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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Historian Federico Finchelstein: Trump's "abuse of the law fits an old autocratic pattern"
The Age of Trump wrapped itself in the flag of false patriotism while simultaneously destroying America's sacred civic myths about its national greatness and the permanence of its democracy. This paradox has left many, white Americans in particular, dizzy as they are forced to confront the harmful consequences caused by their belief in a country that never existed. President Ronald Reagan famously talked about a 'new day in America' as he encouraged the American people to shrug off their old cynicism and to embrace a new optimism. So many Americans believed that their country was truly 'a shining city on the hill' and a beacon of democracy and freedom for the world. There is also the common belief in the fundamental decency and goodness of the American people and that such 'universal values' would make the likes of President Trump and other such demagogues an impossibility, as they were judged to be incompatible with the national character and temperament of the American people. In total, the ascent of the Age of Trump and the authoritarian fake populist MAGA movement has revealed the hollowness of these myths and narratives. So where do the American people go from here as the authoritarian tide continues to rapidly rise in their country? Federico Finchelstein is a leading expert on fascism, populism and dictatorship and professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Lang College in New York City. He is the author of seven books on fascism, populism, Dirty Wars, the Holocaust and Jewish history in Latin America and Europe. Finchelstein's most recent book is 'The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy.' In this conversation, Finchelstein explains how Donald Trump and his forces represent what he describes as 'wannabe fascism' and the specific type of danger that such autocrats and aspiring tyrants pose to a failing Western democracy. Finchelstein also reflects on the danger caused by how 'respectable' elites and other mainstream voices in the political class and news media were and continue to normalize Trumpism because they are not (yet) being targeted in the same way as undocumented people and other marginalized communities. At the end of this conversation, Federico Finchelstein warns that Donald Trump and his forces have moved at a very fast rate to consolidate power, but that their victory is not guaranteed — especially if pro-democracy Americans and their leaders finally decide to commit themselves earnestly instead of being bystanders who are mostly looking away. How common or distinct is America's experience with democratic backsliding and democracy collapse as compared to other countries? This belief in exceptionalism is both American and part of a global history. All countries have a myth of their own uniqueness. America's experience with the erosion of democratic beliefs and experiences is quite common at the level of everyday practice. Intolerance, racism and violence have always been part of modern global history, this country included. However, at the federal level, Trumpism represents a change from previous norms and administrations. It is way more disruptive. Extreme forms of populism that are oriented towards fascism are now at the helm of the most powerful country in the world. Trumpism is more anti-democratic than its predecessors, and it also exerts a big influence outside of the United States. Trumpism is toxic for democratic life here in the United States and around the world. Donald Trump has now been back in power for more than 100 days. Are things as you expected? Better? Worse? I am not shocked by the extremism of Trumpism. But the Trump administration has failed in many ways, and yet it will keep trying to degrade American democracy as much as it can. A troubling question is, how will Trump and MAGA escalate their attacks on democracy and the rule of law to remain in power? I am very pessimistic in this regard. It is always more dangerous when totalitarians rule in the face of imminent defeat. Trump has clearly not yet achieved that level of power — I emphasize "yet". This explains why Donald Trump and his administration and forces more broadly are not as bold as they could be in terms of advancing Trump's goal of destroying constitutional democracy. Where are we in the story of the Age of Trump and his return? We do not have the wisdom of hindsight that future historians will have. My own view, an educated guess of sorts, is that we are in the middle, at least, of Trump's radicalization towards fascism. The American people were repeatedly warned about the calamity that would befall the United States if Donald Trump were put back in power. Why didn't they listen to the warnings? Many people do not care about the harm that Trumpism is causing democracy. Many of the Trump followers are hardcore, diehard believers in fascism in its varied forms and the quest for total domination that is fueled by hatred. But many other Trump supporters, a majority of them, are just hoping for a better economic situation. It is dubious that Trump's policies will create that outcome. And of course, those Trump supporters have ignored or otherwise put aside many of the most troubling dimensions of Trumpism, such as racism, nativism, sexism and wanton cruelty. At some point, the Trump supporters who are not the diehards and de facto cultists will recognize that they voted against their own interests. This is part of the history of fascism and dictatorship. Unfortunately, history shows us that such realizations often come very late in the game after there has been a lot of suffering inflicted on the country. The centrists, institutionalists and other establishment voices were very wrong about Donald Trump and his MAGA authoritarian populist movement's rise to power. These errors began in 2015, continued in the years to follow, and were fully exposed when so many of these 'respectable voices' continued to claim that there was no way Donald Trump could win in 2024. Per their logic, 'the American people would never do such a thing!' Alas, here we are. What does that dynamic look like in other countries when the so-called respectable voices are so wrong? Are they discredited when the autocrat-authoritarian takes power — and with widespread popular support? One of the key problems is how Trumpism is enabled by normalization. This represents the opposite of understanding the reality and facts of what is happening. Many scholars and pundits on the center as well as the right and the left denied the fascist dimensions of Trumpism. They kept trying to locate Trump as part of an older continuity and tradition of American presidents and other leaders. Trump is separate from that democratic tradition. These pundits, scholars and other public voices had a range of responses to being so wrong. Some of them recognized their mistake, but just want to move on and not have to explain their error and how they arrived at such incorrect conclusions. Others are telling the American people not to worry that much about Trump because it won't get that bad, and that Trump is not the real problem or danger anyway. The real problem and danger is that liberal democracy itself is flawed. That, too, is not entirely correct. I have a different perspective. When I was a kid, I lived under a gruesome dictatorship in Argentina. As a historian but also as a citizen, I never forget the key difference between an imperfect democracy and a total dictatorship. It is always fascinating to observe how these normalizing views are presented from a place of privilege and far away from the obvious victims of repression and demonization. If you never interact with the victims, it is harder to notice the change. Is America now in the grips of authoritarianism? If so, what type? Moreover, why were so many in the news media and political class afraid to use the 'f-word,' i.e., fascism, when it was readily apparent years ago that Donald Trump and his anti-democracy movement fit that definition. In my own work, I describe the Age of Trump and this version of authoritarian populism as 'wannabe fascism.' Wannabe fascism is an incomplete version of fascism, it is characteristic of those who seek to destroy democracy for short-term personal gain but are not fully committed to the fascist cause. As I explain in my books, the more we know about past fascist attempts to deny the workings of democracy, the more alarming these wannabe fascists appear. There have been many public discussions of the so-called authoritarian's playbook and how Donald Trump and his agents are following it very closely. What are some specific examples? Some of them are learned in the ways of fascism, others, like the leader himself, are intuitively antidemocratic, but the effects are the same, namely, the irrational rule of a leader who would like to rule as a king or dictator. The examples are many and they range from deportations for racist/and or other authoritarian ideological reasons, attacks against the press, attempts to destroy the independence of universities, the replacement of legality with manipulations of the law in the name of the leader and the attacks against idea and the practice of anti-racism and in favor of diversity. And last but certainly not least, are the events of Jan. 6 and the larger attempt to usurp democracy. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat recently warned that the speed of Donald Trump and his forces' attacks on democracy and civil society is more like a coup than autocratic capture. Do you agree? My friend and colleague Professor Ben-Ghiat is absolutely right! This is not a gradual process. It is unclear, yet, exactly what type of authoritarian end goals they want or will be able to reach. Do they want a full-on fascist dictatorship? An elected populist autocracy? Traditional tyranny? What is clear is that Donald Trump and his MAGA forces and their allies want to leave constitutional democracy behind. I don't want to be too strict with path dependency. But was there a moment(s) when Trump's return to power could have been stopped? Or was this democracy crisis and now the rise of naked fascism and authoritarianism more probable than not? What I focus on is that the architects and visionaries who did the intellectual work never faced justice for their role in the events of Jan. 6 and the larger attempt to nullify the results of the 2020 election. This is a key ingredient of the success of Trumpism. Without the link between history and justice, democracy cannot properly function or expand. The opposite happened, and we can now see the horrible consequences of these mistakes. The news media and free press are supposed to function as the Fourth Estate and the guardians of democracy. How would you assess the American mainstream news media's performance in that regard? The mainstream American news media continues to normalize Trumpism when it is labeled or framed as a 'conservative' or 'center-right' movement. Trumpism is radical and revolutionary. We are witnessing a new ultra-right populist phenomenon in the form of Trumpism and MAGA that is close to fascism. The extremism must be emphasized when discussing it so that the American people understand the dire reality that they are facing. The American news media need to put more history and context into their discussions of the Age of Trump and the attacks against democracy. This would also involve interviewing and otherwise featuring more scholars and other real experts. In your conversations with colleagues in higher education, what is the environment like now, given the Trump administration's attacks? There is, of course, the desired and planned chilling effect. There are attacks on media and universities, legal firms, judges, and others across civil society and the country's democratic and governing institutions. As I see it, what is even more troubling and deeply concerning is how the American people, the majority, are becoming increasingly numb to the abnormal behavior of Trump and his allies. Expert voices and others who have a trusted platform must continue to sound the alarm to wake the American people up from their complacency about Trumpism and the extreme danger it represents to the nation. Going beyond language and concepts, what are some practical, day-to-day things that the average American can do to defend democracy and civil society? It is critically important to be informed and alarmed about the extreme dimensions of Trumpism. In practice, we all need to continue reading independent media accounts of what is going on. We need to defend the independence of institutions and the separation of powers. I think it is important to oppose anti-democratic attempts by defending key dimensions of democracy and not giving up out of frustration and exasperation. This involves voting but also convincing others to do so. It also involves clearly and peacefully expressing one's own positions in conversations, in the streets and on social networks. History demonstrates that the worst thing we can do vis-à-vis wannabe dictators is being silent and apathic. What are some books, articles, creative work, films, movies, etc. that you recommend to those Americans who are trying to make sense of Trump's rise to power and the ascendant authoritarianism and fascism in this country? I would recommend novels such as "It can't happen here' or the recent movie about Trump and his relationship to Roy Cohn. The works of Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism and obedience are essential readings as well, especially her classic book On the Origins of Totalitarianism. I would also recommend the analysis of Nazi language by Viktor Klemperer, 'The Language of the Third Reich.' I also believe that the works of Latin American writers such as Jorge Luis Borges or Roberto Bolaño are of key importance in understanding the logic of fascism. I would recommend movies like the Argentines' 'The Official Story' and 'The Secret in their Eyes' to understand how important it is to know the links between history and legality when confronting propaganda, demonization and violence. I also think the second season of the Star Wars series 'Andor', starring Diego Luna, offers an excellent portrayal of the authoritarian manipulation of the truth through lies and propaganda. It is really well done and quite entertaining as well! The graphic novel "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi is also an excellent representation of how the Iranian dictatorship distorts the lives of an entire population. The novel focuses on the life of a young woman who resists in her own way. As different from the United States as all these cases are, there are still troublesome connections. The United States is becoming more and more like those real and fictional contexts where fascism and dictatorship are part of the picture, and a government wants its people to be less diverse and less tolerant of others. As you see it, what is the most disturbing aspect of Trump's return to power during these first four months? For fascists, what the leader wants is more legitimacy than legality, because while the former was the result of a cult of heroism and leadership principle, the latter was regarded as artificial and even boring. For example, this meant that everything Hitler wanted was legitimate and beyond the rule of law. This was the rationale for Jan.6 and Trump's arguments that he is above the law and that the courts should not have co-equal power to interfere with his actions as president. These actions take place in the context of lies and propaganda; one helps the other. Fascists, and wannabe fascists, imagine that all actions in defense of the law and democracy are part of a conspiracy against them. Donald Trump and his allies' abuse of the law fits an old autocratic pattern, one that has been given a new life in America. I hate applying sports analogies to politics, especially given a situation as serious as the Age of Trump. But who is 'winning right now? Trump and his 'team'? Or the other team? (the institutions and democracy, the 'Resistance,' civil society and the norms, etc.) Donald Trump and his 'team' started very aggressively, but they also made many mistakes. These mistakes include their approach to the economy and the rule of law. The apparent corruption will also not be forgotten by many American citizens. The apparent corruption and using public office to make money embodies the heart of the extremist politics of Trumpism and other forms of extreme populism and wannabe fascism. At this point, it is too soon to conclude how well Trump and his 'team' are playing the 'game.' There is another side to this 'game' that must be included. The other 'team' is those Americans who believe in democratic institutions and if they are going to go on the offense and get involved in the 'game' instead of mostly looking the other way.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's distraction machine is working
There was a menacing cloud hanging over Chicago as I walked down Michigan Avenue the other day. It slowly descended. At first, I thought the cloud was fog, but the air was not damp. I continued walking. I noticed people were covering their mouths and noses with their shirts or jackets. Some of them were coughing. I chose to breathe deeply. My throat was not itching. My eyes were not burning. I breathed deeply again. I wondered, is the air full of incinerated medical waste? Asbestos or some other poison that will give me cancer? Smoke from a forest fire miles away? Was HARP or some other weather control device that the conspiracy theorists have long been obsessed with malfunctioning? I laughed out loud. I then asked myself: Given how bad things are in America right now, what is the worst that can possibly happen to me from this bad air? I quickly realized the answer: a lot. So I covered my mouth and nose like everyone else. Eventually, my phone buzzed with a weather alert. Chicago was experiencing a historic dust storm. In the Middle East, such a storm is called a 'haboob.' I walked several more blocks and looked up at Trump Tower. The dust cloud was now hovering below the huge 'Trump Tower' sign. I smiled at the absurdity and power of the metaphor that is the Age of Trump and its oppressive toxicity that has confused and disoriented so many Americans. Donald Trump is a master propagandist and agent of chaos and distraction with power and influence over a vast propaganda and disinformation machine. Trump's ability to dominate the 24/7 media and this age of spectacle is likely unprecedented in modern (if not all of) American history. He is a defining personality and character of this era. In a 2023 conversation, Lee McIntyre, author of the book 'On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy,' explained to me: "I doubt that Trump has ever taken a course in psyops or that he reads disinformation training manuals in his spare time, but he is nonetheless a master, near-genius-level propagandist. He uses the exact same techniques of disinformation on an American audience that Putin uses on his citizens." When Donald Trump, his MAGA Republicans and the larger antidemocracy movement encounter difficulties with their "shock and awe" campaign and blitzkrieg against American democracy and society, they amplify the power and reach of their disinformation and propaganda experience machine. The mainstream news media, the Democrats and other members of the responsible political class (and many among the general public) have been conditioned to respond almost like Pavlov's dogs. They chase the newest outrage or spectacle and react like it is a surprise instead of focusing on the bigger picture and goals that these controversies and 'shocking' events are advancing and/or hiding. In a recent New York Times opinion essay, Ezra Klein explained how disorientation and a lack of focus are the intended outcome of Donald Trump and his agents' 'flooding the zone' strategy and tactic: Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently…. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn't in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump's country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it's over. Or so he wants you to think. In Trump's first term, we were told: Don't normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don't believe him. Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true… It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there's only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness. Trump's 'big beautiful bill' is set to take trillions of dollars away from the American people and give it to the richest people and corporations. If enacted, it will be one of the largest — if not the largest — transfers of wealth in American history and further gut the social safety net. Trump's "big beautiful bill" is unpopular with the American people and would likely trigger a huge backlash — given any sustained attention. While the GOP-controlled House passed Trump's bill, the media's attention was mostly focused on Trump's 'gifted' 400-million-dollar jetliner, a literal flying palace and king's court, from the government of Qatar. This is part of a much larger pattern of conflict of interests and corrupt power in apparent violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause and other ethics laws in which Donald Trump, his family and inner circle have leveraged the office of the presidency for personal enrichment. Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court has ordered a pause on Trump's mass deportation program under the Alien Enemies Act. There have been a series of lower court rulings that have also ordered a pause or outright stop to key parts of the Trump administration's actions and policies. A series of public opinion polls recently showed that Trump's support at this point in his presidency among the American people has collapsed at a rate not seen in 80 years. However, new public opinion polls show that Trump's support may have stabilized and is crawling back to his ceiling of approximately 45% to 47%. In total, Donald Trump's policies and behavior remain widely unpopular. Donald Trump's historic global tariff regime has not created a new 'golden age' for the United States and the American people. Leading economists and other business leaders continue to warn that the shocks from Trump's tariffs will cause disruptions to the economy if not a recession (or worse). Last Friday, Moody's downgraded the credit-rating of the United States from AAA (the highest level). Donald Trump and his administration's foreign policy –– and his brand as a 'dealmaker' — continues to falter. Most notably, the war in Ukraine continues and the United States' role as the world's leading democracy and an indispensable nation has been greatly diminished in just the first four months of Trump's return to power. Trump and his agents responded by turning their firehose of distraction, falsehoods and spectacle on full blast. The water is rising very quickly. In a recent Truth Social post, Donald Trump continued his attacks against singer Taylor Swift ("Has anyone noticed that, since I said 'I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,' she's no longer 'HOT?'"). He also turned his rage against Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Bono and Oprah Winfrey by accusing them of being part of a vast anti-Trump conspiracy. On Wednesday, Trump shared a video on his Truth Social platform of him hitting Bruce Springsteen with a golf ball that then causes the singer to stumble on stage. MSNBC's Steven Benen sorts through Trump's conspiracy theories and warns: To the extent that reality still has any meaning in situations like this, let's just briefly note that there's literally no evidence of Harris or her campaign paying anyone for endorsements; there was nothing 'unlawful' or 'corrupt' about the support the then-Democratic nominee received from celebrities during the 2024 campaign; Beyoncé did not face 'loud booing' after she endorsed Harris; and there's nothing 'illegal' about public figures publicly backing a presidential candidate. It's also probably worth mentioning in passing that Trump's hysterical online communications don't do any favors to his 'very stable genius' description of himself. But of particular interest was the president's interest in 'a major investigation into this matter.' All things considered, there's no reason to get too worked up about every Trump tantrum, his rage toward celebrities who've dared to criticize him, his weird approach to pop culture, or his use of the word 'illegal' as a synonym for 'stuff I don't like.' What I do care about, however, is the president's willingness to use the power of the state to pursue critics in authoritarian-style fashion. This is especially true now with the Justice Department led by an attorney general who apparently sees herself as an extension of the White House and its political agenda — which raises the prospect of a federal investigator actually initiating a probe into celebrities that Trump doesn't like. Trump also shared an AI-generated video of himself as a member of the rock band Journey playing their iconic song 'Don't Stop Believing' before a huge crowd of his MAGA people. In keeping with his drive for unlimited power, Trump also recently shared a series of AI-generated images of himself as the new Pope and a Sith Lord or other supremely powerful evil Jedi from George Lucas' 'Star Wars' universe. Relatedly, former FBI director James Comey posted an image on the social media platform Instagram of the numbers '86 47' formed from seashells on a beach. Trump responded that Comey was making a coded threat against his life ('Eighty-six' is slang for 'replace' or 'get rid of'; Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States). The MAGA chorus dutifully amplified Trump's paranoid conclusions. The Secret Service is now investigating Comey's alleged threat against Donald Trump. Comey has responded that this is all so much nonsense, and he was just sharing an image of seashells on the beach. In her newsletter, historian Heather Cox Richardson offered this context for Donald Trump and his forces' coordinated distraction campaign and attempts to dominate the information space: [R]etired entrepreneur Bill Southworth tallied the times Trump has grabbed headlines to distract people from larger stories, starting the tally with how Trump's posts about Peanut the Squirrel the day before the election swept like a brushfire across the right-wing media ecosystem and then into the mainstream. In early 2025, Southworth notes, as the media began to dig into the dramatic restructuring of the federal government, Trump posted outrageously about Gaza, and that story took over. When cuts to PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the U.S. Agency for International Development threatened lives across Africa, Trump turned the conversation to white South Africans he lied were fleeing 'anti-white genocide.' Southworth calls this 'narrative warfare,' and while it is true that Republican leaders have seeded a particular false narrative for decades now, this technique is also known as 'political technology' or 'virtual politics.' This system, pioneered in Russia under Russian president Vladimir Putin, is designed to get people to vote an authoritarian into office by creating a fake world of outrage. For those who do not buy the lies, there is another tool: flooding the zone so that people stop being able to figure out what is real and tune out. The administration has clearly adopted this plan. As Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison of the Washington Post noted in early March, the administration set out to portray Trump as a king in order 'to sell the country on [Trump's] expansionist approach to presidential power.' Richardson adds: Dominating means controlling the narrative. That starts with perceptions of the president himself. Trump's appearances have been deeply concerning as he cannot follow a coherent thread, frequently falls asleep, repeatedly veers into nonsense, and says he doesn't know about the operations of his government. Donald Trump and his forces' ability to 'flood the zone' as part of their larger propaganda and disinformation campaign is not some 'unknown unknown,' a mystery, an impenetrable black box, a form of magic or a supernatural power. Information about how to effectively counter such strategies and tactics is readily available to almost anyone who wants to seek it example, a free 2016 report from the Rand organization offers this advice: We are not optimistic about the effectiveness of traditional counterpropaganda efforts. Certainly, some effort must be made to point out falsehoods and inconsistencies, but the same psychological evidence that shows how falsehood and inconsistency gain traction also tells us that retractions and refutations are seldom effective. Especially after a significant amount of time has passed, people will have trouble recalling which information they have received is the disinformation and which is the truth. Put simply, our first suggestion is don't expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth. The Rand report continues: Our second suggestion is to find ways to help put raincoats on those at whom the firehose of falsehood is being directed. Don't expect to counter Russia's firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth. Instead, put raincoats on those at whom the firehose is aimed. [My emphasis added] Another possibility is to focus on countering the effects of Russian propaganda, rather than the propaganda itself. The propagandists are working to accomplish something. The goal may be a change in attitudes, behaviors, or both. Identify those desired effects and then work to counter the effects that run contrary to your goals… That metaphor and mindset leads us to our fourth suggestion for responding to Russian propaganda: Compete! If Russian propaganda aims to achieve certain effects, it can be countered by preventing or diminishing those effects. In our 2023 conversation, Lee McIntyre offered this additional advice about how to resist and win an information war: [D]isinformation has three goals. First is to try to get you to believe a falsehood. Second is to polarize you around a factual issue so that you begin to distrust, and even hate, the people who do not also believe this same falsehood. But finally comes the third and in some ways the most insidious goal of all they want you to give up. I think one message people get from disinformation is that everyone is biased, and that all speech is political. Or that things are so confusing — and there are so many voices out there who disagree — that it's just impossible to know the truth. People become confused and then cynical. They begin to feel helpless. And that is precisely the type of person that an authoritarian wants you to be. They want you to give up. The easiest way to control a population is to control their information source. But you are not powerless. There is something you can do to fight back against disinformation. That's why I wrote the book. But even before you read the book, I want you to know this: the most important step in winning an information war is first to admit that you are in one. [My emphasis added] In the end, howling and complaining that 'the other side is not playing fair' instead of adapting and overcoming is no real defense and a path to defeat. Unfortunately for the American people and the future of their democracy and freedom, throughout the long Age of Trump, the Democratic Party, the so-called Resistance, the mainstream news media and other supposed defenders of democracy and "the institutions" have not learned and internalized that lesson.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
"Save democracy" sounds like "save the status quo": How everything became a conspiracy theory
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways A wave of authoritarian populism has flooded many parts of the world. It has common attributes while simultaneously being specific to a given country's political culture, society and vulnerabilities. In the United States, the great flooding wave of authoritarian populism manifests in the form of Trumpism, MAGA and the larger neofascist anti-democracy movement. Its origins include but are not limited to (much earned) rage at the elites and the ruling class, extreme wealth and income inequality. There is also sclerotic social mobility, a society that is undergoing rapid demographic and other changes, globalization and the neoliberal gangster capitalist order, a sense that the American Dream for most is dying if not dead, future shock and the rise of social media, AI, and other digital culture(s), technofeudalism, loneliness and social atomization, a decline in happiness, a larger crisis of personal meaning and aggrieved entitlement. And of course, the central role played by conspiracism and conspiracy theories in the Age of Trump and the country's democracy crisis cannot be minimized. The feeling that there are sinister forces who are manipulating the country's politics and society in secret and that the everyday American has little to no defense against them except to embrace demagogues who promise 'I alone can fit it!' is both a cause and effect of America's democracy crisis and rising authoritarianism (and increasingly naked fascism). The forces that summoned up the Age of Trump are not new; they have much deeper, decades- and centuries-old origins in some of the worst aspects of American political life, society, and national character. As historian Richard Hofstadter warned in his seminal 1964 essay 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics': American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon…. This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties. In an effort to better understand the relationship between conspiracy culture and America's democracy crisis, why such beliefs are so compelling (and radicalizing) to so many people, and how the rise of Trumpism and MAGA can be tracked back to the Oklahoma City Bombing 30 years ago and the conspiracist culture of the 1990s (and before) I recently spoke with Phil Tinline. The author of "The Death of Consensus," which was chosen as The Times (London)'s Politics Book of the Year, Tinline spent 20 years working for the BBC, where he made and presented many acclaimed documentaries about how political history shapes our lives. Tinline's new book is "Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today." How are you feeling right now in this time of global democracy crisis and authoritarian populism, specifically the rise of Trumpism? How are you making sense of this? Trying to keep up with the new Trump administration and the implications of its actions is disorientating and exhausting. I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years researching the history of the fear that democracy is about to die, mainly in the UK but also in the U.S. Historically, we have worried about this many times without our nightmares coming to life. This led me to be very wary of people airily predicting that democracy was finished, and made me alive to the way that, paradoxically, such nightmares can actually damage democracy. But since Trump's speech at the airport in Waco, Texas, two years ago, and especially since January this year, I've been forced to the conclusion — as many others have — that constitutional democracy in America really is now under severe threat. I hope that, as has happened before, this crisis will force politicians to break free from old taboos and find more effective ways to restore ordinary Americans' trust that democracy can make their lives better — and then to actually deliver on that. [Last] month [was] the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. I remember watching the news on that horrible afternoon when the Oklahoma City bombing took place. It was beautiful outside, and the 'breaking news' alert flashed. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. 9/11 evoked similar feelings. The reporters and commentators immediately concluded it was a foreign attack. I told one of my friends, 'No way. This is American-made. These are domestic terrorists." I grew up listening to late-night AM Talk Radio and shows such as Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM, reading 'zines and the alternative and underground media, and chasing down other such sources of information. In some key ways, the Oklahoma City bombing and the right-wing conspiracy culture that birthed it connect directly to the Age of Trump. I remember that day too. I also remember reading a long article about the Branch Davidians and Waco two years earlier — at the time, it was one of the creepiest things I'd ever read. It was striking that the Oklahoma City bombing happened on the second anniversary, which was April 19 and the anniversary of the start of the American Revolution with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Because of your knowledge of conspiracist texts, you immediately thought that it was a homegrown attack. That was also the first thought of both an FBI profiler and Milton William Cooper, the author/compiler of the conspiracy theory compendium, "Behold a Pale Horse." Or rather, Cooper thought that it was a "false flag" attack staged on the anniversary of Waco to smear the militia movement. I'm struck by how the conspiracy theories which contended that the federal government played some sort of role in the Oklahoma City attack — which of course killed some of its own employees — do not seem to have stuck as hard as the equivalent theories about the assassination of JFK. Looking back, it's not difficult to see some of the roots of today's politics in the 1990s, and it's a worthwhile exercise, but the roots go much deeper than that. How does your expertise in politics and conspiracy theories inform your understanding of America's current democracy crisis and the Age of Trump and MAGA? I try not to get too stuck on party labels. I try to focus on the broad ideological traditions and the abiding fears that shape them. With that in mind, I think it's sometimes useful to read U.S. politics as not simply left versus right, or Democrats vs. Republicans, so much as a three-way split between alienated elements on the left and the right who dislike each other, but also have a shared antipathy to the center. I'd argue that political conspiracy theories are generally stories about power. People invest in them as a way to process and explain why they feel disempowered or defeated, especially when that defeat is a shock. I think this helps make sense of why left-wing conspiracy theories about the state in the 1960s and 1970s have something in common with right-wing conspiracy theories about the state in the 1990s and ever since. However, I wouldn't want to overdo this. There are huge differences as well between the fears of the left and right, and it's demonstrably clear that right-wing extremists have killed far more of their fellow citizens. It's also striking that the phenomenon of conspiracy theory beliefs being triggered by shocking defeats is not something from which the political center is immune, as we were reminded after both Trump's first election and Brexit in the UK. I have copies of many of the 'classic' conspiracy theory texts. Your new book examines one of those classics from the 1960s, "Report from Iron Mountain." What compelled you to write a book on the origins and cultural and political impact of that conspiracy theory? Why now? "Report from Iron Mountain" is a 1967 anti-war satire that claimed to be a leaked top-secret Pentagon-commissioned report — the subject of my new book, "Ghosts of Iron Mountain." The Report warned that if permanent global peace broke out, it would wreck the U.S. economy, and that the social effects of war would have to be replaced with eugenics, slavery, fake UFO scares, polluting the environment and 'blood games.' When this was published, many people thought it was real. The satirists eventually confessed, but the hoax fitted so convincingly with how many people felt American power really worked that they refused to believe it wasn't real. Ever since the 1990s, "Iron Mountain" has been embraced by some on the far-right and in the militia movement as 'proof' of the evil of what we now call the 'deep state;' videos from the 1990s insisting that the Iron Mountain report was real still circulate online today. And as I argue in my new book, this case reveals how falling for stories that confirm your prior beliefs doesn't just make you look like a fool. It can do serious political damage too. The Iron Mountain story revealed a shared left-right anger at the way the powerful treat ordinary Americans because it made sense of their feelings of disempowerment. The story of "Report from Iron Mountain" and its strange afterlife caught my imagination for two reasons. First, because we know for certain that it is fiction. I have a copy of the contract, which refers to it as the '"EACE HOAX BOOK." And second, because it slipped from being a 1960s left-wing satirical hoax to being the basis of 1990s right-wing conspiracy theories. This was an enticing way to explore three things at once, all through telling what I hope is a compelling story. There were similarities and differences between left- and right-wing fears of centralized power. Then the slippery borderland between fact and fiction, and the perils of ignoring just how slippery it is. Finally, it also brought back my memories of the way that the 1990s were absolutely haunted by the 1960s, as the boomers took power, the end of the Cold War left some Americans politically disoriented, and the memory of Vietnam still refused to fade. And the fact that some people still believe it's real, even now, just clinched it. What makes for a "good" i.e. enduring and believable conspiracy theory? Enduring and believable conspiracies are the ones that play on our fears, the stories we tell ourselves, and how far we are willing to go to accept what 'feels as if' versus what actually 'is.' As I write in "Ghosts of Iron Mountain," 'the tale of 'Report from Iron Mountain' offers a warning about the consequences that await if you don't keep an eye on the line between your deep story about how power works, and what the facts support.' And conspiratorial thinking that's appropriated "the Report" drew on what was already a longstanding nightmare on the American Right: the fear of one-world government, and how it might take over the US. Their fears were incredibly detailed and specific, and they power a deep undercurrent of paranoia that has resurfaced today. "Report from Iron Mountain" is an example of a co-opting of a satire as 'evidence' of government evil, which offers unusually clear evidence of just how powerful narrative can be. Of how it facilitates the triumph of what 'feels real' over what we know to be factually true. And of how hard it can be to overcome this — even long before the advent of social media. It's an inarguable case of a clear, proven hoax being taken as truth, meaning it allows us to trace the exact logical leaps its promoters made and offers a template for how conspiracy theorists think about the power of federal government. And that's why it's remained such an important and telling example of American conspiratorial thinking today. What is the difference between conspiracy theories and conspiracism? Too often, the news media and other political commentators and public voices (and the general public) talk about conspiracies when what they really mean is conspiracism. The distinction matters. How does this relate to the Age of Trump and authoritarian populism? It is vital not to use "conspiracies" as a synonym for "conspiracy theories," or for "conspiracism." Real conspiracies often occur, but they tend to be structurally quite different from what the theories claim. As the scholar of folklore Timothy Tangherlini and his colleagues at UCLA showed in a research paper in 2020, actual conspiracies tend to involve strong bonds between a relatively few players, whereas conspiracy theories tend to be much more loose and sweeping. This makes real conspiracies hard to investigate, which means they often emerge gradually through painstaking reporting, whereas conspiracy theories are often constructed very swiftly in reaction to a shocking event. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Conspiracism is the way of thinking that underpins belief in conspiracy theories, centered on the belief that there is a malignant, all-powerful, invisible force controlling crucial aspects of our lives. Trump has long drawn on this to play on Americans' sense of disempowerment and direct it against the supposedly tyrannical 'deep state.' Trump won by claiming to be the populist champion of the rage that many ordinary Americans feel against the uncaring, distant elites who have humiliated them for years. This feeds into the fear of dark forces at the core of the state that have spread since the 1960s. The great ironic twist is that having drawn on conspiracist narratives about the centralization and misuse of power, he is now moving aggressively to centralize and misuse power himself. Contrary to what those outside of that community, the normal politics types, would like to believe, people who have a serious belief in conspiracy theories/conspiracism are not necessarily dumb or stupid. Moreover, there is social psychology and other research that shows that they tend to be of above-average intelligence and have some college training because internalizing and making sense of conspiracy theories is cognitively demanding. Mockery is not an effective way of intervening against conspiracy theories/conspiracism and those who are seriously committed to them. I agree that conspiracy theorists may well be highly intelligent, committed and hard-working — though that's clearly not always so. I also agree that mockery is unlikely to help coax a person out of this kind of belief, though it's legitimate, and I do think it can be useful in putting people off early on.I think that the reason that mockery is often ineffective is that it reinforces the conspiracist's sense of exclusion, disempowerment and humiliation, particularly if that is then countered with warmth and affirmation from fellow believers. I suspect it's more effective to focus on the underlying structural logic of conspiracy theory, summarized by one of the leading experts on conspiracism, Michael Barkun, as 'everything is connected,' 'nothing is accidental,' and 'nothing is as it seems.' Most people would accept that in their own lives, accidents and coincidences happen, and some things really are just as they seem. That strikes me as a more useful place to start, though I have never had to try to rescue someone from a rabbit hole. Did you see the recent film The Order? Justin Kurzel's film (which is based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt's 1989 book "The Silent Brotherhood") is critically important given where America is right now. The film did not do well commercially. In my opinion, it told too much uncomfortable truth in an era when most people are trying to avoid the horrible reality. Denial will not save them. The screening I went to was basically empty. I saw "The Order" three times, and only in one screening were there more than 10 people in it. I went to see the film by myself during its opening week in London, on a freezing night between Christmas and New Year. The cinema I saw it in was almost empty too. I thought The Order was a solid piece of work, and I was glad that it didn't flinch from having the characters articulate their horrible racist ideology that drove them to kill. My main doubt was whether the film did enough to dramatize the broader sense of economic disempowerment that it implied was part of their motivation, because the more we understand what drives people toward the violent extremes of the right, the more likely we are to be able to divert them. The Order is based on the murder in 1984 of the radio personality Alan Berg. Watching Kurzel's film sent me back to Oliver Stone's 1988 movie "Talk Radio," which was also inspired, in part, by that story. Much as I'm critical of Stone's later movie JFK, he deserves a lot of credit being so swift to tackle the story of Berg's murder and the vicious ideology that drove the killers. Stone's "Talk Radio" was warning about The Turner Diaries seven years before it helped to inspire Timothy McVeigh to murder 168 people with his truck bomb in Oklahoma City. Where do we go from here? Towards the end of last year, I went to a presentation of the results of some polling conducted in the wake of the presidential election. It pointed to a troubling finding: when disaffected voters heard Democratic politicians ask for their votes to 'save democracy,' what many of those voters heard was 'please vote for me to save my job, and the status quo.' This chimed with my experience talking to people in the week before the election, which I spent travelling westward through Pennsylvania. What I think this points to is conspiracy theories are one of the warning lights on the dashboard of democracy. They express how people feel about power. More people who care about democracy should have seen those lights flashing red and acted accordingly much earlier. But now here we are. The only way that I can see America recovering from this situation is for democratically elected politicians to show that they can and do make ordinary people's lives better. The problem is that, meanwhile, conspiracy theories are a very useful way for other politicians to stoke distrust and division in pursuit of power.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The media learned all the wrong lessons from 2024
There are annual conferences where medical professionals and other experts discuss the deaths and illnesses of historic figures through the lens of modern medicine. At some point in the future, historians, political scientists, journalists and other experts will convene to discuss and debate the Age of Trump and how the 'world's greatest democracy' succumbed to autocracy and authoritarianism. The role of the mainstream news media is sure to be prominently featured in any political autopsy. During the 2024 election, the American mainstream news media continued to practice its obsolete norms of 'fairness,' 'balance,' 'objectivity,' and 'neutrality.' Coverage remained steadfastly focused on 'bothsidesism,' an obsession with the polls and the 'horserace,' and inside the Beltway gossip rather than critical coverage of Trump's campaign and his MAGA authoritarian populist movement. As an institution, the news media did not treat Donald Trump's chances of victory over the Democrats in the 2024 election with the seriousness and alarm it merited. The result was to normalize and minimize the existential harm that Trump's return to power would cause the nation. In this future political autopsy, media scholar Jay Rosen's advice and warning to the American news media to emphasize 'Not the odds, but the stakes' in its coverage of the Age of Trump will be written in bold or repeatedly underlined. At The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit indicted the American news media for its failures during the 2024 election: The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They've done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. Ultimately, as an institution, the American mainstream news media did not adopt the prime directive that, in a time of such extreme peril, it should be emphatically and explicitly pro-democracy, rather than just a referee, bystander, or stenographer of current events. This is a failure of principle, self-interestand survival. Donald Trump has now been president for two months. He is ruling as an autocrat and aspiring dictator who appears to have no intention of leaving office. The news media has, with some exceptions, not risen to the challenge. In his January essay 'Why is Trump coverage so feeble?' journalist and media watchdog Dan Froomkin summarizes the news media's choice to fail: In some cases they have been explicitly muzzled — told by their bosses to 'be forward-thinking and to avoid pre-judging Trump,' as CNN chief Mark Thompson told his staff, according to Oliver Darcy. In some cases, it's all internalized; they're so into being 'above the fray' that they're unwilling to render judgments that might alienate Trump and his voters and subject them to accusations of having 'taken sides.' But for whatever reason, by failing to properly situate Trump's individual acts, they effectively play down the significance of what he is doing. They normalize it. Let's Be Clear Most of what Trump is doing is coming right out of the authoritarian playbook.... Here's the thing: I believe our top political journalists know full well what is going on, and would actually like to explain it properly to their readers and viewers. They just haven't figured out a way to do it yet….[O]ur political. journalists need to find a way to get over the view that putting what Trump is doing in its full context is somehow 'taking sides' in a partisan political battle. Yes, it's 'taking sides' – but it's taking sides for the truth. It's taking side for an informed electorate. It's taking sides for journalism As Robert Kuttner asks at The American Prospect, 'where are the firebreaks?' that should be slowing down and stopping the Trump administration and its forces as they rampage against American democracy and society. The firebreak that is the American news media (the Fourth Estate) against Trump's assaults on democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution has not been effective. Leading media outlets such as the Washington Post and LA Times are engaging in anticipatory obedience where they are self-censoring or otherwise modifying their coverage and tone to please Donald Trump, his MAGA movement and the larger right-wing. For example, as directed by ownership, the editorial board of the Times did not issue its customary endorsement of a presidential candidate in the 2024 election (Kamala Harris would have been endorsed). To great controversy, the Washington Post also made a similar move. The Post has now gone even further, with its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos issuing a guideline that the opinion section of the paper will focus on amplifying 'personal liberties and free markets." Opposing views will not be given a platform in the newspaper. In his newsletter, historian Timothy Snyder offered the following critique of the logic of 'free market' orthodoxy and how Bezos' decision is doing the work of authoritarianism and plutocracy: The assumption that "free markets" and "personal liberties" work together as "pillars" is mistaken. These two concepts are not the same, and very often point in opposing directions. A "free market," for example, would mean that companies can pollute as much as they like. But if the atmosphere poisons me and I die of cancer, I am not enjoying "personal liberties" of any sort… Snyder continues: The language of "free markets" is authoritarian. Freedom belongs only to people. It does not belong to institutions or abstractions — and least of all to non-existent institutions or abstractions. The moment that we yield the word "free" to something besides a person, we are yielding our freedom. And we should be aware that others who abuse the word by taking it from us intend to oppress us. When we endorse the fiction of "free markets," we are entering a story told by others than ourselves, in which we are the objects, the tools, the non-player characters. We are accepting that we people owe duties to those markets. By way of an unreal concept we pass into real submission. We are accepting that we have the duty to oppose "government intervention," which is to say that we must oppose political actions that would help us to be more free: safety for workers, protection for consumers, insurance for banks, funding for schools, legality for unions, leave for parents, and all the rest. We must accept whatever the market brings us, to go wherever the billionaires take us, to surrender our words, our minds, ourselves. CNN and other television and media outlets are also adjusting their coverage to feature more 'conservative' voices and perspectives in what appears to be an attempt to conform with the Trump administration's desires (and also to avoid retribution). These decisions are justified as responses to a changing 'market and declining ratings. The acts of anticipatory obedience by the Washington Post and other leading news outlets will have a cooling effect across the entire news media. The many failures of the news media in the Age of Trump (and in the years and decades prior that birthed this era) to, for example, accurately and effectively describe America's political and social reality and the country's deep troubles and what to do about them have contributed to its lack of trust and respect among the American people. Last December, Semafor asked dozens of leading news and media figures what they were wrong about in 2024. The survey should have received much more attention when it was published. It was a rare moment of critical self-reflection and potential soul-searching for a news media that rarely admits its errors and failings because to do so would be a threat to its legitimacy and authority. Some of these failings, errors and oversights included downplaying Trump's popularity, mistaking Kamala Harris' 'brat energy' and the enthusiasm of her base as compelling evidence that she would win the election and turning a blind eye to Biden's apparent inabilities, due to age and energy, to effectively campaign against Trump. I have reread Semafor's survey several times during the last three months. Trump's shock and awe campaign against American democracy is escalating and the news media as an institution appears to be continuing with many of the same errors (or worse) it made in 2024 during one of the most critical elections in American history. I asked Brian Karem, who is Salon's White House columnist, for his thoughts about the media's failures in 2024 and what he would have done differently: We fail in the press because more than 90 percent of what you see, read or hear is owned by six companies who are part of the billionaire ruling class. We are owned by entertainment companies and are treated as cheap entertainment. We produce pap with snap for various news-information silos. More intent on going viral than informing, we are no longer capable, at least most of the time, to produce vetted factual information for the masses. We hire cheap, uninformed and under-experienced editors to bow to the owners, and hire uninspired and under-experienced reporters to produce stories. We neither grasp nor search for anything other than reactions to press releases and official pronouncements. We fail to understand and are proud to be along the ride to doom. What we got wrong in 2024? Rather than point to individual stories we got wrong, I will simply say we got all of it wrong by not providing vetted factual information, for failure to communicate, for failure to investigate, understand or search for answers using the scientific method to communication and producing news we can all use. I also asked Matthew Sheffield, who is a progressive writer, commentator, and media critic for his reflections and insights: I think the biggest lesson that progressives should take from the 2024 election is that the mainstream news media will never adequately promote our ideas. This is a mistake that should have been realized a long time ago. Paradoxically, even though the mainstream media as always refused to comprehensively document and expose Republican politicians' fanaticism, Republicans still believed they needed to create their own media environment to promote their ideas to the public. And so they did. Democrats actually have more money at their disposal, but they need to start spending it on advocacy media, instead of worthless TV ads that are despised by voters as much as they hate email spam. It's easy to blame voters for staying home or making a bad choice, and they do deserve moral accountability. But unless you have a plan to stop it, raging against the machine only gets you crushed by it. The two things I got the most wrong in 2024 were 1) that I trusted that the Joe Biden White House was telling the truth when they said he was capable of running a full-scale presidential campaign. He very obviously was not, even before his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump—who actually performed worse, but his aberrant behavior has been, regrettably, normalized for many people; and 2) I underestimated just how little engagement that the Kamala Harris campaign was attempting with younger voters. Trump won the election because of people who had never voted before. And he did it by appearing on countless podcasts, which Republican donors have spent millions creating while Democratic donors pleasured themselves to anti-Trump video ads. The Democratic establishment has failed now twice against Donald Trump, a man who thinks that windmills cause cancer. We can point and laugh at Trump all we want, but since he's won twice now, which politicians are actually the fools? Nathan J. Robinson, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine, offered this call to action: We need to build an alternative media infrastructure that is sharply critical of both Trump and the anemic Democratic opposition. That is what we have been trying to do for eight years at Current Affairs, despite having no corporate backing and working entirely off reader support. The people quoted in that Semafor article are right that they were wrong. They do not, however, realize that their wrongness discredits them and shows why people should stop listening to them. Some of us had much better records in 2024. If you go through the archives of our magazine, I think the commentary holds up pretty well. In fact we warned in 2020 that Biden's presidency would be a failure and Trump would be back. I would encourage consumers of media to switch and follow independent publications that have a good track record of analysis (not just my publication but The Intercept, Lever, Jacobin) and stop paying attention to blowhard pundits who are confidently wrong about everything. As an institution, the news media developed extremely poor habits during the Age of Trump. This was preceded by years and decades of bad habits that collectively have now brought the United States to such a low place. Moreover, these are now more than bad habits; they are the dominant culture of the American mainstream news media. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are quickly consolidating their power. The American news media is almost out of time to learn new habits and norms by being brave defenders of democracy and freedom. The American news media is now facing an existential collective action problem, where to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, they need to work together or be defeated alone. The future of America's news media is clear: If they continue with their bad culture and acts of anticipatory obedience, they will become de facto ministries of state propaganda that are owned by the autocrat and his friends and allies, like in Orban's Hungary or Putin's Russia.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How moving can help beat MAGA: "We need to revive mobility"
The American Dream is now very sick and perhaps even on the verge of death. The Age of Trump and authoritarian populism are closely related to this in several ways. The imperiled American Dream helped to fuel the righteous rage at the elites and a broken economic and political system that lifted Donald Trump back to the White House. If Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans and the larger right-wing antidemocracy movement achieve their goals — even partially so — of gutting the social safety net, hollowing out the federal workforce and enacting tax and other spending and budgetary policies that siphon off even more of the American people's money and give it to the richest individuals and corporations, the American Dream will be even more out of reach. Public opinion polls and other research have consistently shown that a large percentage, if not the majority, of Americans believe that the American Dream is something in the past and that present and future generations will have a much more difficult life economically than previous generations. Homeownership and "living in a good neighborhood" are central to the reality and cultural mythology of the American Dream. As the United States becomes more economically stratified and the richest 10 percent now own a disproportionately large percentage of the country's wealth (60 percent), home ownership has become increasingly difficult for the average American to achieve. The rental market reflects this pressure. In many parts of the country, a combination of financial speculators and multinational corporations is buying up entire neighborhoods and communities, forcing out existing residents and then pricing the properties so that they are generally only accessible to affluent people. America's political polarization reflects these divides of who can enjoy the freedom and right of social mobility through moving from one home and neighborhood (or part of the country) to a more desirable one and those who are stuck, often intergenerationally, in the same homes and neighborhoods of their birth. Political scientists have shown that people who moved more than one hundred miles from their hometown were more likely to vote for Democrats. Those Americans who remain close to their places of birth were much more likely to vote for Donald Trump. To better understand the connections between the idea of home, the American Dream, social mobility, and America's increasingly fractured politics and larger society, I recently spoke with Yoni Appelbaum, deputy executive editor at The Atlantic and the author of the new book 'Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity.' Given everything transpiring here in America with Trump's second term, how are you feeling? I have the rare privilege of doing work that grows more meaningful during times of tragedy or uncertainty. So, for my own part, I turn to the craft of journalism — working on stories that can help bring clarity, put new facts on the record and pursue accountability. And that's really the best advice I have to offer others, too. If things are unfolding that concern you, find your own small way to make the world a little better. You won't solve everything, but you may solve something. What is the American Dream? The American Dream and how a person feels relative to it — and the ability to attain it — is central to the rise of Trumpism and authoritarian populism and the rage at the elites. The best definition of the American Dream I've ever encountered came from one of the founders of The Atlantic, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He recalled kids in a schoolyard saying defiantly: I'm as good as you be. That's it. That's the dream. A country in which each of us is accorded equal dignity, equal rights, and equal opportunity. We can measure its realization in our own lives in a variety of ways, and often we tend to do so in terms of material goods. But those are just yardsticks. When people look around and see that the Dream has been denied to themselves or their neighbors, that's what they're getting at, the denial of the dignity of equality. What does 'home' mean relative to the American Dream? 'Home' and the American Dream and neighborhood and community are central to how people think about society and politics. One of the biggest things I discovered while writing 'Stuck' was just how often people used to move. At the peak, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, probably one out of every three Americans moved each year. As late as 1970, it was one in five. And it's been sliding for 50 years. We just got new numbers, and it's down to one in thirteen, an all-time low. I actually think that's a big problem! But for counterintuitive reasons. I think the lack of mobility is gutting our communities. The peaks of American mobility coincided with the peaks of community. At a broad level, the constant infusion of new arrivals energized civic life. And at an individual level, when you move someplace new, you have to seek out new friends, join new groups, and develop new habits. What historically made American communities special is that, to an unusual extent, our identities weren't inherited but chosen. Because we had the option to leave, the choice to stay became active — to remain in a town, a church, a club. It's why American civic life was long so remarkably robust, why the pews were filled on Sunday. And as we've stopped moving around, it's decayed very sharply. How many Americas are there? We are not one nation or people. We put the answer right on the dollar bill: E pluribus, unum. We're many, and we're one. The book talks about the difference between Israel Zangwill, who exalted the 'melting pot' as the ideal, and Horace Kallen, who coined the term 'pluralism' as an alternative. I think Kallen had the better of the argument. It doesn't make you or me any less American to also embrace our other identities or to be fully part of our particular communities. The idea that diversity could be a strength was a pretty radical claim when Kallen made it a century ago, but over time, I think it's been proved correct. Many of the majority white 'red state' and 'downscale' 'working class' communities that have flocked to Trumpism are not that dissimilar in terms of poverty, lack of upward mobility, limited opportunities, being hurt by globalization/neoliberalism/casino capitalism and other forces as compared to majority Black and brown communities. This is an important fact that is not commented upon enough in the dominant narrative that Trumpism is primarily about an aggrieved 'working class.' One thing that blue-collar communities share across the country—whether in rural areas or inner cities — is that their residents have lost their mobility. The freedom to move toward opportunity used to be an American birthright. Its revocation is experienced not just as a loss of income but as a loss of dignity and a loss of hope. When people lose the chance to move where they want, the research says they grow more cynical, more alienated, and more inclined to see the world as a zero-sum game, where others' gains come at their expense. I think many people in working-class communities can see, very clearly, that something has broken in American life, that they don't have the opportunities they expected. Unfortunately, demagogic politicians have also spotted that justified sense of grievance and exploited the rise of zero-sum thinking to set workers against each other—an effective way to win elections, but not to improve the lives of voters. America is race and class segregated. By some measures, America is as, if not more, segregated than it was in the 1950s. That segregation reflects and fuels the United States' extreme political polarization and negative partisanship. We do not live near people who are different from us, and therefore we don't see each other as real human beings. This is fuel for malign political and social actors. This is, sadly, all too correct. After a long period in which Americans fought incredibly hard to enlarge the freedom to move, tearing down barriers of class and race, we've spent the last 50 years re-erecting them. Only, instead of doing so transparently, the new rules have been written to be facially neutral — in zoning codes and community input processes, and building regulations — even as they have a predictably disparate impact. Wealthy communities have learned how to play the game of exclusion ever more effectively. And as we've stopped moving over the past 50 years, the country has become sharply more polarized. When communities were constantly revitalized by steady streams of new arrivals, they brought with them new life experiences, new ideas and new beliefs. Stagnant communities, by contrast, tend to homogenize over time, as people conform to the views of those around them. If we want to recapture our ability to see each other as fully human, we need to revive mobility. To the title 'Stuck.' What is the role of race and opportunity structures in your new book? Geographic mobility — the chance to move toward opportunity — has long been the key driver of social and economic mobility. There's no better way to understand the centrality of mobility to the American Dream than to trace the ways in which we've denied it to disfavored groups over time. The book unearths the contested history of mobility. It shows how minorities laid claim to this essential American freedom and the backlash that resulted. It traces the rise of zoning—first developed as a tool to ghettoize Chinese immigrants in California, then applied to Jews in New York, and as it spread, all too often used to target Black communities — as an instrument of racial and class segregation. It illuminates the ways in which increasingly restrictive rules and regulations have choked off the supply of affordable housing, constraining mobility today, with a disproportionate impact on the Black community. Work as a public sector/government employee has long been a path to the middle class for Black and brown stivers, white ethnics, and immigrants to America. These are good jobs that have a certain amount of prestige and pride. Part of that prestige and pride was that these careers enabled a person to buy a home and achieve the American Dream for their families and future generations. The impact of the Trump administration's gutting of the federal workforce will be felt widely across the United States. Living in Washington, D.C., I see the impact of the sudden job cuts in the federal government all around me, every day. And there's an added tragedy to the way they're unfolding. The robust equal employment protections of the federal government have long made civil service jobs a path up to the middle class for populations that otherwise face endemic discrimination. That's how my grandfather was able to get a job as a postal letter carrier. And today, it's why the federal workforce is disproportionately drawn from members of minority groups. Historically, it's been a win-win — the workers get the kind of jobs they deserve, and taxpayers get talented civil servants whose skills have been undervalued by a discriminatory private sector. Right now, though, it's a lose-lose — those public-sector workers are losing their jobs, and we're all losing the benefits of their skills and well-qualified and dedicated worker who loses their job for no particular reason is an individual loss. But collectively, the cuts in the federal workforce are devastating the communities that already faced the greatest challenges. What does it mean to lose one's home and all that comes with it? This is a great injury to a person's honor — especially for men — and feelings of being a productive member of society and not a 'burden' or 'taker'. I wrote an entire book about the magic of mobility. But there's a crucial caveat. I'm talking about mobility as an act of individual agency, of choice. There's another kind of mobility that comes about involuntarily — a result of foreclosure, eviction, or housing insecurity. That's generally devastating. That has its origin in restrictive rules that have made it too hard to build housing in the places where it's most desperately needed, driving up prices and rents. That squeezes the folks who live there, sometimes leading to the loss of housing, but leaving a far larger number in a state of precarity. And it makes it hard for people elsewhere who are struggling just to get by to follow the time-honored path of relocating toward greater opportunity. In effect, they can't; they've been walled off from the places where their chances would be better. Both sets of people are denied the dignity of providing for their families. The passing of wealth from the . That generational transition will reinforce the racial wealth gap because of how the GI Bill, VA and FHA home loan programs, and other government policies that created (white) suburbia and the American middle class discriminated against non-whites, and Black Americans in particular. The American Dream is a result of those policies. How is this dynamic reflected in your new book 'Stuck'? One story 'Stuck' tries to hammer home is how large a role government policy — federal policy — played in our present inequality. A variety of New Deal programs made it easier for some Americans to move out to suburban homes, even as they made it all but impossible for others to follow them there. Racially restrictive covenants and zoning codes became a precondition of federal housing loans. The courts eventually struck down the racial restrictions, but communities soon discovered that zoning could be almost as effective a tool of exclusion. So yes, all of these policies helped produce an enormous racial wealth gap, which is transmitted from one generation to the next. But it's crucial to recognize that we're not just feeling the long-term effects of historical policies — present-day zoning is still driving much of the inequality in America. Our communities are being torn apart and pulled at by different forces. Huge corporations and multinationals are buying up portfolios of properties and entire neighborhoods. There are the 'winners' in this increasingly stratified society who can move into formerly working-class, poor, and underclass communities and buy/rent property. The people who live there are being priced out and have fewer places to live. Affordable housing is increasingly an oxymoron and a cruel joke. In my neighborhood, I look for those U-Hauls and cars full of boxes on the last day of the month and all the things left abandoned on the sidewalk. It is very sad. What is this doing to the social and political fabric of this country? To individuals who must navigate it? You're pointing to two overlapping problems. One is that, as you say, mobility has become the privilege of the educated and the affluent. That's who still has the chance to move where they want. And because of the enormous advantages that mobility confers, the gap between them and everyone else is rapidly widening. The other is scarcity. For as long as we've had cities, neighborhoods have changed. While we still produced housing to keep pace with demand, most people welcomed such changes. You could add some luxury townhouses for the rich, and they'd move in. The housing they vacated could be sold or rented to the merely affluent. The upper-middle class could move in behind them. And so on down the line, in a chain of moves you can trace through the property records, right down to the impoverished immigrant leaving one tenement for a slightly more spacious one. The magic of this was that almost everyone who moved ended up someplace nicer or better-suited to their needs than where they'd started. But when there's not enough housing to go around, it's a whole different story. You still get chains, but they can be chains of displacement. The rich move in at the top, and everyone bumps down as rents rise. It's like a game of musical chairs where you keep adding players, but not seats, and you give a head start based on wealth. The results are predictably cruel. Who are the 'winners' and 'losers' in the story and social history you so deftly navigate in the new book? The answer varies by era. In the golden age of mobility, the winners were the dispossessed. By fighting for, and securing, the right to live where they chose to, they gained the chance to decide who they wanted to be. Our society became gradually more equal, and the scope of civil rights enlarged. Lately, though, the winners have been the propertied and the privileged, who have figured out how to rig the game in their favor, by using regulations and land-use rules to resegregate our society. And the losers? That's everyone else, shut out of opportunity. As has been my standard final question throughout the Trumpocene. Where do we go from here? The story I tell in the book is in some ways depressing. But I actually mean it as a hopeful tale. By recovering the story of the foundational American freedom — the right to live where you want — I'm trying to point the way to a better, more just, and more equal future. And it's also hopeful because we don't need to wait for a dysfunctional Congress to act, or for a presidential administration to want to tackle these challenges. The book focuses on state laws and local regulations. States and cities that want to restore mobility, recommit to growth, and open themselves to new arrivals seeking opportunity can do so on their own, right now. These problems are remarkably recent in vintage, and the historical record offers us proven alternatives that we can implement today.
