and order will not turn their weapons against the citizens, simply because the citizens assert that equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental human rights, which are not only in a learnable, but must if necessary, be defended with weapons of war.

Joanne Freeman:

Mandela ultimately is elected president of South Africa in 1994 in the country’s first full and free elections, and he served until 1999. Now what have we seen here in this conversation today? We’ve seen a leader of one kind or another fighting for democracy in one form or another. So someone who steps up and is risking his life to fight for a seemingly democratic cause at a moment when the United States is pondering the meaning and the reach, and the depth of democracy in the United States. And because of that confluence, Americans invest all kinds of meaning in these figures. Take ownership of them, claim an emotional link with them, celebrate them as figureheads who are defending democracy and thus are defending what the United States represents. And in all of these cases, a big part of the spread of that message and the power of that process of adoption is average Americans, who get emotionally charged up in the message being sent in the heartfelt kind of connection with democracy and what it means.

Now what’s interesting to me about this is, connected back now to Ukraine. We have people watching what’s going on in Ukraine. We have Zelenskyy there talking to us, standing forth as a champion, willing to risk his life to fight against democracy. And as in all of the cases we talked about today, in a sense, Americans are transferring themselves into that situation. They’re looking at what’s going on there. They are seeing a fight in one way or another for democracy, and they are claiming that owning that and connecting themselves with that in a really interesting kind of a way. And we’re watching that on a daily basis, the degree of emotion and passion with which people are feeling defensive of, and protective of the people of Ukraine.

And the ways in which Zelenskyy is championing that and using that to pull people even further into the defense of Ukraine, but all of these cases show Americans rethinking or envisioning themselves, and as different way because of the lens that they’re using to look at these other countries. It’s as though they see in these other countries some version of themselves, and it enables them and urges them to defend democracy in a way in which they might not have otherwise.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And I think one of the important pieces of having the principles, in this case of democracy, because there are other things that people could embrace. But in this case, the principles of democracy embodied by a single person because it enables you to have a connection with that person and not worry about the messiness of perhaps the fact that Zelensky’s record on corruption was not what of people had hoped it would be, or that Lafayette left his 19-year-old pregnant wife back in France. Or the messiness of Bolívar coming from a family of enslaves, or the history of Mandela’s connections to the ANC. That any of the things that are complicated or hard, or sometimes unsavory, you don’t have to say think about those if you have one person that you can almost mythologize. But I think also crucially, having that one person connection means you can rewrite the fact that you might not have supported the American revolution or that you might not have supported the idea of throwing off the rule of Spain in Latin America, or that you might in fact supported segregation.

And you can now say no, no, no, no, I love Nelson Mandela, or I am a huge fan of whichever the mythological person is at the time. And I think we’re seeing that right now with people who had been great supporters of Vladimir Putin, and had not, if they’d been even paying attention to Ukraine might not actually have been a fan of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And now all of a sudden, they’re all wearing blue and yellow. And that’s an important concept to think about because of the relationship between the image and the principles, which are incredibly important, and the mythology that brings people along behind those principles and how that mythology doesn’t always fit together with the reality of actually living the history on the ground. And the interplay of those two things are both crucially important for understanding how societies change and for understanding who we are in those societies.

Joanne Freeman:

In that sense, Heather, based on what you just said, these figures that we see and sort of make as icons, they become a way for… In the case of the United States, Americans, to position themselves as they feel they need to position themselves with the excuse, as you just said, of not being dragged down by the actual political realities on the ground. they’re focused on a person, a heroic person. And there’s wiggle room in there as to what that person represents, but it enables you to say you support a person and you can seemingly not be surrendering your political principles, or it enables you to say that you are celebrating that person and it is giving you that full permission and that reason to step forward and say, “I actually am seeing my political principles in a different way, and this person has inspired me.”

What strikes me about this moment, and what I’m very curious now to see, is that partly through Zelenskyy Americans are watching democracy under attack in another country, at a moment when democracy is under attack in the United States. Will Zelenskyy lead people to make that connection and see by being able to appreciate and understand what’s going on there, will that transfer into a popular sense of purpose here. In a sense in the way that we’ve been looking at different moments and different people throughout history, will Americans stand up and begin to talk about and celebrate democracy through the Ukraine and will that have an impact on what’s going on here?