This week on Up First, more violence in Minneapolis. Democrats say they will block a spending bill in the Senate after another deadly ice shooting. How will Republicans respond? And could the Trump administration rethink its strategy on immigration? We'll keep you posted every morning with three stories you need to know to start your day. Up first. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Heather Ann Thompson,

has written a new book that explores fear, how it has become one of the most powerful forces in American life, powerful enough to

excuse violence, shape policy, and decide whose lives matter. Fear and Fury tells the story

through a small cast of characters, four black teenagers, a white man who decided he was under threat,

a media ecosystem that turned fear into profit, and a

political system that rewards weaponizing fear. Three days before Christmas in 1984, the teens,

who were from the South Bronx, boarded the subway headed downtown. They were loud and rambunctious.

One of them asked the white man sitting alone for $5.

That man, Bernard Getz, stood up, unzipped his jacket, pulled out a gun, and shot all four of them.

In the days that followed, Gets became a hometown hero. Tabloids crowned him the death wish vigilante, and who received

thousands of fan letters, cash donations, and public praise, from everyday New Yorkers to celebrities

and powerful media figures who framed him as a man who had done with the city could not.

A jury later acquitted Gets of everything but carrying an unlicensed gun.

Thompson argues the case marked a political turning point when white racial fear was sanctioned by law

and leveraged by elites who learned how useful fear could be. The book is titled Fear and Fury,

the Reagan 80s, the Bernie Gett shootings,

and the rebirth of white rage. Heather Ann Thompson, welcome to fresh air. So glad to be here.

I want to start with Bernie Gets. He was acquitted of attempted murder for the shootings. He served less than a year on the gun charge.

And he essentially returned to life in New York. Right now, he's in his 70s. He's still living in the city. He's still giving interviews. He defends what he did. But you actually decided not to interview him for this book. How come? Well, in part because

the really striking thing about this event at the time and as it's been remembered since,

is that the story is all about him. The story is about writing the justification for what he did on that subway so many

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