The East Side Freedom Library invites you to the next conversation with Tom O’Connell, “Learning from the Past, Fighting for the Future”

Tom will talk with Nation Magazine’s John Nichols to discuss his new book

The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace’s Antifascist Antiracist Politics

Monday, September 28, 2020, 7pm

This will event will premiere on ESFL’s Facebook page and YouTube channel

John Nichols is National Affairs correspondent for the Nation magazine and associate editor of the Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Times. He is the author of numerous books, including The Genius Of Impeachment (2006), The Death And Life Of American Journalism (2010), Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed The Politics Of Protest (2012), and Horsemen Of The Apocalypse: A Field Guide To The Most Dangerous People In America (2017). John will be joining Tom to discuss his new book, which offers readers the opportunity to engage in a spirited conversation between the past and the present.

In The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party, John takes up back seventy-five years, when Henry Wallace, then the sitting Vice President of the United States, mounted a campaign to warn about the persisting “Danger of American Fascism.” As fighting in the European and Japanese theaters drew to a close, Wallace warned that the country may win the war and lose the piece; that the fascist threat that the U.S. was battling abroad had a terrifying domestic variant, growing rapidly in power: wealthy corporatists and their allies in the media. Wallace warned that if the New Deal project was not renewed and expanded in the post-war era, American fascists would use fear mongering, xenophobia, and racism to regain the economic and political power that they lost. He championed an alternative, progressive vision of a post-war world-an alternative to triumphalist “American Century” vision then rising—in which the United States rejected colonialism and imperialism.

What happened to Wallace’s political vision? Can it be revitalized today? Join John and Tom for a conversation exploring this history and these questions. You can ask questions and join the conversation, remotely, too.

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