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Donald Trump at a rally
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Trump’s Rhetoric About the Election Channels a Dark Episode From Our Past

The only coup in American history came after scare-mongering that wouldn't sound out of place in 2020.
A forest scene featuring people hiding behind logs.

The Jamaican Slave Insurgency That Transformed the World

From Vincent Brown's Cundill Prize-nominated "Tacky’s Revolt."
Joseph McCarthy presenting a map.

The Real Legacy of a Demagogue

A new biography of Joseph McCarthy does not reckon with the devastating effects of anti-communism.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden behind podiums during the first presidential debate of 2020
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President Trump Gets the Suburbs All Wrong

His conception of what appeals to suburban voters is frozen in the past.
Exhibit

Fear Itself

We're not generally at our best when frightened. It's no surprise, then, that some of the ugliest episodes in American history (but also, some pretty great films) have been driven by fear.

The Trump family at a public event

Why is the Nationalist Right Hallucinating a ‘Communist Enemy’?

Reactionary leaders are invoking communism as a way of attacking the left, says author and activist Richard Seymour.
circa 1795: Reverend Timothy Dwight IV (1752 - 1817)

What We Can Learn From Early American Conspiracy Theories

How an Illuminati conspiracy theory captured American imaginations in the nation’s earliest days.
Trump speaking in front of Mount Rushmore, stage lit, mountains in night's darkness
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Nostalgia and the Tragedy of Trump's Speech at Mount Rushmore

In a recent speech, Trump looks to America's past for answers. However, the history he recounts is glaringly limited.

QAnon Didn't Just Spring Forth From the Void

Calling QAnon a "cult" or "religion" hides how its practices are born of deeply American social and political traditions.
Donald Trump.
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Trump’s 2020 Playbook Is Coming Straight from Southern Enslavers

Racism — not reformers demanding redress — is the source of American strife.

A Brief History of Dangerous Others

Wielding the outside agitator trope has always, at bottom, been a way of putting dissidents in their place.

Joseph McCarthy and the Force of Political Falsehoods

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.
Photograph of Mike Mahoney on the White House grounds.

Blood and Vanishing Topsoil

“We’re the virus.” So read a tweet in March praising reports of less pollution in countries under COVID-19 lockdown. By mid-April, it had nearly 300,000 likes.

Will Urban Uprisings Help Trump? Actually, They Could Be His Undoing.

As a historian, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the fallout from Watts and other rebellions.

How White Backlash Controls American Progress

Backlash dynamics are one of the defining patterns of the country’s history.

Rumor Mill

Watching fake news spread in 1942.
Donald Trump seen through a window reflecting a fence.
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President Trump’s Immigration Suspension Has Nothing to Do With Coronavirus

Restrictionists have long sought to cut U.S. immigration — to zero.

In 1918 and 2020, Race Colors America’s Response to Epidemics

A look at how Jim Crow affected the treatment of African Americans fighting the Spanish flu.

Did an Illuminati Conspiracy Theory Help Elect Thomas Jefferson?

The 1800 election shows there is nothing new about conspiracy theories, and that they really take hold when we don’t trust each other.
Amy Cooper calling the police on Christian Cooper, a Black birdwatcher.
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Amy Cooper Played the Damsel in Distress. That Trope Has a Troubling History.

Purportedly protecting white women has justified centuries of racist violence — while doing little to actually protect white women.

How Nativism Went Mainstream

Three decades ago, California was the launchpad for a virulent strain of anti-immigrant politics that soon spread nationwide.

The New China Scare

Why America shouldn’t panic about its latest challenger.

Civility Is Overrated

The gravest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol—it’s the false promise of civility.

The Greensboro Massacre at 40

Forty years after the Greensboro Massacre, a survivor talks about that day, and why organized workers are such a threat to the powerful.

Zombie Flu: How the 1919 Influenza Pandemic Fueled the Rise of the Living Dead

Did mass graves in the influenza pandemic help give rise to the living dead?

American Immigration: A Century of Racism

On Daniel Okrent's "The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America."
Broadside for debate between W.E.B. DuBois and Lothrop Stoddard.

When W.E.B. Du Bois Made a Laughing Stock of a White Supremacist

Why the Jim Crow-era debate between the African-American leader and a ridiculous, Nazi-loving racist isn’t as famous as Lincoln-Douglas.

A Lynch Mob of One

The assault rifle has enabled racists to act alone.
View over Baltimore.
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How Politicians Use Fear of Cities Like Baltimore to Stoke White Resentment

President Trump is building on a tactic pioneered by segregationists.
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What We Get Wrong About the Southern Strategy

It took much longer — and went much further — than we think.
Black men confront armed whites in a Chicago street.

Tying Black Resistance to Communism Is a Time-Tested American Tradition

When modern conservatives associate activists of color with communism, they’re drawing on a racist history that goes back over 100 years.

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