Author: TheGuardian

While their fear and dismay is often regarded as rooted in delusion, rightwingers are correct that the world is metamorphosing into something new and, to them, abhorrent. They are likewise correct that what version of history we tell matters. The history we tell today lays the groundwork for the future we make. The outrage over the 1619 Project and the new laws trying to censor public school teachers from telling the full story of American history are a doomed attempt to hold back facts and perspectives that are already widespread. In 2018, halfway through the Trump presidency, Michelle Alexander...

Even as the mob ran screaming and smashing through the capitol on 6 January, it was clear this was a coup attempt. It was equally clear that it had been instigated by the then president and his circle, much of whose audience in the “stop the steal” rally would become that mob. Everything since has been fill-in, important in building the legal case against the leaders of this attempted coup and establishing the facts for history and public knowledge – and, one hopes, for efforts to prevent another such attempt. That the goal was a coup is a solemnly...

When Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of murdering two men during anti-racism protests in Kenosha, the verdict was celebrated by far-right politicians and pundits across the United States. Several Republican lawmakers offered Rittenhouse an internship and Fox News host Tucker Carlson called him “a sweet kid.” Kathleen Belew, a historian of American White Power movements and author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, argues that the fact that Rittenhouse’s trial is being read as a victory by more mainstream components of the right has the potential to serve as a rallying cry for increased...

American democracy’s most dangerous adversary is White Supremacy. Throughout the nation’s history, White Supremacy has undermined, twisted, and attacked the viability of the United States. What makes White Supremacy so lethal, however, is not just its presence but also the refusal to hold its adherents fully accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do to the nation. The insurrection on 6 January and the weak response are only the latest example. During the war for independence, after the British captured Savannah, the king’s forces set out to capture a wholly unprepared South Carolina. John Laurens, an...