If there’s a part of you that still holds out hope that, for all his autocratic tendencies, Donald Trump will revert to a sort of political normality as president, you need to read Masha Gessen’s chilling but essential article “Autocracy: Rules for Survival” in The New York Review of Books.
Gessen, a journalist who has devoted much of her career to making sense of Russia under Vladimir Putin, offers a number of hard-won lessons for surviving in the autocracy that we may soon find ourselves living in here in the US.
The first and in some ways most important lesson for those still holding out hope for a more-or-less normal presidency:
Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture.Â
I think we’re going to have to suspend Godwin’s Law for the length of Trump’s presidency; the comparisons are simply too apt.
He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. … Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.
Gessen’s other rules:
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. …
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. …
Rule #4: Be outraged. …  [I]n the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. …
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises.
The final rule offers up a little bit of hope:
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either.Â
Gessen ends her piece with a call for “resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged.” Thousands of Americans are already taking to the streets in cities across the country to let the world know that Trump — who after all lost the popular vote — is not their president. He’s not mine either. We need to join those in the streets — literally, figuratively, or both — to make clear we don’t want, and won’t stand for, Putinism in the United States.
Applauds
Now this Gessen can tell it like it is, knowing how these dictators operate. The part about Putin taking over the media really scares me though.
I feel like I should be glad I don’t live in the US. But somehow I’m still horribly depressed and anxious about this whole thing. Knowing he lost the popular vote and seeing the amount of protests has restored a bit of my faith in humanity, though. I stayed up to catch the results as they came in on election night, which was a school night – in the UK, that meant staying up until about 6am. I didn’t and couldn’t sleep – I was positive, after everything, Hillary had it in the bag. It’s amazing the huge effect this has had on everyone.
Still – Alec Baldwin will have (presumably) 4 years of material, I get to keep my “Make Donald Drumpf Again” Chrome add-on, and I think I’ll recover in time by binge listening to Boards of Canada and drinking gallons of green tea.
My sympathies to all of you people actually living in the US! This is hopefully just the (pretty big) dying gasp of the conservative/right wing types who are too scared of a changing world. No matter the setbacks, the progressives always win eventually. History repeats itself. This time Adolf comes in a lovely deluxe orange!
I think autocracy may be tad much. BUT then again, he IS considering Ben Carson for department of education… and then there’s Mike Pence…
Are you fucking kidding me? *sigh* What a shitshow.
The cabinet is basically “1000 ways to hurt Americans”
I’m very pleased with the anti-Trump rallies.
Let’s all give President trump the same respect and courtesy that President Obama got.
I want to give Ms Gissen a big hug.
Thanks, we really need all the sympathy and support we can get.
This gives me some faith in humanity and I hope that the same people who protested at those rallies have the same energy to do the same at Standing Rock.
I can’t wait till I get the money and car (or someway I can travel without driving which is better tbh) so I can go to these rallies.
I’m not sure I was quite ready for this scariness. Especially number 3. I’ve been thinking, okay, maybe I get more involved with the ACLU. Maybe a really strong ACLU can help save us. But without the media, electoral system, or especially, the judicial system, what would the ACLU be able to do?
Then again, we are not Russia. If we are surveillant and fight hard enough, it might take much longer to dismantle our institutions. So if we do all the others, maybe 3 won’t happen.
Trump will probably be bad as president. He might be really awful — or even worse.
But although I appreciated Masha Gessen’s thoughts, I don’t think we should necessarily believe all the disgusting things Trump says. He’s an abusive politician, not an abusive boyfriend. If I had an abusive boyfriend, he might not be sophisticated enough to lie — especially given that I might spend a lot of time with him. It would be quite a feat of acting to lie to my face all the time. So I should take his awful statements of intent very seriously.
A politician, on the other hand, might espouse some terrible point of view for political expediency — but walk it back once the population reacts badly.
It wasn’t so long ago that Donald Trump was praising Hillary Clinton as a fantastic senator. His current views (if he has any) seemed to develop overnight. If he doesn’t really hold any views, then he might be able to change his policy once he experiences pushback.
And I have to wonder if all autocrats operate in the same way.
Gessen is from Russia. And the former USSR, including Russia, has had very little experience with democracy. IMO that’s why the USSR careened into totalitarianism after the Bolsheviks took over. And that’s why Russia isn’t a democracy. The USA, on the other hand, has almost 250 years of experience with democracy. We have very different expectations than the Russians do.
Gessen makes some excellent points. But if Trump doesn’t fulfill every one of them (and I think he might not), I don’t think we should relax our guard.
I’m taking everything Gessen said into account. And I’m also preparing myself for the unknown.
@Kat – I also don’t believe all that Donald Trump says – because he says all kinds of stuff, mostly contradictory. But I think we must absolutely be prepared for the worst of what he said. Because there are people who support him who voted for him for the worst of what he said and would love to enact it.
Donald Trump doesn’t have the attention span to follow through with the worst of what he said – even if he meant it -, but he’s a good delegator by many accounts and many of the people who he’ll be appointing are of the ‘tear it all down’ variety.
@rugbyyogi Exactly. It’s not Trump I’m worried about so much as the people propping him up.
If I remember right, he is an abusive husband, though, to at least one of his previous wives.
I agree, it’s not Trump we need to keep an eye on. It’s the people just behind the curtain.
There are a lot of Republicans as well as Democrats who wouldn’t mind seeing Trump impeached – he’s a loose cannon (despite being easily led due to his short attention span and disdain for facts, reading, and boring meetings), and he’s very damaging to their brand. There is also the fact that being president is one of the hardest, most physically grueling and psychologically taxing jobs in the world, and Trump is incredibly lazy. It will take a severe toll on him, and I don’t get the sense he’s in terribly good shape (all that “stamina” and “sick Hillary” stuff seems like pure projection). Honestly, I’d be surprised if he lasts four years. But then, as Gessen points out, failure of imagination is how we all got here.
I will live under the assumption that the worst that can happen can actually happen. Trump gets no benefit of doubt. Whatever he or his cronies say, I’ll believe to be a distinct and approaching probability. If he changes what he says, I’ll believe that too
Yeah, after seeing a billion parallels to other despots I really do not have any desire of giving benefit of doubt.
@Kat
Please, please don’t underestimate the situation. Yes, Trump is a pathological liar, and yes, the bast-case scenario is that he will just go back on all the promises (as he has already started doing). But that is just the best outcome. Everyone needs to be prepared for the worst one. I wrote a lengthy rant in another thread about this, which boiled down to: I’m from Poland. We also thought that it can’t possibly be THAT bad. And not that much has changed on the surface, but the country and its democratic systems are slowly being dismantled from within (and I can see Putin smile all the way in Kremlin).
Also, I’ve found this. It’s from early May, before all this happened, but especially the beginning about Plato’s ‘Republic’ was chilling.
Can we talk about how to reach Trump supporters? I see so many of them railing against how they feel attacked by the left. How they are angry with us because we call them racist.
We have been using shaming as a tactic to fight bigotry and it backfired. I’m not saying it’s morally wrong to shame bigots, I’m saying that we can’t afford to. We have been using bigot-shaming as a strategy, thinking that it would teach people that bigotry is wrong. Instead it taught them that bigotry is a social faux pas, not that it is actually wrong. Millions are furious with us for what they see as enforcement of an unnecessary social rule.
I totally get that sometimes people won’t have the energy to quietly explain things to racists and we will all lose our cool at times. I have also dealt with so many concern trolls who pretend they are open to a discussion when they are really trying to manipulate.
Sometimes we will all do things that they register as shaming because we are so upset. The privileged can sometimes be such precious flowers that they will feel attacked at the slightest implication they are wrong.
But at the very least we need to stop using bigotry shaming as a deliberate tactic. It only drives bigots into the closet, where they become even more bigoted and more angry with us and more focused on plotting their revenge.
No way am I going to underestimate the situation.
And yeah, Trump was, IMO, an abusive husband — even though Ivana walked back her accusations.
I guess my point was that he’s not our abusive boyfriend. He’s our abusive politician — a role that has a lot of smoke and mirrors and advisers involved.
And as rugbyyogi pointed out, Trump says a lot of contradictory things. So really we can’t believe everything he says. Probably not even all the bad things.
My point was also that maybe things would play out somewhat differently from what Gessen said.
And I have a lingering hope that he won’t try to do all the bad stuff he promised.
But yeah, he’s surrounding himself with some go-getters, and that’s not good.
Luckily, we’re go-getters ourselves. Let’s make those people with evil designs on our democracy rue the day Donald Trump won the presidency.
Whose country? Our country!
@losername
Can we not call calling out bigotry a shaming tactic? Cos, like, shaming people for their appearance or sexual history is wrong. Not outta some strategery but cos it’s just wrong. Criticism =/= shaming, and I’d rather not have the terminology crosspollinate like that
Calling out bigotry is a shaming tactic. But unlike with most other shaming tactics, this shaming is well-deserved. Bigots ought to be ashamed of themselves.
@Axecalibur
That’s exactly what I mean where I say that the privileged will sometimes claim they are being shamed just because we point out that they are wrong.
But actual shaming that is used as a deliberate tactic is backfiring. Things like this: http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/
@Laugher at Bigots
Calling out bigotry can be education and criticism. It’s the hyperprivileged delicate flowers who want to believe they are being shamed every time someone points out that they are wrong.
I can absolutely agree that bigots deserve to be shamed, but when shaming them gets Trump elected, I think we need to use another tactic than giving them what they deserve.
The ironic thing is, a lot of republicains would be even worse than Trump. Maybe some would be better than him, but it’s arguable at best. Would anyone want Ted Cruz over Trump ?
@losername
As the old saying goes, what do you mean ‘we’, white man? * Who has been calling out bigots, shaming them, making them talk about feeling ‘attacked’? Because, in the main, it has been the victims of bigotry who have been ‘bigot-shaming. It hasn’t been people the bigots see as their peers. By and large, white people cheerfully ignore racism, men dismiss misogyny, straight people let homophobia slide, and cis people throw trans folks under the bus. “Aw, well, Bob’s a great guy, he’s just a little rambunctious with women.”
“Sure, Aunt Marge talks about putting the [racial slurs] back in the fields where they belong, but she makes a mean pecan pie.”
And the ever classic “It’s just a joke, don’t take it so seriously.”
Those are much more common reactions to bigots among the privileged than actually calling them out or shaming them for their horrible views. Which is rather the problem, in fact. Because the privileged laugh off systemic bigotry, it persists, and, much like herpes, erupts into an acute stage periodically. However, unlike herpes, there is a possibility of an actual cure, which means dismantling systemic bigotry, which means rooting bigotry out of culture to the greatest extent possible, which means, among other things, to fucking shame them. It means not cutting racist (or whateverist) bullshit any slack, ever.It means calling it out even in minor manifestations, even if it’s supposedly well meaning, even if it’s done in ignorance. Because the one thing a free and equal society (not that the U.S. has one, or anything close, but that’s the goal here) cannot abide is bigotry, of whatever stripe.
*Yes, I’m white, and I don’t actually know your race or gender; that doesn’t affect my point, though.
Trump’s victory is a victory for the far right everywhere. Marine Le Pen, for one, is openly crowing and European commentators think she may have a real shot at the French government now. It’s telling that Breitbart is now recruiting for writers in France and Germany, the two countries where the far right is taking hold.
Gessen is right. We have to believe what people say about themselves. Trump himself may not be an ideologue in any real sense. He could just be in it for the adulation. But the people who surround him and support him are very, very clear about what they want and none of it is good. They want nothing less than to remake the West according to their own twisted ideas. They have actually said so.
All these movements – Alternative fur Deutschland, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, Trump supporters etc etc – are feeding into each other, with the help and encouragement of Putin’s very slick propaganda machine.
The most telling thing to me is what Trump isn’t saying – he’s not coming out to calm down the country and put everybody’s fears to rest. That speaks volumes.
losername:
Eh I don’t think its so much call outs backfiring that got Trump elected as much as it was Trump pandering to them in a more open way then previous republican candidates did. And I really don’t think that trying to reason with bigots is necessarily that helpful. A well reasoned argument doesn’t really do much against someone who is set on hating people, especially since bigotry isn’t really based on logic.