Episode Details

In this episode of the Chuck ToddCast, historian Heather Ann Thompson discusses her new book “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings and the Rebirth” that revisits the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting and explains why it remains a chilling precursor to the racialized fear and political rage shaping America today. Thompson walks through who Goetz was, how he shot four unarmed Black teenagers, and how—without video evidence—the media constructed a vigilante narrative that erased the victims and fueled public support for Goetz despite his own recorded confession. She situates the case in a New York City gripped by crime, austerity, and racial anxiety, arguing that fear was real but deliberately misdirected by sensationalist media, tabloid culture, and political leaders who framed young Black men as the threat while stripping away public resources.

The conversation traces how Reagan-era policies, talk radio, and the tabloidification of news helped turn crime into profitable outrage, laying the groundwork for stop-and-frisk, the Central Park Five, and ultimately the politics Donald Trump would later master. Thompson connects the Goetz case to today’s wealth inequality, media groupthink, and deep political divides over racialized violence, showing how these stories are not aberrations but part of a long continuum. The episode is a sobering examination of how fear, race, and media narratives can warp justice—and how understanding that history is essential to understanding where America is now.

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Timeline:

(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)

00:00 Heather Ann Thompson joins the Chuck ToddCast

01:30 Bernie Goetz was an early analog for the white rage we see today

02:30 Who was Bernie Goetz & what is the history of the story?

03:00 NYC felt like a city in crisis during the 80’s

04:00 Goetz shoots four unarmed black teenagers

05:00 There was no footage of the shooting & media shaped the event

06:00 Goetz was celebrated by white New Yorkers as a vigilante

06:45 Goetz gave lengthy video confession & still acquitted on most chargers

08:00 The victims have been completely written out of the story

09:00 Victims were denied compensation by the city’s crime victim fund

10:00 The shooting destroyed the victim’s lives even though they survived

11:45 New York felt like a city on the brink in the 1980’s

12:30 New Yorkers were living in fear of many parts of the city due to crime

13:45 Media clearly made the “threat” young black men

14:30 By 1984, trash was piling up and areas of NYC were underpoliced

15:30 The fear was warranted, but was misdirected by Rupert Murdoch, others

17:30 The Reagan administration doubled down on austerity

18:45 Eventually NYC experienced a renaissance, the “Guiliani miracle”

19:45 Austerity was sold on the idea of the “underserving” & criminal underbelly

20:45 Stop & frisk and other policies pushed underclass further away from Manhattan

21:30 Trump was a beneficiary of these politics & rode them to the White House

22:15 Trump is a creature of the 80’s since that era was best for him

23:30 Trump understood the power of television, fear & race baiting

24:15 Trump sells what the Reagan revolutio