White Rural Rage April 16, 2024 Kara Swisher talks with Timothy Ryback (if, like me, you don’t have time to read his book): There are a lot of Trump/Hitler comparisons being thrown around these days. So we went to the source, as chronicled by historian Timothy Ryback in his new book Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power. Ryback zooms in on the final six months before Adolf Hitler dissolved the government of the Weimar Republic, revealing that Nazi Germany was not inevitable. Kara and Ryback discuss the Berlin power players that misjudged Hitler’s bankrupt party, and the (not just rhetorical) similarities between the ascendance of Hitler and Donald Trump. In his book, Ryback apparently never mentions Trump’s name. But as you’ll hear, the parallels are . . . chilling. On a related note, White Rural Rage is “a searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens — who are also the least likely to defend its core principles,” according to its publisher. White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. [The authors] explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States. If you can help preserve the American experiment — flawed, to be sure, yet still beacon of freedom to the world — click here.