I’m a historian of totalitarianism. I look at fascist rhetoric. I’ve been thinking about the sources of the worst kinds of history for a quarter of a century. “Experts say the constitutional crisis is here now.” ”The Trump administration deporting hundreds of men without a trial.” “A massive purge at the F.B.I.” “To make people afraid of speaking out against him.” I’m leaving to the University of Toronto because I want to do my work without the fear that I will be punished for my words. The lesson of 1933 is you get out sooner rather than later. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last decade trying to prepare people if Trump were elected once, let alone twice. “Look what happened. Is this crazy?” [CHEERING] I did not flee Trump. But if people are going to leave the United States or leave American universities, there are reasons for that. One thing you can definitely learn from Russians — — is that it’s essential to set up centers of resistance in places of relative safety. We want to make sure that if there is a political crisis in the U.S., that Americans are organized. ”We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet. It’s all just kicking in.” My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, “We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.” And I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship. Our ship can’t sink. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink. “The golden age of America has only just begun.” America has long had an exceptionalist narrative — fascism can happen elsewhere, but not here. But talking about American exceptionalism is basically a way to get people to fall into line. If you think that there’s this thing out there called America and it’s exceptional, that means that you don’t have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom. And so then what your definition of freedom is just gets narrowed and narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, and soon, you’re using the word freedom — what you’re talking about is authoritarianism. Toni Morrison warned us: “The descent into a final solution is not a jump. It’s one step. And then another. And then another.” We are seeing those steps accelerated right now. There are some words in Russian in particular that I feel help us to understand what’s happening in the United States because we now have those phenomena. “Proizvol”: It’s the idea that the powers that be can do anything they want to and you have no recourse. This not knowing who is next creates a state of paralysis in society. The Tufts student whose visa was removed because she co-authored an article in the Tufts student newspaper. [DESPERATE YELLING] I thought, what would I do if guys in masks tried to grab my student? Would I scream? Would I run away? Would I try to pull the mask off? Would I try to videotape the scene? Would I try to pull the guys off of her? Maybe I would get scared and run away. The truth is, I don’t know. Not knowing terrified me. It’s a deliberate act of terror. It’s not necessary. It’s just being done to create a spirit of us and them. “Prodazhnost”: It’s a word in Russian for corruption, but it’s larger than corruption. It refers to a kind of existential state in which not only everything but everyone can be bought or sold. “Critics are calling this a quid pro quo deal between Adams and President Trump.” “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza.” “He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million.” There’s an expression in Polish: “I found myself at the very bottom, and then I heard knocking from below.” In Russian, that gets abbreviated to “There is no bottom.” “We cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws.” What starts to matter is not what is concealed but what has been normalized. There is no limit to the depravity — ”President Trump did not rule out the possibility of a third term.” — and the sadism — “The White House released this video titled ASMR Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” — and the cruelty that we are watching now play out in real time. “This facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use.” You have to continually ask yourself the question, “Is this OK? Is there a line I wouldn’t cross? Is there something I would not do?” People say, oh, the Democrats should be doing more. They should be fixing things. But if you want the Democrats to do things, you have to create the platform for them. You have to create the spectacle, the pageantry, the positive energy, the physical place where they can come to you. Poland recently went through a shift towards authoritarianism. Unlike in Russia, unlike in Hungary, the media remained a place, in Poland, where you could criticize the regime. And as a result, democracy returned. The moral of Poland is that our democratic institutions — the media, the university, and the courts — are essential. You know you’re living in a fascist society when you’re constantly going over in your head the reasons why you’re safe. What we want is a country where none of us have to feel that way.
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