Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Heather Ann Thompson joins us to discuss “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage,” her new book about the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting and how it became a flashpoint in the Reagan-era politics of fear, austerity, and race. Drawing on never-before-seen archival materials, Thompson reconstructs what really happened that day on the train and recovers the lives of the four Black teenagers whose stories were buried beneath the vigilante myth. We explore how right-wing media, urban crisis, and a carefully orchestrated conservative project turned Goetz into a folk hero, helped dismantle the New Deal order, and laid the groundwork for Trump-era white rage and punitive “law and order” politics. Along the way, Thompson highlights the courage of families like Daryl Cabey’s and reflects on what this history can teach us about resisting manufactured fear and rebuilding a more just democracy today.
About Heather Ann Thompson
Heather Ann Thompson is a historian, activist, and professor best known for “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in History. Raised in Detroit and trained in African American studies at the University of Michigan and Princeton, she has spent her career documenting how prisons, policing, and economic policy shape the lives of marginalized communities and the broader contours of American democracy. Her latest book, “Fear and Fury,” continues this project by uncovering how one violent moment on a New York subway helped ignite a national politics of white rage whose consequences we are still living with today.
Resources:
Order the book: https://kingsbookstore.com/book/9780593702093
Webpage: https://www.heatherannthompson.com/
Greg’s Blog: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/
Pat’s Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/
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