On today’s show, Allen Ruff and his guest, historian Dr. Gerald Horne, explore the assertion that the arrival of COVID-19 has exposed inequities in our social system and continues to act as a catalyst for deep and simmering social and economic crises—all worsened by the current political system.

Dr. Horne puts it bluntly: “The virus  is ripping the masks off of US society, ripping the masks off of neoliberalism. It’s often suggested that a crisis helps to reveal character, and this crisis is helping to reveal the character of neoliberalism, of capitalism, of imperialism.”

Dr. Gerald Horne is the Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston. He’s the author of over thirty books to date, including a history of the political economy of jazz (Jazz and Justice, Monthly Review Press, 2019), a comparison of the entangled histories of South African apartheid and Jim Crow (White Supremacy Confronted, International Publishers, 2019), and the African-American struggle to gain the right to fly (Storming the Heavens, Black Classic Press, 2017).

His forthcoming book, The Dawning of the Apocalypse (NYU Press, July 2020), revises the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and the roots of slavery. He is a frequent contributor to Political Affairs magazine as well as various radio programs.

(Cover image courtesy Adam Niescioruk on Unsplash)