Heather Ann Thompson

speaker

670 appearances 5 recordings 4 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 26 Jun

Heather Ann Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.

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Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci · Historian: This Event Created Trump, Giuliani & Rupert Murdoch - Heather Ann Thompson · 28 Apr 2026 podcast

I grew up in Detroit, but I spent a lot of time in New York City in the 80s.

And for those of us who remember it, it was a really gritty, scary time in America that felt like something different was afoot, like cities were falling apart and there was kind of a new mean austerity economically on the one hand, but on the other hand, there was a

like the age of yuppies, people were making a ton of money, and then there was also a lot of hate crimes going on.

So that kind of resonated to me with right now, and I'm a historian, and I thought, you know, what is, what's going on today, and where did it really get going, this kind of normalization of,

all this rage and all this misinformation and all this kind of real income inequality that we're living with today.

And it turns out all the same folks on the scene today were there in New York City in 1984 when this one kind of crazy traumatic event happens on a subway that will become a trial and it will –

catapult the political careers of people like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and Rupert Murdoch.

And so it turned out this was a story that was kind of ground zero for where we are today.

The city-city, northwest side.

You are absolutely right.

And notwithstanding, you know, the phrase rebirth of white rage, you know, I acknowledge in the book and talk a lot about it in my work in general, look,

racism is baked into the DNA of this country and certainly the impulse to, you know, resort to vigilante violence.

We have a long history of that in this country, but there is a period in this country and it really matters, which is sort of between the 19th century when we have lynching and we have the Gilded Age and we have all the robber barons.

And today we

when there was a belief that the rule of law mattered, that lynching still went on, but it was considered outside the bounds of civility, and a period of time when we regulated business.

And we said, you know what, it's not okay to just do whatever you want.

And businesses, too, have to pay into the body public.

And

And the question is, when did we then go back to this renormalization and relegitimization of really some of the worst income inequality we've seen in 100 years?

and some of the worst unleashing of gun violence and rage and vigilantism that we've also not seen in 100 years.

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