Is the United States headed toward autocracy?That's a question prompted by a steady stream of executive orders seeking to consolidate power in the White House and upend long held policies and norms.New York Times Opinion writer M. Gessen lived through much of Russia's slide into autocracy, and wrote a book about it. They argue that one of the ways Vladimir Putin consolidated power... was by making a series of arguments that seemed outrageous at the time — like the idea that the LGBT population was a threat to Russian sovereignty. President Donald Trump's second term has been marked by a string of policy proposals that would have been unthinkable in any other administration.Even if they don't go anywhere, they're reshaping the boundaries of our democracy. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What insights does M. Gessen offer on autocracy in Russia?
M. Gessen knows what it feels like when a democracy starts to look like something else. They lived in Russia in the aughts in early 2010s, which was a period of time when Vladimir Putin steadily cracked down on activists, journalists, and opposition leaders. And one of the particularities of Russia, according to Gessen, is that before things became threatening, they often just seemed ridiculous.
It seemed completely absurd when Putin started centering LGBT people as the root of all evil and a threat to Russian sovereignty. Tiny minority, not that visible in Russia.
Guessing as trans and non-binary. But they say they failed to take Putin's words seriously at first.
You know, I thought it was almost quaint. And I certainly didn't realize that it was a personal threat and that within a couple of years I'd have to flee the country.
Gessen left Russia in 2013. They're in the U.S. now, a columnist for The New York Times. In a recent op-ed, they argued that the phenomenon, outlandish ideas taken seriously, It feels a lot like what has happened in the first month of the Trump administration.
We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we'll probably state those opinions now.
Like that press conference where President Trump argued that diversity policies were behind that plane crash at the Washington airport.
It's all under investigation.
I understand that. That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
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Chapter 2: How did Putin's policies appear absurd before they became threatening?
I want to do the radio host thing here of pushing back on the idea I've invited you onto this program to talk about, but I'm very curious about how you think about this. Because Americans voted to return Trump to power. And there's a lot of anecdotal and broader evidence that a lot of voters hear conversations like the one that we're having right now as white noise.
This is alarmist worries from elites and magazines and national news outlets. And they either don't believe these warnings or they don't care. How have you thought about this since the election? And what do you think about that dynamic that seems to really be playing out?
You know, a couple of things. One is that I think that Americans voted for Donald Trump because there's some really major problems with the system of government as it's constituted. And I think that basically the Democratic Party for at least three election cycles has now insisted that things are fine just the way they are, that we just have to live in some sort of imaginary normal
Really refusing to hear that the normal, whatever that is, isn't working for a lot of people. That they are anxious and miserable and they would rather throw a grenade at the way things are in the form of Donald Trump. than continue living the way they've been living.
And the reason it's important to think about that now is that it's still the same sort of dynamic, where Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the world as we've known it, and the Democrats are saying, well, you can't do that. That's not how the rules are written. Americans have said that the way that the rules are written and the way that the system functions doesn't work for them.
So there has to be a bigger idea. The rules were written for a reason. They were there to perform certain functions. They were there to make sure that our obligations to one another are in fact fulfilled. And they haven't been.
I think a theme across all of the close analysis of what has happened to countries that have slid into authoritarianism in the past is that a lot of the times the power is willingly given over.
And when you look across the country right now, whether it's large corporate-owned media settling lawsuits or big corporations suddenly changing their policies and their political actions or nonprofits stripping words from their websites right now,
What do you think is so different from the first time Trump has office to right now that statements he made the first time around kind of went in and out of a lot of these actors' ears? And this time they're stopping what they are doing. They are recalculating. They are making changes to be on the right side of Donald Trump policies.
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