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Heather Cox Richardson’s Revisionist History
Substack’s top writer commands a bigger audience than most cable shows: 2.7 million people. But her version of history is a false morality tale.
By Blake Dodge and Katherine Dee
10.20.25 — U.S. Politics
Historian Heather Cox Richardson at Tanglewood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on August 2, 2025. (Tony Luong/The New York Times/Redux)
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This piece was originally published in Pirate Wires. It has been lightly edited and condensed.

There was the time she wrote that 9/11 kicked off the Republican campaign to suppress voters. That Donald Trump, in 2016, won the White House partially by “asserting that white men should dominate women and people of color.” That Trump choosing J.D. Vance as a running mate, in 2024, showed an ideology of rejecting democracy in favor of Christian nationalism had “taken over the Republican Party.”

In September, she wrote that Charlie Kirk was shot by a right-wing white man from a Republican, “gun enthusiast family.” And that MAGA’s outrage at the shooting was a prelude to an authoritarian takeover. Budget cuts? Those are a prelude to an authoritarian takeover. Recent Supreme Court decisions? A prelude to an authoritarian takeover. Deploying troops to Washington, D.C., who, as part of their marching orders, picked up trash and spread mulch around the cherry trees? A prelude to an authoritarian takeover.

Who wrote these dispatches, you may ask? An obscure leftist blogger, tucked away on Bluesky? Nope.

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Blake Dodge
Blake Dodge is a tech writer at Pirate Wires.
Katherine Dee
Internet ethnographer. I want to talk to you if you grew up with unrestricted access to the Internet. @default_friend of X (formerly Twitter). Columnist all over. Commission me anyway!
Tags:
Donald Trump
Democrats
Republicans
Political Violence
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