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The far-right siege on the U.S. Capitol has been called “unbelievable,” “shocking,” and “beyond imagination.” And let’s not forget the attacks on statehouses around the nation and all the symbols hate deployed – guillotine, hangman’s noose, confederate and Nazi iconography, though they received far less coverage. I admit I felt shocked, glued to the coverage, waiting for some sort of intervention. It never materialized, five people died, dozens were injured, hundreds feared for their lives for hours under lockdown, and millions across the country were terrorized. Senator Chuck Schumer said January 6, 2021 is a new “day that will...

By Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University One of the many horrifying images from the January 6 rampage on the U.S. Capitol shows a long-haired, long-bearded man wearing a black “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and under it the phrase “work brings freedom” – an English translation of the Auschwitz concentration camp motto: “Arbeit macht frei.” Another image, more subtle but no less incendiary, is of a different man whose T-shirt was emblazoned with the inscription “6MWE” above yellow symbols of Italian...

Governor Tony Evers began 2020 talking about how to spend a budget surplus and preparing for the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. By the end of the year, the first-term governor had overseen a sweeping government response to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, mobilized the National Guard following destructive protests in Madison and Kenosha, and fought repeated Republican lawsuits seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin. As 2021 begins, Evers will have to negotiate a new budget with Republican lawmakers, and — if he decides to seek a second term — lay the foundation for his reelection campaign. In...

Pundits desperately searching for a historical analogy for the storming of the U.S. Capitol have seized on August 1814, when the British army burned the Capitol in retaliation for the U.S. assault on the Canadian capital a year earlier. But there’s a more apt comparison. Fifty years later, in July 1864, with the Civil War still raging, a Confederate army came within shooting distance of capturing Washington. Confederate Gen. Jubal Early could see the shining dome of the Capitol “feebly manned,” he later wrote, a mere six miles away. Though troop fatigue, summer heat, and the late arrival of...