The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Anne Applebaum Ask How Does a Stoic Resist Tyranny?

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

On today’s Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Anne Applebaum (Gulag: A History, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, Twilight of Democracy) about recent global political developments: the rise of authoritarianism in Western nations, the struggle against this movement, and how to fight for and defend democracy.Anne Applebaum is an expert on 20th- and 21st-century authoritarian governments. She has written books describing the authoritarian actions of the Soviet Union (Gulag: A History, Red Famine) and has written recently about modern-day authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and the West, both as a journalist at publications like The Atlantic (in articles like “History Will Judge the Complicit”) and the Washington Post and in her newest book, Twilight of Democracy. Applebaum currently lives in Poland.This episode is brought to you by GiveWell, the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. GiveWell’s team of researchers works countless hours to determine which charities make the most effective dollar-for-dollar contributions to the causes they support. Since 2010, GiveWell has helped over 50,000 donors donate over 500 million dollars to the most effective charities, leading to over 75,000 lives saved and millions more improved. Visit GiveWell.org/stoic and your first donation will be matched up to 100 dollars.This episode is also brought to you by Trends. Trends is the ultimate online community for entrepreneurs and business aficionados who want to know the latest news about business trends and analysis. It features articles from the most knowledgeable people, interviews with movers and shakers, and a private community of like-minded people with whom you can discuss the latest insights from Trends. Visit trends.co/stoic to start your two-week trial for just one dollar.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Anne Applebaum:  Homepage: https://www.anneapplebaum.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/anneapplebaumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/anneapplebaum2000/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anneapplebaumwp/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics.

We interview stowed philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to sing, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all! I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo.

Just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovelyly nicknamed me Kiki Keep a Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a Bag Love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast.

I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you.

Because on Baby Mrs is Kiki Palmer. No topic is off limits. Follow baby this is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcasts. Hey prime members, you can listen early and app free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. Let's see, where are we?

Well, it's a crazy world, as you know. It seems even if you try not to follow the news and prefer history to breaking news alerts, the news finds you and the news is alarming. And I say alarming still within the context of this sort of stoic alarm. I'm not saying you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off or saying that the sky is falling, but you are sort of deeply aware that things are not as they should be

as the expression goes, this is not normal. And as someone who's studied history and as part of what I write and talk about, I mean, I think it's hard not to see the parallels, particularly in America, between Kato's Rome and today's America. There was, or the Pax Romana of Marcus Aurelius's time and the Pax Americana of our time. And yet this order seems to be crumbling a little bit. There are, there are fissures.

There are flare ups. We are dealing with abnormal events, not just in America, but you look at the rising threat of China, you look at Russia's almost imperial ambitions at this point. And it's unpleasant, but it's also something you can't shy away from. And so, I talk about politics here on this podcast, not because I'm trying to convince anyone on any specific policy here or there, but because the Stokes believed that it was impossible

to separate philosophy from politics. We are political animals, and the world we live in is made possible by politics. We are political animals and the world we live in is made possible by politics. But most importantly, one of that that core stoic virtue of justice, politics is the means by which that justice is either upheld or violated. I've made no secrets about what I think about the sort of current administration here in America. And I've tried to secrets about what I think about the sort of current administration here in America. And I've tried to talk to interesting people with interesting perspectives across the spectrum, whether we're having Republican congressmen on former sort of Republican speech

writers, whether we're having activists, whether we're having writers like Kamuler, crisis conscience, which we talked about, and the sort of the fight against corruption both in private enterprise and public politics. But today's guest is someone I, who's writing, I have been reading for a very long time, Ann Appelbaum. She's a staff writer for the Atlantic, former Washington Post columnist. She's also a Pulitzer Prize winner for her history of the Soviet Goulog. She is just a great writer. You may have seen her Atlantic cover story recently,

history will judge the complicit. And so she is looking at the political situation, not just in America, but across the West. She happens to live in Poland, so she's got also the perspective of Eastern Europe there. And she's looking also the perspective of Eastern Europe there. And she's looking at the rise of these authoritarian figures. She's looking at what's enabling them. She's looking at how we're able to rationalize them. She's looking at the cowardice that they exploit and the injustices that they inevitably do.

I mean, her three famous books, she wrote one on the Red Fam famine, which was one of Stalin's greatest crimes. She looks at the rise of the Iron Curtain, and then of course her study of the Goulog is obviously an exploration of the most horrific abuses of left wing totalitarianism. But in any case, Anne is a fantastic writer, and she's looking at this, not in the old, can you believe, Trump said this, or oh, can you believe that Biden did this? She's not looking at it in that political sense. She's looking at it from the thousand-foot view, and which I think is essential right now.

And her new book, Twilight of Democracy, could not be more haunting and sobering and eye-opening, because as she says, democracy is not this thing that has always existed. People made it exist. And as Franklin famously said at the founding of America, this country is a republic if we can keep it. And so, you know, the Stoic is not just politically active in terms of holding office, but politically active in the sense that we have to protect these important institutions.

We have to protect these important institutions. We have to protect these norms. We have to stand up for what's right, even when we might disagree, say, with the domestic policy agenda of the person that ends up, we end up supporting or whatever. We have to think about it in that larger sense as well. Marcus Realized that the opening of meditations talks about how the early still looks like Thrasia and Hilvidius taught him about equality under the law,

the importance of rulers who respect their leaders, the importance of that Stoic virtue of justice. So these aren't, we can't just divorce modern politics from the discussion of Stoicism because Stoicism is not merely a philosophy for personal improvement. It's a philosophy for society, for culture, for the world. It's an operating system for life.

And unfortunately, we can't go, oh, but that's unpleasant. That's divisive, that's partisan. We can't talk about that. No, we have to talk about. We have to look at these things. And we have to look at them even though they're uncomfortable. And it would be better for my brand, my audience, if I didn't talk about these things, right?

I, you know, you're pissing people off when you talk about them, but I feel obligated to because that this is what we have to do, right? This is what stoicism is about. Senaqa says, look, the Epicurean says, I do not participate in politics unless it's an emergency. The stoic says, I participate in politics unless there's an emergency that prevents me. So that's why I continue to have these discussions. And I try to talk to people and bring people on, I think, will open your mind, we'll push you, and we'll

make you better. And Anne is a great example of that. Again, Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award finalist, a great writer, if you haven't read her stuff on the Atlantic, you absolutely should. But her new book, Twilight of Democracy, is an absolute must read. So listen to my conversation here. And what I hope you take from this is a push towards the only thing that matters in this life according to the stokes, which is action. Courage is something you do. Justice is something you implement.

Wisdom is pursued not for its own sake, but so it can be applied to those other virtues. And so again, we have to be active, we have to participate as I close the interview with Anne, she talks about this, that we have to take up roles in society because if we don't, that vacuum is filled, unfortunately, by the people, we'd rather not have them filled by the ambitious

or the unethical or the unprincipled or the lovers of power were unfortunately in some cases the sort of deranged sadists of the world and obviously that goes back to the neuros of Seneca's time. So listen to my interview. I hope this has some impact for you and be smart, be well. And of course wear a mask. So this is a sort of strange timing for your book.

I can't imagine that you feel vindicated, but it must be haunting to see the world where it is given what you've written about. I mean, it depends which part of the world you live in, but the threat to democracy and the possibility of democratic decline or collapse has been pretty clear in a lot of parts of what we used to call the West for some time. So the fact that it suddenly come home to people in the United States is a coincidence, but actually the signs have been there for some time.

Yeah, and I'm also sort of referring to the events in Beloruss and other parts of Eastern Europe. You're sort of focused on the rise of authoritarianism. I don't want to say you've called it, but as you said, this has been a trend we've been on that it seems like people have just stuck their head in the sands about. Yes, you know, I think one of the mistakes that we all have made, and I've made certainly over the last 30 years, was to assume that as that the once countries had attained some stage of liberal democracy once they had a number of free elections or in our case,

United States case, many dozens of free elections. We assumed that democracy then become somehow stabilized and it can't then fall apart. Actually, if you look back in history, old democracies have fallen apart sooner or later. And our assumption was that somehow we were an exception because I don't know, our constitution was so great or because we'd found such a great solution or because as in Western Europe, we had learned so with such, you know, with so bitterly that the alternative was so terrible,

we've assumed that people wouldn't want other kinds of choices. But I think the events of the last couple of years and even in the United States in the last few months have shown that that's wrong. There are people for whom either politicians for whom authoritarianism is attractive because it gives them more power or the press, anyway, the application of pressure against institutions designed to hold them to account is advantageous. There are voters who are bored by or irritated by the noise and cacophony of democratic debate

and they want it silenced. And there are intellectuals and spin doctors and makers of memes and images who see the rise of authoritarian or liberal movements as an opportunity for themselves to gain power or to have influence or to shape politics. And all of those people have, you know, we see them playing public roles in the US, in Poland, where I'm at, where I'm right now, in Spain, in the U.K., in Germany, in France, everywhere, really. We're talking about something obviously unpleasant, the idea of authoritarianism, the collapse of this sort of Western order, the veering away from this sort of

historical tradition we've been on. I'm struck by, there's a Shakespeare line I like, it says, you know, I cannot think it. And history appears in two different plays, but basically it's the character not wanting to see what is obviously in front of him because it's unpleasant. It strikes me that part of this is kind of snuck up on us

because a portion of us, or maybe a part of all of us, will watch an authoritarian leader. And obviously this happened with Hitler. I mean, one of the interesting things about Churchill's relationship with Hitler, it seemed to be the only Western leader who actually read Mein Kampf and got, like, an Tuk Hitler at his word. There seems to be this part of us that looks at authoritarian leaders and then says, well, I can't be exactly what they're saying. It's almost like we make excuses for them and then it sneaks up on us. There's that.

And there's also the fact that if you name something for what it is, then you're obliged to do something about it. So this has been one of the main problems in getting the West, the Western leaders to recognize what Russia is and what Russia has become over the last decade, namely that it's become a power, a revanchise power that wants to reverse the changes that were made in 1989, that wants to reestablish itself as a superpower at some level, and that has a clear plan and a clear strategy of how to intervene in and shape the political systems in both of its neighbors and of Europeans

and of the United States. And the strategy has been clear for some time. I actually started writing a it in 2014 and 2015. And the Russians have stepped by step sought to carry this out. Now, why don't Western nations recognize that, understand it, seek to do something about it? The reason because is that it would, that would mean a major change in their thinking about the world.

That would mean that they can't sort of benignly dismiss Russia as a regional bully. They can't just say, oh well, you know, it's far away. It's not our problem. They can't just say, well, you know, we do business with a lot of Russian oligarchs and company, you know, Russian companies. And they seem like pretty all right people. And we're making money off our relationships with their gas companies or their other companies. And we don't want to end those relationships. And the necessity of reorienting Western thinking or American thinking around the nature of this challenge is it would require so many sacrifices and so many changes

that people just don't want to do it. I would say until recently there was a similar problem with China. The situation with China is a little bit different because it's become a useful scapegoat for the Trump administration. But you can say that about our own system. Admitting that we now have an office, an American president, who is, for example, openly seeking to undermine the post office so that it so that it will be more difficult for Americans to vote in November. And understanding what that means, that he is openly assaulting and attacking our electoral system, leave aside all the other things that he's done. You know, saying that is so shocking in a way that people just don't want to say it. You know, they don't want to do it.

It strikes me that we're experiencing a similar thing with COVID, too, where what you're saying is it's not that the choice is hard, right? Because it's sort of choice between the obvious right thing and the obvious wrong thing. But then what the choice is demanding of you is really hard, you know, whether it's another lockdown or whether it's, you know, the choice to send your kids to school or not to school is pretty on paper, pretty clear cut, but then what that's requiring of you is some sort of sacrifice.

And so it strikes me that across Western societies, it's less the, it's like intellectually we know, but really there's a deficiency of will to do the difficult thing. So then cognitive dissonance kicks in and we somehow manage to convince ourselves that the obvious right thing shouldn't be done. Or as you said, the person who's telling you I have this authoritarian aim or Russia's obvious actions, we find a way to rationalize them because we don't wanna do what it's obvious

we probably have to do. Yeah, exactly. So the price that we would have to pay, the effort we would have to make, the rethinking of our assumptions that we would have to do, all of that is a big requirement. And admitting the degree to which our political system is deteriorated or the degree to which Russia is now a threat to numerous democracies in Europe, admitting

that would cost us and so it's just easier not to admit it. Let's have a reset with Russia. We actually, there's a group of analysts in Washington who want to do that again. It failed last time. It will fail again. But it's a much nicer idea than admitting the nature of the new Russian government or the nature of the Russian government

and the ways in which it seeks to undermine our political system. That would require a lot more work than just having a reset. I'm obviously given what I write about. I tend to go back to the ancients and what's interesting about the sort of stills are on both sides of the Roman Republic. You have Kato and your Sissuros on the sort of decline fall of the Roman Republic. And then, you know, the first emperor comes in Augustus is advised by two Stoics and then famously, Santa Cah advises Nero. I'm curious like fascinated slash appalled, horrified. There seems to be kind of two paths that people,

whether they're politicians or writers or intellectuals, which you talk a lot about. When we see one of these authoritarian leaders that threatens the order or wants to usurp the institutions, there's the sort of the K-dos who sort of go down swinging and fight, they'll pay any price. Then there's the Cicero's who sort of make excuses. They sort of go to the strong side.

They look for the winner. Obviously, later in Nero's administration, you have Thrasian, a Grippinus, they sort of go to the strong side, they look for the winner. You know, obviously later in Nero's administration, you have Thrasian, Agrippinus, and a bunch of Stoics who are ultimately lose their life fighting against Nero. And then you have Seneca, who's his top advisories are telling himself that I'm mitigating it, that I'm making it better, I'm working from the inside.

What makes someone choose one path or the other? What have you seen in your research? Well, if you read my book, you'll know that there isn't a single answer to that question. These choices are shaped so much by people's personal experiences, by their own ambitions, by their own political views, that you can't give us a single answer to that.

I talk a little bit in my book and also in a recent cover story I did for the Atlantic, which was about collaboration and why people collaborate with regimes or systems that they know are wrong or that they know are counter to their own principles. And you have to look at a range of explanations or a range of You know, range of motivations. So there are people who are, you know, who are deeply Disappointed either with their own country or with their own careers and then become attracted to radical Politics because they see radicalism as either as a way of personal advancement. You know, this is a new party or a new way to move up.

Or they see it as, you know, as the solution to their degenerate or corrupt or otherwise disappointing society. So radicalism almost always comes out of some kind of profound disappointment that, you know, then you see other people who are attached to the status quo, and that can be for good reasons and bad reasons. It can be because they have a personal stake in the system as it exists, or it can be because they think they're institutions in their society that are worth saving, so they make the choice to stay with that system. And then there are different kinds of personalities. There are people for whom authoritarianism

or authoritarian language has a kind of deep appeal. They prefer one leader, they prefer one voice. They don't like arguing, they think it's, they don't like the weaknesses of liberalism and of democracy and this sort of cacophony that it creates. And then there's the opposite kind of personality. There's sort of liberal or libertarian or other kinds of personalities, people who like change and difference and who are interested and intrigued by debate and who don't mind being in an environment

where people argue and don't get along. So I think it's, I think it's almost too hard to generalize me. There are, as I said, both in my book and in some of my recent articles, you can find examples of, you know, that whole wide range of people. Well, you have that amazing phrase. History will judge the complicit, but it doesn't seem like people care that much about how history will judge them.

No, I think that's probably true that they don't. And also people are always convinced that their version of history will win. And that looking, you know, and they, and they think that, you know, whatever, whatever minds that they have at the time, they think that's the one that's going to prevail. And they forget that, you know, things because, you know, the ideas are overturned and they change and they forget that, you know, things become, you know, the ideas are overturned and they change and they, and they go off in other directions. So, I, you know, it's a, it's a,

usually statesmen towards the ends of their lives begin to think about history and how history will see them. I would say it's probably pretty rare, though, for most of us to go through, you know, in the ordinary course of the day and worry about how history is gonna see us. So I think the inability to step back and look at, you know, take a long view of what you're doing is, I mean, that's just human. I mean, that's not just not how most of us think

most of the time. I had breakfast with a Republican Senator in the Senate dining room, maybe a few months after the election. Well, I guess I'm trying to mess up the timeline. But anyways, I was asking him sort of about this. Like, this is so, Trump's agenda in most cases is so opposed to the sort of Republican orthodoxy or what these people had talked about their whole career,

I sort of said, how's this working? And he sort of pointed to one person and he pointed to another person sort of, serotoniously across the room and said, you know, that person is now not gonna win reelection. You know, this person could have been the CIA director. And his point was that these people had sort of worked their whole careers

to get in line for a certain position or a certain advancement and to challenge it would obviously threaten that. But what seems so insane to me about it was we'd already had a pretty good track record of how people holding those positions in the administration had gone for them. It seems like the cognitive dissonance almost makes someone live in a false reality where you could have been a successful CIA director under an authoritarian leader. Why would you even want that position anymore given how it had gone for the, you know, the

process? Exactly. Yeah, now that's one of the great mysteries of the Trumpetism. It is increasingly clear that anybody who gets too close to him, it's almost like for the price of it. Exactly. Yeah, now that's one of the great mysteries of the trumpet is you're meeting. It is increasingly clear that anybody who gets too close to him, it's almost like an infection. I mean, they become somehow toxic and they find it very difficult to extract themselves

from so all kinds of honorable people, whether James Mattis or John Kelly, people who attempted to work with him and inside his administration found themselves badly tired afterwards, you know, kind of stained by him, by the compromises that they had to make, and then by the fact that he invariably attacks them if they say anything even lightly critical of him.

I mean, think about Rex Tillerson, who blundered his way into the job of being Secretary of State, having been an oil executive. And as the end of his career, and he probably saw this as some kind of moment capping his long series of triumphs as a businessman. And instead, he was insulted by the president. He was dragged through the mud.

And he'll be remembered as one of history's worst secretaries of state. And yet you're right. And yet people still want these jobs. And they still want to do them. I mean, there is one certain kind of job. I mean, there's sort of a few deputies. There are a few people in the state department.

There are a few people in some other parts of the government who I still think are probably there for good reasons who are trying to, you know, behind the scenes do something useful. But most of the people who've taken prominent, you know, forward, you know, kind of media looking forward looking jobs have been, have been stained. I mean, and will always be by the kinds of compromises they make by the idiotic things they've had to say, by the policies that we know they don't agree with that they've had to go along with. And yet, the desire for power and the desire for influence, and the belief that you can somehow do something that others were incapable of doing is very strong. So they go on imagining that by force of will, they're talented that they'll find a way,

and they'll find a way to rise above the nastiness of the administration and achieve something. And I suppose the lesson is that we also underestimate how attractive power is and how much people wanted, especially people who've been sitting around in the house or the Senate for many years, you know, hoping to find a way to make a mark and are suddenly given an opening.

It's very tempting to take it. Hey, it's Ryan, got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show, stay tuned. Yeah, that's sort of the Seneca argument, you know, of the, I'm going to be the adult in the room. I'm going to, or it's the, it's the, the person who falls for the, the abusive spouse over and over again, or the bad boy, I'm going to change them. There, it strikes me, there's an ego in that, sort of a savior complex that allows someone to rationalize doing a very selfish thing for seemingly altruistic reasons.

Well, one of the reasons I wrote that Atlantic cover story that you were referring to is that, these are the kinds of excuses that people make in authoritarian countries, or have done in the past. There's a long tradition of people rationalizing, whether it was working with the V.C. government or whether it was working with the government in communist Germany right after the war. There are rationales that have been used over and over again. And in a way, the shocking thing is hearing them in Washington.

I mean, they're expect that in Washington, D. DC, you would hear people using the same kind of language that people once used. And in much harsher and worse dictatorships, particularly in Washington, I mean, at the end of the day, if you said, no, I'm not going to support Donald Trump, you know, even if you did what Mitt Romney has done and distanced yourself and voted for impeachment and, you know, dared to stand up against him in public, and on Twitter, or whatever, what terrible price did he pay? I mean, it wasn't like he's been sent to the gulag

or he's lost. You know, his children have been arrested. I mean, none of that. I mean, it's true that he wasn't invited to CPAC, this conservative conference. And I, you know, which happened to be this year was, this version of it was one where everybody got COVID. And, you know, it's sometimes the president attacks him

on Twitter, but actually has anything that terrible happened. I mean, if you, you know, why aren't more people following that example? Is it so difficult? You know, again, in other kinds of regimes, I mean, you could have lost your life for a defying leader. And in Trump's Washington,

maybe you don't get a couple of party invitations. And maybe it worse comes to worse, you don't get reelected. But is that so terrible? Then that means you'll just have to take a million dollar consulting job or maybe you'll have to go and teach at the Kennedy School.

I mean, it's not like, you know, your whole family will be executed dawn. So the mystery in the Washington case is why more people haven't followed Mitt Romney. Well, and it's you might not be reelected in six years. That's what's so weird about the term limits on it. And so when I think about the sort of the rationalization, one of the ones I've heard, I had Congressman Mike Gallagher on the podcast and I had Congressman Dan Crenshaw more recently. But one of the things they tell themselves,

or I'd be curious your response to it, is this sort of, maybe they actually see themselves leading some minor resistance to Trump in certain cases. But then what they would immediately point to is the illiberal left, right? The worries of the illiberal left, which I agree exists and has issues, but there's this strange argument that the complicitness in one authoritarian sort of administration, again, within the context of the United States, is rationalized by because you're protecting us from college students who think sushi is racist. But this is, I mean, this is also very old. So why did people collaborate with Vichy France?

In fact, the leadership of Vichy France, why did they agree to collaborate with the Nazis? The reason was because the Nazis to them were preferable to the terrible French left, which they were- To the communist. To not even the communist, to the French socialists who'd run the country in the 1930s, and the, you know, and the, you know, and the, and the terrible degeneracy that they, that they saw there. So they justified, they

could justify working with, with fascists because, you know, because of that. I mean, the, one of that. I mean that one of things I have trouble and here I'm speaking to somebody I wrote three books about communist to tell a tyrannism. Okay. I you don't have to you don't have to tell me that there is a authoritarian streak on the left or that or that or that Marxism can can lead you in in very dangerous directions. I spent two decades- You're about to go along. Right, I wrote two decades writing about that.

But what is genuinely mystifying to me is we now have, is the difference between, so the left and the United States is a big problem on some, by the way, not all some university campuses. And even on those university campuses campuses not in all departments. It's not a problem in the biochemical engineering departments. It's a problem in the English department maybe. It's becoming a problem. It's some newspapers mostly in the center of the center left.

There's some cultural issues around, you know, nutty stuff that people on the left do or the rules that they want people to adhere to about how the right and wrong ways to speak about racism and so on. Okay. I can see that that's a problem. On the other hand, you know, you have a team of people in government and in power, you know, who are altering and changing American institutions day by day, who have eviscerated the State Department, who have eviscerated the Department of Justice, who are seeking to twist, to use the tools

of the American government, the money that's used to support for a military aid, for foreign military aid, for the personal, personal use of the president in his political campaign. So all of Washington, you know, all these institutions and organizations that were set up to serve the American people have been undermined, you know, by this, you know, this team of authoritarians, would be authoritarians, you know, in power in Washington. That seems to me off the scale more dangerous and more important than the authoritarian left, you know, at the moment. If the authoritarian left were to win and they were to take over

Washington and, you know, and and and do the same thing, then I would feel as worried. But, but to me, the the the thread is so disproportionately from the right that, then I would feel as worried. But to me, the threat is so disproportionately from the right that I am misdivide. And again, I speak as somebody who spent my pretty much my whole life writing about the extremes of communism and famines created by communist governments and so on. But this is disproportionate, you know, this problem on the right. And by the way, it's the same in most of Europe. You know, there was the exception of Greece.

We had a, there was a nutty left wing government in Greece, although in the end they, you know, in the end they also wound up being more moderate than their language was. But in, you know, in one European country, I have another with a couple, you know, very few exceptions. The threats to democracy are coming from the authoritarian right and from the language and tactics

being used by the authoritarian right. And I just don't, I don't even see that there's a comparable problem on the left in most countries. Yeah, it's, I'm just, I, I, I, I'm mystified by it, by this. I'm mystified by it too, you know, if it too. If the populists we saw in the United States were of the Trump variety, or I live in Texas, the sort of Papi-O-Dannules variety from the mid-1900s, or the Huey Long variety, you could almost get, or understand some of these ridiculous comparisons because they're not

coming from it. They are not as familiar as you are saying with your understanding of communism. But a lot of the people that are complicit that you're saying history would be judged by are not doing it from a place of ignorance either. I mean, these are people with degrees from Harvard or Yale or they've served in the military or they've like, what's so weird to me about it is, is the people you hear making these sort of absurd, preposterously, you know, preposterously inaccurate historical comparisons must know either they've managed to so fool themselves because, you know, you can't, you can't get a man to understand something that salary

depends on him not understanding, or they are doing this from a much more malevolent point of view because you can't possibly compare those two things. They are also looking at what kind of information they get and what they read all the time. If you watch Fox News all the time, then you probably will feel mostly afraid that America is about to be taken over by Antifa, socialist, radical revolutionaries. That's the real threat that faces us. They repeat it over and over again. They show images of violence constantly.

You see it if you are in a, if you, if you are on Facebook or on social media and those are the accounts that you follow, then you will see repeated images of violence, um, uh, you know, um, crazy protesters. And the fact that it's, you know, 150 people in Portland who are still holding out as rioters. Or it's a few people in various cities. You'll see that and you'll think that's the story of the country. And people seem to be, they buy that propaganda. They're surrounded by it, they read it, they see it.

And that's what they're afraid of. They're afraid of, and there maybe I should add, there may be another piece of this and this is a little bit, this is in my, in my recent book as well. You know, there are some people who are particularly susceptible to that kind of propaganda or that kind of those kinds of images. You know, there are people who are really bothered by scenes of violent protest and whose whose instincts when they see something like that is to kind of lock down, switch off and say, we need a crackdown. And the Trump administration is using that, knows that, and is using those images of kind of police cracking down on demonstrators in order to appeal to that kind of person.

And maybe they'll be successful, I don't know. So last question for you, and obviously, I as an author, I hate when the sort of the wrap up question is like, tell me what to do. But I'm curious like, as someone who lives, I know you live in Poland, how does an individual person, I guess this is something I struggle with, how does an individual person, a citizen, not a person in a position of power?

How do we know what to do? When do you flee, when do you leave, when do you take to the streets? I think that's what's been so hard for me to wrap my head around and I think it leads to this sort of stoic question of, you know, is it something you control? Is it not something you control? When do you fight? Like, how do you know when this is like really early

and someone else will take care of it? And how do you know when it's like put everything in suitcases and, you know, head to a safe place? Like that, I think people's inability to calibrate where we are in the crisis has caused a lot of the inertia and apathy and enabled some of this. Well, it's also, you know,

there's the strange problem in the United States of Washington, we're such a big country, you know, Washington is far away and in fact, quite a decentralized country. So, you know, Washington is far away. And in fact, quite a decentralized country. So, you know, many, you know, it's going to look different in the United States than it does in a smaller country like Poland, where the central government has a lot of power

and you can feel right away when there's a, when something has changed. I mean, I would say that for, for individuals, the best thing to do is to, is to remember that, you remember that democracy is not like running water, that you can just expect it to keep coming out of the tap. And you don't, you know, that it will just happen and you don't have to do anything about it. And that we are getting to, you know, the events of recent months should be a reminder that everybody should be involved at some level. You don't have to join a political party if you don't want to, you don't have to run for office if you don't want to, although it would be useful if good people would run for office, even at the lowest possible levels,

whatever, school board, local government. But being involved in civic organizations, being involved in charities, volunteering, giving money, giving time if you can, seeking to make sure that you're connected to your community and that you are thinking about the, you know, just even just thinking about the local politics of your town or your city or your neighborhood and how you can contribute to that. I think, I think that's a, you know, that's something that everybody can do. And that kind of involvement is really, that's the sort of, the very basic building blocks of democracy are, you know, the people and the civic organizations of democracy or the people and the civic organizations who make it function at the lowest possible levels. And anything you can do to be involved in that, I think, is useful and also it will connect

you to people who you don't normally meet. And so you're not fleeing Poland yet? I'm not fleeing Poland yet. No, no, no. In fact, when the coronavirus start pandemic began, we had a dramatic scene where my family, I was in London and my children were studying abroad. And there was a dramatic moment when we all had to get to Poland

before the border shut, which we did in March. One of my sons very dramatically landed in Germany when the border was already closed and he had to walk to the cross the border with his luggage. I mean, you know, and of course it was very funny because it was the reverse of 1939 when everybody had to get out of Poland, you know, before we were closed.

So no, we're not leaving yet and we're, you know, we try to be useful here in any way that we can. Well, thank you so much. I love your stuff and you're writing both inspires and horrifies me. So thanks for what you do. Well, thanks for the interview. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps.

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