♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hello new york. thank you for joining us live at a town hall in new york city for this very special edition of why is this happening? he is incisive, he is big hearted, he is very, very smart. and, admit it, he is taller than you expected. please give a warm welcome to my friend, a beloved colleague, msnbc's, chris hayes. [applause] >> thank you! oh, stop. stop it. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> how are you? good? thank you. thank you, thank you, thank you. sit down, sit down. thank you, that is extremely kind. i hate attention and positive feedback. it's a hard 20 seconds for me. thank you for cutting it short. it is amazing to be here in my hometown of new york city. i have family here. tonight, we will talk about democracy. that word, we have probably talked more about democracy in the last four or five years that i had in all of my time as a journalist. even that, as a topic, seems we are. we all know, america is a democracy. there is a certain history you are taught that, i think, is part of american, civic culture, deeply. almost a civic religion. which, roughly, goes the following. the founders rebelled against the tyranny of the crown. the injustice of the modern-day. they conceived, in liberty, a new nation, founded on a government buy, of, and for the people. that is the lincoln, gettysburg address version of it. they rejected, basically, the idea that there is some authority, above all of us, that has dominion over us. that each of us are imbued with the ability to determine our own fate, collectively. that is a difficult, messy process. fundamentally, in the eyes of some founders, it's god given, others, unnatural truth. we all decide together what we are going to do. that, simple, fundamental, and at the time, radical notion is what separates us in the western hemisphere from the old world of europe where you had monarchies, kings and queens, tyrants, and as time went on, various forms of blood and soil authoritarianism. ultimately, fascism, culminating in the second world war. you don't really get democracies in that part of the world, in the way we think about them, until afterwards. there are some, obviously. there are some democratic forms of government that exist before them, failed revolutions, compromises that are worked out in the uk, and in poland, and in different parts of the continent. basically, we are the model for the world. we are the first ones. we figured it out, we sloughed off the yoke of tyranny, and we have seized our faith. now, the other part of the story we know is a complicated one. as one british critic at the time said, the loudest cries of liberty come from the americans as they with their slaves. which, by the way, is an important point that they saw at the time. people understood, at the time, there was an incredible, ridiculous tension in american rhetoric about self determination, and democracy. but, the general story we have is we start with an imperfect democracy, and work towards a more perfect democracy. a more perfect union, in the preamble. i think there is something to that story. i don't think it's a crazy story. i think it is the civic religion we have. there is another way of thinking of american democracy, which is that america is the ongoing, dynamic sight of a per perpetual contestation of democracy. it is the site of a constant, pitched battle, between forces on the side of democracy, and forces against it. the forces against them are not fringe, and sometimes the forces against them are the most celebrated people in the country. andrew jackson, viewed as a small d democrat because he railed against the elites. he founded the modern democratic party with his populism, and invited people into the white house on the day of his inauguration, and they all got drunk. he was not, in any recognizable sense, a democrat that we think of today. he thought there was a cast of people who should rule over another. he was one of the major pursuers of the ethnic cleansing that made the continent what it is. he did not think that everyone had a universal, inalienable right, that all of, us collectively, should rule, all, collectively. he thought the white man should rule over slaves, and over indigenous people that populated the continent. i'm not saying this in an andrew jackson's canceled way. i mean, he should be, to be clear. i'm actually talking in a very specific way. how would you characterize the ideological belief system of andrew jackson? is it accurate to call him a small the democrat? is it accurate to call andrew jackson a believer of democracy? i think it is tough to say it is. at least, in a modern sense. theodore roosevelt, on mount rushmore. what does he believe? he believes, and rights, and says, often, that the white race is there to rule the others. he found, what becomes, the american empire in the pacific where we will rule these people. they won't get to vote, they aren't citizens, they are subject to authority, from on high, and they are forced to be under that authority, and not that different of away as the remote king at the time. again, with all of these examples i'm giving, there are people at the time who recognize this. one of the most pitched debate in american history, on the floor of congress, is about the trail of tears. people come to say, they didn't have the term at the time, ethnic cleansing. this isn't just. we cannot do this. these people have inalienable rights. at the same time, when we started to fight our wars under theodore roosevelt, and pursuing american empire, there are people at the time, mark twain among them, saying that we are doing the thing we hated the crown for doing at each moment in american history, you have these, fights these frictions, over what the meaning of democracy is. there are contemporaries, on either side of the debate. it is not tea lows, a need to park, where we start out confused, and don't understand that slavery is wrong, but walk into the light. no, they knew. they knew. they knew the trail of tears was wrong. they knew the wars in the pacific, in the philippines, what we were doing, it was all wrong. there are people who, clearly, saw what it was. that is true at every point. it is true up until the period, and the run, up to world war ii that story, we learn, is basically the following. because of the trauma of world war i, the u. s. is reticent to get in another war on european shores. fair. we dither this, and fdr comes up with land lease. this is the basic version, because he straddling, he realizes something will need to get done, but it's hard to get americans into this idea of a second war in europe only a few decades later. then, pearl harbor happens, we win, fascism is over. go us. that is basically the story. that story, also, masks the exact same thing that is masked in those other moments from the country's founding, to the trail of tears, to jackson, to the creation of u.s. empire in the pacific under theodore roosevelt. the contemporaneous debates, within society, about what democracy is, and whether it is good. whether what we actually want to see for everyone, collectively, as individuals, with sovereign rights over ourselves, collectively, to come together, and transfer that sovereignty into a collective. to decide, as a democracy, how we will mark our faith. how we will go forward. whether what we want to something else. dominion. ruled by some group, or some person. that is an eternal debate in american politics. we are realizing this in a way we didn't appreciate, until we found ourselves in this moment now, and we are debating it again, every day. if feels we are, it feels alien, it feels like it landed from mars. how do we all come to a consensus on this? didn't we all agree we are a democracy? wasn't it a fact that, in the old days, we would fight on the 40 yard lines? that's the cliché. we didn't have extremes, we weren't debating. no, the debate was there the whole time. one of the most useful interventions in understanding the debate being there the whole time comes by way of this up and cooling talent that i spotted. i have a good eye. in this remarkable podcast called ultra, coming out a year ago. [applause] if you have not listened to, it go download it. subscribe to my podcast to, while you are doing it. but, download ultra. it is the story of, basically, fascist sympathizers in the u.s., prior to the war, and their efforts. the incredible lights they went to. i won't spoil, it will talk about it in a second, that, subsequently, turns part of it. i want to urge people, because i read the book this week, because i've been under the gun, deadline wise. i want people who listen to the podcast to read the book. this book, prequel, see it? it is not just a podcast in the book, it goes so much further. it's an incredible read. it is, kind of, i think, a skeleton key for this particular moment. so, without further ado, let me reintroduce the author, and my dear friend, my beloved colleague, rachel maddow. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> there are a lot of people in this room. >> there is. for those on the podcast, there is 20,000 people. i've never seen anything like it in my life. >> i am wearing my reading glasses. you are all just a little blobs. can't see you at all, which is helpful. i want to start in your way into this material. i must say, it is an incredible talent you have. this has been true on your television show, for years, at finding these unexplored nuggets in american history. the stories that people don't know, and then you tell them and they say, what? really? that happened? ultra was an incredible example of that. i know who father coughlin was. a right-wing, antisemitic, populist preacher. i knew that, i knew that there was -- there is this america first movement with limburg. i read the novel. that was kind of my cannon, for those things. i knew those things. i knew nothing else. so, i want you to start by just saying, what was your way into this material? really, it is not available on the surface. >> i never set out to tell a history story, i'm looking for something that is going on in current life. always something that has sprung from things that are happening in the news. the thing i am dinged for, rightfully, and the way i do my work is that if i want to tell you about something happening in the world today, everything must start with, first, a meteor hit the earth. then, the dinosaurs died. when their body is dissolved -- i mean -- >> that's a good bit. >> if that is not your way of thinking on the world, i understand why it is alienating. i understand i'm not everyone's cup of tea. thank you, i love you too. that is the way my brain works. i was as unnerved as everybody, but confused, and interested, that we were seeing all of this alt-right, neo-nazi, antisemitic, and holocaust an aisle stuff around the rise of trumpism. trumpism is happening in the electoral space, and for a minute, we called at the all right, i don't know if we call it that anymore. it was seeing them rise alongside trump, seeing them cheerleading for trump, seeing them as parallel movements, i didn't understand why that was. i wanted to figure out how not just antisemitism, but specifically, holocaust denial has functioned in the united states before. that was the starting point. if you go back far enough, in terms of american holocaust oral, which is what i did, you go back to 1948. holocaust an aisle does a lot of terrible things, but one thing it does is weird. it does something strange was so much evidence, how do you say it doesn't happen? in 1948, there are people in the world who are witnesses to what happened. so, how can it be that it is a source of denial for a political movement? well, it is not that they earnestly believe it didn't happen, they are using that denial as a reason. they're using it to further a political project. that is what i got into in the 40s, and how i found my defendants, and how i learned, they all got put on trial, and all got off when the judge denied. they thought, you know, i'm going to tell a different story, but i'm going to tell this one. i didn't know any of it. you trace in the book different strands. pro fascist, antisemitic, nazi aligned actors within the u.s.. -- in some ways, it is a little bit of a misfit toys situation. there are some odd ones in there. also, they are operating in a discursive environment that is not closed off to what they are saying. >> correct. >> tell me about public opinion around the question of fascism, and the rise of it, in 1930, 31, 32? some of the people you document in the book are trying to, and sometimes, at the behest of the german government, cultivating empathy. this >> fascism was the movement of the future. fascism did not have the cast that we associate it now, respectively, with not see germany. the number one selling book in america, in 1941, was written by charles lindbergh's wife. it was about how fascism was coming to america, and wouldn't it be fantastic? finally, we could get something done. it was, in fact, a lot of people, who have looked into it, i can't say this definitively, but believe it was ghost written by a guy named lawrence dennis. he was a leading intellectual fascist of his time. he wrote a book called the coming american fascism. one of the things we found was nbc radio archives the from town meeting of the air. a great debate show they used to host on nbc radio networks. one of the first ones they did, they brought lawrence tennis on to argue for fascism, against others were arguing against, and he wiped the floor. >> fascism cross fire? >> fascism cross fire. totally. it was a popular thing. by the time you get to 1940, 83% of the american public are against joining world war ii. 83%. that is what fdr was up against. some of it was, we don't want to fight a war. some of it was, the people you want us to fight against have the better idea. >> how do they go about cultivating -- let's talk about dennis for a bit. he's worthwhile spending a bit of time on. >> there is lots to talk about in regards to him. >> talk about him a little bit. >> lawrence tennis was a state department official. he had gone to harvard, he was an area, date articulate, guy. he had a substack contrary next to him. you could not complimenting him without him insulting you for doing it. in his gruffness, in his contrarian as, made everyone fall in love with him. men, women, old, young, they all had a crush on dennis. he slept his way through the 1930s. in a way, he didn't understand why his wife minded. there are many interesting things about him. he was writing speeches, and books, for the isolationists. the isolationists we're not calling themselves fascists, over late, but had the, leading intellectually, from a self-described fascist. dennis was a favorite of the naughty -- nazi government in berlin. they brought him over for the nuremberg rally, they brought him to germany, and they gave him access to everyone, including hitler. he used it to, essentially, become a well networked, very influential, person. he interviewed mussolini, he interviewed hitler, he spent all of his time with important diplomats of the time, and he wrote speeches for isolationists, and others, and isolationist books wives and heroes. he was one of the sedition trial defendants, and was so arrogant he not only defended himself in court, but insisted that there should be mental examinations of his codefendants. once they realized that was a way out of it, agreed. they all wanted mental examinations. he is the leading fascist intellectual, you mentioned. there is also -- the seed is planted and somewhat fertile soil, for many reasons. can you talk a little about why that is the case? there is the fact that world war i was brutal, and awful. there is an interesting thing that happens in this book, and in ultra, which is that people who totally, understandably, reasonably, say that it was a disaster being prepared to say, we will never do that again. that posture, which is not at all a crazy posture, irrational one, completely, being that slippery slope through which they end up, first, isolationism, and then, outright fascism. in that, you have the depression. then, you have this sense of the broken-ness of the american system, slash the messiness of democracy. all three of those things run themes in the people who are pushing for, proposing, or in the case of huey long, embodying in, alternate to that. >> it is easiest to see it when you look at what the germans were secretly telling us. one of the things we now know, this is an ultra, and the book, that there was a very big, very aggressive, very well funded, secret, german, propaganda effort targeting the american people. what were they trying to do? they were trying to do three things. i guess you could narrow it down to that. one was to support isolationism, however they could. however you want to hear it, they would hear it. any argument against americans joining the war, they were for it. they also wanted to turn us against our allies by making us see fascism as preferable to every other form of government. they're arguing, we should not go to war to defend our ally, britain. in what sense are they, really, our ally? they are corrupt, they are an empire, they are cruel, they are weak. the germans, who have a much better idea, will run over them in a matter of weeks. why do you side with the failing empire you should resent, and not the germans with a better idea? they're also trying to make us believe that we, are inherently, weak. that we should change our form of government, and that by having a democracy, we open ourselves to be controlled by the jews, by international forces, by those who would send us into the meat grinder of war when, really, we should just let germany win, and then side with them. they were trying to articulate all of those things through any american voice they could put their words in the mouth of. so, it is members of congress, it is u.s. senators, it is people like lawrence tennis, who they are funding. george sylvester, an american the nazi agent, who's running 12 publications. it's publishing houses they bought, it's magazines. the messages they were trying to sell us, to me, is just unnerving, and clarifying, to see. it is so much the story we are sold by those who would prefer we became a strongman government, instead of a democracy today. the exact same message. 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the government needs to be able to protect us from those people. so we need a government that is strong, that has authority, that can protect us from those people. to vote is cute, but it's weak. and this is the only way that we can efficiently compete with the real countries on earth. the real strong countries, you would say today, china, russia, hungary. and so that message is the same. it's bitterness against each other, to make us believe that democracy doesn't work. to align us with strongman countries and other parts of the world. the other piece of it is that there is no noble truth, right? >> really important. >> i can tell right now that this sounds woo-hoo. it's very specific. one of the things they do is they tell you don't believe journalism. don't believe science. don't believe experts. don't believe history. it's all fake. it's all designed to bamboozle you. none of these so-called sources of expertise are real. the only knowable truth is something that you feel in your gut, and let me tell you what the feel in your gut. separating us from the idea of noble truth means we don't recognize real practical problems in the world. we don't recognize real practical solutions to those problems which we should put our government to. and it means that you're very susceptible to both conspiracy theories and you're susceptible to suggestion from the leader who wants you to do things that you probably would not do on your own's team if you had your wits about you. and that dislocation from the truth, don't trust the media, don't trust science, don't trust experts. don't trust any political opposition. don't trust journalism. that is part of the authoritarian project and always has been. >> this is one of the things that is so fascinating to me in reading the book. everything you just described, when they happen now, when versions of them happened now, there is this very i think somewhat a historical but also understandable tendency to put them on the technology of the time. all of the same traits that we try to see as an outgrowth of some technological moment here, platform moment, it's all there. they're just doing it like analog versions of it. and as far as i can tell, almost as effective. >> yeah, the thing that has changed, i think, is the iterative nature of the media. your ability to talk back in a social environment. so what that does is i think it can work as an accelerant. so somebody says a lie to you, you repeat the lie back to them. okay, here's a bigger line. okay. here's a bigger lie. it helps those messages be targeted better, i think. but yeah, there is a very, very famous celebrity pilot in her day. pilots used to be like the kardashians and the travis kelce's. they were everything altogether. they were the celebrities of their day like you cannot believe. and after amelia air heart. the most famous female ava tricks in the country, they called her, was laura angles. little house on the prairie? no, her ace cousin. laura angles eight cousin. >> don't get it twisted, because you're about to see how the singles rolls. >> she flew an airplane over the white house and dropped pamphlets over the white house out of an airplane -- very impressive? also, you don't want to see those pamphlets. so she was actually working for the gestapo. she was american who was on the payroll of denazify's. she was answering to the top gestapo agent in the united states, and she was fully getting paid. had a monthly stipend. there's a great moment -- have you ever do times machine for the new york times articles? if you have a subscription, you can use the time machine. turns out there's a limit to how much you can use the time machine. >> you found it? >> i founded by spending a lot of time with laura angles. >> it's like getting kicked out of the bar at four a.m.. that's it! sorry. >> you are over served on stories about laura angles. i got cut off and they called me. i was like, i don't think you had my number. she was so famous that there was an article in the newspaper, in the new york times in 1934 when she got a speeding ticket. article in the new york times. by 1935, she was so famous there was an article in the new york times where she got a parking ticket. it was crazy how famous she was, and then she's working for the gestapo and dropping flyers over the white house. there's this amazing story from when she goes on trial. one of the witnesses against her in her trial was a surgeon who operated on her, who said that after she was on the laughing gas, all she wanted to talk about was her swastika necklace. one of the most influential and popular celebrities in the entire country. now, her espousing views that she had and been such a dare devil in the way that he was expressing them, we don't have anything like that today. that's a different kind of power in terms of -- >> level of mass fame is harder to achieve now because of how fractured it is. there are these people in the book, and laura angles is a great example, you never heard of, they were massively famous. there's a bunch of those that you tell the story of. and then there's henry forge. and, you know, it's so funny because i know, again, the broad strokes of henry ford. really an industrialist, ford motors, basically created the modern factory method of assembly line production. broadcast down in doing so. paid his workers a higher wage than others. also, a raving antisemite. that's my like two sentences on ford, right? the last part of that, that last sentence, i knew it but when you read it in your book, when you re-and counter henry fords on the subject of the jews and what and the length that he went to, i really don't think that we need to reverse the order of that bio in the two sentences. because it's like, this guy was wildly dangerous and bad. and aligned with the worst forces basically in human history. >> i knew about fords antisemitism, i think, as if it were a private vice. no, it was a different thing. it was one of the things he contributed to this world. john medary this part? >> i would like you to read that. part >> do you mind if i read this part? 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[laughter] sorry. it acts, i'm supposed to say acts. he had a newspaper, it was called the dearborn independent, which he had purchased for a song in 1918. the paper was a big money loser in the beginning. middling circulation, ford's editorial harangues did little to draw new readers. how many attacks on the man who beaten forward in the michigan in the senate race to the public really want. but truman h newberry had stolen that election! one of the dearborn independent editorial staffers was the veteran of the new york -- hero to ford's right-hand man, fine and evil to attack. let's find some sensationalism. and lo, the answer lended unbidden. newly-after, a newly translated english language addition of a book called the protocols of the meetings of the learned elders of zion. the pamphlet was the work of rapidly anti-semitic russian fascists who were furious at the bolsheviks toppling of the aristocracy. portrayed the russian revolution is not just a local affair. they portrayed as the early innings of a plot by a cabal of all powerful jewish seamers to take over the world. the protocol was billed as the product of a surreptitious note taker to chop secret meeting, where in these jewish public masters had drawn up their strategy. there was no secret meeting, obviously. there was no secret plot, there was no surreptitious notetaker. the whole thing was a work of fiction. a very considered, deliberately lie. a very dangerous piece of propaganda. floored and his newspaper bore down on it with alacrity. they started in new weekly series in the paper based on the protocols. it was a 92 part weekly series. every week for 92 weeks, headlines like these. the international view, the world's problem. and jewish jazz, more on music becomes our national music. and this one. the perils of baseball, too much jew. these headlines were splashed on the pages of fords paper, which was distributed in four dealerships across the country. ford also saw the publication of his series in book form. it was titled the international jew. it ran to four volumes. never mind that the protocols was exposed as a make believe in 1921, right in the middle of henry ford's 92 week series. his weekly international jew essays continued without pause and ford motor dealers kept tossing the latest addition on to the front seat of newly-purchased model ts all over the country. ford sought to it that the four volumes of the international jew were translated and published worldwide in 12 international editions, including one in germany. and put a pin in that. of all the contributions henry ford made to this world, one of them was this. the most prolific, most sustained published attack on jews the world had ever known. the german edition of fords book at landed in the hands of one particularly gifted propagandist. one adolf hitler's book was published in 1925. the author appeared to lift not just ideas but whole passages from ford's own publications. my income first addition was extol forward by name. hitler wrote it is jews who govern the stock exchanges of the american union. every year makes them more and more the control the masters of the producers in a nation of 120 million. only a single great man, forward, still maintains full independents. by this point, hitler had already mold's endangerment shock troops to major american cities to aid in what he hoped would be henry ford's run for president in 1924. when a reporter from the detroit news showed up at not the party headquarters in munich in december 1931 to interview hitler, she had a series that was called five minutes with men in public eye. and she had her five minutes with hitler. when she went to hitler's office, she was surprised to find hanging on the wall behind hitler's desk a large framed portrait of a very famous american. hitler explained to the newspaper woman, i regard henry ford as planes parisian. the detroit reporter asked hitler that day point blank why he was antisemitic. he said without hesitation, somebody has to be blamed for our troubles. i feel like if you go back in time to then, the worst thing that you could find, if you could time machine yourself back to the future style and see your family or people you are interested in. the worst thing that you can imagine is that they have a portrait of hitler at that time. i think hitler having a portrait of you is -- >> actually worse. >> i did know that was an option, but that's worse. oh... stuffed up again? so congested! you need sinex saline from vicks. just sinex, breathe, ahhhh! what is — wow! sinex. breathe. ahhhhhh! sleep more deeply. and wake up rejuvenated. purple mattresses exclusive gel flex grid draws away heat. relives pressure and instantly adapts. sleep better live purple. right now save up to $900 dollars off mattress sets during purple's black friday sale. visit purple.com or a store near you today. [coughing] copd isn't pretty. i'm out of breath, and often out of the picture. but this is my story. 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[applause] and so they sent a nazi lawyer, heinrich cruger, to the university of arkansas, to do a deep study of racist american law and a way that you could have the 14th amendment and also jim crow. and also lynching. and they brought that. not the government production, they brought his report back to munich and berlin and they used it as the basis for discussion for writing the nuremberg laws to strip jews of their citizenship in germany. they learned some of that from us. and if you think that it's something in the german character that makes you susceptible to fascism, i invite you to spend time thinking about that anecdote. it's very disturbing. ♪upset stomach, diarrhea♪ pepto bismol coats and soothes for fast relief when you need it most. have heart failure with unresolved symptoms? it may be time to see the bigger picture. heart failure and seemingly unrelated symptoms like carpal tunnel syndrome, shortness of breath, and irregular heartbeat could mean something more serious, called attr-cm a rare, underdiagnosed disease that worsens over time. sound like you? call your cardiologist and ask about attr-cm. ♪ today, my friend you did it, you did it, you did it... ♪ centrum silver is now clinically shown to support cognitive health in older adults. it's one more step towards taking charge of your health. so every day, you can say, ♪ youuu did it! ♪ with centrum silver. 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[applause] only hitler's hitler. only nazis are nazis. there is no modern analogy to germany under hitler and the 90s from 1933 to 1945. there isn't one. don't try to make. when the prequel, the people to sort of learn from here, the story that went before that feels like the antecedent to what we are in now, where the americans were fighting against the ultra right in this previous time, both in the government but also mostly outside of the government, people who were trying to outflank and expose them and hold them to account. i always feel like, i know it's obvious to everyone, but it's important to say. in terms of what's going on in contemporary terms, i've been thinking about this project 2025 stuff and i'm having another one of those moments, which you know me well enough to know happens all the time, which everybody sees it one way and i'm really stuck on a piece of it that i see differently, and i can't let it go. that's the insurrection act part of it. so this reporting in the washington post, last sunday, that trump, project 2025 plan involves invoking the insurrection act on the first day that he is sworn in for his next term. it keeps getting discussed as how crazy is it that trump wants to use the military against peaceful protesters? first of, all these protests are hypothetical. we don't know that they exist. also, there's nothing in them invoking the insurrection act that has anything to do with protest. if you on your first day in office give yourself the power to use the u.s. military against u.s. civilians on u. s. soil, if you think it matters whether there is a protest anywhere in the country, that day or any subsequent day -- [applause] it is the check of ian book loaded gun sitting in the first act of the play. it will be used by the end of the play and it is accruing power to himself in a way that, it's not like they'll do it for 12 hours and then give it back. the idea of the authoritarian project is to gather all power to the leader, both inside the government and outside the governments. you're not allowed to be a political opponent. jan also not allowed to be immediate critic. and you're also not allowed to be civics i. t. and that suffix is i. t. entails opposition or criticism of the leader. this is what fascism is. it may be a form of government that includes other sources of authority when leader takes over, but those other sources authority from the government will be either neutered or closed down. so the congress will not function, the fourth estate will no longer be free. civil society will not be allowed to do anything that is critical or in opposition. political potency will not be tolerant tolerated. ultimately minorities will be scapegoated. this is how these things go. to know that i will accrue all power to myself, i will unify civilian and military authority on day one, and have that be the announced plan, it just means that we're there. this is it. we're not in a hypothetical confrontation with a leader who promises authoritarian rule. we are in an explicit choice. >> the choice part is the part that i think a lot of people have a hard time with. it's something that appears in the book. fascism in both its italian and german forms and differently in spain actually because it functions a little differently there. but it's a popular movement. again, the hitler was elected, but it's the case that there is mass mobilization and tons of people in millions of people who are like, yes, we want this. there is a fascinating irony to. it it's a mass movement of grassroots supporters mobilizing in favor of what will ultimately be an authoritarian project that makes the civil society, that allows for mass movements, basically, to go away. i think a lot of people probably this room probably listening to this podcast or watching this, have a hard time being, like, how is this popular? how is this popular and why is this popular? i'm curious if you feel like you've got insights that you have drawn from this period of historical study. again, it's not precise apples to apples, but people wanting a charismatic leader who's going to fight for them and defend their purity or -- >> embody the nation. >> embody the nation against his enemies, foreign and domestic, that is, that has been a popular recipe. >> there's different kinds of authoritarians. fascism is a mass mobilization movement. that's also complex because one of the things that happens in fascist decidedly is it becomes impossible not to be part of the movement. so you may be an enthusiast. but if you're not you're probably gonna be out there wearing a badge and doing the saying. because you don't have any other choice. you create the illusion of unitary, of a unitary nation subject to and a fan of the great leader about who there's a cult of personality and you're not allowed to oppose. >> there's a line you quote, i don't think he long was a fascist but he was an authoritarian, he said you can get to a point where it looks like it's a democracy and it's not a democracy anymore because people are so happy with the leader. >> yeah. >> no one's complaining anymore because you just solved everything. [laughter] this was his line. why bother voting? we all agree. that was his line. louisiana as under hualong was routinely caused called a dictatorship. in court it was called bass. it was a defense, actually used by people who were put on file trial in federal court for having been part of his immensely corrupt graph schemes in louisiana. judges would say, like, well you weren't huey long, so you didn't have a choice in the matter. this is a dictatorship. you didn't have freewill therefore yes, you took the bribes, but you are kicking them up to him. it was accepted that he was a dictator. that's why fascist love the idea of huey long. that's confusing if we look at authoritarian authoritarianism as a conservative versus liberal thing, because lots of thing things about huey long look liberal. policy does not matter. it is about accruing all power to the leader. that's all that matters. and they'll say and do anything in order to get all the power, but then once they've got it, that's the point. >> there's a certain kind of specific visual grammar and language syntax and cadence to fascism or to broadly authoritarian movements, or popular leadership cults, and there's a picture of huey long, big portrait if you see it immediately like oh, i know exactly what this is. like, there's the big picture of the guy, and i feel that way about, to bring back to the contemporary, i feel that way about the use of the word vermin. >> yes. >> by trump this week. >> a trump this week in a speech to describe his political and domestic energy enemies. when you see that, and you know what you're looking. at when you hear a leader described the other people on the political spectrum as vermin, with like investing the, nation i just know what that is immediately. >> everybody knows what that is. and i think he knows what that is. >> yes. >> there's also something, there's a little bit of, i don't know what we should call, it a playground thing that he does in terms of his politics. do you remember where the idea of fake news came from, that phrase? that phrase was not donald trump's phrase. that was used to describe what was happening in russian information spaces, where they were writing legitimately fake made-up new stories and then siloing them into the u.s. news ecosystem through pro russian covert sources, and it was a legitimate thing. this thing didn't happen in montenegro, but russian propaganda sources wrote that it happened in montenegro and now there are rightly new sources in america where describing this thing that happened in montenegro that never happened in montenegro. it was a real thing. was part of what was going on with the russian disinformation influence and election interference after efforts in 2016. people are starting to figure it out that that was one of the weird things that was happening in our information universe in that election. and then trump adopted it and said all news is fake news. and so then you couldn't use that term anymore to describe this more technical thing which we had been previously describing. without a term to describe it, we then lost track of it. because then it became a thing that had a meaningless name. so you can't talk about that thing. so there's some of that. >> with what? >> the use of the word vermin. and with the way that he is now calling his enemies fascists. >> right. yes he, has started doing. that >> he has started calling you and me and everybody who's not team trump is a fascist, that he has to save the country from the fascists. and he's using this terminology which is overtly and obviously fascist callback language, and we have the people, yes, okay, but calling the internal enemy vermin and to be exterminated, he knows what he's doing. that will make everybody say wow, the most fascist things i ever heard, no, fascist, year the fascists. all his enemies are fascists. and then the word fascist doesn't mean anything anymore. and we don't have any word anymore to describe what this is that he's trying to get us to do. we [applause] so as he starts to advance what i think is a more overtly authoritarian project, watch for him to call everyone else an authoritarian and a tyrant. it's to rob those words of their function. >> there's, there are people in your book who want to be the next american hitler and don't have it in the. i don't remember morally, i just mean whatever the stuff is, the charisma, whatever it is, and i guess i, something that i was thinking about when reading your book, what is the saying? what is the thing that makes hualong successful in becoming huey long? what is the thing that makes trump successful in this particular kind of type, authoritarian populist demagogue, different people have tried it in different ways, it has a lot of commonalities in the rhetoric. some six feet in some don't. it feels alchemical to me. i can't tell you what it is because i can describe. i can understand basic dynamics. i understand blaming some small disfavored minority for the nations ills and the invigorating feeling of solidarity that comes from the nation's blood all coursing through the rally and all being directed at one place like a bunch of solar panels aimed at a water tower to boil everything together and i can get that and i can look at someone who is gifted and rhetoric and his presence and charisma, which is a percent to about him, but in the end if you ask me to, if i had the nba draft of fascists autocrats [laughter] and i was like running them through the paces, i don't know in the end what makes someone work for someone and not for someone else. >> this is a very unpopular opinion, but i do not believe that the leader matters. >> this is what i sort of thought. >> the movement matters. >> it's prior to, he backs into it at some level. >> you need a country that is looking for an authoritarian solution, and you need people who are willing to submit themselves to the authority of the person who says they deserve it. and so you've got, like, franco was napoleon sized. hitler was a dork. mussolini was a journalist and a socialist. >> those were the worst things. >> those were the worst things in the world. >> [laughter] [applause] >> but not a big set up. there's one thing about these guys that's inherently, that transformed those countries against their will. those countries were subject to an anti democratic pro authoritarian movement that had skills, and the people were ready to do it. and so you end up with a huey long being very successful in the project that he was part of. the person who fdr most feared running against in 1936 was huey long. in 1935, as huey long was gearing up to start his presidential campaign, where he was gonna run against fdr, and fdr believe that if anyone could beat him it would be huey, in 1935, fdr was at the summer white house in hyde park new york, and he had summoned father coughlin to come talk to him about the fact that coughlin was clearly supporting huey long. he believes it coughlin and long and long together would bring america to a fascist dictatorship in two years. he thought it was an unstoppable force. he was there to try to talk loughlin out of it and as coughlin was driving to fdr's house that day for that top huey long was assassinated. >> spoiler alert. >> [laughter] >> that was 1935 and that's the way things went. what huey long's power-wise, i think what was magic about him, was his unbridled appetite for power. >> right. >> the thing that he did was, yes, he paved road to the grave away free school textbooks and he was a spellbinding orator and he wore silk outfits and all sorts of things you could say about him. but really what he was a maestro of was power, that he never met the source of authority that he could not accrue to himself, and that was the thing that you need to be able to do to be able to lead a society in that direction well telling a people that they need to do it but they can only trust you with that their enemies are out to get them and you're not the only when they can protect them from those enemies. that's how it works. 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[laughter] >> [applause] >> obviously the world's smallest violin, i'm lucky to do what i do, and i love what i do. but there's an exhaustion factor. [applause] you guys feel that way too? but there's also those exhaustion but there's also you've got to be indefatigable because the movement on the other side seems indefatigable navigable. >> yes! >> and are you exhausted, as well? seriously, because people ask me all the time and i'm, like i feel for myself, i feel very like the stakes are incredibly high, when you said when we're looking at someone talking about doing this from day one, we are in it. i feel that way. i felt that way for much of this. that is animating. it gives me a sense of zeal and mission and energy. but also it's like sometimes i'm like -- i cannot. and so i just balance those two but i'm curious as to how you do it. >> one thing you and i have talked about over beers, one of the things that is the privilege and pleasure of our job, maybe not up for leisure, a privilege, is that you're here and you watch msnbc -- >> [applause] >> you're thinking about this stuff all the time. you're consuming the news all the time you're thinking about our country and you're worrying about the worst people in america and what they might do next. all the time. we all are. and then to have to do all that and go do your jobs. chris and i are doing all that, but then our jobs is processing it. so it's therapy. we are all being put through the same ringer. but chris and i get to do our daily jobs talking about the stuff. that is a great privilege. to that end, part of my big jobs has also been writing this book and doing other projects like it. i'm mark working on ultra season too. >> [applause] >> very exciting. and what is energizing to me about that is, again, the good guys. you think that the bad guys in this are obscure, and most of them are, coughlin, and forward, and long, but the really obscure people are the good guys, the americans who, the beleaguered secretary who is working for this minnesota senator and was such a freaking creep every time she gets paid by the senate she has to hand back half of her salary to him in cash. that's how much power she had in the workplace. and yes, she went to the fbi and she told the fbi. >> [applause] >> water senator boss was doing with a well-known azzi agent. she didn't sign up for the marines trying to be a paratrooper somewhere. she was somebody who was not in a powerful position at all and she did something that was really important for her country. i am very enthused to learn her story. i'm very enthused to learn about the guy who was like this really milquetoast normal middle of the road guy who's fields of expertise was direct mail advertising and yet, when you son came home from his first semester of college and was like, dad, i'm getting all this propaganda, this anti-semitic pro german pro veggies and propaganda at school. it's really freaking me out, i don't know what to do with it. he was like, well, i do happen to have an area of expertise that relates to stuff being sent in the mail. and he applied his random area of expertise to becoming a one-man expository journalist and investigator to find out and to literally document for the good of the country a multi million dollar covert propaganda campaign that the germans were running through 24 congressional offices and multiple front organizations all over the country. and he exposed it. he was an ad man. a random civilian who did this. i'm so energized by stories like that. who's gonna be that secretary? who's going to be that ad man? who's gonna be the guy working for the atl in southern california running a spy ring on his fellow world war i veterans? >> disguise amazing. >> because they notice that german groups in los angeles we are starting to have hitler youth summer camps and they were worried about that. who are the heroes among us today who didn't sign up to be heroes but heroisms is coming to their door? >> [applause] >> i am energized. i'm energized but i also feel like for all of us being a 250 -year-old democracy is hard. there aren't very many. the seeds of anti-democratic projects in authoritarian projects are within the heart of every person who lives in a democracy because democracy, like you were saying at the outset, chris, is about us all deciding something together, us as equals, with our rights and our sacred lives given to us by almighty god, equal before one another, can decide together how we will be governed, and that is a beautiful thing unless you think that some of the people who are in your polity with you shouldn't have a say because they're creeps. and who among us has not felt that way? >> it is not an evil thing to think, that, actually, i have a better idea than you, you shouldn't get a say. that's natural. a small d democrats, we need to be committed to the idea that this is a better system of government than others, for all of its flaws. the great, tactical disadvantage, for those of us who fight for democracy is not fighting for democracy is democracy. you must use democratic means to defeat anti-democratic forces. this can seem like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. you are either a democrat, or you are not. it's hard. it's hard. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. you have to do it. >> hi, i'm ben and i've lost 60 pounds on golo. 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[laughter] [laughter] >> i live in rural, western massachusetts. living in rural, western, new england, dirt road new england, has a lot of things about it. now, we have the internet. that's new. it's really made things a lot better. one of the things that i think, as a kid who grew up in the suburbs, who's lived in cities my whole life, i've lived there for the last 20 years, one of the things that it has taught me is that politics is only one thing, in any one person's life even for those who are committed. news junkies, political activists, working for political parties, or an elected official themselves, a bear is getting into their trash. they, also are afraid of them -- >> a lot of heartbreak. >> they are taking care of their elderly parents, who they didn't expect to be taken care of at this point in their life, they have both kids, and parents, and they are the responsible family member. they have another family member who is in recovery, who they are so hopeful for, but so scared for. there is, i believe, something very important that you can do in your non political life, that will improve your political life. to have personal relationships with people, face to face. things that are about everything besides politics. it is hard to do, post covid, even harder, but do you have a book club? do you, maybe, want to start a club? it could be over zoom. do you have a neighbor who lives alone? who wants to come to thanksgiving? do you want to be part of a civic group was working on a local pipeline that is coming to your town? do you want to volunteer at the vets hospital? something that connects you to the immediate era, which isn't about finding consensus about what happens in the 2024 election is good for your community, it is good for your soul, and being able to look at other people, in the eye, and recognize each other's human? it. i have another one, this is from pat and pennsylvania. this is completely, out of the blue, and i don't think a single person in this audience has given this any thought, but alaskan anyway. >> nicely done. >> what do you think of the latest polls -- [laughter] >> whether they show biden and trump neck and neck? >> i don't know, ask president romney. i don't know. you are actually much better reading polls than i am. no, you are, you are much better, your more subtle. i look at them and say [laughter] [laughter] -- i feel like polls, in my adult lifetime, our garbage.. except, occasionally, they are right. so, yes, you can spend your time worrying about polls, or you can work as hard as possible, for the candidate you want to win. i sometimes, there are interesting cross tabs information. a specific group of people, who used to think about your chosen candidate, now thinking about this about that person. okay, that may be helpful in terms of the way you may want to work for your candidate. but, the point of them, especially for us as a public, for people who are not political professionals, they tell you what work needs to be done. calibrate your level of political involvement to match, exactly, your anxiety about the polls. if you are freaked out about it, do something. do something with other people. you will be better for it, and you will be more resilient, and in difficult times ahead. this is from debbie in north carolina. i think i may have met debbie before the show, who came here, from there today. this is a trade craft question that, i, also, have. having watched you closely for years. how do you come up with such amazing topics that start-up seemingly totally random, drive a stake through the heart of a relevant event? >> it is that meteor thing. i think -- >> how? how? get down to brass tacks. process. where does the seed show of a random anecdote that is the start of the thing? are you reading all the time? do you follow some -- what is it? >> in general, it's good to read all the time. in our business, if there is one thing i could impart on you bergeron, we'll, if you are a female person coming to this, first of all, never show your emotions, no one ever understands. otherwise, male or female -- [laughter] still true, hello. in general, for everybody, read beyond the assigned to reading. whatever the assigned reading is what's going on the news cycle, read beyond it. you never know what will be redevelopment. read stuff that interests you, that is nonfiction, that is journalism, that is history, that is academic work that interests you. you never know when it will be relevant, and when it will be a helpful contribution. just in general. so, the way it works, on a day-to-day basis, is there something going on that is interested in, that i'm confused by, or wants to understand better. i just keep looking stuff about it, until i find something that interests me. then, i teach myself that thing, and then teach other people that thing. again, your mileage may vary. my storytelling style doesn't work for everybody. if you do not mind coming around on the journey that i'm on, i really do believe that, over the course of one conversation, you can get to a graduate school level of complexity with anybody, so long as you are willing to start together, in kindergarten. that is why some people don't like that i repeat things, that i will restate, luke, bakary state, lou, back restate. some people find that very frustrating. i heard you the seven-time, i didn't need at the 17th. that is because we are starting here, and going here. i need to ensure that we are all there, every step. the weird or the topic, the more unfamiliar the proper nouns are, i think the more that you have to pay attention to the way you tell the story. by the time we get to the point of it, it's like, oh, it comes together, i've got it. my shorthand for myself is that by the time we get to the end of the story, i want you to be able to tell it to well enough, that you could tell someone else. i want you to get, it so you can tell my story. that's what i'm trying to do., have you tweet? what are changes that you have made, like, in the process and the versions over the course of the long career you've now had doing this? >> the a block keeps getting longer, sorry, if you represent one of our advertisers, particularly sorry. it has a real consequence in that regard. yeah, i don't know. like i said, i do have this one here rain,, so i don't think that i have changed very much in terms of the way i think about the news. i tried for a while to pay attention to the visual elements that are on the screen, i'm talking, but that didn't work. so, i gave up on that. that is my big try, my big effort to try to notice what you're seeing. >> i feel like you're very involved in the production elements. >> i don't look at the mom talking. >> you can't look at them while you're talking. look at them all your talking? >> i'm not aware of -- i will choose the elements are. i don't know whether on the screen, and i don't speak to them. and i don't know what you are looking at. looking at sleep more deeply. and wake up rejuvenated. purple mattresses exclusive gel flex grid draws away heat relieves pressure and instantly adapts. sleep better. live purple. right now save up to $900 off mattress sets during purple's black friday sale. visit purple.com or a store near you today. ♪ the winter play was really coming together. ♪ until... disaster struck. ♪ tensions... were high. ♪ luckily, replacement costumes were shipped with fedex. which means mr. harvey... could picture the perfect night. ♪ we're delivering more happy for the holidays. ♪ ( ♪♪ ) rsv is in for a surprise. meet arexvy. 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[laughter] >> good, a good democratic moment. it's good. [laughter] >> that's exactly right. that's where the bus is going. >> sorry, gnome. >> i think i know part of the answer to this, and i think part of this is a little public record, but i'm curious to hear you say it. christine from barbara, pennsylvania, says, how do you decompress given the critical nature of your job? >> there is some fishing. since i switched to mondays, instead of being on five days a week, i know you guys don't -- i know. more, more, more. thank you. thank you. here is the thing, i was dying. i am sorry i'm only there on monday, but i am alive. [laughter] that is the. >> i cannot overemphasize how unsustainable her work flow is. [laughter] truly. >> the one thing, i'm now one day a week, so not dying, except, i did use to count for compartmentalization purposes, on the schedule of the daily live show. so, what that meant is no matter how long i worked over the course of the day, i am live at nine pm eastern, and no longer live at 10:01. then, sorry, lawrence. then, at 10:01, i am done. i will not work the rest of the evening, unless there is some breaking news, think i will do whatever i need to do in the morning before i start working, then i start working again. that was the off switch, and on switch. a switch. the switch is only there on mondays, now. what is happening is i work seven days a week, and then work until midnight every day. i'm doing all of these other things, which are fantastic. it is, actually, bad. i need to fix it. last question, from jean in millerton, new york. what keeps you up at night? [laughter] >> wine [laughter] i used to do friday night cocktail moments. if i am in the same room as something that is over 80 proof? i'm awake for five days. a single glass of wine, and i'm up at three in the morning being 50 years old. that is the true story of what keeps me up at night. i just outgrew the ability to do cocktails. in terms of this work -- one of the reasons i said that thing about trying to have some in person connections with other people who live near you, and are in your life right now, one of the reasons why i said that, and i've been trying to tell people when i've been speaking at the audiences for this book tour, is just because, i do think we will have a hard year. i think it's going to be a weird year. if it goes very badly, it is going to be more, weird, bad years after that. but, regardless of how it goes a year from now, it will be a tough year. therefore, i want us all to make us as resilient as we can. this means not having baggage trailing behind you that you do not want to have trailing behind you. it means, making up with your estranged family members. it means, getting to know your neighbors. it means, if you have very serious concerns about politics, it means working in a political campaign. it means having something to do with the civic life of where you are, so you are not alone while we have a tough year in this country. it has come for us in this generation, in this country, in this lifetime. it does not come for every generation. but it has come for us, and we need to be up to it. it means, you cannot live on your phone. [applause] you cannot build from a position of despair and feeling powerless. you need to have people you can call. not just because they are on your side, but because you know them, and they know you, and you are americans, together, in a difficult moment. we need that kind of resilience, for all of us. so, start a book club. [applause] >> rachel maddow, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (music) have heart failure with unresolved symptoms? it may be time to see the bigger picture. heart failure and seemingly unrelated symptoms, like carpal tunnel syndrome, shortness of breath, and irregular heartbeat could be something more serious called attr-cm, a rare, underdiagnosed disease that worsens over time. sound like you? call your cardiologist, and ask about attr-cm. liberty mutual customized my car insurance and i saved hundreds. with the money i saved, i started a dog walking business. oh. 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