Keen On America Fear and Fury: From Bernie Goetz to Kyle Rittenhouse
Jan 27, 2026
Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of Fear and Fury, provides a concise historical look at the 1984 Bernie Goetz case and its wider political resonance. She traces links from Reagan-era shifts in public safety to modern vigilante moments like Kyle Rittenhouse. The conversation focuses on media, law, and the genealogy of white rage in late 20th-century America.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Political Shift Fertilized Vigilantism
- Heather Ann Thompson ties the rise of vigilante acts to a broader political shift beginning in the late 1970s and solidifying in the Reagan 1980s.
- She argues many Americans lost faith in government capacity for public safety, producing a hunger for private retribution.
Policy Choices, Not Fate, Shifted Expectations
- Thompson contrasts the post-Depression social safety net era with the Reagan-era turn toward austerity and distrust of government.
- She suggests that political choices—not inevitability—reoriented public expectations about state responsibility.
Rhetoric, Policy And The Making Of A Symbol
- Thompson links the Reagan administration's rhetoric to deliberate political choices that amplified racial fear to win support for tax cuts and austerity.
- Bernie Goetz became a symbolic product of that curated political and media environment, not merely a lone actor.
