Timothy Snyder is the first guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is an award-winning professor of history at Yale University and author of numerous books including Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin as well as Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. His newest book is On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. This is Professor Snyder's second appearance on The Chauncey DeVega Show. His first conversation with Chauncey DeVega about Trump's election and the potential for a coup and a fascist regime was read several million times at the online magazine Salon and also shared almost 300,000 times on Facebook. That episode of the podcast was also listened to and downloaded more than 20,000 times.  During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Snyder and Chauncey evaluate the health of American democracy after eight months of Trump as president, discuss how the recent white supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville could potentially fit into Trump's plans for authoritarianism in America, if Charlottesville was a "Reichstag Fire" moment, and how the rule of law is threatened by Trump's regime. Professor Snyder also explains the historical antecedents and disturbing echoes of the white supremacist and neo-Nazi hate festival in Charlottesville relative to their origins in Nazi Germany.

This week's podcast also features Professor Cedric Johnson. He is the author/editor of several books including Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, as well as The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans.  Dr. Johnson is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Cedric and Chauncey discuss the new movie Detroit, the accuracy of its depiction of that city's racial rebellion, how the civil rights movement is presented by Hollywood, and share some thoughts on the problematic racial essentializing politics of the much discussed and highly praised film Get Out. On this week's show, Chauncey DeVega demands accountability from those people who are in denial about the threat posed by Donald Trump, shares a story about filming a documentary, and explains how today's black conservatives are a modern day version of the black people who helped the Ku Klux Klan in the American South after slavery.