Booktv. Org or consult your television guiled with. Now, Anne Applebaum on the rise of authoritarianism around the world. My name is john francis is coney, and i manage the Louis Mcnally jackson in down drown brooklyn at downtown brooklyn at the beginning of march. If you go to Mcnally Jackson. Com, youll see all the amazing writers and programs that were hosting in the coming days and weeks, and im adding more every day as far ahead as fall, so Pay Attention to our web site or sign up for our newsletter. Were glad we can host events this way, and we hope that theyre palliative for you with as theyve been palliative for us during this difficult and confusing time. This event is free, but we do have copies of annes book, twilight of democracy, out today from doubleday. Youll find a link to buy it from us in the chat. As weve changed phases from staying at home to opening for curbside pickup, stores like ours need more support, so if you want us to host more events and youre able to order a copy of annes book from us, we would be greatly appreciative. If you have questions, use the zoom chat function to submit any questions you have, and closer to the top of the hour ill come back and relay them to anne. Were honored to present this Virtual Event in partnership with the United Nations association of new york, and we have with us today annie coal who wants to speak briefly about who they are. Thank you so much for the introduction. Were delighted to cooperate with Mcnally Jackson booksellers today bringing Anne Applebaum. Twilight of democracys subject matter is appropriate, relevant and timely. It provides tools of analysis that can be applied to many situations in the world today. The global tide between liberal democracy and authoritarian forms of government have long been intertwined with the work of the United Nations, and i know that we have a very stimulating conversation ahead of us. Anne applebaum is social movement, and today she shares her insight on the [inaudible] of nationalism. Anne, its great pleasure to have you address us today. Thank you so much. And ill give it back to john. Thank you very much. Were thrilled to have anne in conversation today with jacob weisberg, cofounder and ceo of a Podcast Company dedicated to putting artists and creators first. He was previously the editorinchief of the slate group. And the author of todays book, twilight of democracy, Anne Applebaum. Annes 2018 atlantic article, a warning from europe, inspired her new book and was a finalist for a National Magazine aa ward. After 17 years as a columnist at the washington post, applebaum became a staff writer at the atlantic in 2020. She is the author of three criticallyacclaimed and waredwinning histories of awardwinning histories of the soviet union, winner of the blitz or prize. Blitzer prize. Timothy snyder had this to say about annes new book Anne Applebaum is a leading historian of communism and an investigator of contemporary politics. Here she sets her sight on the big question, one with which she herself has been both deeply engaged, how did our democracy go wrong. This extraordinary document written with urgency, intelligence and understanding is her answer. And david fromm writes friendships torn, the ideals betrayed. In this, her most personal book, a great historian explains why so many of those who won the battles for democracy or spent their lives proclaiming its values are now succumbing to liars, thugs and crooks. Twilight of democracy fearlessly tells the shameful story of a a political generation gone bad. With that, ill pass things off to jacob. Great. Well, hello, everybody, and i want to first thank ann any nicol for fostering the event and john for hosting it. Its very nice to see it in a bookstore, even if it has to be virtual. And i want to make sure you all at least see this book which is very elegant. Very brief and to the point, this book is, among other things. Very efficient and quick and engaging read. So i want to start, above all, by recommending it. And then i want to recommend anne a little bit who is, you know, not only an old friend, but for me the person who first sounded the alarm about so much of what were dealing with now in the United States. And i think, you know, she has special insight not only because of her work as a historian as a journalist, but because of her orientation toward, around Eastern Europe and her experience in the soviet union. And when we started to see manifestations of authoritarianism in american politics, i think a lot of us did have the reaction that it cant happen here, that it would remain permanently a kind of fringe movement, something we didnt have to take seriously. And that turned out to be wrong. And, you know, i think anne because of her experience she writes about in Eastern Europe particularly sort of knew what was coming and started to talk about in a, with a clear warning voice in 2015 at the very least, but really before a lot of other people were making the same comments. So, you know, i think i read the book with that in mind. And the first thing i want to ask you, anne, is with the perspective you have on, the global perspective on authoritarianism, why you have focused the book in the way you have on the role of the people who are sort of exemplaries to authoritarianism. You might call them the intellectuals, but in a lot of ways many of them arent intellectuals or dont deserve or dont get that as an appropriate distinction. Theyre people who are publicists, pundits, propagandists. Some of them are intellectuals, there were intellectuals, but why are you looking at these people rather than the authoritarian leaders themselves . Well, first of all, thank you. I, too, am delighted to be in a virtual bookstore even though im joining you from across the atlantic. But its a nice feeling to have book people around me. And, of course, great to be with jacob who ive known for many years and who i think [inaudible] for my book called iron curtain which is about the soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Theres a weird parallel between these two books, which we may discuss. So the book grew out of the reason why i wrote it the way i did is the book grew out of my reflections about people that i know. And it started with me thinking about people who i had known over 20 and sometimes 30 years, firstly in poland, then later i started thinking about people in britain and the u. S. And elsewhere and who i felt had made a kind of political journey and who had been on the centerright or would have called themselves reaganites or maybe thatcherites, part of the anticommunist movement in poland and hungary, people who were instrumental in arguing for and helping to bring about the end of communism and who had, over the next 20 and 30 years, had changed rather dramatically. In my view. And had become something closer to a new form of radical right. Some became nationalists, some became, some became part of, you know, or spokesmen for authoritarianleaning political parties. And i thought about how to write about this phenomenon, and i decided that the best way to do it was from the perspective of people i know. I mean, i had one issue which is that i am to some extent in the story. I live in poland. Im american, i grew up in the United States, i lived in england for a long time in the 1990s, but i have very deep ties to poland where im married to a polish politician who was defense minister and in government for many years, you know, and i, you know, somehow i felt that i couldnt tell husband his story without being in it because that would be cheating. I couldnt write a, i couldnt do what i did for the obfuscation of Eastern Europe after 1945 which is tell the story in a balanced way from lots of perspectives. I felt this was a story, you know, that i could best tell in my own voice and about people that i know. And who, you know, who do i know, you know . I knew other journalists, i knew people in politics, and i knew a lot of people who had, who were what i would call political entrepreneurs. So a although,ing jacob, if you dont want to use the word intellectual, thats fair enough. A lot of these are people who are interested in ideas and in sort of how to make ideas into politics. In other words, you know, they, theyre people who hang around think tanks, sometimes hang around universities, sometimes around political parties, some newspapers. And they, you know, and then they sought to bring about political change in a particular direction. And this is just a group of people that, you know, i know well and am familiar with. I also think that they have a, you know, we underrate their roles. In other words, lots and lots and lots of people have written about voters, or right . Why do voters vote for trump or why do voters vote for pilot, you know, or why do voter vote for choose authoritarian. And, you know, thats a legit may not pursuit and a legitimate question to ask. But not that many people have looked at, you know, what are, you know, what are the voters being presented with. Its not just, you know, its not just the question of an authoritarian leader. Theres an authoritarian leaders package, you know, particularly nowadays. So somebody writes the memes that are designed to create enthusiasm for him, somebody writes, you know, writes the speeches, somebody, you know, somebody prepares him. Somebody writing his speeches is thinking about how to sell him to the public. And this is a missing piece of the story, i felt. And as i said, one that i just felt uniquely able to tell because, you know, some of them are people i know. Yeah. I mean, theres a prehistory here particularly of the 20th century, people who were thought or assume to share the premises of a democratic or liberal society who then went over to sort of the thug side, as it were, and ended up supporting stalinism or fascism. Primarily where you are but also in the United States. You kind of put it in that tradition. You talk about a writer who developed this idea of the treason of the clerks as he calls them, or you know, which is his term for what were talking about, some intellectuals, some writers, but people from the sort of intellectual class, people who traffic in ideas. Who, at some crucial moment, make a terrible decision to ally themselves with authoritarianism against liberal democracy. And i guess the question for you is why does this keep happening, and why in the broadest sense do they do it. The most obvious answer is, well, they want power and its bargain where they get, they are empowered by the authoritarian leaders they support. Is there more to it than that . So, you know, there isnt one of the things that will annoy people about this book, and its already annoyed one or two reviewers, is that it doesnt have a single answer. I do not give you one thesis, you know, this kind of overarching theme that explains everything. You know, i do look at several specific people, and i do talk, you know, about several particular circumstances. And i think the you have to look at you have to look at a range of motives. I actually write some of the motives are to do with power, people who seek more and particularly from intellectuals or journalists who feel they were somehow excluded or theyre owed something more, you know . Theyre been left out by the elite or by some other group of intellectuals or by, you know, some other group of, you know, journalists or thinkers who are concluding their ideas. And thats a very common phenomenon. Theres sometimes almost a kind of resentment that leads people to attach themselves to illegal political movements. You know, sometimes its, sometimes there are true believers. Theyre people who have talked themselves into believing that, you know, that their societies is have failed. This is a particular theme that you can see over and over again from the 19th century, the 20th century and right up to the present. That, you know, modernization and the very rapid social changes that its spreading for some people presents a, you know, kind of crisis. Our society is losing something. Whatever, were losing tradition, were losing our old heros, were losing our old folk ways, the ways that we used to do things. And, you know, theres a kind of cultural fetch limb or despair. And if you listen to the language, even the language of the presenters on fox news. I talk about Laura Ingraham, but with you hear it if Tucker Carlson as well. Sometimes their language is designed to table exactly that, you know, weve lost something, were missing something, and we want it back. Sometimes theres that emotion as well. I think money is a reason, ambition is a reason. You know, almost sometimes nihilism is the reason, you know . The desire to mock and make fun of the pompous authorities in society. This is the mood that the altright in the u. S. Captured so well, you know, we can just make fun of liberals, and we can mock our democracy and, you know, have a really good time doing it, you know, playing video games. Theres some mood like that can also be part of it. But the, usually the primary motive is usually this sense of, you know, its the sense of somebody else has power, they dont deserve it, you know, and we do. And thats very often, you know, motivation. Yeah. And when you take that that further and say that the sense of dispossession that people who had power dont have it and somehow theres this theme of the countrys been stolen, the country has been taken away, we have to take america back again and our version of it. But theres some version of that in almost every country youre talking about, and it just implicitly raises the question of, well, you know, who is the we and who is the they. And the they comes back again and again to foreigners, immigrants, jew, you know, but in the Eastern European context its often, well, you know, its the communists. Is that way of thug fundamentally the same in the thinking fundamentally the same or is it significantly different . So maybe the claims thought pattern is very often the same although, you know, one of the odditieses is that a lot of this is about tribalism. Were the real poles or were the real trenchmen or were the real americans as as opposed to saying, whatever, the elite, the foreigners, people who dont really believe in our country. You can actually correlate that claim, that kind of polarization even in a homogeneous cup. Poland is 99. 9 [inaudible] everybody is polish. Everybody speaks polish. I mean, theres a tiny fringe minority groups that really its an overwhelmingly [inaudible] and yet it is a country where youve created, what they have managed to create kind of two deeply poe e lahrizeded tribes polarized tribes who hate each other as much as if they were, you know, speaking different languages and had different skin colors and belonged to different ethnic groups. And so, and, of course, we have a phenomenon liking that in the United States where, you know, blue america and red america. You know, we still have a large group in between, but there is a, you knowing, there are tribes on both sides who also now identify one another as, you know, really profound enemies. So, i mean, yes, the member number of thinking mechanism of thinking that someones has stolen the our country from us, whoever it is, you know, you can say that, but you can also create that same instinct, you know . The usurpers or the unpatriotic, you know, citizens are in charge. You can create that claim to division, and you can use through that kind of politics even in a country where there isnt any ethnic dispute. Yeah. I want to [inaudible] a little more before we get back to Laura Ingraham. I thought it was so useful the way you sort of bring us uptodate on whats happened in poland and hungary by picking out a few of these exemplaries but not the positive sense individual stories, you know . Because here even if you follow that part of the world, you lose track of elections and what was, you know, liberal protection is being suspended and wheres the rule of law, how much of it is left, you know, in one country versus one of its neighbors. But these people that you talk about, and i wondered if you could just talk for a minute about the percy brothers who really, for me, were so helpful in understanding what actually happened in poland in recent years. Yeah. So this is, this is a very salient example. Theres two brothers. They are twins, but theyre a few years apart in age wait, wait, ive got to stop you. How can they be twins if theyre two years apart . They are not twins. Theyre sometimes thought to be twins because theres another famous pair of twins in polish politics. They are not twins. They both grew up in the city which was the kind of heartland of the anticommunist opposition in poland are. They were both children of a kind of opposition family, and even when they were in high school, they were both very active anticommunist activists, and they both marched in protests when they were 16, 17, 18ing. They worked they ran one of the randle school, i dont know, solidarity committee, one of them worked on the trade union newspaper. And both of them were very active in the anticommunist movement. And over the years, they nevertheless began to take different pasts, and one of them now has ended up as the editor of the main polish liberal newspaper. Its kind of the polish New York Times, the paper of record in poland. The other one is now the head of state television, and this is a state television thats been taken over by the ruling party, and its been made into treal most crude form of party propaganda. So just to give you an example, during the last president ial election which took place a few days ago, state its put out these constant stories about, you know, what they call ld [inaudible] it was about how if the opposition candidate won, basically your children will all be forced to marry, you know, into gay marriages. The National Independence day parade will be replaced with gay pride. This extraordinarily vir you leapt, nonstop homophobic propaganda. Theres about 30 of the country that doesnt get any other television because they cant afford cable. So one of them is running an independent paper, and the other one is putting out really quite extreme by any standard farright, homophobic, antisemitic sort of propaganda every day. So the question is how did they what happened to them. And, you know, theres, the book goes into some detail about their lives. And part of the answer is that the younger brother, the one who runs state television, has developed a deep sense of resentment after 1989 because he felt hed been this great hero, solidarity, he threw rocks at the police when he was younger, and somehow in subsequent years he didnt become what he expected to become. He didnt become prime minister, he didnt get any great recognition, he didnt, you know, become an editor like his brother, you know, he didnt have any great success. And he became ever more resentful of, you know, of the people who were running the country, of other journalists, you know, who were doing well, if he began to look for, you know, affiliate himself with extreme parties and look for another way out. So hes somebody in which the [inaudible] resentment interested in power and ambition led him down this particular road. And now, of course, what does he do with his power as the head of this state television, he attacks his old enemy, you know, people who were mean to him or people who were insufficiently impressed with them. Of course, that includes his brother and his brothers newspaper. So its, you know, its a very and its very toxicment i they dont speak to each other. And they dont, you know, i think they, you know, they rarely see each other. I think when their mother died, they were both at the funeral. But other than that the, they live totally separate lives. But this is an illustration of how the development of ones life, you know, how you evolve as a person can also affect your politics. Thats really fascinating because i have watched different people make political decision over the years, and i think we just underrate how much ones personal experience and ones, you know, ones context, ones friends, ones alliances can push you in one direction or another. Yeah. Well, so so bring the analogy here then. You know, having watched polish state television and you talk about how crude it is, then you see fox news, you know . Is it a version of the same phenomenon . Is it moving in that direction, or is it, do you think there are sort of limits on it here either in terms of how bad it will get or in term of how much influence it can ultimately have . I mean, fox news has already evolved enormously. I used to cautionally get asked to be occasionally get asked to be on fox news, ive been on it in the past, and other people now who are either on the left or the centerright used to be featured on it. And also fox news is much more of a, its more sophisticated. There are some programs that are fairly neutral, and then there are mostly these hosted programs, you know, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, you know, which are truly i virulent now and dont really pretend anymore. Theyre sort of, you know, theyre opinion programs. They dont really pretend to be, you know, they dont pretend to cover anything neutrally. But, you know, if you watch even how those two have evolved, i mean, both of them are much more, whats the word i want to use, theyre much more, you know, adepress eli partisan aggressively partisan. Laura ingraham periodically says things that she used to be careful to not say. Its not just about illegal immigrants, its about legal immigrants. Its not just about, you know, protecting our borders, its about preserving the kind of country that we used to be. And, of course, Tucker Carlson is even more aggressive. Theyve become clearer in their messaging the their audience that this is about, what theyre talking about is preserving White America or preserving a hierarchical america or we serving something that they fear might be lost. Both of them are using these kinds of tactics to kind of commit to their watchers that youre part of the tribe, we need to unify together against the foreigners, the dems, you know, the immigrants who are trying to destroy us. And so in that sense, i suppose they are similar. Yeah. Even the staging of it and so on more sophisticated. Here, too, as you write your partisan sour or at least story or at least you have a strong reference point. We once sort of shared a milieu with some of those people, you and i did, when we were both living in washington in the late 1980s, early 1990s. We would write for the same magazines they would, or maybe i should say they would write for the same magazines that we would. But the idea that one of us would publish an article in the american spectator, the National Review was common practice. They would write for a magazine like the new republic. Its a mystifying experience to see, i mean, none of those people were particularly friends of mine, but i knew them, i knew most of the people you talk about slightly. You may have known some of them better, and we did, we did assume that they shared certain basic values with us. Yes. I would say and its been we still have you. Im sorry, there was just a little glitch. I mean, absolutely. I mean, i wrote for the National Review. I wrote for weekly standard. I wrote in the new criterion. I wrote for all of these conservative mags. And, you know magazines. But i think what existed in the 90s it was really still, you know, this was still the tail end of the cold war. And a lot of these big coalitions that had been created, you know, bipartisan coalitions, you know, that had to be created to fight the cold war and to create a kind of decade in, decade out Foreign Policy were still at that time together. But if you think about who was part of that cold war coalition, you know, in fact, it has different components. Is so there was, for example, you know, people who were cold warriors because they worried about russian influence and grand strategy and nuclear weapons. And among that i would include there would be lots of democrats. There were people who were cold warriors because they cared about human rights and denial crass, and that was why they wanted to [inaudible] there were people who were cold warriors because they were christians and because the soviet union was atheist. And one of these the stories that started to happen in the 1990s maybe artificially held together a little bit by 9 11 was that that coalition began to come apart, and those people began can to find themselves in different groupings. And so, you know, the sort of, you know, it was no longer automatically the case that people who were christians were on the same side as people who believed in human rights and [inaudible] so you began to get this shattering of the group. And i think that was the beginning of the change. But, you know, but still the events of of the last three or r years, you know, i think has to be explained in a deeper way. You were just alluding to it. Its explained in the book that, again, people who are journalists, they were, you know, sometimes they worked for the Republican Party, they were sort of, you know, young conservative staffers. So its true that they, some of them have now gone off in a direction which is much more clearly not only not entered in democracy, but kind of scorns democracy, not interested in promoting it abroad, not mindful of it at homeing you know . Not seeing themselves more and more at war with people like you and me even though we all used to be more or less the same side. Yeah. I mean, but there are even beyond that, you know, the premise, for example, that the Mainstream Press makes up stories, now thats something that, you know, anybody who works as a journalist in any way knows is fundamentally not true. There are no stories in the New York Timeses that are intentionally false. But that has now become the standard claim of everyone in this group youre talking about, people who are sympathetic to the authoritarian right, and they dismiss information they dont like by calling it fake news or propaganda. When does that become an acceptable position for an american conservative . You know, its something you never would have heard in the 1990s or even the 2000s, i dont think, except as an extreme fringe perspective. I mean, i think it starts to, it starts during the Obama Administration. And, you know, i think the Obama Administration for a lot of them was an, you know, first of all it was an experience of, you know, the rise of a charismatic black president who seemed at least initially like he was going to be able to create, you know, a perform innocent majority, you know, for a permanent majority for his views. And the consequence being to prove him ill legitimate and to undermime him at every undermine him at every stage which was the tactic of the Republican Party and gradually became the tactic of the republican media. I think that was the beginning of this. You know, one of the really, really important sort of events or phenomenon in American Public life was the phenomenon of birtherrism which i ignored, i underrated, the idea that the president isnt really the president , hes an illegitimate president , he was born in kenya with, hes not really american. Sometimes there was a hint that hes muslim. Something, hes foreign. And Something Like 25 of americans believed that. So that means that 25 of americans believed that we had a fake president , you know . An illegitimate president who was, you know, mysteriously or secretly or somehow forced upon us, you know, by some cabal of whomever, media and the system. And once enough people began to believe that and the rightwig talk show hosts began to understand that they could get huge, you know, enormous amounts of attention and sort of, you know, create all kinds of energy and anxiety by talking about that, once they discovered that i think that was really the beginning of this idea that we can use this growing distrust in our favor. In other words, this was, you know, the game was to create distrust. How to do you, how do you delegitimize democrats, how to you delegitimize the media that write about them, how do you delegitimize all these institutions, you can do it by saying they all lie or theyre making things up. And i really think the Obama Presidency expect birtherrist movement and the birtherrist movement gave them that energy. It is absolutely not accident that donald trump was one of the lead exercise of that movement, and leaders of that movement. He was the man who was brave enough to tell america that it has a fake and illegitimate president. And for a lot of people, that was a very important attribute. I just think that people who looked at that story and said, oh, its ridiculous, its a Conspiracy Theory and obama himself made fun of it, you know, we failed to understand the power of it. And i think the rightwing talk show hosts did understand the power of that and they understood that as soon as they began awe lewding to that, hinting at it, they immediately got this, you know, boost and lift and their ratings went up and their audience became engaged. So i think it dates from that. Yeah. And it goes to the point you were making earlier about resentment of the people who have power, in this case with such a strong and resonant racial component because its hard to imagine that being visited on a white president in the same way. But i wanted to ask you, your books called the twilight of democracy. Is your feeling that this, the whole tendency youre writing about is continuing and getting worse in the United States, that were going more in the direction of a hungary or a poland . Or do you think this is something we could come out of with a, depending on the results of this years election . And, you know, do you think this will be a strange episode, or do you think were [inaudible] its funny, i recently, somebody recently asked me what i thought was going to happen in 2021. As i said, it depends what happens next, and only then did i realize what a stupid answer that was. [laughter] i mean, i think the point is that for a long time, you know, we have felt theres a kind of inevitability about american democracy, that we are the greatest democracy in history, our constitutions the best one ever written, our history is the story of progress, onwards and upwards, . With this little blip in the middle for the civil war, but other than that, you know, everything just gets better and it always will. And i think that sense of inevitability was misleading, and we and many of us missed, therefore, the rise of this longing for some other kind of politics, you know, thats clearly earth now. And evident now. And one of the things i wanted the book to do is remind people that the future is radically open. You know, i do think it is possible that we could overcome donald trump and people will look back and say, you know, what was that all about. Finish i also think its possible that we could be battling with him and his shadow for a long time. And reallying you know, honestly a lot depends on what happens with the election and how the Republican Party behaves afterwards. And so, you know, if the election well, obviously, if trump wins and he he will solidify, you know, the damage that hes done, and it had been much worse. And then i think we are on a very, you know, even terrifying path towards, you know, a country that will not be recognizable, not democratic four years from now. If he loses by a little bit, in other words, if its very close, if the republicans keep the senate, then there will still be a strong kind of trump u. S. Element inside the trumpist element inside the party, and that element will still have a lot of legitimacy and will still be vying for power. And this will be, you know, the next president ial candidate would be perhaps tuck orer carlson whos been throwing his name around a little bit, perhaps don jr. , you know, perhaps ivanka, or perhaps someone a little bit more, you know, more traditional like tom cotton. Perhaps mike pompeo, perhaps mike pence. So, you know, if one of those people take over the party, you know, people will still, it remain a party that questions many, many things that we have long considered to be fundamental. If trump loses by a lot, you know, if its a really, you know, if its a wipeout and the democrats take control of both houses of congress, then i think there at least is a chance or an argument to be had inside the party about where out goes next, you know . And then there will be multiple candidate, you know, larry hogan, the governor of maryland or others who havent emerged yet will compete for leadership of the party, you know, will seek once again for it to be the kind of party that can appeal to all americans and doesnt just seek to kind of appeal to a white base. Perhaps then we could have a big argument. And, by the way, that is by far the best outcome. Even the farthest left democrats should be rooting for a renewed and restored conservativism, a conservativism thats really conservative with a small c sense and isnt seeking to create radical change as many of the trumpists are. Yeah. [inaudible] like that in order to have democracy remain in balance. And, anne, in that more hopeful scenario, we are going to have the problem about what to do with our [inaudible] possibly you more than i because [inaudible] now, a lot of of your conservative friends, i should say, who have acquitted themselves very well, you know . The david fromms and bill kristols. There are some conservatives i really respect who have behave really honorably, who are more, you know, more on the outs with trump and trumpism than anyone could be. But there are lots of the Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham types who we worry were going to run into at a party or have to sit on a panel with. And it may be your average republican congressman who capitulated to trump and the position of those people will be, well, we had no choice, we, you know, we were put in this terrible position, we never liked him. And i guess the question is, you know, if we do get back to a healthy twoparty s p, what has to happen for system, what has to happen for us to accept the good faith of people on the right who have succumbed to lure of authoritarianism . Well, i mean, look, the project of healing the nation and of ending this deep gap between political tribes is going to be a very long one, and it will need different moving parts. I mean, it will need organizations and communities and so on. You know, the question of what to do with, i mean, i sort of wonder will i ever see Laura Ingraham at a party again . I almost wonder if any of us would be in the same room again. I havent focused on what im going to do. But, look, i think the only real answer is that well talk to theming you know . Well have them on the panel, and well you know, the only thing we can do is try to reconstruct some kind of, you know, some kind of common public sphere again where we agree on the ground rules and we, you know, dont make bad faith claims that, you know, the New York Times is always lying, or we dont, you know, we, you know, we have have to bring them back inning you know . Its almost like the kind of dilemma that countries have after they have civil wars, you know . The question is what do you do with politicians on the other side. And theres never a very good answer. You and i run, jointly host a podcast some of the time called solvable, and one of the people who i had on to podcast a few months ago was the former president of colombia who had the dilemma of how to reintegrate guerrilla are fighters into society, and he wanted to bring them back in. A lot of people didnt like that. They wanted them to go to prison. But we have, look, itll be a similar pop on how do we problem on how do we reintegrate the group. Ill be one of the people if favor of dialogue. Right. Well be lucky to have that problem, but with if we are lucky to have it, it is interesting because the question is what price we demand to re [inaudible] i know weve got a lot of questions, and maybe at this point i should hoond things back in the direction of john who can moderate what people joining us want to ask you. Well, thank you, jacob, for leading this wonderful conversation. I do have time for a few good questions from the chatment someone asks, or anne, are you optimist you can about the future of the European Union, the fact that poland and huckly have been able to hungary have been able to veer towards authoritarianism makes me and many italians very uneasy about the bloc and its value as a union. With well, youre asking me this on the day that the European Union has just had an extraordinary the sort of step forward towards something anyway, they just agreed on a deal whereby the European Union borrow money and help countries recover from the virus and from the Economic Impacts of it. And it was weeks of negotiation in order to get this deal, and its one of the, you know, its a moment when it looks like the e. U. May be cooperating, you know, at quite a high level. And one of the strange things about the conversation that this issue about poland and hungary came up as part of the negotiation. And it isnt clear to me yet how its been resolved, but i do think it looks like the e. U. Has now put some conditionality on money that is a paid to poland and hungary on, you know, calling for proof of their abiding by rule of law, that their judges arent politicized and so on. Well see how that looks in practice. Finish i think that the discomfort is now shared by a lot of people including leaders of most major countries. You know, the problem is the precedent. Poland and hungary are members, theres no procedure for chucking people out, you know . It wasnt set up that way. Its not like we can chuck out texas all that easily even if somehow we wanted to. And so there isnt a procedure yet. But with, you know, i do think awareness is now quite high and more conditionality is going to be placed on those countries in the future. Its not as if its an unknown problem or been swept under the carpet. Another person asks, what should we do if trump loses and refuses to give up power by claiming fraud . Or even if he doesnt refuse to give up power, but if he claims fraud and revitalizes the movement that way . So i think that almost certainly will happen. I mean, i am expecting it to happen. Im expecting, first of all, im expecting him to try and cheat. This is what people like him do when theyre losing. And there will be different ways hell try to cheat, right . They will cheat by trying to prevent people from getting access to, you know, online not online, mailin ballots. Which people willen want because i think the virus is still going to be with us in november. They will cheat by the normal means of voter suppression, limiting the number of voting booths in democratic neighborhoods just as theyve done in the past. And it is perfectly possible that once the election is lost, if the election is lost, then trump will say there was fraud, you cheated, and he will storm around the country and claim victory. Here a lot will depend on how the rest of his party reacts. Are will he have enablers . At this point, at that point enabling trump would be bordering criminal behavior, genuine criminal behavior. A lot will depend on how fox news reacts and the owners of fox news. Ultimately, you know, if he loses, joe biden will be president on january the 20th, 2021, and, you know, at that point he can tell the secret service to evict the trumps from the white house. Is so i do think there will be, you know, it will that movement will have an end. But it is absolutely something that all americans should be aware of and prepare themselves to think about. You know, how will you argue with your republican friends . How will you what will you do when trump tries to steal the election, because i am 100 sure that he will try it. Another question from the chat, do you think the roots for this development presumably the authoritarianism can be found in Early Education when no child could do wrong and each child was praised regardless of how the child performed, hence now the resentment if she or he he do you see the roots of what you describe in your book in Early Education . So, you know, i see the roots of what i describe in human nature and the longing for dictatorship and the frustration created by democracy and noise and the unevenness and sort of unfairness sometimes of democracy has always been a problem. So i dont think its reared in a particular education system. You know, i do talk a little bit in the book, you might find this interesting, about this concept of is there such a thing as an authoritarian personality. This was a phrase, i think, first used by [inaudible] who talked about it in the 20th century, that there are surgeon kind of people certain kind of people. Nobody was ever really quite able to get a hold on it. Others investigated the idea, there were freudian versions of investigations into it. Theres a recent kind of behavioral psychologist who has come up with a very interesting description which she calls an authoritarian predisposition which isnt quite the same thing as personality which deal with people who prefer simplicity and dislike change and want, you know, there seems to be a personality type like that. Some people prefer things to stay the same and are bothered by, for example, demographic change or economic change. But, so the answers, no, i dont think its rooted in education, i think its something but i do think youre right to point to early origins. I think its quite deep in human nature. And its not an accident that most states, i mean, most civilizations going back through history have essentially been dick tau to haveships. Dictatorships. We have time for just two more questions. Another from the chat, do you think the recent unrest and unrests that have been occurring in the u. S. Surrounding Police Brutality and systemic racism hold any special cig enough cabs for the vitality of american democracy . Do you see it as [inaudible] i i mean, ill do my thing saying it depends what happens next. There was something unusual and, you know, i wasnt in the United States,sish say, is so others will speak better for me. I watch them on social media and on the news. I wasnt there. It did seem to me that there is and you can see this in the opinion polls that there is a, you know, there has been a kind of turning point about racism, and there is this deep understanding now. There was a deep sympathy for george floyd, i think, that was both black and white and, you know, and everything else. Crosscultural, multiethnic sensation that something wrong. You know, there are deep problems also with i think the background was a virus which was disproportionately killing people who are black and hispanic. So i felt theres a reason why a lot of people were on the streets, because they wanted somehow to show their recognition that they understand that. And its fair that there may be a, maybe that is a, you know, good sign for some kind of renewal or some kind of energy that will happen in no. In november. The Trump Administration is has now instrumentallized and used the, these demonstrations in a very different way, and theyre now going to you know, weve seen it in portland and elsewhere, you know, what ive already described elsewhere as a kind of performative authoritarianism. Portraying all of the protests as riots, all of the protesters as antiamerican. And to use scenes of policemen forcefully putting down protesters as their election propaganda. And this, again, will be designed to appeal to people who dislike change, dislike protests, dislike this and dislike that. And one last question from the chat, its a big one, but is there a playbook here or are all these authoritarian tendencies learning from each other . Is it being made worse by social media . And i guess on top of that, can social media be a tool to combat some of the ten says you tend e says you identify in your book or is it more likely it will be a weaponizing force . So they have, i mean, you know, its already happened that the, you have these authoritarian parties and or you know, hard nationalist parties have have unquestionably learned from one another. And, again, theres a chapter in my book which is about spain where theres a very new sort of farright party which is, which has been created, you know, by people who learn theless edisons if from other far lessons from other far right parties ask using the tactics that have worked in other countries including the use of fake web sites and piping out terrifying headlines and creating echo chambers for people who are fruitenned or angry or upset about changes in spain and immigration with, so on. And in spain theres a [inaudible] through it as well. But there is a playbook, they learn from one another, they watch each other. You know, there are there are people who are intuitively good at understanding the a appeal of authoritarianism. I think trump is one of them, you know . That he, you know, he has a very, you know, an intuitive way of seeking to reach people who are, you know, who feel anger angeredded by, you know, political and social change. Maybe its because, you know, hes identified with his father who was in a different rah. You know, i cant explain it, and i havent read mary trumps book yet. Maybe its there. [laughter] but on top of that, there are tactics, there are techniques. And actually just to get back to the very first question that jacob asked me, why am i writing about the people who are enablers of trump and of others . Its because those are the people who are using and learning those tactics and seeking to make them work, you know, the ones that work, you know, in hungary seeking to make them work in italy and vice versa. Well, this has been really, really wonderful. Thank you so much, anne, for joining us. Thank you, jacob, for moderating. Consider buying a copy of the book from us at Mcnally Jackson, well ship it to your home, or you can come pick it up from me. Thank you again, everybody. Thank you, all. Thank you, jacob, for doing this. And everyone support independent bookstores. Thank you, anne lets do it again for your next book. [laughter] you know, you read the things that were said about thomas jefferson, you know, that he was an infidel and he was an agent of the french government . Sounds a little reminiscent, doesnt it . The things that were said about abraham lincoln, the things that were said about fdr, that he wanted to be a dictator. So it it does kind of come with the territory, but i think in trumps case at least in the modern political era, postworld war ii ive never seen anything like it. Sunday, september 6th at noon eastern on in depth, our live conversation with faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph reed. Joined in the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and betweens. Watch booktvs in depth sunday, september 6th at noon each on cspan2