Thank you for opening your Chartbook email.
HEY READERS,
THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day.
I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button.
If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to.
Rome – 1938 Autonomous Exhibition of Italian Minerals – Pavilion for the Defense of the Race in the Mining Sector – Interior
For contributing subscribers only.
Highway to Hitler
Can autocracies win electoral support by showcasing economic competence? We analyze a famous case – the building of the Autobahn network in Nazi Germany. Using newly collected data, we show that highway construction was effective in boosting popular support, helping to entrench the Nazi dictatorship. Direct economic benefits such as declining unemployment near construction sites are unlikely to explain the increase in pro-Nazi votes. In addition, Nazi propaganda used the Autobahn as a powerful symbol of successful economic policy, putting an effective end to austerity – so that many Germans credited the Nazi regime for the economic recovery. In line with this interpretation, we show that support for the Nazis increased even more where highway construction coincided with greater radio availability – a major source of propaganda. The effect of highways was also significantly stronger in politically unstable states of the Weimar Republic. Our results suggest that infrastructure spending can raise support for autocracy when voters are led to associate it with visible economic progress and an end to political instability.
Source: Nico Voigtländer UCLA, NBER and CEPR Hans-Joachim Voth University of Zurich
Kinda excited about the “Capitalism and democracy” seminar I’m teaching this term.
For contributing subscribers only.
This is compressed brilliance from Jameson including one of my favorite riffs on peasants.
Synekura Audio@synekura_audio
Fredric Jameson on time and space
12:16 AM · Jan 14, 2026 · 5.05K Views
2 Replies · 30 Reposts · 144 Likes
Debating Zbig
Source: New Left Review
If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: