Benjamin Carter Hett Reminds Us The End of Democracy Is Never Inevitable

Benjamin Carter Hett is Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York. He specializes in German history, and his books include The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic; The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War; and more.

He is one of my favorite historians, and I was really excited to get to have him on the show. We dive into the parallels he thinks do and don't exist between today and the 1920s and 1930s. We also spend some time on the f-word debate and whether he thinks fascism is the best term to describe what we're facing in Trump 2.0. Then we get into contemporary politics in Germany and the strength of the AfD ahead of the upcoming elections.