The historian and podcaster says hope for a multicultural democracy lies with the young: "Preserving the status quo will not be good enough, and the younger generation understands this better than any other."
As the central feature of police technology and the main way that departments present themselves to the public, police cars have long been key symbols in police efforts to claim greater legitimacy, resources and power.
While several laws pertaining to historical memory have been passed under nationalist regimes in Europe, other authoritarian societies actively use other laws as an excuse to suppress inconvenient historic commemorations, reflecting a broad and growing pattern of subordinating history to power.
Italians' recollection of Mussolini and the Fascist regime embody the replacement of historical memory with national mythology—a mythology that dismisses both the violence of the dictatorship and Italians' collective responsibility for it and enables the resurgence of the far right today.
Since Reconstruction's overthrow, calls for "law and order" have imagined the former as a tool for enforcing a particular vision of the latter, usually in the form of white-dominated racial hierarchy.
Are you confused about the meaning of Fascism? If so, you're not alone. Benito Mussolini, the creator of Fascism, famously did not define it until 1932.
"Donald Trump wants to return to the White House. His candidacy should be the final test of whether the United States has truly overcome the lure of authoritarianism."
NBC Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss and NYU History Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat discuss the concept of fascism and the danger facing the U.S with American Voices host Alicia Menendez.
From abortion to classroom teaching, state laws are increasingly incentivizing people to report other members of the community for violating new restrictions. Experts say this has worked in the past to erode trust and enable further authoritarianism.
This moment of peril for American democracy calls for a return to the diagnosis presented in "The Authoritarian Personality," 1950s effort to develop a social-psychological profile of the people likely to embrace fascism.
Showing his belief that the democratic process is only legitimate when he wins, Trump demonstrates the nihilism at the heart of MAGA, which Joe Biden correctly called out last week in his speech.
Critic Adam Gopnik examines two recent books on alternatives to representative democracy that respond to the recent use of institutions by power-seeking authoritarians.
Historian Thomas Zimmer tells Joshua Holland that there is a consensus among experts that American democracy is teetering on the brink of collapse -- but there is a reason for hope.
Since 1883, the federal civil service has been protected from the old spoils system by rules for merit-based hiring and promotion. Trump has threatened to revert to a system of rewards for loyalists and punishment for enemies, without regard for performing the public's business.
Six judges, who are impervious to public opinion and majority rule are exercising arbitrary control over American society, jeopardizing the very legitimacy of the government.
The right's agenda is for a white, Christian, patriarchal nationalism that simply can't be achieved by majority rule. That's what the Supreme Court and 400,000,000 privately owned guns are for.
Whether for casting ballots or counting them, Trump was quick to blame Black Americans for his defeat, carrying on an ignominious tradition of casting Black political participation as illegitimate and dangerous.
While the elite media class indulges in lurid fantasies of an armed breakup of the nation, those who live precarious or impoverished lives find themselves already enmeshed in a civil war; the real red/blue conflict is about who will control the infrastructure of repression built up over the last half century.
