Recommended Reading: Coups Make a Comeback and the Destruction of Myths

This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jared Yates Sexton, Diana Butler Bass, Jill Filipovic, Erin Reed, and Damon Linker.

The Week's Recommended Reading on Substack:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

writes that the “GOP found out on Jan. 6 what generations of authoritarians already knew: coups are hard to pull off. Of 471 coup attempts staged around the world from 1950 to 2000, half were defeated due to operational failures or lack of unity among participants. Successful coups require the backing of powerful individuals and institutions, whether the military, security forces, or political parties.”

Coups Make a Comeback as GOP Elites Declare "Total War" on US Democracy

Jared Yates Sexton

writes that we should “talk about the scientists who actually achieve things. Serious people we couldn’t even possibly hope to name. In fact, I couldn’t tell you a single person who worked on this project because they’re more interested in innovating and doing their work than bathing in the limelight and inspiring cultish devotion. And they did that work with the help of government money. Money, it should be said, well spent. Or at least better spent than funding cars that randomly catch fire or kill innocent bystanders.”

The Destruction of Myths and the Creation of the Future

Diana Butler Bass

writes that “many Americans think of Christians as the bad guys in the story for LGBTQ rights. And, of course, they’d be right. In far too many cases, the church has been one of the worst actors in the tale. But the story isn’t just of churches resisting change, of narrow-minded religious people hating gays… There were Christians who struggled with ancient texts, preached controversial sermons, argued with their fellow parishioners, came out to their church friends, battled during congregational meetings, broke denominational policies, protested state laws, and fought to change their larger church bodies.”

Protest, Pride, Pew, and Presidential Pen

Jill Filipovic

writes that “the anti-abortion movement is taking aim at abortion pills. And importantly, they’re taking aim at speech about abortion pills — trying to outlaw it — and at people who help to secure abortion pills for those in need. They want to throw those people — moms, friends, sisters who try to help a loved one in need — in jail for drug trafficking.”

The Anti-Abortion Movement Wants to Jail You For Abortion Pills

Erin Reed

writes that “the name and pronoun dance is something that happens when an ally gets to your name or pronouns and then suddenly stops. It’s jarring. It’s the conversational equivalent of getting into a fender bender. It’s awkward as hell and every trans person realizes when it happens - you aren’t being smooth by pausing at names and pronouns.”

Stop Doing The Pronoun Dance: How To Remember Your Trans Friends Names/Pronouns

Damon Linker

writes that "just as a revolutionary aims to overthrow the world of the present in order to build a new one oriented toward the future, so a counter-revolutionary aims to overthrow the world of the present in order to build a new one oriented toward the past. The reactionary seeks not to stand athwart history yelling, “Stop!,” as a conservative might, but to throw the conveyor belt of historical motion into reverse—or to leap out of the flow of historical change in order to return us to a moment in the past before the revolution took place and forestall the onset of decline this time around."

Opening Our Eyes to the Right’s Rising Radicalism

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