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Will Hitchcock

@willhitch.bsky.social
965 followers 1.6K following 62 posts

Historian | NYT best-selling author | UVa Prof. | Forthcoming: “A SHADOW OVER THE WORLD: FDR, the Rise of Fascism, and the Making of America’s WW2.” | American Academy in Berlin 2025

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Reposted by Will Hitchcock
The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 28/09/2026
Franklin D. Roosevelt was slow to confront the threat of Fascism. A new history explores how he—and the country—finally came around. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
How America Became Antifascist
Franklin D. Roosevelt was slow to confront the threat of Fascism. A new history explores how he—and the country—finally came around.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Here’s their story: www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Shad...
simonandschuster.com
A Shadow Over the World
From New York Times bestselling author William I. Hitchcock, a riveting, revelatory portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the lead-up to World W...
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
There’s a lot of fascism going around these days. Unfortunately this is not new. But less well known is how many Americans were antifascists in the early 1930s, especially women, Jews, African Americans, + intellectuals. And in the end, they won the argument. It has been exciting to rediscover them:
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
This is good from The New School’s Jeremy Varon: jacobin.com/2026/03/vide...
jacobin.com
Trump Wants a “Video Game War” in Iran
Donald Trump has resurrected the military fantasy of the “video game war,” waged mostly through high-tech, lethal air power with few US casualties. But his administration may have miscalculated the ea...
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Oona Hathaway @oonahathaway.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Even if it is a "mistake," it can still be a war crime. A person who acts recklessly in causing disproportionate civilian deaths can be found to have acted “wilfully” and thus responsible for a war crime. Read "'Mistakes' in War": papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...
nytimes.com
Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
NYT catching up… so nearly there! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Resistance Libs Were Right
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
-Uses traditional elites to secure power; -Imposes autarkic forms of economic control; -Deploys paramilitary at home ; -Creates a cult of an infallible Leader; And — you guessed it— *Promises redemption via violence/conquest/struggle.*
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Btw, Fascism: -Emphasizes the threat to the nation from within and without; -Proposes to cleanse the nation of “enemy/ other”; -Glorifies an imagined “lost” past of national greatness; -Seeks an anti-democratic one-party state; -Demands control of media/culture/universities;
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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
I need a couple books on the origins of the New Deal. Is there much on tha…
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History News Network @myhnn.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
🗃️Read Elizabeth R. Varon on why J.D. Vance is wrong about the Civil War, immigration, and “real” Americans. www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/elev...
historynewsnetwork.org
Elevating the Few
What J.D. Vance excludes from the history of the Civil War and immigration.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
Still waiting
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Graduation speeches in the 1930s were 🔥
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Woah 🔥!
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Hector Diaz @iamhectordiaz.com · 08/05/2025
A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope
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Elizabeth N. Saunders @profsaunders.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Unhappy to confirm that the entire Historical Advisory Committee at the State Department received termination notices this afternoon (myself included). The HAC, set up by Congress, oversees the office that produces the FRUS series. history.state.gov/about/hac/in... 1/
Tim Naftali's tweet on the termination of the HAC members without cause.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
I am fortunate to be part of this great group of colleagues and phd students in our (entirely voluntary and casual) seminar on 20th C international history. Great discussion on Berlin as a site of decolonization!
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
“Almost the first freedom to be destroyed, as dictators take control, is the freedom of learning. Tyranny hates and fears nothing more than the free exchange of ideas.” Franklin Roosevelt, Oct 5, 1940.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
In 1940, the presidents of Yale, Columbia, and Harvard urged the government and country to fight fascism. It was national news.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Lovely convo with my grad students this week, riffing with them about how to plot a book on decolonization and the Cold War. Dreadful chalk scribbles but fun intellectual exercise.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Sometimes old books can suddenly seem new again.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Fortune mag, March 1940. 65% say government should care for needy even if it means more taxes or higher prices.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Look, it was never about prices. Sure, millions of people spoke those words but this is how ideology operates: it provides you with believable nonsense so you can hide your racism, sexism, and xenophobia behind happy stories about egg prices.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Word of the moment, used during the Nazi merging of the party w the state in 1933-35: *Gleichschaltung* gleich (same) schaltung (circuit): All switches are put on the same circuit, allowing them all to be activated by throwing a single master switch. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...
encyclopedia.ushmm.org
Gleichschaltung: Coordinating the Nazi State
Gleichschaltung is the German term applied to the Nazification of all aspects of German society following the Nazi rise to power in 1933.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Happy birthday FDR! Your New Deal state survived almost a century but some very bad people you would call “economic royalists” are going to destroy it from within.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Well… the jury is still out on whether we beat the Confederates and the Nazis! They seem to be thriving tbh
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
History doesn’t repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes with Mussolini. Read up on Italy from 1922 to 1926 for a preview of coming attractions.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Now do History.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Sam, this Quincy brief you joined is non-sensical. It proposes Trump’s global grift over the “system” we’ve got now. I get you want an end to imperial overstretch. But why not envision that within intl law? Instead you embrace Trumpian nihilism and say “hey let’s give it a try! Silver lining!” Sad!
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Can confirm
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
My colleague and podcast cohost @sivav.bsky.social has written an excellent piece here about the global rejection of liberal democracy. Brief and insightful! Have a look: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
With the 21st century a quarter complete, illiberal democracy is the new global norm | Siva Vaidhyanathan
Many of the political ideas we thought were taken for granted at the end of the 20th century have cracked and crumbled
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
Reading about the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany? This sheet pan Black Forest cake will make you feel like you were there.
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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
We're just 48 hours from the special elections that will decide whether Dems keep their majorities in the Virginia Senate & Virginia House boltsmag.org/legislative-...
Similarly, in Virginia, Democrat Suhas Subramanyan and Republican John McGuire are moving to the U.S. House from the state Senate, which is currently split 21 to 19 in Democrats’ favor. The race to replace Subramanyan in District 32nd is more likely to be competitive, according to The Downballot, giving the GOP a chance to tie the chamber in a Jan. 7 special election; a tie would effectively hand Republicans the majority since the GOP lieutenant governor would have the power to break ties.

In mid-November, Democrats chose state Delegate Kannan Srinivasan to run in this race. This triggered another Jan. 7 special election, this time in District 26, Srinivasan’s blue-leaning House seat. Democrats’ control of the lower chamber is just as narrow—51 to 49—so the GOP will have an outside shot at tying the House as well.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
So far, my university’s policy discourages *faculty* from using any AI detector tool on student papers because the tools can be inaccurate. So the official policy message on AI is… 🤷‍♂️
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Just saying, Denzel’s expression in his final scene in Galdiator 2 is me watching this movie
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Awesome!!
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
The face that launched 11,000 emails
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
FDR called them “economic royalists” which rolls a little better than “imperialist clique.” Note that Wilkerson in this essay praises FDR and New Deal for antifascist work.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Writing is hard; and writing a book is agony, until suddenly there’s a moment when you look up and realize you’re finishing it, and it’s not terrible, and maybe you haven’t wasted years … and your heart beats a little faster. Worth bottling that feeling for use in future emergencies
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Go see “A Complete Unknown”! Bring your fam! It’s lovely, a sentimental, beautifully acted film, a tribute to youthful genius, and generational conflict. Plus the clothes! The hair! The music!
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Guys, please, this isn’t an anomaly, a surprise, a mistake, a gaffe. Applauding Nazi violence is the whole point! Like, it’s not a secret!
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
On Sept 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, Hitler gave a shrieking, grievance-filled speech to the Reichstag. The great columnist Dorothy Thompson heard it, and on NBC radio she reflected back to January 1933. Anyone from Charlottesville will know exactly what she is talking about here.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
FYI, wealthy people have liked fascism from 1922 until today. Usually the argument is: “fascism is good for the unruly slobs who need discipline;” but it has also been seen as a cure-all to economic woes, race/gender panics, etc. A billionaire endorsing a neo-Nazi party is 100% on brand.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
The interval of time between grades being posted and students complaining about said grades is best measured in: hours minutes seconds nanoseconds
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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
I'm very indebted to the work of @brianbeutler.bsky.social and @jamellebouie.net in formulating this line of questioning. I hope more Dems are pushed on this going forward:
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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
A record 47.8 million immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2023, up from 46.2 million in 2022. While the number of immigrants in the U.S. reached a new record high last year, their share of the population (14.3%) remained below the all-time peak (14.8% in 1890). www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
Chart showing immigrant share of the US population from 1850 to 2023.
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Will Hitchcock @willhitch.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Don’t forget Ike’s “eight millionaires and a plumber!” (The plumber quit after a few months)
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Laura Davulis @davulis.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
There are still a few weeks left in the year (though December is generally a quiet month for book proposals), but it looks like I’m going to close out 2024 with around 80% of total book proposals coming from men, 18% from women, and 2% from persons whose gender was not apparent/obvious.
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