Political Theater and Foreign Policy Dynamics

This week, I’m joined again by my friend, Claire Wardle, who in her words “studies this crazy information environment” as a professor at Cornell University in upstate New York to discuss the latest news (recorded on Friday) but the meat of this episode is an interview with Jason Stanley, one of the world’s leading authorities on fascism in which I ask him the obvious question: is this what this is?

Spoiler alert: his answer isn't very cheerful. But it is one we need to hear.

"The United States is your enemy. The United States is your enemy. Russia is your enemy. Trying to convince Europeans of this, when my book, How Fascism Works, was published, in German this past summer. In the German speaking world, especially Germany, there's still this kind of very strong America, you know, defeated the Nazis thing. And that's why it took so long to get published in German, because I think people just are so resistant to the idea that the United States can be fascist. Even though in Mein Kampf, Hitler says the country he most wants to imitate is the United States. And even though interracial marriage was not fully legalized in the United States until two years before I was born. Even though the United States was not a democracy, it's one of the world's youngest democracies. We weren't a democracy until 1965, when the Civil Voting Rights Act was passed. We're a much younger democracy than European countries, than most countries in Europe, aside from Spain and Portugal. But it's essential that people recognize the United States, if you're living in a country that is a democracy right now, the United States is your enemy. Just like Russia."

There’s also a voice note from Chris Steele, the ex-head of MI6’s Russia desk, and the author of the recent Unredacted: Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy. This was recorded before the most recent, explosive developments but it still resonates.

That and the whole interview with Jason is well worth your time. There’s a transcript below.

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How to Survive the Broligarchy: Episode 2

Transcript of interview with Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

This conversation was recorded before the Friday Trump/Zelenskyy showdown.

Carole: So Jason, are you saying that this is fascism? Or are we on the road to fascism?

Jason: There's been something called the fascism debate since, since 2016, 2017. Do you call this, what we're seeing across the world, fascism? It becomes somewhat terminological. I think it's helpful to draw on the literature on 20th-century fascism to understand what is happening.

For instance, theories from the Frankfurt School said when you're looking at a fascist takeover, it looks like a mafia situation. The fascist leader looks like a mob boss. They enforce discipline like a mob boss. They draw on loyalty rather than competence. Uh, these are all useful points because you see people saying, "Wow, Trump is behaving like a mob boss."

So those are useful comparisons, but no two authoritarian situations are exactly the same. What we need to do is draw on our understanding of authoritarian movements.

And what we're seeing is not an authoritarian movement of the left. We're seeing an authoritarian movement that uses as its gas, uh, anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-LGBTQ sentiment, hysteria about a supposed Marxist takeover of the institutions where the opposition party is labeled as Marxists and communists.

So for instance, the Nazis targeted the social Democrats as communists when they first came into office. So these are tactics straight out of the fascist playbook. But whether, you know, we should be talking about, is it a fascist regime or is it exactly like, you know, Mussolini and Hitler, this is an autocratic takeover.

It's an autocratic takeover that draws mass support by familiar fascist tactics that are rooted in many countries. The anti-immigrant stuff is, of course, prevalent, uh, in multiple countries and has a long tradition, and the racism in the United States. Those tactics come from our fascist Jim Crow past. But whether to use the term fascism, just use whatever term helps you understand the tactics that are being employed.

Jason: Well, normalizing is the obvious one. I mean, this is an old point now that we've been making since the first Trump administration. You know, stop treating objectivity as this party said this and the opposing party said that's wrong. If you mention a possibility, people give much more credence to it.

So if a politician says, "Oh, there are pink bunnies, uh, that are about to invade," people's credence in that will go from zero percent to five percent, you know. So this journalistic tactic of reporting what everyone says equally will result in a highly distorted information space. So I think people have cottoned on to that. The objectivity in journalism means truth. It doesn't mean reporting all sides equally. So you have to figure out the truth and report on it even if one group says that's not true. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. The truth is what you report.

And secondly, you need to keep analysis going because they're doing a flood of tactics now. And the flood of tactics, one of its effects is to lose the overall picture. So like, "Oh, well, Trump said this yesterday, so let's focus on this." And then you have no overall sense of what's going on. So the news media must say, "Okay, this is a far-right autocratic takeover. Let's put everything into that structure so we never lose sight of the fact that this is a far-right autocratic takeover."

Carole: So that is key, it seems to me. But the fact is, is that's not the banner headlines are saying. They're not saying this is a far-right autocratic takeover. And actually none of the news is being reported within that framework. That seems to be the critical failure that we're seeing here, right?

Jason: Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's all about what is the next bad thing that is happening. And so as a result, people aren't putting the pieces together, uh, because I mean, I, right. I would like to see a banner headline structure every day. The progress of the autocratic takeover.

So my 2018 book, How Fascism Works, is sort of an overarching structure of the politics we face. And I wrote the book Erasing History, which, uh, because that's a book about the piece about education, the attack on universities and schools, probably a little bit less evident in the UK, but in the United States, the first Trump attacks were on universities and schools. The first executive orders, and this is clear.

If you look at, you know, Putin recently said wars are won by teachers. So because people don't have the overall structure, I've been trying to get the media in the United States to focus on the attack in the universities, not the attack in the media, the attack in the courts, all of that people expect that. But the whole overarching structure is what people need to keep in mind at all times.

Carole: So, in our last episode, Mark brought up the issue of the AP journalists being banned from the White House briefing and he made the case that everybody should walk out. What do you make of that, Jason?

Jason: Well, you're suggesting the entire media quit over access. I'm in favor of that. You have to do that, because otherwise you're going to be picked off one by one. You've got to de-legitimize the media. Uh, this and access is a standard way that autocrats use, you know, that's just utterly standard. You've got to play my tune or you're going to lose access.

It would be great if the entire news media just cut that power off by saying we're all [00:08:00] going to quit together. Great idea.

Carole: Can I also point out something else, right? Which is the tech Silicon Valley has always played with access, access to the new products and to the interviews with the CEOs that has always been a key point of leverage and journalism got wise to it. And this, you know, wave of really good critical reporting grew up.

But they still, there is still this using access and I have from my dealings with the tech industry is that you don't want access. If you have access to them, they just lie to you or they try and spin it. It's not useful, right? If you actually are going to report on it, you need that critical distance and to be talking to other people inside the company.

So I do think that's a direct analogy to here of what's going on in the White House, right?

Jason: Yeah, I mean, what you're pointing out is that if anyone starts to use access as a weapon, they're no longer going to be giving access as a source of information, but rather as manipulation or spin. As soon as they start using access as a weapon, you know that access is just going to be a propaganda method.

Carole: But the thing is, is that news organizations and journalists absolutely still always fall for that because the kind of the idea of the exclusive scoop is still has currency. When really, I mean, I come back to it. This all the time is that exclusive scoops of 90s bullshit, get over them. Actually, if something's an actual proper news story, you want everybody reporting on it, and I think that the trick paying favors for access to your point, that is one of the key things it seems to me that we've got to grow out of, isn't it?

Jason: Yeah. I mean, I mean, brilliant point. Technologically it's absurd. Suppose I have an exclusive scoop within, you know, a millisecond, it's no longer exclusive.

Carole: Yeah, but it's kind of ego. In fairness, it's because news organizations, we're in a resource-hungry environment where you feel you have to compete against other news organizations. But one of the lessons you learn from people in authoritarian countries is you can't actually think like that. You've got to network and make each other stronger.

I mean, that's something Maria Ressa, the, you know, brilliant Nobel prize. She, you know, that's what they had to do in the Philippines was bring the competitors together. And that's going to be a hard battle, I think, to win.

Carole: If I can, at this point, I'd like to finish on Russia and Ukraine and what this means. And I've got a voice note and maybe we can just then reflect off. So Chris Steele, who's the ex-head of MI6's Russia desk, who became very notorious during the first Trump presidency, and he's out in public warning about Russia's threat to us. Anyway, this was what he had to say.

Chris: Dear Carole. With the current geopolitical crisis worsening, I couldn't help but write to you. I firmly believe that the Kremlin is successfully exporting its playbook to the United States and elsewhere. The disinformation and reflex lying of the likes of Peskov seem to have taken hold and inflicted and infected our own polities. And of course, the less challenged this is, the more it takes hold. It reminds me of Hitler's The Big Lie. The German Nazi leader once said that the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed.

And the failure of the mainstream media, particularly in America, because it's owned by corporates who fear upsetting Trump, the likes of Bezos and the Washington Post, makes this even more of a threat. But I think we are facing an even more profound crisis than politics or the news. The very basis of empirical investigation, facts and evidence, that relates of course also to the rule of law, is coming under attack for the first time in our lifetime.

And make no mistake, this threat, this onslaught is coming to Europe next. Musk, etc., with Trump's leverage behind them, will try and enforce deregulation on Europe and Britain. Things like the online safety bill will be under attack. Unless we stand up and fight this, a truly Orwellian world beckons, I believe. And do remember, Carole, I'm an optimist.

Jason: Yeah, just a note on optimism. I don't know if you're familiar with the old Jewish joke. What's the difference between an optimistic Jew and a pessimistic Jew? The pessimistic Jew says, things are so bad, they couldn't get worse. And the optimistic Jew says, no, yes, I believe they can always get worse.

Jason: So, uh, but, uh, that some differences between Steele. I mean, obviously we've been here before. I mean, the Iraq war. So, you know, the financial crisis, those opened up the avenue that we can now drive down. And again to point, I think if we don't see the connections to the past, then we'll miss a little bit of what's going on.

I mean, Trump is going, we need to think about the past pure colonialist. So what he's doing to Ukraine is what the French did to Haiti. It's a straight colonialism, and Trump, what's happening in the United States is, uh, there's an attack on schools and universities saying, okay, don't say that the 19th century was bad, don't say that slavery was bad, don't say that manifest destiny was bad, don't say that indigenous genocide was bad.

And Peter Beinart made this point recently, now what they're doing is we're not just going to say, it wasn't bad. We're going to do it again. So you have this explicit colonialist mentality, you take your territory next, you can be expansionist in your countries. We'll be expansionist in our countries. Trump, you know, was signaling about Ukraine when he said he was going to take over Canada.

None of this is new. What was new is like the couple years between things when things seemed a little bit better. And that's helpful because then you can see, okay, we're just fighting the normalcy. I mean, as, as Musk said, all the jingoistic stuff that America does. I love that. That's what I love. Like the old stuff that you're, so we can expect a cabal of these colonialist-minded, Putin's Russia is a fascist colonialist empire, uh, and they're trying to sort of return to that.

And that's what Trump is doing too. And he's giving the green light to China. And that's why you're going to have this autocratic link of Russia, China, and the United States who are sometimes allies, sometimes when their interests conflict, not allies.

And this was, this is, was the problem with universal fascism in the past when they tried to say, okay, let's all be fascists. It's the whole world, but then people realize, okay, then taking over each other's countries when we each want Greenland, it's going to be tricky. So that's more like the world we're entering into.

Um, is it disinformation? Is it just a different ideology? An ideology of everyone should just go seize anything they can. Uh, I prefer more the latter.

Carole: I think the thing just sitting here in Britain, are we going to align ourselves with the new axis of power, which is Russia and America, or are we going to ally ourselves with Europe? Which is, we believe, going to try and stand up and fight for that. And that's a really critical question because, you know, America, of course, has been our friend and ally, and it's going to take a lot for people to think that we have to think differently about that.

And this total shift in world power, this is the big story which, again, we need some banner headlines and the TikTokers and all the rest of it.

Claire: But we need banner headlines in London, Carole. And the thing is, most London media houses are owned by Russians.

Carole: Well, we have no independent media, we have no, and I say that, well, The Guardian stands, sort of, but it's just entered into an agreement with OpenAI. And that, for me, is like sleeping with the enemy.

Jason: Yeah, as a result, if I assign essays in my classes, they're gonna, they're gonna give me back essays informed by your work, Carole.

About this issue that I think is really important, Carole, that you just raised about people not getting the United States meant for many countries who earlier considered the United States as an ally. The United States is your enemy. The United States is your enemy. Russia is your enemy. Trying to convince Europeans of this, when my book, How Fascism Works, was published in German this past summer.

In the German-speaking world, especially Germany, there's still this kind of very strong America, you know, defeated the Nazis thing. And that's why it took so long to get published in German, because I think people just are so resistant to the idea that the United States can be fascist.

Even though in Mein Kampf, Hitler says the country he most wants to imitate is the United States. And even though interracial marriage was not fully legalized in the United States until two years before I was born. Even though the United States was not a democracy, it's one of the world's youngest democracies.

We weren't a democracy until 1965, when the Civil Voting Rights Act was passed. We're a much younger democracy than European countries, than most countries in Europe, aside from Spain and Portugal. But it's essential that people recognize the United States, if you're living in a country that is a democracy right now, the United States is your enemy. Just like Russia.

Carole: So listen, Jason, I wanted to finish on this final question to you: what is the most important thing people have to understand about this moment?

Jason: So, in this moment where competence is being replaced by loyalty, which is the central process of an autocratic term, everyone's going to be replaced by people who think the 2020 election was stolen, or people who agree to think that.

So, what people have to do in this circumstance is just do your job. Journalists who say things like, "Well, I don't know, I'm not political. I'm just a journalist," you know, good. Just be a goddamn journalist.

The former Yale president, Peter Salovey said, when I was hired, the board told me they hope I spoke up loudly for the democratic values of the university. And then he laughed and he said, I bet they don't tell people that anymore.

So instead of trying to save your institution during this moment, recognize that you're not saving your institution. If you're giving up its values and practices, stick with the values and practices, that is the biggest threat. You don't even have to be political. Just do the things you're supposed to do.

And resist all attempts to make you do something else, because if you do something else, guess what? Your institution is already lost, even if the name is still there.