The Great Suppression
“According to this grim investigation, when the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, it bolstered ongoing right-wing attempts to limit democracy and voting rights…Roth explains that once-per-decade redistricting will allow the GOP to dominate American electoral politics for years to come. His book should be required reading for understanding the ultimate goals of American conservatism.”
Publishers Weekly
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of 9 Books for Back-to-School
A deeply reported look inside the new conservative movement working to undermine American democracy.
Control of the country is up for grabs-and Republicans have been rigging the game in their favor. Twenty-two states have passed restrictions on voting. Ruthless gerrymandering has given the GOP a long-term grip on Congress. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, boosting candidgates backed by big money.
It would be worrying enough if these were just schemes for partisan advantage. But the reality is even more disturbing. As reporter Zachary Roth reveals, a growing number of Republicans distrust the very idea of democracy-and they're doing everything they can to limit it.
In The Great Suppression, Roth unearths the deep historical roots of this antiegalitarian worldview, and introduces us to its modern-day proponents: the GOP officials pushing to make it harder to cast a ballot; the lawyers looking to scrap all limits on money in politics; the libertarian scholars reclaiming judicial activism to roll back the New Deal; and the corporate lobbyists working to ban local action on everything from the minimum wage to the environment. And he travels from Rust Belt cities to southern towns to show us how these efforts are hurting the most vulnerable Americans and preventing progress on pressing issues.
A sharp, searing polemic in the tradition of Rachel Maddow and Matt Taibbi, The Great Suppression is an urgent wake-up call about a threat to our most cherished values, and a rousing argument for why we need democracy now more than ever.
Praise