How the NYC Reagan 80s Taught America to Excuse Violence: Heather Ann Thompson's Fear and Fury
This week, I talk with historian Heather Ann Thompson about her new non-fiction Fear and Fury, which traces how the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting became a flashpoint for the Reagan-era rollback of public investment, the rise of punitive policing, and the normalization of white vigilantism.Moving between the lived experiences of the four Black teenagers who were shot and the political, media, and economic forces that quickly transformed Goetz into a folk hero, Thompson shows how fear was deliberately manufactured and redirected away from structural inequality and toward racialized…
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