I study 17th century New England with a focus on the Salem Witch Trials. During the Trump administration, every Tweet that he sent with the words “witch hunt” caused me to groan. I worked as a docent in Salem, MA, and often heard tourists comment on the history of the 1692 witch hunt and the president. For years, anytime I met new people, whether it was at a birthday party or a wedding, being introduced by friends and family as “the Salem Witch Trials guy” meant there were follow up questions about Trump. I cannot emphasize enough how disgraceful the former president’s conflation of scapegoating and accountability is to the memory of the victims of Salem and other injustices. These exchanges happened so often that I knew my routine and what points to hit each time. I started thinking about how history and current events work together. Now as a moderator of AskHistorians, I see this phenomenon everyday and it sparked a side research project that I wanted to share more about here. I make no promises of turning this into an ongoing series throughout the entire 2024 election, but I’ll try to post updates.
The subreddit AskHistorians, a text-based Q&A forum with over 2 million subscribers on Reddit, bans the discussion of current events. Users often circumvent this rule by asking about historical topics that echo the present. The rules explicitly state that questions must focus on events that are at least twenty years old, and any violating post is removed with suggestions of other subreddits to try instead. However, asking a question about the past does not occur in a vacuum. As E. H. Carr wrote, “we can view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present.” As a moderator of this community, I’ve seen the influxes of questions related to major news stories. Sometimes there are explicit references. For example, this question asked about examples of military withdrawals and mentioned news coverage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Other questions aren’t explicitly tied to current events but correlate strongly with media coverage, like this question on Afghan pastimes under the Taliban the same day as the New York Times ran a story on the American exit strategy from Afghanistan. I recently recorded a panel on AskHistorians for the upcoming DH 2024 conference where I presented a paper on this phenomenon. While preparing for it, I thought about how the U.S. election is already a prominent topic of historical questions and wanted to show what’s happening on Reddit, the so-called “front page of the Internet.” The relationship between current events and historical questions on r/AskHistorians shows both the relevance of history and the public’s interest in connecting the past and present. After the past month of election news, there is a clear need for historians to intertwine their knowledge with the political events of the day.
For those unfamiliar with Reddit and r/AskHistorians, Reddit is a social media site made of disparate communities called subreddits. Each subreddit is dedicated to its own unique topic or content format with its own rules about user created post submissions and comments. Users subscribe to communities which is algorithmically sorted to an individual feed, or their own personal front page. Reddit also has its own front page, or r/all, where trending topics across the site are presented. AskHistorians is a question-and-answer forum for questions about history. The moderators require that comments provide in-depth and comprehensive answers to posts and remove answers that do not meet this standard. Answers must show that the user has subject matter expertise but does not require academic credentials. As a result, many questions go unanswered, but users may repost their inquiries. AskHistorians also has a podcast, an AskMeAnything series, and recommended resources. Additionally, the Sunday Digest and newsletter provide collected links of answered questions.
Posts are approved by moderators according to the AskHistorians rules. These rules prohibit bigotry, soapboxing, polls, hypotheticals, and discussion of current events. Answers must also follow these rules and provide accurate and comprehensive responses to these questions. By asking about historical events, users react to current events and seek context for the world around them without violating the AskHistorians policy that questions cover topics twenty or more years old. Posts that are overly focused on current events or would encourage a debate over modern politics are removed, but references to events or news stories to contextualize or frame a historical question is perfectly fine and allowed according to the rules. For example, a post asking, “How does the Biden campaign compare to past incumbent presidential campaigns?” would break the rules by depending on discussion about the 2024 Biden campaign- come back in 2044. But an allowed post might be titled “Did incumbency help 19th century US presidents win reelection?” with explanatory text saying, “I keep hearing President Biden has an incumbency advantage, but I want to know if this is historically an advantage for reelection?” Acceptable questions might can be less explicit, such as “Did past U.S. Presidents run for reelection with low poll numbers? How did their campaigns deal with being unpopular?” All three draw on modern politics, but the latter two ask about historical events.
Four major events this summer already set the tone for the election and appeared on r/AskHistorians in significant ways: President Biden’s June 27th debate fallout, the Trump v. United States immunity decision released on July 1st, the July 13th shooting of former President Donald Trump, and President Biden’s July 21st decision to not seek reelection. Each of these events appeared on AskHistorians with various questions, and examples for each topic were some of the most popular posts of the day, week, and month.
I would describe these topics as falling into three categories of questions: Contextual Questions, Comparative Questions, and Learn from the Past Questions. With each of these questions, users are reaching out to the past to understand the 2024 election, and they serve various purposes.
Contextual Questions seek historical information that helps to explain something. These questions might ask why something occurred in the past or ask about change over time. On occasion these posts will take a format like “how did we get here?” For example, on July 1st, a user asked “Why did the US founding fathers opt to have Supreme Court Justices be appointed by Presidents instead of general elections?” The user even said in their post they were trying to understand the checks and balance system in the U.S. Constitution and wanted to know the intentions and debate over the clauses. This is not explicitly about Trump case, but the decision to grant immunity to official acts impacts how to understand checks on the Executive Branch, and that impact probably inspired this question.
Comparative Questions ask about similar events and either make or seek parallels in the past. As an example, in the fallout of the presidential debate, the media storm surrounding President Biden has relentlessly focused on his cognitive ability and fitness for office. In the midst of this press frenzy, a user asked “[When] President Reagan was in the white house it was rumored in the second term he already had Alzheimer’s and that his wife pretty much ran the country. Is there any truth to this or was this just something made up?” President Biden is not directly mentioned, but the question clearly draws on the widespread discourse about cognitive fitness for office.
Learn from the Past Questions look for instances in the past that we can learn from to understand and adapt to the current world. The colloquialism that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is present in these posts, and oftentimes users are seeking optimism. On July 3rd, a user posted “Are there any good examples in history of countries that had a rise in fascist ideology but was halted before full-blow fascism?” and the post text said “Asking for a friend from another country…” Subtlety is not Reddit’s strength.
With each of these question genres, users are reaching out to the past to understand what’s happening in the 2024 election. For contextual questions, users want to understand how we got to this point, for comparison questions users are curious if anything similar ever happened, and learning questions are trying to understand where we are going. Each event also represents something uncommon for an American election: President Biden’s debate performance, the assassination attempt, the Supreme Court’s malpractice against the Constitution, and an incumbent dropping out are not wholly unique events but they feel or are treated as unprecedented in modern politics. There have been bad debates, presidential assassinations, and damaging SCOTUS decisions, but not all occurring in any other recent election. Historical examples can help clarify and make sense of current events.
I want to take a look at some of the questions about each event. Many still need answers, but the posts are still a valuable resource as questions. I gathered many of the relevant and approved submissions, but these are not comprehensive lists.
On presidential health:
This set of questions, including the Reagan Alzheimer’s question above, seems to conflict with the media narrative regarding how important this topic is, or was prior to July 21st, to the electorate. These questions are asking if a president’s health has ever mattered, and the tone of the Wilson and FDR questions ask if there is a significant effect to the presidency. The subject matter is not how past presidents, or other world leaders for that matter, were forced to vacate their office or campaign due to their health; the subject is ‘has anyone cared about it before.’ There is plenty for historians to discuss about the historical reality of presidential age, health, and campaigns, but these questions indicate a perception that media scrutiny over President Biden’s physical and mental condition is an outlier in presidential history.
On assassinations:
Did comedians make jokes about the Reagan assassination attempt?
Did the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan help bolster his reelection campaign?
The assassination questions surprised me with the historical content that appeared: certain assassinations/attempts were asked about, but not all, and not Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. It isn’t wholly surprising that the assassinations of James Garfield or William McKinley are overlooked on AskHistorians this month, they tend to receive less attention in general as well as other attempted assassinations like against FDR or Gerald Ford. The attempt against Reagan seems the most comparable as the most recent failed attempt which also fits into a metanarrative of the Republican party identity. But no Abe Lincoln questions? No John Wilkes Booth? There may be a recency bias in what questions AskHistorians receives, but it struck me as odd.
The main thing I notice about these questions is that none of them asked for motivation. Why did John Hinckley Jr. or Lee Harvey Oswald do it? It’s a valid historical question, but in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, that’s not this historical question users are curious about. Instead, users asked about reactions. How did comedians react? How did the Secret Service respond? How did the public feel? These are not questions about why political assassinations occur, but rather how do people respond, and therefore how do we respond today? Is a joke by a comedian appropriate? Do law enforcement agencies fix problems? Will this affect how people vote? Maybe this is why there is no Lincoln question: responding to an assassination attempt in 1981 makes more sense than 1865. These are questions for 2024.
On stepping aside:
Biden has had a lot of pressure from Democrats to resign, did LBJ get the same?
Have any “surprise” candidates ever won a major American election?
The media allusions to LBJ have clearly broken through to the minds of AskHistorians posters since otherwise President Lydon B. Johnson is not the most regular figure on the subreddit but he is mentioned in a lot of the broadcasts as the last incumbent to step aside. I’m sure within the next week there will be many more questions, but so far it seems to be questions to make sense what happened. This meme on Twitter captures the feeling of the long 2024 election cycle: 0 days since our last unprecedented event. These questions are serve that exact purpose, determining how unprecedent current events are.
I saved the Trump vs. United States questions for last because those took a different tone. In the other three instances, users asked questions that sought to make sense of events. People are confused and looking to history to understand. But in the wake of the Supreme Court granting presidential immunity and impacting how Trump will be held accountable for the January 6th Insurrection, the questions on AskHistorians took a different tone: fear. People aren’t just looking to the past to make sense of the chaos in our political news, they’re looking to the past out of fear of repeating it. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, AskHistorians received an influx of questions about Nazi Germany and the rise of fascism. It was not a subtle trend.
On presidential immunity:
Was there a German equivalent of California as Germany descended into fascism in the 1930’s?
Was There Anything Non-Nazi’s Did To Accelerate Hitler’s Rise To Power In The Early 1930’s?
Were the German population okay with the Enabling Acts of 1933?
Is this the first time “American Democracy” has been perceived to be in jeopardy?
This list reads like a flashing red light and blaring sirens. These are the mental links Redditors are making with our present day and history.
Not every question on AskHistorians receives an answer. The scary thought to me is that if Reddit is the first or second stop, where do they look next if we don’t reach them? Probably not our academic books, articles, or conferences. Reddit can oftentimes be a cesspool, but its one of the places where people go to learn in our digital age. As a graduate student affiliate at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, I’m very familiar with Rosenzweig’s call to “democratize history” by using digital media to reach wider audiences. Looking at AskHistorians this election cycle, democratizing the past is also part of the fight to protect democracy. This election is making people confused about the present and afraid for the future. They’re looking to the past to understand. Are we reaching them?