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In August 1968, during a year of violence and political tension in America, protesters fought a pitched battle in the streets of Chicago with the police. The anti Vietnam war demonstrators clashed outside the Democratic National Convention, while inside the pro and anti war factions of the divided Democrats attacked one another. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show,
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Between 1926 and 1937 the Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist government following the dictator’s crack down on left wing parties. During his incarceration he wrote some of the most important critiques of capitalist society of the 20th Century. Gramsci’s prison notebooks are a fundamental part of Marxist thought and attempt to answer questions that Marx was unable to address about the workings of capitalist society. Explaining History helps you understand t
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At the end of the Second World War, the British Army marched into the French colony of Indochina, which had been occupied by Japan for the previous four years. The British used Japanese and Indian troops to prevent a Viet Minh nationalist government establishing itself and returned French colonists to power. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and
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In the second half of the 19th Century a quiet publishing revolution was taking place. Victorian ladies with education and wealth were able to produce new newspapers, pamphlets and books demanding equal political and legal rights for women. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: pat
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In 1945, after the devastation of a long war across Asia, Britain’s hold over her Indian empire was greatly weakened. The new Labour Government was notionally committed to Indian independence, but it was the inability of Britain to continue ruling and the development of India as a powerful new military force in the region that made independence an inevitability. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to t
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In 1974 the government of Edward Heath was defeated in an election called to give Heath a mandate against the trade unions. His nemesis was the miners union organiser Arthur Scargill. In 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher inflicted a crushing defeat on the union movement, a victory long in the planning by the Conservative Government. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy t
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During the chaos of the First World War a generation of British and American correspondents in Russia astutely predicted the failure of the Provisional Government and came to see the Bolsheviks as a viable alternative. Some, like Arthur Ransome and John Reed went further and became passionate advocates for the new regime led by Vladimir Lenin. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you
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Margaret Thatcher was a politician convinced that a return to ‘family values’ after two decades of seeming moral decline in the 60s and 70s was part of the key to restoring British fortunes. Throughout the 1980s, however, this manifested itself in a prolonged attack on gay rights, during a time when the existence of the HIV virus and AIDS was associated in the press with the LGBT community. During the 1980s however, Conservative policies led to a politicisation of the gay community and the quest
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During the First World War the racist terrorist organisation the Ku Klux Klan reformed and by 1924 boasted four million members. However five years later it was once more a political irrelevance. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Communit
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In the early 1970s John Lennon embarked on a brief and rather inglorious career as a political activist while based in America. His activism was an indication of the wider radicalisation of the decade and can help us to examine the prevalence of the counter culture in 1970s America. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show