Aired on Sept. 29, 2024

• Professional music, market forces, populism, fascism

Host Randy Voller welcomes Michael Joseph Roberto a musician, historian, writer and retired NCA&T associate professor in contemporary world history. Roberto retired as an associate professor of contemporary world history from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 2016. His first book, “The Coming of The American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940” (Monthly Review Press) was published in 2018. He is now at work on a sequel about the increasing peril of American fascism since Donald Trump won the White House in 2016.
Leaving graduate school at Boston College in the late 1970s and traveling the country, Roberto found his way to Greensboro and became a journalist. He cut his teeth at The Carolina Peacemaker, a black weekly in the city, before going to the News & Record in 1986. Employed as a copy editor, Roberto also wrote news stories, commentaries, and book reviews.
He left journalism in 1994 to return to Boston College to complete his doctorate in Modern European history. Prior to the book, Roberto published in Monthly Review Magazine, Socialism and Democracy, Science & Society, as well as newspaper op-eds and a lengthy commentary on the 2020 U.S. election for the German magazine Melodie Und Rhythmus.
Closer to his heart and soul, Roberto is a lifelong percussionist who has performed with leading jazz and R&B musicians.

• Illustration from “The Coming of The American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940” by Michael Roberto

Randy Voller, host of On The Porch and publisher of Chatham County Line