Hello and welcome to background briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.org, I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with more campuses erupting across the country as protests against Israel's war in Gaza intensify and spread and speak with Wendy Perlman, a professor of political science and director

of the Middle Eastern North Africa Studies Program at Northwestern University.

Her books include violence,

non-violence and the Palestinian National Movement and Triadic coercion, Israel's targeting of states

that host non-state actors. She is a signatory to an open letter from the staff at Northwestern

University urging productive conversations regarding students' rights

to protest peacefully.

And we will discuss how the agreement between the students, faculty and the administration

at Northwestern has led to a de-escalation, serving as a possible model for other universities

whose leaders have often made bad decisions that have led to escalation and confrontation.

Then with Trump fined $9,000 today for violating many gag orders and threatened with jail by the judge,

we will explore in depth the chilling and disturbingly accurate analogies between the rise of Hitler in 1932 and the American

political moment in 2024. 100 years ago, in 1924, Hitler's grandstanding in court, then being

jailed as a martyr for the cause of making Germany great again, only boosted his popularity. Then he rose to power

thanks to a divided gerontocracy on the left weakened by a split with the far left, which allowed

a deranged demagogue supported by a one-third minority, but with the help of right-wing media

barons and short-sighted plutocrats to seize power and end democracy.

Joining us is Timothy Ryback, who has written on history and politics for more than three decades.

He is the author of Hitler's Private Library, a Washington Post best-selling book of the year,

and The Last Survivor, a New York Times notable book.

...