American Midnight
by Adam Hochschild · first published 2022
8mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2022–2025first – last mentioned
100% recommend
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…actively opposing the possibility of people doing good for themselves & the world. I strongly recommend folks go read one of the darkest periods of America, before enough was enough Adam Hochschild's American Midnight (2022) tells an amazing story of a circa-WW1 state that had radicalized against people, that had been totally overrun by well monied powers. Of Hoover using the full power of the police state to surveil…
on “Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working” ↗I havent opened it yet but the book American Midnight came highly highly recommended, which covers this time period & this event. A power hungry intolerant federal government mandating War-fervor & jingoism, suppressing all outside voices (largely liberal…
on “Anti-War Speech Sent Eugene vs. Debs to Prison, 1918” ↗…to incite or produce such action." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... Utterly unsurprised to find it was WW1 time-period constraint, as I'm reading the utterly fabulous American Midnight about how the USG built a huge surveillance network & vigilante groups to destroy labor, human-rights, socialistic causes, and anyone not signing up for an incredibly propogandized Big Business lead war.…
on “Yes, the US Government Threatening to Block TikTok Violates the First Amendment” ↗…improved rural service. It is fair to say however that he may have been the worst human being ever to serve as postmaster general -G. J. Meyer This guy shows up time and time again in Hochshild's amazing American Midnight, to keep careful watch over & to ban various inconvenient political, civil, labor, racial, and anti-war folks from being able to send their letters. Empowered via the 1917 Espionage Act, by a Congress…
on “Denmark's Justice Minister calls encrypted messaging a false civil liberty” ↗…online, and from what sources I can see that include 2022 immigration statistics, it seems like immigration has more than made up for lost time. Sort of side note, but very much meta-on-topic; I'm reading American Midnight (2022) about the suppression of labor, progressives, & anything standing in the way of capital around WW1, and it's amazing & sad. About the economic & military, & especially especially the social mobilization…
on “There is no US labor shortage. That’s a myth” ↗…essential need for human privacy at some level, that it's a gross & disgusting world if humans are deprived of a sense of independent identity, are too closely handled from above. My example comes from American Midnight, which is a very very very long tale about awful things the US did just 100 years ago. It's well written and as the title says incredibly dark. A huge amount of the book touches on the power of information.…
on “Complex Systems of Secrecy: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs” ↗Reading "American Midnight" about Wilson & industrialists promoting/propogandizing WWI & the whole US using that movement as a cudgel to beat down labor, progressives, minorities, basically everyone with anything to say that wasnt…
on “When Americans Lost Faith in the News” ↗A lot of similar-ish underlying currents to American Midnight, a history book about America around WW1, & governmental-industrial interests aligned against the general welfare & individual liberty.
on “Noam Chomsky: “We’re on the Road to a Form of Neofascism”” ↗