embrace of authoritarians, professor of history of at yale, professor when you see what happened today, the vote is a symbol of something larger. what kind of moment are we in here despite the fact that trump was defeated, his party lost, the opposition party got control of all three of the levers of the executive and legislative branches? yeah, that s an important question because more important than momentary control is a nation s ability to tell the truth about itself. history is extremely important. but it doesn t happen if no one reports it. it doesn t happen if no one remembers it. as a country, it s very important to understand the facts and dynamics of january 6th not just to make sure that it doesn t happen again in the short-term, which, i, too, am worried about, but we have to
this monday marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific days in the nation s history, the 1921 tulsa massacre. nicknamed the black wall street the greenwood district was a driving black neighborhood in the early 1900s. decades after the abolition of slavery this became a thriving economic hub of opportunity and freedom. me 31, 1921, a white mob burned homes, businesses, churches, reducing the once affluent neighborhood to ash killing hundreds of black americans into an attack that lasted the next day. in a brand-new documentary which airs 10:00 p.m. this monday on msnbc what reports in 1921 and how that trauma reverberates through generations. the entire history of tulsa right here. greenwood, murder, arson,
i m torn between you meet eid procedurist max you willism, fight fire with fire, and then the impulse po fight wire with water, if the bad impulses are group blinkered group think, you know, our way, our way is the only way for the country to flourish and your way will lead us to peril, you know, you can fight within that framework because i sort of believe that, right? i believe there is an anti-democratic force that is, like, extensionally threatening the things that i love about this country. at the same time that leads to kind of maximalism, right? your view of your fellow citizens adds an enemy and balancing those two is difficult. i think the place we cank maximalists is on the question of truth. if you care more about the truth, if you care more about history, you are reaching to places that conservatives can t entirely ignore. and so i think you can be a
ter / authoritarian impulses are downstream of history, narratives, press, truth, right, the beliefs people form, where they get information, the lies that they are told or tell to themselves and so the question of how to get at that, right, coming off this polling is a hard one. i mean, it s one i, you know, come to work every day and wrestle with. like, what s the answer? yeah, i mean, again, great question, because democracy is tough, right. authoritarianism is easy. it s easy to believe the lies you are told. it s easy to believe the things that people say around you. it s easy to believe the things you want to believe. democracy, this thing called democracy, is fundamentally about self-criticism, being surprised by the facts, being surprised by your neighbor s views, it s about changing your mind, about being able to learn your candidate wasn t who you thought your candidate was. without those habits you can t really have democracy.