Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This week, I talk with historian Heather Ann Thompson about her new non-fiction Fear and Fury, which traces how the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting became a flashpoint for the Reagan-era rollback of public investment, the rise of punitive policing, and the normalization of white vigilantism.
Moving between the lived experiences of the four Black teenagers who were shot and the political, media, and economic forces that quickly transformed Goetz into a folk hero, Thompson shows how fear was deliberately manufactured and redirected away from structural inequality and toward racialized scapegoats.
We compare 1980s New York to the present moment—drawing lines to media sensationalism, carceral logic, and modern cases of state and vigilante violence—while insisting that this history is neither accidental nor inevitable. By centering the long-term human cost borne by the victims and their families, the conversation ultimately argues that understanding how white rage was cultivated is essential to imagining a more just future.
Check out the book here:
goodreads.com/book/show/235611072-fear-and-fury?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=o67WPaJgTl&rank=1
#bookwild #booktube #readersofyoutube
This week, I talk with historian Heather Ann Thompson about her new non-fiction Fear and Fury, which traces how the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting became a flashpoint for the Reagan-era rollback of public investment, the rise of punitive policing, and the normalization of white vigilantism.
Moving between the lived experiences of the four Black teenagers who were shot and the political, media, and economic forces that quickly transformed Goetz into a folk hero, Thompson shows how fear was deliberately manufactured and redirected away from structural inequality and toward racialized scapegoats.
We compare 1980s New York to the present moment—drawing lines to media sensationalism, carceral logic, and modern cases of state and vigilante violence—while insisting that this history is neither accidental nor inevitable. By centering the long-term human cost borne by the victims and their families, the conversation ultimately argues that understanding how white rage was cultivated is essential to imagining a more just future.
Check out the book here:
goodreads.com/book/show/235611072-fear-and-fury?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=o67WPaJgTl&rank=1
#bookwild #booktube #readersofyoutube
