Apr 16, 2025
"Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter
China," trumpeted The New York Times in 2021. "A New Economic
Patriotism Can Help Unite Our Divided Congress," argued Newsweek in
2023. "US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of
USAid shutdown, analysts say," cautioned The Guardian in 2025.
In recent years, we’ve been exposed to the latest version of a
centuries-old geopolitical message: We all have a common enemy, and
we all need to unite to fight it by making our own country
stronger. That enemy—most commonly China—is threatening to outpace,
if it isn’t already outpacing, the US in infrastructural
investment, educational programs, technological development, and
elsewhere, and we need to devote millions, billions, even trillions
of dollars to restoring the vitality of our institutions in order
to reverse this trend.
But why must defeating an "enemy" be the justification for policy
that has the potential to benefit the public? Why should we just
accept the premise that there must be an "enemy" to compete against
and defeat? Why can’t policy be enacted for the sole purpose of
improving people’s lives? And how does this messaging about the
threat of a looming adversary serve the ruling class?
On this episode, we detail the timeworn trope of the common enemy
as a "unifying" device, looking at how increasingly so-called
progressives are appealing to feel-good sentiments of unity and to
the genuine needs for sound infrastructure, robust social safety
nets, corporate regulation, and functional institutions in order to
sell the idea that there is, and always will be, a shadowy bad guy
that must be vanquished.
Our guest is historian, professor and author Greg Grandin.