A history that looks back to a mythologized past as the country’s perfect time is a key tool of authoritarians. It allows them to characterize anyone who opposes them as an enemy of the country’s great destiny. But the true history of American democracy is that it is never finished. It is the story of people who have honored the idea that a nation

In 1791, Black mathematician and naturalist Benjamin Banneker directly called out then–secretary of state Thomas Jefferson for praising the “proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature,” while at the same time “detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of

Nixon’s media handlers vowed to reach voters by emotion rather than reason. “Voters are basically lazy,” one wrote. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”[1] Those handlers needed to create an “other,” and they had an obvious

Days after the first major leak from WikiLeaks, Trump openly invited Russia to hack the U.S. secretary of state’s computer system, which he insisted had important information on it: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.[5] Reporters were shocked at a political candidate openly calling

Authoritarians rise when economic, social, political, or religious change makes members of a formerly powerful group feel as if they have been left behind. Their frustration makes them vulnerable to leaders who promise to make them dominant again. A strongman downplays the real conditions that have created their problems and tells them that the

With Yanukovych’s removal, Manafort was out of a job, and he owed about $17 million to allies of Yanukovych and Putin. His longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone was advising the floundering presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and Manafort stepped in to help. He did not take a salary, but immediately after getting the job, he did reach

This is a book about how a small group of people have tried to make us believe that our fundamental principles aren’t true. They have made war on American democracy by using language that served their interests, then led us toward authoritarianism by creating a disaffected population and promising to re-create an imagined past where those people

Nixon’s media handlers vowed to reach voters by emotion rather than reason. “Voters are basically lazy,” one wrote. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”[1] Those handlers needed to create an “other,” and they had an obvious

Whenever it looked as if marginalized people might get an equal voice, designing political leaders told white men that their own rights were under attack. Soon, they warned, minorities and women would take over and push them aside.[6]