David Pepper, the former Ohio Democratic Party chairman, has had a front-row seat to one of the major fronts in the American right’s insurgent war on democracy: Namely, the nation’s statehouses, where the gradual Republican takeover in the past decade has resulted in a barrage of antidemocratic laws, not to mention the empowerment of incipient far-right extremist ideology. After observing and coming to understand how this frontal assault works, Pepper knew he had to do something about it. So he wrote a book titled Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call From Behind the Lines that maps out how Republicans have effectively forced minority rule on Americans, first at the state level in legislatures, governorships, and state courts. It’s a blueprint they have used in state after state. And if Democrats don’t awaken to the threat, the far-right extremism we all have seen rampaging in the streets of urban liberal centers will have a permanent seat of power in government both at the state and federal level. As someone whose focus has been on the role of radicalized right-wing extremists in fomenting the war on democracy—but simultaneously and acutely aware that it is being enabled and empowered by supposedly mainstream Republican figures—I interviewed Pepper this week. Video and transcript follows. Read more