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Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
@tzimmer_history
Jul 8, 2020 • 10 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
It’s not grabbing the headlines, as it’s been coming for months. But this is still a disastrous decision for America and the world. I wrote and talked about the history of the World Health Organization and its relationship to the U.S. several times over the past few months 1/
In May, I wrote about Trump attacking the WHO for the @washingtonpost, why it would only exacerbate the problems that have always hampered WHO’s effectiveness, and what the history of global public health can tell us about the best way forward. 2/
I wrote an essay for @G_der_Gegenwart (in German) on the history of the WHO, the international community’s response to the threat of epidemics – and why the West needs to break out of the cycle of panic and neglect if we really care about global health. 3/
This longer essay just came out in @redaktionmerkur, on the international response to pandemics from Cholera to Covid-19, emphasized how unusual that moment in the mid-1940s was when the idea of “world health” animated many of those who founded the WHO. 4/ merkur-zeitschrift.de/2020/06/23/das…
Here’s an interview with @swissinfo_de (available in several languages) about why much of the critique of the World Health Organization is based on a misunderstanding of the organization’s past and present. 5/
Back in May I went on the #InfectiousHistorians podcast to talk about the idea of global health and why the founding of the WHO in 1948 marked an important moment in the history of global health politics. 6/
And a few weeks ago I participated in a @Harvard_History roundtable discussion on “Covid-19, the WHO, and International Society” 7/
Also from mid-June, this wide-ranging conversation with @dg_history on the political responses to and repercussions of Covid-19 starts with a 15-minute talk on pandemics in global history and the place of the World Health Organization in that story 8/
Finally, if you’re interested in a much more detailed exploration of the story, here’s my book on the history of global health politics in the 20th century (in German, unfortunately – although I’m working on getting an English version published) 9/ wallstein-verlag.de/9783835319196-…
I don’t have anything to add beyond what I’ve written or said publicly already – and I know we’re all pretty tired and have become numb to much of what is going on… But this is still really bad: It has the potential to harm a lot of people - while helping absolutely no one. /end

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More from @tzimmer_history

Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Dec 22, 2024
Sunday Reading: The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism
 
Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
 
This week’s piece (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism: Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project”
I focus on some of Modern Conservatism’s intellectual leaders in the 1950s/60s - Buckley and Bozell, Whittaker Chambers’ diagnosis of liberalism, and Frank Meyer’s view of the civil rights movement - to investigate the origins of a radicalizing dynamic that led to Trumpism. 2/
Crucially, today’s self-identifying “counter-revolutionaries” on the Right do not think they represent a departure – in fact, they claim to be fighting in the name of the *real* essence that defined Modern Conservatism, which in their mind now very much requires radicalism. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Dec 16, 2024
The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism
 
Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
 
New piece (link in bio): My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism: Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project”
What should we call the pro-Trump forces that are dominating the American Right today? Conservatives? Reactionaries? Something else? The terminology really matters because it reflects and shapes how we think about the nature of Trumpism and how to situate it in U.S. history.
We need to distinguish between colloquial or abstract philosophical notions of what it means to be (small-c) “conservative” - and the political project that referred to itself (and was widely referred to) as the Conservative Movement in post-1950s America.
Read 7 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 28, 2024
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right

Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.

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

🧵1/ My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “Meet the Ideologue of the ‘Post-Constitutional’ Right: Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.”
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation. 2/
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From, at least rhetorically, claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.” 3/
Read 14 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 28, 2024
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right
 
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.
 
New piece (link in bio): My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “Meet the Ideologue of the ‘Post-Constitutional’ Right: Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.”
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From – at least rhetorically – claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.”
Read 4 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 5, 2024
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, 2024
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

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