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Alligator

Why Do Fascists Dream Of Alligators?

Long before the new detention facility in Florida, the reptile has featured in the fantasies of Southern racists.
by Asher Elbein via Defector on July 9, 2025
Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Kristi Noem, look at rows of bunk beds behind chain link fence in a detention center.

Don’t Call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a Concentration Camp.

This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.
by Andrea Pitzer via MSNBC on July 5, 2025
A throng of Trump supporters, some in colonial garb, march through Washington D.C.

The 19th-Century Precursors to the Crises of Trump’s America

Revisiting history shows that violence and constitutional disputes are nothing new in US politics.
by Marcus Alexander Gadson via New Lines on July 4, 2025
Donald Trump shakes the hand of a border patrol officer while a line of others waits to meet him.

State of Exception

National security governance, then and now.
by David Klion via The Drift on June 24, 2025
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.
Soldier at the US-Mexico border.

Trump’s Doubly Flawed "Invasion" Theory

How Trump's migration-as-invasion theory might serve as a pretext for claiming vast presidential powers and upending constitutional norms.
by Elizabeth Goitein, Katherine Yon Ebright via Just Security on February 19, 2025
W.E.B. DuBois, seated in garden reading book, while Shirley Graham DuBois waters plants.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
by Jeff Goodwin, Jonah Birch via Jacobin on February 17, 2025
A propaganda poster of an American flag on fire and white American citizens struggling against Communist officials, with the caption: "Is this tomorrow? America under Communism!"

What Happened the Last Time a President Purged the Bureaucracy

The impact can linger not just for years but decades.
by Clay Risen via Politico Magazine on February 6, 2025
Rep. Stephen Horn, examines a chart showing his grades for each agency's progress on the Y2K computer problem.
partner

What to Know About Y2K, Before You Watch 'Y2K'

The Year 2000 computer problem continues to nag at us 25 years later.
by Zachary Loeb via Made By History on December 18, 2024
Peeling paint.

On “White Slavery” and the Roots of the Contemporary Sex Trafficking Panic

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.
by Chanelle Gallant, Elene Lam via Literary Hub on December 12, 2024
Political cartoon depicting 1856 presidential candidates

The First Punch

There are uncanny parallels between the elections of 2024 and 1856, with one big exception: in 1856, it was the political left that was on the offensive.
by Matthew Karp via Harper’s on December 5, 2024
A painting of a group of Puritans walking through a snowy forest, with the men carrying rifles.

The Puritans Were Book Banners, But They Weren’t Sexless Sourpusses

From early New England to the present day, censors have acted out of fear, not prudishness.
by Peter C. Mancall via Zócalo Public Square on November 25, 2024
Photo of Kamala Harris speaking at a moderated conversation with Liz Cheney.
partner

Why People Should Stop Comparing the U.S. to Weimar Germany

Those who draw a line from today to that infamous historical moment when democracy slid into authoritarianism are missing a key difference.
by Christine Adams via Made By History on November 5, 2024
Campaign poster for Tom Watson

The Original Angry Populist

They say there’s never been a man like Donald Trump in American politics. But there was—and we should learn from him. Look back to early-20th-century Georgia.
by Zachary D. Carter via Slate on October 16, 2024
Cover of American Scary by Jeremy Dauber.

The Historical Seeds of Horror in "American Scary"

Jeremy Dauber's new book explores the themes and origins of the American horror genre.
by Gianni Washington via Chicago Review of Books on October 7, 2024
An illustration of the book "Silent Spring" on top of the earth.

This Book Helped Save the Planet—but Created a Very Harmful Myth

It radically shifted the way the world looked at the environment, but created a wave of misinformation we’re still dealing with today.
by Katie MacBride via Slate on September 29, 2024
Movie poster of The Birth of a Nation depicting a Ku Klux Klan member as a knight.

How the Work of Thomas Dixon Shaped White America’s Racist Fantasies

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.
by Joel Edward Goza via Literary Hub on September 23, 2024
Political cartoon of politicians fist fighting.
partner

The Culture Question: How Hot-Button Issues Divide Us

Culture wars have a long and divisive history in American politics, with gender, race and religion continuing to inflame public opinion.
via Retro Report on September 20, 2024
Art piece of a hand holding barbed wire.

Do Border

Who can migrate to the US and make their home here? Who gets to drop US-made bombs, and who is expected to suffer them? These are not unrelated questions.
by Daniel Denvir via n+1 on August 22, 2024
Alain Locke.

A Century of Cultural Pluralism

How an unlikely American friendship should inspire diversity, equity, and inclusion.
by David Weinfeld via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on August 21, 2024
Kamala Harris

The Cultural History Behind Trump's Attack on Kamala Harris's Race

What the scholarship on biraciality tells us about politics now.
by Rafael Walker via The Chronicle of Higher Education on August 8, 2024
Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

Hate Burst Out: Chicago, 1968

It is hard not to figure the 1968 election as inaugurating the cultural and political polarisation of the American electorate so evident today.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via London Review of Books on August 7, 2024
Some attendees of the Republican National Convention hold "Mass Deportation Now" signs on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History

Trump’s language about immigrants “poisoning” the U.S. repeats past rhetoric that led to civilian detention camps, with horrific, tragic results.
by Andrea Pitzer via Scientific American on July 23, 2024
Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington D.C.

Immigration and Mental Health Collide, Again

Trump's seeming mixup of asylum-seeking refugees with patients in psychiatric institutions stems from a long rhetorical and political tradition.
by Jeremy Peschard via The Abusable Past on June 20, 2024
Boy receiving measles vaccination
partner

The Public Health Community Must Tell the Whole Measles Story

The anti-vaccine movement has gained ground because the public health community has denied the truth about measles.
by Elena Conis via Made By History on May 29, 2024
1882 newspaper headline following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 100-Year-Old Racist Law that Broke America’s Immigration System

The legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the launching of the Border Patrol, which inaugurated the most restrictive era of US immigration until our own.
by Mae Ngai via Public Books on May 28, 2024
New York City's Twin Towers.

New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity

Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day.
by Daniel Benjamin, Steven Simon via The Atlantic on May 20, 2024
A U.S. Border Patrol officer shows how he found an undocumented Mexican immigrant under the hood of a car along the U.S.-Mexican border in March 1954.

Trump Promises to Deport All Undocumented Immigrants, Resurrecting a 1950s Strategy

Donald Trump says he will authorize a roundup of all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. A 1950s program with similar goals offers lessons.
by Katrina Burgess via The Conversation on May 6, 2024
Fr. Daniel Berrigan, left, and his brother, Fr. Philip Berrigan, outside the Montgomery County Court House in Norristown, Pennsylvania, 1981 (AP Photo/Paul Shane).

When the FBI Feared the Catholic Left

Even if today's anti-war protestors couldn’t tell you who the Berrigan brothers were, the Catholic Left’s shadow looms large.
by Arvin Alaigh via Commonweal on March 11, 2024
Obama, Reagan, Trump, George W Bush, and Biden

Things Fall Apart: How the Middle Ground on Immigration Collapsed

Politicians from both sides used to agree on immigration policy. What happened?
by Kirk Semple, Jonah M. Kessel via New York Times Op-Docs on January 23, 2024
Martin Luther King, Jr. with hands raised in front of bookshelf

Martin Luther King, Critical Race Theorist

Republicans may claim otherwise, but the civil rights hero was no color-blind conservative.
by Sam Hoadley-Brill via The Nation on January 15, 2024
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