Travel guru Rick Steves has a new focus: Saving America

Globe and Mail

19 hours ago

For decades now, Rick Steves has arguably been the world's pre-eminent European tour guide.
While his primary audience has been in his home country of the United States, his influence has extended far and wide. Along the way, he's encouraged millions of people to broaden their thinking by getting to know the local customs and culture of the destinations they're visiting – to gain new perspectives by interacting with the people who call these places home.
His accessible and relentlessly upbeat style (especially on his long-running show on public television) has made him a traveller's favourite. Along the way, he's become a much-admired figure and, as a result of his massive following, a highly influential one, too.
In recent years, however, some of Mr. Steves's commentary has taken a darker turn. While he's never hid his progressive leanings – he's advocated for the legalization of marijuana for years – he hadn't been known for being overtly activist when it came to national politics.
That has changed.
In 2018, two years into Donald Trump's first term as U.S. president, Mr. Steves produced a documentary called The Story of Fascism in Europe, which chronicled the emergence of authoritarian movements on the continent. While Mr. Trump himself wasn't featured, the subtext was clear: democracy is fragile and it doesn't take much for an aspiring dictator to make it quickly disappear.
The film was a warning bell that Mr. Steves was sounding, one he is ringing even louder in the early days of Mr. Trump's second administration.
Opinion: Donald Trump is making America a monarchy again
Last month, Mr. Steves gave an emotional speech at a 'Hands Off' rally in his hometown of Edmonds, Wash., in which he criticized the Trump administration for attacking several U.S. universities.
Recently, he posted a long note on his Facebook page in which he encouraged his compatriots to attend 'No Kings' rallies set to take place across the U.S. this weekend, saying the country is effectively under attack by a man who wants to follow in the footsteps of totalitarian dictators of the past.
'A perfect storm of political conditions has left American democracy in an existential struggle,' he wrote. 'We have a President who wants to literally replace our system of government – a system which has inspired freedom-lovers across the planet for nearly 250 years – with an oligarchy … a dictatorship.'
Mr. Steves has clearly been shaken by what he has witnessed in the last few months – events he couldn't imagine 10 years ago. What has rattled him the most is the speed at which the U.S. President has undermined the American Constitution, gutted long-standing institutions, installed cronies and sycophants in important positions for which they are grossly unqualified and turned the White House into a corrupt kleptocracy.
In Mr. Steves's mind, there are striking parallels between the MAGA movement in the U.S. and the repressive authoritarian regimes that rose up across Europe 100 years ago.
In an interview with Vanity Fair last month, Mr. Steves said there are certain things any wannabe autocrat needs to do to overthrow a democracy, beginning with an attack on truth itself.
'You've got to be able to tell lies repeatedly with such confidence that people believe them,' Mr. Steves told the magazine. 'You've got to discredit journalism … You've got to target higher education. You've got to target the courts. You've got to create an external enemy, some kind of fear – refugees or Jews, somebody to scapegoat.'
Every time Mr. Steves reads the news today, he thinks to himself: that's exactly what Adolf Hitler did, or what Benito Mussolini did. 'You've got to intimidate people at the voting booths,' he said. 'You've got to be able to disappear people into some kind of concentration camp or a prison in another land. You just look at any news flash that deals with how [Mr.] Trump is taking or consolidating his power and you can see that it is from the fascist autocrat's playbook.'
I realize there are some people who continue to brush off remarks like these as hysterical overstatement, the words of someone suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Let me say, those people are either fools, or ones benefitting from the unequal, unjust society the President is creating – one that benefits the rich (and mostly white) at the expense of everyone else.
Autocracy is like bankruptcy; it happens slowly at first, and then suddenly. Americans used to seeking out Rick Steves's normally cheery travel advice may want to pay attention to the wise counsel he is offering them today. It has nothing to do with cool spots abroad they may want to explore. Rather, it's about a dangerous threat emerging in their own backyard that they need to stop now, before it's too late.