Special: Charlottesville, Race, and Nazi America

In this Head On History Special we move away from our season outline and discuss the current events of Charlottesville, Virgina. We use history to help explain how we got to this moment with Nazi's and white supremacist marching in the streets. In this podcast we talk about the historical connection between America's race project and Nazism, we discuss the connection between American race legislation and the Nuremberg Laws. We dispel the myth about the Confederacy being about state's right providing evidence that at its heart was the institution of slavery. We explore how race has always been at the heart of citizenship in America and how laws like the Racial Integrity Act and anti-immigrant sentiment weren't just part of American Nazism, but mainstream politics. Finally, we talk about the history of Confederate statues, dispelling the myth that they were merely about heritage. We end with a discussion on historical amnesia and America's failure to critically engage it's dark past.