The function of foundational myths is to fence off the present from ideas, counter-histories, and traditions from below that could cut through the barbed wire and reopen a sense of political possibility. As a great bard—Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine—once put it: “Who controls the present now controls the past, who controls the past controls the future.”
In his new book of revisionist history titled The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South, out April 14 from OR Books, David Griscom places a ten-gallon hat atop De La Rocha. “Republicans in Texas have been skillful at crafting a version of Texas history that is favorable to their current goals,” writes Griscom, a first-time author who hosts a podcast for the socialist magazine Jacobin and a streaming show called Left Reckoning.
Our state is home to the highest number of on-the-job construction deaths and to an epidemic of hospital closures, to name just two of many shameful designations. But how can we shift course? Must we recover an alternative story about this place with a different theme other than rugged individualism at its heart? Forge a connection between the hardhat and the maverick cowboy hat, the pecan-sheller and the Ascension hospital nurse on strike? Griscom’s book furnishes us with a strong “yes,” and it makes clear that the stick beating the drum of our potential counter-story is a left-wing old reliable: solidarity.
