Explaining History

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by David F. Walbert, a veteran voting rights attorney whose new book, Stealing Elections American Style, traces the long, sordid history of contested and corrupted elections from the mid‑19th century to the present day.

David's career spans decades of litigation on voting rights cases, beginning in the early 1970s when he moved to Georgia and discovered that despite the Voting Rights Act, African American representation in elected office was staggeringly low. The problem was not voter registration – Black and white registration was near parity – but structural devices that allowed white majorities to control every election outcome.

We explore the origins of the "Southern strategy" – the explicit deal struck by Richard Nixon in 1968 with the white South: electoral votes in exchange for Supreme Court justices hostile to civil rights. That strategy, David argues, is the genesis of the ongoing assault on voting rights, culminating in the 1980 Supreme Court decision that nearly shut down vote dilution cases – and the subsequent effort to amend the Voting Rights Act in 1982.

The conversation moves to the stolen election of 1876 – perhaps the most flagrant in American history – where Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the presidency despite losing the popular vote, through the systematic throwing out of Democratic precincts in Louisiana. The parallels to the present are striking.

David also discusses the evolution of voter suppression tactics, the spread of white racist ideology from the South to the North, and the alarming infiltration of election denialists into state and local election apparatuses. He warns that the next close election – particularly in the House and Senate – could be decided not by voters, but by partisan politicians in Congress, a prospect that threatens the very foundation of American democracy.
Topics covered:
David's career litigating voting rights cases
The Voting Rights Act and its amendments
The Southern strategy and its consequences
The stolen election of 1876 (Tilden vs. Hayes)
George W. Bush vs. Al Gore in 2000
Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election
The infiltration of election denialists into state and local offices
The constitutional power of Congress to judge its own elections
The threat to the 2028 presidential election
David F. Walbert's Stealing Elections American Style is published by Bloomsbury and is available from September 3 in the US and October in the UK. Please consider buying from an independent bookshop or directly from the publisher.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content
Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory
▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast
Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com
▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper
Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we step back from the specific history of Congo to examine the broader theoretical framework of neocolonialism – and how the decline of formal empire prepared the ground for the neoliberal revolution.

Drawing on thinkers from Marx and Lenin to J.A. Hobson and Rosa Luxemburg, we explore the purpose of empire from the perspective of capital: the pursuit of cheap resources, cheap labour, and captive markets. Britain's transformation from a middling European kingdom to a global superpower was built on the extraction of wealth from its colonies – from the opium trade with China to the slave‑based sugar and cotton economies to the systematic deindustrialisation of India.

But what happens when empire becomes unsustainable? In India, the British lost control of the Indian Army in 1946, and with it, their ability to monopolise armed force. By the 1950s and 60s, most of Britain's African colonies were gone. Yet the flow of wealth from the Global South to the City of London did not stop. It continued through neocolonialism – debt, the Bretton Woods institutions, corporate infiltration, and support for pliant regimes.

And then came neoliberalism. As the returns from empire declined, capitalist elites in the Global North turned inward, cannibalising their own societies through privatisation, the erosion of welfare states, and the breaking of organised labour. The neoliberal revolution was, in part, a response to the crisis of empire – a way to maintain elite wealth and power when the old imperial structures could no longer deliver.

We also consider the explicitly colonial and eugenic thinking of some neoliberal architects, and the destructive consequences of imposing market logic on societies with no history of it. From the mass unemployment of Thatcher's Britain to the ongoing exploitation of Africa, the arc of capital bends towards extraction – and the people always pay the price.

Topics covered:
Marxist and liberal theories of imperialism (Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg)
Britain's transition from formal empire to neocolonialism
The loss of control over the Indian Army in 1946
The Bretton Woods institutions and the weaponisation of debt
Neoliberalism as a response to the decline of empire
The cannibalisation of Western welfare states
The role of organised labour and the defeat of the miners
The eugenic and colonial thinking of neoliberal theorists
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content
Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory
▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast
Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com
▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper
Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we begin a journey into one of the darkest and most overlooked chapters of the 20th century: the establishment of neocolonialism in Africa after the formal end of European empires.

After the Second World War, the dreams of a genuinely independent Africa – of nations free from exploitation, able to chart their own futures – were mercilessly snuffed out by Western powers. Drawing on Susan Williams's brilliant White Malice: The CIA and the Neocolonialisation of Africa, we explore the relationship between Ghana and Congo, and the forces that destroyed the hopes of the independence era.

We begin with the brutal history of King Leopold II's Congo Free State – a territory nearly 80 times the size of Belgium, where an estimated 10 million Congolese people died as a consequence of forced labour, mutilation, and murder. The purpose of Belgian rule, as Kwame Nkrumah observed, was not to suppress slavery but to change its nature, to make it more profitable.

But the exploitation did not end with formal decolonisation. The Congo's Shinkolobwe mine produced uranium of unparalleled richness – up to 75% uranium oxide, compared to ores from America that contained just 0.2%. This uranium was essential to the Manhattan Project, powering the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, the resource extraction continued, but through new means: corporate infiltration, debt, coups, and the tools of the Bretton Woods system.
We trace the origins of American intelligence operations in Africa, from the OSS bases in Accra, Cape Town, and Addis Ababa, to the top-secret mission to protect Congolese uranium from falling into enemy hands. And we consider the broader tragedy of neocolonialism – how the West used every tool at its disposal to ensure that Africa's resources remained under its control, long after the flags of empire had been lowered.
Topics covered:
The Belgian Congo and the crimes of King Leopold II
The forced labour system and the rubber trade
The Shinkolobwe uranium mine
The Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb
The OSS and early US intelligence in Africa
Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism
The tools of neocolonialism: debt, coups, and corporate power
The continuing relevance of resource exploitation today
Susan Williams's White Malice is available from all good bookshops. Please consider buying from an independent retailer.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content
Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory
▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast
Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com
▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper
Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by John McDonagh, professor of practice at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, former Massachusetts state legislator, and key architect of Obamacare. He is here to discuss his new book, America's Wrong Turn: U.S. Healthcare in the Neoliberal Era – a searing diagnosis of how a revolution in economic thinking turned the American healthcare system into a global outlier.

The United States spends more on healthcare than any other advanced nation – by a staggering margin – yet its health outcomes rank near the bottom. Life expectancy has been declining since 1980. The infant mortality rate is embarrassingly high. And while every other wealthy country covers 99–100% of its citizens, the U.S. still leaves millions uninsured.

John explains how a single chart – showing U.S. healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP – reveals the story. In 1980, the U.S. was the highest spender but still in the pack. Then something happened. Around 1982–83, the U.S. "jackrabbited" away from every other nation. The culprit? The neoliberal revolution – the ideas of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the Mont Pelerin Society – that captured American policy under Ronald Reagan and transformed healthcare from a public good into a site of value extraction.

John traces how monopoly capitalism, private equity, and the mantra of "maximising shareholder value" have hollowed out the system. Hospitals are bought by private equity firms, stripped of their land and buildings, and turned into tenants paying exorbitant rents. Two companies now control 90% of dialysis care. Antitrust enforcement has collapsed. The result is a system that Americans hate – but feel powerless to change.

Yet John is an optimist. He argues that the feedback loop of public revulsion is building, and that the neoliberal era – though its effects persist – is over. The seeds of hope lie in renewed antitrust activism, grassroots organising, and the eventual replacement of a corrupt administration.
Topics covered:

U.S. healthcare spending vs. outcomes
The 1980s inflection point
The neoliberal revolution and its key thinkers
Monopoly capitalism in healthcare
Private equity and value extraction
The collapse of antitrust enforcement
Milton Friedman's "shareholder value" doctrine
The NHS and the politics of healthcare
Hope for reform

John McDonagh's America's Wrong Turn is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Use code HTWN at checkout for 30% off. Please consider buying from an independent retailer or directly from the publisher.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content
Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory
▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast
Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com
▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper
Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore a little‑known chapter of American history: the establishment of California's penal system as a form of coerced labour that replaced chattel slavery.

When we think of slavery in America, we think of the southern states. But California has a far more complex and underexplored history. In 1849, the year after gold was discovered, California was a lawless frontier. There were no courts, no jails, no police. Vigilantes and self‑appointed "tribunals" dispensed "justice" with fists, guns and ropes. White paramilitary groups like the Hounds terrorised Latino and Black communities, robbing, raping and mutilating with impunity.

As California moved towards statehood in 1850, it needed to establish order. But the state had no money to build prisons. The solution was to put prisoners to work – and to make them pay for their own incarceration. From the 1850s onwards, legions of shackled prisoners built roads, broke granite, laid pipes and even built San Quentin prison itself. Convict labour was leased to private businesses, creating a system of penal slavery that would endure for generations.

Drawing on Jean Felser's California, a Slave State, we trace the origins of this system. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery – but with a crucial exception: "except as a punishment for crime". That exception allowed California to build an economic colossus on the backs of unpaid prisoners, disproportionately Native American, Black, immigrant and poor. And the system never went away.
Topics covered:

California's lawless gold rush era
The Hounds and vigilante justice
The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians
The establishment of San Quentin prison
Convict leasing and penal slavery
The 13th Amendment's "punishment for crime" exception
The racialisation of crime and punishment
The prison‑industrial complex in historical perspective

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content
Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory
▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast
Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com
▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper
Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.