Ep. 151: James Whitman Explains What Adolf Hitler and the Nazis Learned From American Racism

Sep 2, 2017

James Q. Whitman is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and author of the new book Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Whitman and Chauncey discuss the connections between American "race scientists" and their peers in Germany, what the Nazis and Adolf Hitler learned from America's racial order, as well as how American anti-miscegenation laws and Jim and Jane Crow were admired by the Nazis. Professor Whitman also shares his thoughts on the troubling parallels between Donald Trump's rise to power, the recent events in Charlottesville, and Hitler's genocidal authoritarian regime.  

On this week's show, Chauncey DeVega reflects on Hurricane Harvey and what its devastating aftermath reveals about the color line, income inequality, and disaster capitalism. Chauncey also ponders the morality of trying to profit from the inevitable rebuilding efforts. At the end of the this week's podcast Chauncey also "connects the dots" between the high level of support for Donald Trump among America's police, disinformation about the Black Lives Matter movement, and how the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies have now labeled anti-fascists as "terrorists".