Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

This is America

Samuel Watts offers a historical perspective on the assault on the US Capitol
The ABR Podcast 13 January 2021

This is America

Samuel Watts offers a historical perspective on the assault on the US Capitol
The ABR Podcast 13 January 2021

The events of January 6 shocked the world. In this episode of the ABR Podcast Samuel Watts reads his article 'This Is America' and offers a historical perspective. As Watts notes, 'To view the assault on the US Capitol as the climax of a dramatic, but brief, period of authoritarianism in the US is a potentially dangerous mistake. This attack was just the latest iteration in a long-lasting tradition of anti-democratic, white supremacist violence that has plagued the Republic since, at least, the Civil War.'

Samuel Watts’s article ‘This Is America’ is one of a series of commentaries funded by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.


The ABR Podcast features a range of literary highlights, such as reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

Subscribe via iTunesGoogle, or Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Music credit: 'Moonrise' and 'Negentropy' by Chad Crouch is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.