Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Print this page

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.