Zack Beauchamp at Harvard Book Store

Harvard Book Store welcomes ZACK BEAUCHAMP—senior correspondent at Vox and former host of Vox's Worldly podcast—for a discussion of his new book The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World.

About The Reactionary Spirit

There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of American politics that has endured since our nation’s birth. The defining ideals of democracy and liberty for everyone have always existed uneasily alongside realities of slavery, widespread disenfranchisement, and other grave impediments to true democracy. How has this paradox survived for so long in the face of America’s foundational claim of liberty and justice for all?

In The Reactionary Spirit, Zack Beauchamp explains that this tension is in fact an example of a phenomenon intrinsic to the project of democracy, what he calls the reactionary spirit: as strides towards true democracy are made, there is always a faction that reacts by seeking to undermine them and thereby resist change. The adoption of democratic rhetoric cleverly belies authoritarian ends—a development that is increasingly prevalent today, both at home and abroad.

Brilliantly combining political history and reportage, Beauchamp reveals how the United States was the birthplace of this strange and harrowing authoritarian style, and why we’re now seeing its evolution in diverse nations including Hungary, Israel, and India. These countries in turn provide blueprints for the reactionary spirit domestically, as with Florida governor Ron DeSantis taking pages from Hungarian president Viktor Orbán’s anti-LGBT legislative playbook.

The Reactionary Spirit paints a vivid, alarming picture that illuminates not only what’s happening to democracy globally, but also what we must do to protect it—while we still can.

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.