What the official narrative of US history should be, who gets to tell that history, and who the protagonists are have been recurring debates since the founding of the American republic, but they became especially important and heated in the aftermath of the Civil War—and they have been a defining feature of far-right politics ever since. At stake is the question of whose country this is and to whom this land and its future belongs.

In this special series of The Marc Steiner Show, co-hosted by Marc Steiner and Bill Fletcher Jr., we will examine the rise of the right in the US and beyond, we will explore the different tendencies and motivations fueling today’s surge in far-right politics, and we will engage with a range of critical voices who can help us understand how we got here and what we can do about it. In Episode Two of “Rise of the Right,” Marc and Bill are joined by Erica Smiley, Bill Gallegos, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz to examine the central place that race, racial hierarchy, and the project of settler colonialism have held in far-right politics historically, and the role they play in driving far-right politics today.

Erica Smiley is a longtime organizer and movement leader, and she is the executive director of Jobs With Justice. Bill Gallegos is an activist who has been involved in the Chicano liberation and environmental justice movements for many years; he also served as the executive director for Communities for a Better Environment. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. She is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize and she has authored and edited many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States and Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.

Tune in every Monday over the next month for new installments of this special series of The Marc Steiner Show on TRNN.


Read the transcript of this podcast:


Pre-Production: Dwayne Gladden, Stephen Frank, Kayla Rivara, Maximillian Alvarez, Jocelyn Dombroski
Studio: Dwayne Gladden
Post-Production: Stephen Frank


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