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Justice Clarence Thomas gave a rare public address on Wednesday that started as a benign celebration of the Declaration of Independence before devolving into a bitter attack on progressivism, steeped with grievance, bad history, and self-regard. In the speech, delivered at the University of Texas at Austin, Thomas blamed progressives for the worst crimes of the 20th century, insisting that “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao” were all “intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” as was “racial segregation,” “eugenics,” and other evils. The justice also bemoaned the “unfair criticism and attacks” that he and other tellers of truths must withstand as the price for courageously “not budging” on their principles.
On this week’s Slate Plus episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed Thomas’ characteristically resentful, solipsistic talk, and what it reveals about the justice’s nostalgia for Gilded Age corruption and plutocracy. A preview of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dahlia Lithwick: This is a speech that’s supposed to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But it then veers off into a land that I never want to visit or speak of again. He styles it as a critique of the progressive movement, which he pins to Woodrow Wilson, then blames for everything bad that happened in the 20th century but also today?
Mark Joseph Stern: The speech is ostensibly bemoaning the progressive movement of the early 20th century, but the New Republic’s Matt Ford has a fantastic piece about how his history is completely wrong. Thomas claims that the American progressive movement was founded by Wilson and imported from Germany, neither of which is true. It was a reaction to corporate abuses and corrupt governance and horrific things like child labor and environmental destruction. It was an organic, grassroots movement, but Thomas says it was a top-down push to suppress individual liberties and put the government in charge of everything. That is a false, libertarian counterhistory that has no basis in reality. The justice also asserts that progressivism led to the worst atrocities of the 20th century, including Nazi Germany, Stalinism, and Mao, and draws a straight line from that to progressivism today.
I saw Thomas’ defenders on social media pretend that this wasn’t about contemporary progressives, only those of the early 20th century. That is a completely ridiculous misreading of this speech. His discussion of 20th-century progressives was a windup to say: By the way, this is still happening today! He exhorts the audience to have the courage to reject progressivism and defend the principles of the Declaration of Independence that progressives allegedly seek to smother. This was a political speech. The last third of it was all about the need to fight back against those devilish progressives who are still trying to send our country to hell.
I think Thomas’ Achilles’ heel—which you can really see in this talk—is that he just can’t get past Clarence Thomas. Everything, in the end, is about Clarence Thomas. This speech comes out as a love song to the one person in Washington who has the courage not to succumb to flattery and demands and politically correct cronyism. Everyone else loses their moral courage and takes the bait, the grift, the deal. But not Clarence Thomas. He’s the one person who is incorruptible. Money doesn’t touch him. He will never succumb to the insider Washington efforts to cajole people to do and say things that lack courage. Meanwhile, Harlan Crow, who has given Thomas innumerable gifts, is in the audience, and he gets thanked by name! You just want to cry at the irony of it.
At every level, it’s the same performance: Poor me, I’m the victim, everybody hates me, but I am still teeming with courage. It’s the falsity that is just unendurable after decades. It is about him all the time. I find this depleting and exhausting. It’s a childish performance that is trussed up as an important meditation on the Declaration.
Can we go back to Thomas thanking Crow? Because that felt like the biggest middle finger.
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern
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The irony is unbelievable. Ford captured this at the end of his piece: American progressivism emerged out of a rejection of corruption and self-dealing in the Gilded Age. It was a backlash against millionaires who were profiting off the backs of ordinary people. And who is the person Thomas specifically wants to thank in his speech about how everything bad that has happened in history, including Hitler and Stalin, is a result of progressivism? Who does he thank by name? His very own billionaire sponsor, the Gilded Age buyer of gifts for Clarence Thomas.
One thing we discovered through all the reporting on Thomas’ corruption is that Crow was part of a coterie of millionaires and billionaires who actively built a cult of personality around him. We can all conjure up the painting of him educating these rich white men about the founding principles of America. We now know that these guys came in early and ensconced Thomas in this milieu of super-wealthy people who had a specific set of beliefs—the Federalist Society coloring-book history of the U.S., about how rich people are great and progressivism ruined everything and freedom in America is all about letting billionaires and corporations do whatever they want.
This speech just shows how much all that worked. Because this man doesn’t just have main-character syndrome—he truly thinks he is a god. Yet he still believes that he’s a man of the people who should be heeded on every aspect of life, especially on how to disregard all criticism because anyone who criticizes you must be wrong. This had echoes of Thomas sitting before the Senate committee and refusing to concede that Anita Hill was telling the truth. He has only become more insulated and more convinced of his own infallibility since then.
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I always contrast Thomas’ capacious ability to feel sorry for himself with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, because she also faced so many hurdles in her own life, right? She had to fight through so many things in order to get to the court. Yet anytime anyone would rib her about being seated through affirmative action, she would just laugh. It bothered her not at all. She thought that the system, in all its imperfections, had landed her a seat at SCOTUS, and she was going to use that seat to try to make the world a better place. It is fascinating to me that Thomas, who genuinely feels belittled by every single thing that has ever happened to him, has somehow gotten smaller on the job.
It didn’t have to be this way. And this speech does feel like a representation of how angry he is that he has had all the successes in the world, both personally and professionally, and still can’t take the win. It’s almost heartbreaking that a whole room full of people had to hear him feel bad and keep being furious. It’s just sad.
