Extremist Futures

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's 2074 and a suicide bomber has killed the President of the United States. Months later Marines open fire on protesters killing dozens. The Second American Civil War has just begun and once again the North and South are pitted against each other. This is all according to the dystopian world chronicled in Omar El Akkad's novel, American War. El Akkad's imagined, yet familiar, world is reflective of today's deep political and societal fissures, but it also pushes us to understand the universal language of war and ruin, to what happens after the violence begins and why it's so hard to end.

In this episode of Throughline, we immerse ourselves in El Akkad's 'what could be' to understand larger questions about history, humanity, and American exceptionalism.

Transcript

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0:00.0	First shots of Civil War.
0:24.4	This is a direct statement from the federal government that if you disagree with the sustainable
0:44.6	future act or any decision made in Columbus, you are the enemy and must be destroyed.
0:55.2	Witnesses describe the scene of carnage following the shooting with several lifeless bodies lining
1:00.0	the roadway and pools of blood clearly visible around them.
1:04.6	A soldier inside Fort Jackson, who was not among the guards stationed at Gate 2, said at
1:09.4	least one of the protesters near the front of the demonstration, fired a pistol at a chain
1:13.7	and lock that held part of the temporary fence in place.
1:18.4	Many demonstrators dispute that account, saying the Marines were not provoked in any way.
1:26.7	This isn't only about succession anymore.
1:29.8	This is about a vignet our dead.
1:35.6	The first shots in the second American Civil War are fired on March 15th, 2074.
1:45.7	At least that's what happens in the world, imagined by reporter and author Omar El-Akkat
1:50.5	in his futuristic book, American War.
1:52.9	You'll be hearing excerpts from the audiobook like the one you just heard throughout this
1:57.1	episode.
1:58.1	American War is a novel that is based largely in the south of the United States, in three
2:05.4	states in particular, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia.
2:09.0	Takes place about 50 years from now.
2:10.9	The United States of that time is a very different place.
2:14.3	Geographically, it has changed in many, many cataclysmic ways.
2:18.0	The Eastern Seaboard is largely underwater, Florida has gone.
	...

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