political violence 
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/26/2021
America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama
"The terror campaign of 1870 ended the promise of Alabama’s brief Reconstruction era, allowing the so-called Redeemers to pry Alabama from the hands of reform. This was the critical juncture that led to the way things are."
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2/21/2021
Must the Capitol Riots be Included in the Legacy of American Dissent?
by Ralph Young
Teachers of history might feel a disconnect between praising American traditions of dissent and condemning the Capitol riots. They shouldn't. Historical evaluation of the grievances of dissenters, whatever their methods, finds real grievances, not lies, at the root of dissent.
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2/21/2021
January 6, 2021: A Day of Populist Transgression
by Robert A. Schneider
The Capitol riot included a small core of actors bent on destruction, with many more along for the ride reveling in a moment of transgression. In this way, it was a microcosm of the Trumpian movement that, now unleashed, will be difficult to contain.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/18/2021
The 150-Year-Old Ku Klux Klan Act Being Used Against Trump In Capitol Attack
Ulysses S. Grant championed legislation to apply the power of the federal government against armed conspiracies to prevent the exercise of the vote. A Mississippi Congressman is now suing Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani under a provision of the law that allows victims to file civil lawsuits against conspirators.
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SOURCE: Mother Jones
2/4/2021
How to Teach History in a Community Still Reckoning With Its Past
"For the African American community, it was still this large, looming scar, and the white community literally didn’t even know what had happened. It had just been erased. There was this disconnect in the community."
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2/14/2021
Political Violence: Still as American as Cherry Pie
by Alan J. Singer
SNCC leader H. Rap Brown declared that violence was "American as cherry pie" in 1967. Though his remarks were scorned then, he was correct, and no movement for justice can succeed without acknowledging it.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/10/2021
Will Insurrection Lead to Terrorism?
by Martha Crenshaw
An expert on terrorism and political violence looks to other examples of insurrection to ask what the hardcore extremists at the center of the Capitol riots are likely to do next. Such groups and the recruits they gained on January 6 are likely to become more isolated, but more extreme, and have access to guns unlike any other extremists in the world.
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SOURCE: FiveThirtyEight
2/8/2021
In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors
Thomas Zimmer and Joanne Freeman represent historians among the scholars commenting on the asymetric polarization of American politics.
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SOURCE: Just Security
2/4/2021
Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda
by Jason Stanley
Not enough attention has been paid to the video shown to spectators at Donald Trump's January 6th "Save America" rally. A close look shows it to be a work of propaganda firmly in the tradition of fascism.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
2/3/2021
The Case for a Third Reconstruction
by Manisha Sinha
During their brief hold on power, so-called "Radical Republicans" used their power to build multiracial democracy in the South and punish white supremacist terrorism. We face the same challenges today and must learn from and complete the work begun in Reconstruction and renewed by the modern Civil Rights movement.
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SOURCE: Keeping Democracy Alive
2/1/2021
January 6: Not Who We Are?
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson discusses the Capitol riots, arguing that violence has long been a part of the battle for political legitimacy and authority in America.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/30/2021
Only Accountability Will Allow the U.S. to Move Forward
by Mitch Landrieu
Full accountability for the Capitol Riot is essential lest white supremacists and other extremists take the lesson that their actions are accepted and permitted. The white supremacist massacres of the post-Reconstruction period show that moving on without accountability is impossible.
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1/31/2021
Poverty, Politics and Pandemic: The Plague and the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381
by Alfred Thomas and Peter Rutland
Seen in a historical context of pandemic-induced paranoia, antisemitic conspiracy, and broad-based resentment, the English rebels start to look less like the innocent victims of tyranny and more like the Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol.
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1/31/2021
Democracy, Violence, and the Legacy of the American Revolution
by David W. Houpt
Although many of the Capitol rioters claimed to defend the Constitution, their actions reflect ideas derived from the Revolutionary period that the people have the right to resist tyranny by force. The Constitution sought to check that impulse by establishing a representative republic and a cultural bargain to live by the results of elections, but the two ideas have never been resolved.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/29/2021
When the Threat of Political Violence Is Real
by Joanne B. Freeman
Republican calls for unity refuse to claim responsibility and in some cases level the threat of further violence to bully colleagues out of holding Trump and his allies accountable for the Capitol riots of January 6. This is reminiscent of the climate of threat and violence in Congress in the 19th century ahead of the Civil War.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/21/2021
What Americans Across the Political Spectrum Got Wrong About the Attempted Insurrection
by Corrie Decker and Elisabeth McMahon
American reactions to the Capitol insurrection made implicit and explicit comparisons to the developing world, reflecting the way that American exceptionalism has grown out of the Enlightenment's hierarchical and racist ranking of civilizations with Europe (and America) on top and Africa at the bottom.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
1/25/2020
Strange Costumes of Capitol Rioters Echo the Early Days of the Ku Klux Klan - Before the White Sheets
by Kenneth Ladenburg
"Although costumes cannot tell us the entire story of a group or movement, they can provide a window into understanding how the groups and movements form and how their ideologies are spread."
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SOURCE: The New Republic
1/27/2021
The Persistence of Hate In American Politics
After Charlottesville, the historian Joan Wallach Scott wanted to find out how societies face up to their past—and why some fail. Aryeh Neier reviews Scott's comparative history of the Nuremberg Trials, the South African Truth and Reconciliation effort, and the debate over reparations to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/26/2021
Out of the Barrel of a Gun
The resurgent militia movement and renewed attention to the threat of political violence compels a reckoning with the vast number of firearms in America and with the political significance of guns.
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SOURCE: Africa Is A Country
1/20/2021
Reflections On An Imploding Empire
by Russell Rickford
Progressive dissidents must meet the moment of Biden's inauguration by not settling for what liberal politicians offer on economic justice, human rights, environment, labor, and health.
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