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Martin Di Caro

mdicaro@washingtontimes.com

Martin Di Caro was the host of the History As It Happens podcast at The Washington Times.

Latest "History As It Happens" Podcast Episodes

Articles by Martin Di Caro

Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia, including Phil Robinson, right, join protesters at a rally at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich., Thursday, April 30, 2020. Hoisting American flags and handmade signs, protesters returned to the state Capitol to denounce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay-home order and business restrictions due to COVID-19, while lawmakers met to consider extending her emergency declaration hours before it expires. (Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal via AP)

History As It Happens: COVID-19 and the lost year

One year after the rhythms of daily life were upended by the unchecked spread of an invisible, deadly pathogen, Americans have a degree of optimism that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is behind them.

March 15, 2021
FILE - In this June 25, 2020, file photo, a statue that depicts a freed slave kneeling at President Abraham Lincoln's feet rests on a pedestal in Boston. On Tuesday, Dec. 29, the statue that drew objections amid a national reckoning with racial injustice was removed from its perch. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

History As It Happens: Lincoln and the woke left

The Black Lives Matter protests that roiled America's cities in the summer of 2020 helped ignite a reckoning with the country's history of racial injustice. Confederate statues and monuments that had stood for generations as towering symbols of Lost Cause mythology and Jim Crow segregation were torn down by mobs and, in some places, peacefully removed by local authorities.

March 3, 2021
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif addresses in a conference in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) * FILE **

History As It Happens: Can the U.S. and Iran get along?

President Joseph Biden's decision on Feb. 25 to order airstrikes against targets in Syria, as a warning to Iran against backing militias in Iraq, served Americans an important reminder: The situation in the Middle East, so often overshadowed by the endless partisan bickering at home, remains unstable and dangerous, and relations between the U.S. and Iran remain at a low point.

March 1, 2021
Photo by Martin Di Caro

History As It Happens: Understanding fascism

"Everyone is sure they know what fascism is," wrote Columbia University historian Robert O. Paxton in his seminal work, 'The Anatomy of Fascism.' This may partly explain why in modern American politics both Democratic and Republican politicians, including most of the recent presidents, have been called fascists by their critics.

February 22, 2021
In this Aug. 15, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump points to members of the media as he answers questions in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York. Trump’s racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans’ deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in an extraordinary public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

History As It Happens: Free speech for whom?

"If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise you are not in favor of freedom of speech," said the linguist and social critic Noam Chomksy to a group of students who wanted to know why he defended the right of a Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, to express his views free of censorship.

February 15, 2021
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with the Government via video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

History As It Happens: Vladimir the survivor

Faced with growing discontent over his nation's faltering economy and massive street demonstrations provoked by the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the regime of Russian president Vladimir Putin responded with an iron fist. State security forces arrested more than 10,000 people who participated in arguably the most significant protests against Putin's rule since he assumed power in late 1999.

February 10, 2021
In this May 22, 2019, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at the Capitol in Washington. Sanders is set to give a major speech to rebut accusations by President Donald Trump and others that he is too liberal to win in a general election. During Wednesday's speech, which Sanders previewed in an interview with The Associated Press, he will define democratic socialism, the philosophy that has guided his political career. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

History As It Happens: Understanding socialism

Few words in the American political lexicon are as freighted with fear as socialism. It can conjure thoughts of diabolical Communism, the horrors of Stalin and Mao, and the Iron Curtain. To many on the right, the word has become synonymous with un-American because of its perceived threat to overturn capitalism and erode freedom. But attitudes toward socialism, however defined, are changing, especially among younger Americans.

February 8, 2021

History As It Happens: Impeachment (again!)

As the Senate prepares for the fourth presidential impeachment trial -- in this case, of an ex-President -- there seems little doubt Donald Trump will be acquitted along partisan lines. But while acquittal may be a foregone conclusion, the issues are critical to the health of our democracy and meaning of the Constitution.

February 3, 2021
In this photo provided by the New York Stock Exchange, specialist Stephen Naughton works at a post on the trading floor, Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. The erratic trading in shares of underdog companies like GameStop that turned markets combustible last week appears to have migrated to commodities, sending silver prices surging to an eight-year high. (Nicole Pereira/New York Stock Exchange via AP)

History As It Happens: The GameStop revolution

A decade after the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York and other cities took to the streets to condemn those responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis, a different kind of anti-Wall Street uprising is happening online -- on comment threads and in trading apps -- and these protesters are dumping equal parts money and defiance into their cause.

February 1, 2021
Traditional observations of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday were toned down and transformed into online events or face-to-face acts of service with health measures put in place. This year marks what would have been the civil rights leader's 92nd birthday. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

History As It Happens: Recovering the radical King

The political dramas playing out in Washington -- the fallout of the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol and the inauguration of a new president -- may have overshadowed the annual marking of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a holiday that usually provokes some reflection on the civil rights hero's legacy.

January 27, 2021
History As It Happens: Episode 3

History As It Happens: The first 1,000 days

The fate of President Biden's ambitious legislative agenda will depend on whether Congress embraces his call for bold government action to deal not only with the immediate economic fallout of the pandemic but long running inequities in American society as well.

January 25, 2021
History As It Happens: Episode 1

Inauguration: Episode 1

One hundred sixty years after soldiers and sharpshooters guarded the arrival of Abraham Lincoln on Inauguration Day in 1861, Joseph R. Biden will assume power in a fortress-like Washington defended by thousands of National Guard troops and police officers.

January 18, 2021