Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People--And the Fight to Resist It

Ari Berman

Book cover for Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People--And the Fight to Resist It
Book cover for Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People--And the Fight to Resist It

Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People--And the Fight to Resist It

Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People--And the Fight to Resist It

Ari Berman

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Description

A riveting account of the decades-long effort by reactionary white conservatives to undermine democracy and entrench their power--and the movement to stop them.

The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. But this crisis didn't begin or end with Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift. Ari Berman charts these efforts with sweeping historical research and incisive on-the-ground reporting, chronicling how a wide range of antidemocratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America.

"The will of the people," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, "is the only legitimate foundation of any government." But that foundation is crumbling. Some counter-majoritarian measures were deliberately built into the Constitution, which was designed in part to benefit a small propertied upper class, but they have metastasized to a degree that the Founding Fathers could never have anticipated, undermining the very notion of "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Chilling and revelatory, Minority Rule exposes the long history of the conflict between white supremacy and multiracial democracy that has reached a fever pitch today--while also telling the inspiring story of resistance to these regressive efforts.

About the Author

Ari Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. He's the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction) and Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, and he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR. He's won the Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize for Magazine Journalism and an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. He lives in New Paltz, New York.

Critical Reviews

"Voting rights journalist Ari Berman has been detailing threats to our democracy for years, and his new book Minority Rule is a timely and essential read. He expertly shows how Republicans are trying to rig our political system--and shares how we can fight back."
--Hillary Clinton on X

"[A] rich history of America's ambivalent attitude toward majority rule." --Charles Kaiser, The Guardian

"Great book alert: Understand how the Supreme Court actively undermines democracy and learn to spot the broader anti-democratic tactics that impact us at the national & local level. Get Ari Berman's timely, smart new book Minority Rule." --Stacey Abrams, former Georgia House Minority Leader and voting rights advocate

"[A]nyone who cares about democracy should read his new book, Minority Rule. It's terrific." --Jane Mayer, on X

"If you want to learn more about how the Supreme Court is undermining our democracy, I highly recommend reading Ari Berman's timely new book Minority Rule. " --Robert Reich, on X

"Minority Rule," by Ari Berman, traces in methodical detail the long history of white conservatives deploying all kinds of technical maneuvers to counter the democratic effects of a diversifying country." --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"[A] labyrinthine political exposé . . . Berman pairs wide-ranging and historically grounded analysis of America's minoritarian political system with a trenchant critique of its departures from democratic common sense. The result is an eye-opening dissection of partisan manipulation." --Publishers Weekly

"A richly documented political book with significant current relevance." --Kirkus Reviews

"[A] deeply researched and deftly argued treatise . . . Berman rings a clarion call about
the current state of political influence to shed light on the steady erosion of democratic norms." --Booklist

Publishing Information

Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux
Pub date: 2024-04-23
Length: 384 pages

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