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Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
@tzimmer_history
Apr 11, 2020 • 3 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Very grateful to @theeuropedesk for making my lecture on “The Age of Pandemics. The Threat of Infectious Disease and the Politics of Global Health in the 20th Century” at Georgetown University's @EuropaSaxa publicly available in podcast form.

#coronavirussyllabus #histmed
The less-than-stellar sound quality is entirely my fault: It was a Zoom lecture that I had to give from the closet-turned-“office” in our apartment... Still worth a listen if you’re interested in a historical perspective on pandemics from Cholera in the 19th century to #COVID19
(Oh, and the actual Zoom lecture had PowerPoint slides that you won’t be able to see in the podcast version, of course. It should still be easy enough to follow the lecture though)

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More from @tzimmer_history

Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 5
Why the Stakes in this Election Are So Enormously High
 
Democracy itself is on the ballot. If Trump wins, the extreme Right will be in a much better position than ever before to abolish it.
 
Some thoughts from my new piece - while we all nervously wait (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Why the Stakes in this Election Are So Enormously High: Democracy itself is on the ballot. If Trump wins, the extreme Right will be in a much better position than ever before to abolish it.”
Consider this my closing argument: As of right now, only one of the two major parties in the United States, the Democratic Party, for all its many flaws, is a (small-d) democratic party. The other one is firmly in the hands of a radicalizing ethno-nationalist movement. 2/
The fault lines in the struggle over whether or not the democratic experiment should be continued map exactly onto the fault lines of the struggle between the two parties. Democracy is now a partisan issue. Therefore, in every election, democracy itself is on the ballot. 3/
Read 16 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 2
Weekend reading:

Combine the myth of American exceptionalism, (willful) historical ignorance, and a lack of political imagination and the result is a situation in which a lot of people refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously.

This week’s piece:

thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/it-could-def…My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “It Could Definitely Happen Here: Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.”
There is a pervasive idea that in a country like the United States, with a supposedly centuries-long tradition of stable, consolidated democracy, authoritarianism simply has no realistic chance to succeed, that “We” have never experienced authoritarianism.
But the political system that was stable for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy. There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started less than 60 years ago.
Read 8 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 1
It Could Definitely Happen Here
 
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.

Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):

🧵1/ My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “It Could Definitely Happen Here: Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.”
I wrote about the mix of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, lack of political understanding, and (willful) historical ignorance that has created a situation in which a lot of people simple refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously. 2/
There is a lot of evidence that this election may be decided by a sizable group of people who strongly dislike Trump and his plans, but simply cannot imagine he would actually dare / manage to implement any of his promises and therefore aren’t mobilizing to vote. 3/
Read 14 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Oct 27
Eleven months ago, Robert Kagan published “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable” in the Washington Post.

He has now resigned from the Post because it refuses to endorse Trump’s opponent.

I dove deep into why Kagan was essentially correct:

thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/donald-trump… x.com/davidfolkenfli…Image
This warning was not coming from the Left. Although he rejects the label, Kagan is probably best described as a neocon. He’s an influential Never Trump Ex-Republican. And he believed that unless we changed course, America was on a trajectory towards a Trump dictatorship.
Nothing is ever inevitable. But what Kagan got right is that every political analysis needs to start from the recognition that there’s an eminently plausible and fairly straightforward path from where we are to autocratic rule. That’s even more obvious now than it was a year ago.
Read 7 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Oct 25
Crucial piece by @Mike_Podhorzer on how polls are obscuring the extremism of Trump’s plans.

A related thought: Since the mainstream discourse stipulates that extremism must be “fringe” in America, anything that has broad support is reflexively sanitized as *not* extremism.
This apologist sleight of hand is often deployed to provide cover for extreme forces within the GOP: If extremism is not defined by its ideological/political substance, but as “something fringe,” then the minute it becomes GOP mainstream, it ceases to be regarded as extremism.
Just like that, not only do extremist ideas and policies get automatically legitimized - by definition, the Republican Party, regardless of how substantively extreme, also gets treated as “normal” simply because it ain’t fringe, because it’s supported by almost half the country.
Read 8 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Oct 16
Donald Trump, American Fascist
 
Trumpism is what a specifically American, twenty-first century version of fascism looks like. And in November, fascism is on the ballot.
 
Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Donald Trump, American Fascist: Trumpism is what a specifically American, twenty-first century version of fascism looks like. And in November, fascism is on the ballot.”
Donald Trump’s closing pitch to the American people is rage, intimidation, and vengeful violence. He is threatening – or promising, if you ask his supporters – fascism. No more plausible deniability for anyone who refuses to see the threat. 2/
Mere weeks before the election, I revisit the Fascism Debate and discuss where we stand after Trump has, even by his own standards, gone on a rampage recently. If anyone thought more evidence was needed before we could call it fascist, the Trumpists have certainly provided it. 3/
Read 12 tweets

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