Lincoln Square
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Is the Right Looking for a Reichstag Fire? | Historian Thomas Zimmer joins Susan Demas
Posted
September 17, 2025
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53:26Now PlayingFor the last five years, Thomas Zimmer was a professor of international history at Georgetown University and is well-known for his research on American democracy and extremism on the right. But he made the decision to move back to Germany, in part, because of the political climate during Trump’s second term.
"This administration simply does not think the First Amendment applies to non-citizens,” he explains to Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas.
But Thomas continues to do important work, like his latest essay, “The Right Wants a Reichstag Fire,” examining the calls from Trump, Vance, and other Republican leaders to wage war against “the left” over the murder of Charlie Kirk. The fact that they have no evidence that leftist politics motivated the killing hasn’t stopped them from fanning the flames during this fraught period.
Thomas notes that today’s American right has rejected conservatism and has embrace counter-revolutionism, summing up their ideology as: "There is a real America ... and it is under siege ... from this sort of fundamentally anti-American right."
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