Roundup

Are the Dems Doomed?

by Julian Zelizer

The Democrats are leaving themselves open to taking the blame at the polls for the war in Ukraine and high gas prices and the inevitable next wave of the COVID pandemic. 

Will the War in Ukraine Doom International Climate Action?

by Michael Klare

The international tension provoked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine couldn't come at a worse moment for efforts to advance action to fight climate change.

Can We Condemn One Empire Without Affirming Another?

by Moon-Ho Jung

The experience of left-wing Japanese Americans, who rejected Japanese imperialism while being oppressed by American nationalism, shows that war forces an artificial binary of national allegiance. 

The War Won't End Until Putin Loses

by Anne Applebaum

It's premature and wishful thinking to believe that Putin will consider any of the "off ramps" offered as solutions to the war. 

What Parents Did Before Baby Formula

by Carla Cevasco

"The formula shortage is not a victory for breastfeeding. It is a calamity for families who, like families throughout history, just want to feed their children."

Buffalo and the Double Terror of Being Black in America

by Ibram X. Kendi

"For Black people to survive both racist policy and racist violence is grueling. To live as a Black American is to be a survivor."

Bringing CPAC to Hungary Betrays the Roots of the Conservative Movement

by Lauren Lassabe

It is a bitter irony that the postwar American conservative movement was energized by the anti-Stalinist Hungarian revolution of the 1950s; today the movement takes inspiration from a repressive regime and its autocratic leader. 

Banning Abortion and The Buffalo Shooting are Connected

by Mytheli Sreenivas

The seeming coincidence of the Buffalo shooter's "Great Replacement" manifesto and the leaked Supreme Court decision actually highlights the way that women's reproductive freedoms are central to the politics of race and demography. 

Midge Decter: An Overlooked Intellectual Forerunner of Trumpism

by Ronnie Grinberg

By connecting social turmoil to the decline of traditional family and gender roles even before Roe or the rise of second-wave feminism, Midge Decter created a foundation for the politics of family values. 

The Imminent Demise of Roe Signals More Christian Nationalist Attacks on Secular America

by David Sehat

Christian conservatives are targeting not just abortion or contraception, but the broader idea of a secular American republic. 

How Violence Crushed the Achievements of Reconstruction

by Clyde W. Ford

Both the formerly enslaved and their poor white partners in governing pursued significant changes in the political economy of the south, but those they won were stripped away by violence. 

Corporate Activism is a Dead End

by Joanna Wuest

Corporate support for LGBTQ rights cannot substitute for building sexual and gender freedom into a working people's movement for change. 

The Roundup Top Ten for May 20, 2022

The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

What Everyone Gets Wrong about the Evangelical-Abortion Connection

by Gillian Frank and Neil J. Young

A widely-accepted narrative holds that conservative Christian leaders pushed their followers to oppose abortion as a galvanizing issue when their first concern, resisting school desegregation, became politically unpopular. This obscures the movement building at the grass roots as Christians considered and debated the issue.

The Undiscussed Backlash to Brown v. Board: The Sidelining of Black Educators

by Leslie T. Fenwick

Brown v. Board was meant to ensure that children of different racial groups would share classrooms. But resistance to allowing Black teachers and principals to oversee white students' education led an estimated 100,000 Black educators to leave their profession. 

The Religion of the "Lost Cause" Is Back, and It May be Winning

by Bill Leonard

The weaponization of Southern Christianity around perceived threats to cultural integrity today adapts the playbook of the Lost Cause to the present. 

Women Know You Can't Just Replace Formula with Breastfeeding

by Laura Earls

Breastfeeding advocacy is historically tied as much to a prescriptive and sentimental image of motherhood and maternal attachment as to concern for babies' health, and has long ignored physical and social obstacles to nursing. 

Why American Christians "Back the Blue" so Fervently

by Aaron Griffith

Evangelicals within police forces and in the public at large have been encouraged to understand a scriptural mandate for police authority that often short-circuits consideration of other Christian obligations for justice, argues a historian of evangelical attitudes to law and order. 

When a Right-Wing Attack on Textbooks Was Stopped

by Jonathan Zimmerman

A McCarthy-era attack on a leading civics textbook fell short because of both organized resistance and the unpopularity of the ideas behind the ban. Supporters of academic freedom today can potentially draw on both of those elements, too. 

Alito's Opinion Shows Roe is Only the Beginning

by Thomas Zimmer

The entire idea of substantive due process under the 14th Amendment is called into question by the draft opinion, potentially threatening reproductive rights, civil rights, and sexual freedom in service of a reactionary ideal of patriarchal society.