Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course, Trump versus Democracy. Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: speeches of late are chock full of warnings about the
Speaker 1: threat from within posed by his myriad opponents, those he
Speaker 1: decries as vermin how to destroy the US and the
Speaker 1: American dream. He routinely promises to crush his critics and
Speaker 1: make America great again. As always with Trump, there's a
Speaker 1: method to his madness. A history that looks back to
Speaker 1: a mythologized past as the country's perfect time is a
Speaker 1: key tool of authoritarians, notes historian Heathercox Richardson in her
Speaker 1: new book Democracy Awakening. It allows them to characterize anyone
Speaker 1: who opposes them as an enemy of the country's great destiny.
Speaker 1: Richardson is a professor at Boston College specializing in the
Speaker 1: Civil War era, and she's the author of a popular newsletter,
Speaker 1: Letters from an American, which closely monitors and ponders Trump's
Speaker 1: intersection with US politics. Like all forms of authoritarianism, she argues,
Speaker 1: trump Ism clause at American democracy's true roots, at what
Speaker 1: she describes as the idea that a nation can be
Speaker 1: based not in land or religion, or race or hierarchies,
Speaker 1: but rather in the concept of human equality. Richardson joins
Speaker 1: Crash Course today to discuss the lessons from her new book,
Speaker 1: Democracy Awakening, which already sits happily and handily as top
Speaker 1: bestseller lists. Welcome to the show, Heather.
Speaker 2: It's such a pleasure to be here, Tim.
Speaker 1: I'm just very stoked that you're with us today. We've
Speaker 1: got so much to talk about, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that we can contain it in this little narrow package
Speaker 1: we have, but let's give it a shot. Tell me
Speaker 1: why this book? What was the germinating kind of motive
Speaker 1: behind this one?
Speaker 2: This book was intended to be a series of short
Speaker 2: essays that explained all the questions that people ask me
Speaker 2: every single day, like how did the parties switch sides?
Speaker 2: And you know, what was the Southern strategy? But I
Speaker 2: realized pretty early on that the question people ask me
Speaker 2: most is how did we get here? What on earth
Speaker 2: is going on? And how do we get out of it?
Speaker 2: So quickly it became thirty short chapters that take us
Speaker 2: from how we got to this particular moment in the
Speaker 2: Republican Party that gave us Donald Trump, and how Donald
Speaker 2: Trump took that moment and turned it into an authoritarian movement,
Speaker 2: and then finally how we get out and it actually
Speaker 2: grew quite a bit from what I initially had intended
Speaker 2: it to be.
Speaker 1: And what do you think a historian brings to the
Speaker 1: table that other analysts don't when taking on a project,
Speaker 1: and the kind of questions you just brought up.
Speaker 2: That's a really important question because a lot of people
Speaker 2: make the mistake of thinking that I am a journalist
Speaker 2: and I am not. I'm trained very differently than journalists are.
Speaker 2: What historians do is we try to explain how societies change.
Speaker 2: So we become very well verse in looking at actual
Speaker 2: facts on the ground, looking at documents, looking at speeches,
Speaker 2: looking at events, at things that happen and how they happen.
Speaker 2: But crucially, although there's overlap there between historians and journalists,
Speaker 2: what historians then go on to do is look at
Speaker 2: the patterns try and say this is what is happening
Speaker 2: and how it is changing society. So in this particular moment,
Speaker 2: there's so much coming at us all the time, which
Speaker 2: by the way, is partly by design from people who
Speaker 2: are trying to undermine our democracy. But there's so much
Speaker 2: coming at us all the time that it's somebody like
Speaker 2: me who can say, you need to pay attention to this,
Speaker 2: maybe not so much to this, because these things show
Speaker 2: patterns and they show how society is changing. That other
Speaker 2: stuff is just noise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned that magic word patterns. I often think
Speaker 1: that pattern recognition is one of the highest forms of insight,
Speaker 1: whether it's in the arts or in history or in journalism.
Speaker 1: That you know, weaving together connected events to them into
Speaker 1: an understandable whole for your readers or your audience or whoever,
Speaker 1: is a huge public service. It's I think an animating
Speaker 1: force in your newsletter for sure, and it's certainly very
Speaker 1: vibrant in this wonderful book that you've written.
Speaker 2: Well, you can find patterns that are false. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that historians will do, is
Speaker 2: we are not q you know, we are actually looking
Speaker 2: for patterns that have establishment in history and that have
Speaker 2: shown us how they play out. And that's an important
Speaker 2: distinction as well.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that a little bit in the
Speaker 1: context of this book, because I find it very important
Speaker 1: and it's fascinating. I think one of the things in
Speaker 1: your work, at least from my standpoint, is the development
Speaker 1: and evolution of Republican ideology. And there's a sort of
Speaker 1: classic Lincoln era republican ideology which is very different from
Speaker 1: republicanism today. But in your book, I think, as a
Speaker 1: departure point, you begin with the New Deal in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, this federal response to horrors in the downturn
Speaker 1: of a massive economic dislocation, and the very fact of
Speaker 1: how the Roosevelt administration responded to that crisis raised a
Speaker 1: number of threats to conservatives around how they believe the
Speaker 1: world should work and what was happening to the world
Speaker 1: they inhabited. That it set in motion a series of
Speaker 1: responses that have led to where we are right now,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you could kind of delineate
Speaker 1: some of those for us.
Speaker 2: Sure, But first let's start with the idea that the
Speaker 2: word conservative was picked up very deliberately in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: seven by those people who opposed the New Deal. They
Speaker 2: weren't embracing conservative ideology, they were using that term politically,
Speaker 2: and let me explain what I mean by that. So,
Speaker 2: the reason that the book starts in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 2: Is because after FDR I reelection in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: a lot of the people who really opposed what he
Speaker 2: was doing thought that he was going to flame out,
Speaker 2: that in fact, he was an aberration, and as soon
Speaker 2: as he was thrown out of office in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: we would go back to the kind of government that
Speaker 2: we had had in the nineteen twenties, which is the
Speaker 2: one that they liked. FDR when he took office, began
Speaker 2: to use the government in an entirely new way, doing
Speaker 2: what he called offering a New Deal to the American people.
Speaker 2: That's how it gets the name it has. And that
Speaker 2: New Deal was a government that worked for the people,
Speaker 2: and it did so by regulating business, providing a basic
Speaker 2: social safety net like social security, for example. That's when
Speaker 2: that gets instituted, promoting infrastructures, so the Tennessee Valley Authority,
Speaker 2: for example, which brings electricity, among other things, to regions
Speaker 2: that had not previously had it, and that works on
Speaker 2: our roads, and that works on our public installations like
Speaker 2: post offices and customs houses and hospitals and railroads and schools.
Speaker 2: That was all part of the New Deal. And finally
Speaker 2: the New Deal began to protect civil rights in the States,
Speaker 2: not anywhere nearly as fully as it would beginning in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties, but all of those aspects of government
Speaker 2: are new to the New Deal. A number of people
Speaker 2: look at that new government and they consider it anathema.
Speaker 2: They want to go back to the nineteen twenties. And
Speaker 2: those people are led both by Republicans who don't want
Speaker 2: business regulation because they insist that that takes a man's
Speaker 2: property and interferes with his ability to run his affairs
Speaker 2: as he wishes, and Southern Democrats who are virulently racist
Speaker 2: and want to maintain their Jim Crow systems in the
Speaker 2: American South. So those two groups come together in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty seven and they put together a document that they
Speaker 2: call the Conservative Manifesto, and it says that the government
Speaker 2: should not regulate business for the reasons I just said.
Speaker 2: It should not provide a basic social safety net because
Speaker 2: that belongs to the churches. It should not promote infrastructure
Speaker 2: because that should be done by private enterprise, which can
Speaker 2: then pocket the profits. And it certainly should not interfere
Speaker 2: with civil rights. It calls for something called home rule,
Speaker 2: which means that Southern states get to keep whatever racial
Speaker 2: codes that they have. The Conservative Manifesto disappears really quickly
Speaker 2: for a number of reasons, but it gets reprinted in
Speaker 2: Chamber of Commerce newspapers and newspapers around the country, and
Speaker 2: that set of principles becomes the centerpiece of a faction
Speaker 2: of the Republican Party that becomes known as movement Conservatives.
Speaker 2: And that's why I just drew the distinction about the
Speaker 2: word conservative, because they are not embracing the ideals of
Speaker 2: conservatism so much as they are a political movement. And
Speaker 2: that political movement gradually comes to take over the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: And we could walk through all the pieces of that
Speaker 2: if you would like, But what it means is that
Speaker 2: it begins to assault this idea that is shared by
Speaker 2: both Republicans and Democrats after World War Two, that the
Speaker 2: government should do all the things that FDR and later
Speaker 2: Truman and Eisenhower begin to use it to do. Americans
Speaker 2: like that, They've always liked that. But the movement conservatives.
Speaker 1: Just interrupt you for just a second, right there. You know,
Speaker 1: when you were talking about the development of the Conservative
Speaker 1: Manifesto and the response to the New Deal, I recently
Speaker 1: finished David Nassau's biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, and Kennedy
Speaker 1: was essentially co opted by FDR to be an ambassador
Speaker 1: to that very community. Kennedy was one of the few
Speaker 1: sort of titans of business at the time who said,
Speaker 1: you know, the world has changed. I consider myself a conservative,
Speaker 1: but I also know now there's going to be a
Speaker 1: permanent role for government in the life of the country
Speaker 1: in a way that had existed before. And I'm ready
Speaker 1: to sort of advocate for that. But most of the
Speaker 1: business class he came out of, and certainly most of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party where he had one foot in, didn't
Speaker 1: agree with him at all around that. And that sort
Speaker 1: of tension that began in that period that you've identified
Speaker 1: really then gets to be this war over whether or
Speaker 1: not the government itself is a valuable presence in American
Speaker 1: life becomes this political football in the year that you
Speaker 1: were about to talk about.
Speaker 2: Well, and I'm happy to talk about them, but this
Speaker 2: is a really interesting rabbit hole that you just opened up,
Speaker 2: and that is that it is no accident that it
Speaker 2: comes from somebody like Kennedy, because a lot of the
Speaker 2: ideas behind the New Deal come from the Democratic Party. Obviously,
Speaker 2: that has its roots in the urban areas in the East,
Speaker 2: especially in places like New York, where local governments had
Speaker 2: in fact been taking on these roles since the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 2: And in many ways you can look at the New
Speaker 2: Deal as the application of those lessons from the Gilded
Speaker 2: Age in the cities to the national government. So having
Speaker 2: somebody like Kennedy in there, who knew, of course, the
Speaker 2: histories of those urban areas, had lived in those cities,
Speaker 2: is a really nice bridge between that old urban machine
Speaker 2: and the idea of bringing that kind of a government
Speaker 2: to the national level.
Speaker 1: So let me get you back on track again, since
Speaker 1: I bought you to the Kennedy rabbit hole. You know,
Speaker 1: we have this post World War two consensus, as you
Speaker 1: noted that both the New Deal and World War two
Speaker 1: spending had created an economy and a high tide that
Speaker 1: lifted many boats, and there was more or less a
Speaker 1: consensus that that kind of an economy created a broad
Speaker 1: middle class and was good for a broad swath of
Speaker 1: Americans who had access to the economy. But that didn't
Speaker 1: really survive the post World War two years intact, did it.
Speaker 2: It didn't, and it didn't because of the May nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four Brown Versus Board of Education decision, by which
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court began to defend civil rights in the States.
Speaker 2: It said that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. And
Speaker 2: with that, the next year you get the establishment of
Speaker 2: the National Review under William F. Buckley Junior, in which
Speaker 2: he vows to tell, as he says, the violated businessman's
Speaker 2: side of the story. But immediately he begins to make
Speaker 2: the argument and his writers begin to make the argument
Speaker 2: that all along, while people had liked this large federal
Speaker 2: government that was protecting their economic rights, that what was
Speaker 2: really going to happen was you would start to see
Speaker 2: the redistribution of wealth from white taxpayers people of wealth
Speaker 2: to undeserving black Americans. And this was a trope right
Speaker 2: out of Reconstruction, and it's one that they deploy really
Speaker 2: effectively from nineteen fifty five on that In nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 2: of course, Eisenhower is going to send the troops to
Speaker 2: Little Rock to integrate Little Rock Central High School. That
Speaker 2: simply adds gasoline too the fire. By nineteen sixty you
Speaker 2: have the rise of somebody like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater,
Speaker 2: who argues that he will take the government back to
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties. Sixty four, he becomes the Republican candidate
Speaker 2: for president and picks up in that election his home
Speaker 2: state of Arizona and the five deep Southern states that
Speaker 2: want to maintain segregation. By sixty eight, Nixon's going to
Speaker 2: have to make a decision about whether or not he's
Speaker 2: going to go down that same route or try to
Speaker 2: pick up the new black voters who have been empowered
Speaker 2: by the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. He
Speaker 2: doubles down on the Southern strategy, telling strom Thurmond of
Speaker 2: South Carolina, for example, that he would not use the
Speaker 2: federal government to enforce desegregation. And that line keeps on going.
Speaker 2: You see Reagan picking it up with the Welfare Queen
Speaker 2: and giving one of his important speeches in Philadelphia, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: where three civil rights workers were murdered very famously in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four. And that thread that a government that
Speaker 2: works for all the American people is simply redistributing wealth
Speaker 2: from white people to black people, is a form of socialism,
Speaker 2: which you are still hearing today from the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: becomes more and more and more central to that party's
Speaker 2: message and becomes more and more and more exaggerated.
Speaker 1: It also, you know, the idea that states' rights are
Speaker 1: getting trampled at the expense of a muscular and overweening
Speaker 1: federal government is part of this as well, and it
Speaker 1: informs the federal ear of society. It informs this legal
Speaker 1: push into creating a bulwark around the notion of states
Speaker 1: rights and any other right that gets federalized, whether it's
Speaker 1: access to reproductive rights, it's access to voting, etc. Et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, amounts to a trampling of states rights. So
Speaker 1: in addition to everything that you've just charted here on
Speaker 1: the political and socioeconomic side of the ledger, you get
Speaker 1: this very powerful push on the legal side as well
Speaker 1: to enshrine state rights as an argument against federalism.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, and that's precisely what they are doing. They
Speaker 2: begin to argue that these Supreme Court decisions, which by
Speaker 2: the way of course, are decided under a Republican Chief
Speaker 2: Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren had been a
Speaker 2: Republican governor of California, and they are unanimous decisions. Sings
Speaker 2: like Brown versus Board is a unanimous decision. But those
Speaker 2: decisions of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, those opponents of
Speaker 2: those decisions begin to argue that this is judicial activism,
Speaker 2: that is, judges are deciding something on which voters never agreed,
Speaker 2: and so they begin to defend states' rights on the
Speaker 2: idea that this is a way to return power to
Speaker 2: the people. But of course there is within that a
Speaker 2: poison pill, and that is that states also decide who
Speaker 2: gets to vote. So by throwing everything back to the states,
Speaker 2: you're throwing them to a body that gets to decide
Speaker 2: who gets to vote in those states. And this was
Speaker 2: always the problem with the concept of states rights, that
Speaker 2: until you protect universal voting in the states very quickly,
Speaker 2: what you see in the states is a few people
Speaker 2: manipulating who gets to vote in those states and therefore
Speaker 2: determining their outcome. And the very concept of states rights,
Speaker 2: when Andrew Jackson first really began to embrace it ideologically
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen twenties, was tied up in this idea,
Speaker 2: and in the nineteenth century, that idea of states rights
Speaker 2: actually gets to the point that you have people arguing
Speaker 2: that the whole idea of a human enslavement is actually
Speaker 2: pro democracy because voters in states have decided to enslave
Speaker 2: their neighbors, and because they have decided to do that,
Speaker 2: it's just fine. And you see that right throughout the
Speaker 2: late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: As long as the state wants to do it and
Speaker 1: it's residents vote for it, even if those districts sort
Speaker 1: of been jerrymandered, it's okay. You can do anything you
Speaker 1: want under the umbrella of states rights. And we're living
Speaker 1: with that now. We'll explore some of that as we
Speaker 1: go forward. All of these concepts that you and I
Speaker 1: are talking about, politicians and people on the ground, over
Speaker 1: time became more and more adept at exploiting them. You
Speaker 1: began with Barry Goldwater. You mentioned Richard Nixon. You get
Speaker 1: to Ronald Reagan. You get from Ronald Reagan, I think,
Speaker 1: to Nuton Gingrich. You get from Nuton Gingrich to Sarah Palin.
Speaker 1: You get from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump. And Trump
Speaker 1: is sort of the apotheosis of all of this, because
Speaker 1: I don't think he's probably ever read a single book
Speaker 1: of history. He certainly hasn't read yours, But in his
Speaker 1: sort of reptilian brain, he does have this street smart
Speaker 1: apprehension about what moves people emotionally. He's got a salesman's
Speaker 1: understanding of how to pluck at people's heartstrings around certain
Speaker 1: issues and certainly around the issues that divide them. And
Speaker 1: that's what I want to get into as we continue
Speaker 1: this conversation after the break, Heather, We're back with historian
Speaker 1: Heather Cox Richardson, and we're exploring creeping authoritarianism in American
Speaker 1: life and politics. So, whether we've been discussing the roots
Speaker 1: of our current wrestling match with authoritarianism personified by Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: I probably gave short shrift to all of that. I
Speaker 1: think your book gives anybody who's got the time to
Speaker 1: read Democracy Awakening, you can explore that at greater length.
Speaker 1: Do you want to bring us up to the president?
Speaker 1: Because Trump is such a litmus test and sort of
Speaker 1: the approve I think of the dangerous outcomes that come
Speaker 1: from a lot of the things we've been exploring, and
Speaker 1: you bookend, I guess I'll refer to it as round
Speaker 1: one of the Trump era. Because Trump has had one
Speaker 1: tour through the White House, he's positioned, it would seem,
Speaker 1: at the time of this podcast to be setting himself
Speaker 1: up possibly for a second tour, so you sort of
Speaker 1: bookend round one of the Trump era with his election
Speaker 1: as president November twenty sixteen, and then the insurrection he
Speaker 1: fomented at the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: I think it's obvious why you chose those two things.
Speaker 1: They're vibrant and useful and disturbing. But talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about how you, as a historian, think
Speaker 1: about both of those events.
Speaker 2: Well, let's start with something you just said, and that's
Speaker 2: that Trump is a salesman. And I think it's important
Speaker 2: to recognize that we would not have Donald Trump had
Speaker 2: we not had the previous forty years of Republican leaders
Speaker 2: dividing the nation into quite deliberately and convincing their voters
Speaker 2: that those people who did not vote for a Republican
Speaker 2: not necessarily just Democrats, but those other parties who didn't
Speaker 2: vote for a Republican were people who were trying to
Speaker 2: replace American capitalism with socialism. They demonized these people as
Speaker 2: being increasingly anti American. And what Trump did was he
Speaker 2: held up a mirror to those people and said, listen,
Speaker 2: I can fix the economic stuff that you don't like.
Speaker 2: People forget in twenty sixteen, he was the most moderate
Speaker 2: Republican in terms of economics on the debate stages. You know,
Speaker 2: he called for fixing tax loopholes, he called for better
Speaker 2: and cheaper healthcare, he called for infrastructure, he called for
Speaker 2: bringing back manufacturing. But he also promised that he would
Speaker 2: actually hurt those people that the Republican Party had so
Speaker 2: demonized with his sexism and his racism and his an
Speaker 2: attacks on a disabled reporter, and all of the ways
Speaker 2: in which he seemed to body the idea of getting
Speaker 2: rid of those bad people. So his election, I think
Speaker 2: was a picture of a certain part of the American
Speaker 2: population in that moment in twenty sixteen. And I also
Speaker 2: obviously talk about the disinformation campaign that really helped him,
Speaker 2: and the different pieces of that election that were unusual
Speaker 2: because there was an attempt to disrupt American democracy from
Speaker 2: places like Russia, for example. But what Trump does that
Speaker 2: is so important is he takes that disaffected population and
Speaker 2: he turns him into a movement. And that welding of
Speaker 2: those people into a movement are what gives us that
Speaker 2: moment in twenty twenty one where his followers are willing
Speaker 2: to destroy America. In order to recreate their own version
Speaker 2: of a new kind of America in which they are
Speaker 2: better than everybody else.
Speaker 1: It's deeply seated cult of personality. Essentially, you start with
Speaker 1: people sort of throwing their vote to Donald Trump. You
Speaker 1: end with people being willing to do whatever he tells
Speaker 1: them to do because they think, in a world full
Speaker 1: of mixed messages on social media and countervailing facts, that
Speaker 1: he's a lens for both authenticity and value, and therefore
Speaker 1: if he tells them to march, they'll march.
Speaker 2: Yes. But this is a place where historians are helpful
Speaker 2: historians and scholars of totalitarianism or authoritarianism, because there's a
Speaker 2: really central question there. How do people go from oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll cast a vote for this guy to yes, I
Speaker 2: will follow him to the point that I'm going to
Speaker 2: end up either dead or in prison for very long
Speaker 2: periods of time. And his scholars began to study that
Speaker 2: after World War II, and people like Hannah arent who
Speaker 2: was a great theorist of totalitarianism, or Eric Hoffer, who
Speaker 2: was a long shoreman in San Francisco, had a great
Speaker 2: insight into what makes people follow an authoritarian and those
Speaker 2: two ideas put together, I think tell us a lot
Speaker 2: about Donald Trump's following. So, first of all, in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he
Speaker 2: does something very important and just by the way it
Speaker 2: changes the way he approaches the presidency. Although I don't
Speaker 2: really talk a lot about that in the book, but
Speaker 2: he gives authority to those militia movements, those far right movements,
Speaker 2: those fringe movements that have been percolating through American society
Speaker 2: really since at least the nineteen nineties, at least in
Speaker 2: the Clinton administration and even before that. He says to them,
Speaker 2: you are good people. You don't have to live on
Speaker 2: the fringes any longer. And that matters because one of
Speaker 2: the ways that you create a movement out of those
Speaker 2: disparate fringe elements is by making them feel like they
Speaker 2: are a team and that they are working with each
Speaker 2: other to fight back against something. Once they have that
Speaker 2: sense of unity, you can convince them to follow an
Speaker 2: ideology that they were not necessarily that involved with to
Speaker 2: begin with. They might have just been there with their
Speaker 2: friends to throw some punches. By the time that they
Speaker 2: are coming out of something like the Unite the right rally, though,
Speaker 2: which is obviously more than throwing punches. But the idea
Speaker 2: is the same. The ones they have come out of that,
Speaker 2: they are very susceptible to a strong man taking them
Speaker 2: to yet more extreme levels going forward from that. So
Speaker 2: once they've done that, once they have started to go
Speaker 2: down a violent path, a path in which they are
Speaker 2: fighting people that they believe to be their enemies, there's
Speaker 2: something interesting paradoxical that happens. And Eric Hoffer points to
Speaker 2: this in his nineteen fifty one book True Believers. The
Speaker 2: worse the leader behaves, the tighter they cling to him,
Speaker 2: because they have become psychologically committed to the idea that
Speaker 2: their enemies deserve to be treated badly. If they break
Speaker 2: away from that, they have to admit that they were
Speaker 2: the ones who were in the wrong, They were the
Speaker 2: ones who deserved to be treated badly, and that's a
Speaker 2: psychological leap that very few people can do. So Paradoxically,
Speaker 2: once a strong man has them on the hook, the
Speaker 2: worse he behaves, the more tightly they cling to him.
Speaker 2: And my great example of this, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: people can see it certainly with Donald Trump, but also
Speaker 2: with other authoritarian leaders in the past. You know, you
Speaker 2: think people in twenty fifteen who followed Trump could not
Speaker 2: imagine themselves now following somebody who calls his opponents vermin
Speaker 2: and needs to get rid of them. You can see
Speaker 2: how that transgression happened in our society. But lots of
Speaker 2: people have read the Harry Potter books and Narcissa in
Speaker 2: that is a classic example of somebody who follows Voldemort
Speaker 2: no matter how badly he treats her, her compatriots, and
Speaker 2: her family, because she is so psychologically committed to him.
Speaker 2: And I think that comparison is a good one. If
Speaker 2: you can't see what's happening to you in the United States,
Speaker 2: to see it in this fictional world, because that's exactly
Speaker 2: what Eric Hoffer described.
Speaker 1: You know. Another dynamic in this is that I think
Speaker 1: that Trump learned his authoritarianism on the job. He was
Speaker 1: certainly prepped to sort of glide into this moment. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think he always wants to please who's
Speaker 1: ever in front of him. He rode tests messages, and
Speaker 1: then as he gets amplified responses, he doubles down on
Speaker 1: those because he doesn't really care intellectually about the content
Speaker 1: of the messages and He certainly doesn't care from a
Speaker 1: public service standpoint, you know, whether or not he's delivering
Speaker 1: effective policy or solutions to his voters. But he does
Speaker 1: care about an emotional connection. He loves being affirmed. He
Speaker 1: loves seeing people believe that he's affirming them. And I
Speaker 1: think throughout his presidency he kept finding these moments where
Speaker 1: he could pull more and more people in with increasingly
Speaker 1: divisive and ugly messaging. And you know, like when you
Speaker 1: mentioned him cultivating these small militia groups, I think they
Speaker 1: began showing up at his rallies. I don't think he
Speaker 1: really had knowledge and advance in the early stages of
Speaker 1: his presidency that these crews would be rolling into his rallies,
Speaker 1: But they showed up. He realized they were responding to
Speaker 1: something that he was saying, and then he doubled down
Speaker 1: again on that message. And what he was doubling down
Speaker 1: on is someone's trying to steal your candy. That may
Speaker 1: be a brown person from Mexico, it may be an
Speaker 1: ambitious woman, it may be the Chinese. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there who are trying to
Speaker 1: take things from you. And I'm going to be your defender.
Speaker 1: I'm going to stand in the way of that. And
Speaker 1: that's essentially the sort of scene quann of who Trump is.
Speaker 1: And I think he has learned as authoritarianism on the job,
Speaker 1: though he was certainly also I think morally and intellectually
Speaker 1: craven enough to just enjoy embracing that. But that brings
Speaker 1: me to a question I want to ask you about,
Speaker 1: which is why Trump. You know, we've traced this line
Speaker 1: of Goldwater forward, but I don't think Richard Nixon or
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan would have been so deeply anti institutional and
Speaker 1: so deeply unmoored as to deploy a lot of the
Speaker 1: things Donald Trump has to just sort of wallow in
Speaker 1: division and hatred, to have a willy nilly approach to
Speaker 1: anti institutionalism, to publicly inveigh in such extreme and dangerous
Speaker 1: ways against the rule of law and sitting judges and
Speaker 1: anyone really who opposes him. You may disagree with me
Speaker 1: about that, but I did want to use that as
Speaker 1: a departure point for sort of exploring why Trump and
Speaker 1: why now?
Speaker 2: So one of the words you didn't use when you
Speaker 2: were describing Trump was the word power. That everything is designed,
Speaker 2: of course for him to get approval, but also power,
Speaker 2: and I think the anti institutionalism you point to is
Speaker 2: crucially important, but it speaks to authoritarians, and it certainly
Speaker 2: speaks to his quest for power, and that is that
Speaker 2: one of the key ways in which an authoritarian works
Speaker 2: is by cultivating those people who would not have power,
Speaker 2: who would not be able to to enter an administration
Speaker 2: for example, that required actual ability, that required you know,
Speaker 2: lots of hard work. And the degree to which he
Speaker 2: and his people are anti institutionalists, I think is in
Speaker 2: part because they are not capable of running the institutions.
Speaker 2: So the way that they're trying to garner power is
Speaker 2: to say that they are going to tear down those institutions.
Speaker 2: And for comparison, for example, think about the people that
Speaker 2: President Joe Biden has put into office. They have resumes
Speaker 2: as long as your arm, and some of them, Gina Ramando,
Speaker 2: for example, at Commerce. You look at her CV and
Speaker 2: you think she must be one hundred years old because
Speaker 2: she has so many degrees and so many really high
Speaker 2: plaudits for how much work she has done and how
Speaker 2: good she is at it. And you compare that with
Speaker 2: somebody like Chad Wolf that Trump had illegally in as
Speaker 2: an acting Homeland Security secretary, you know he had no
Speaker 2: qualifications at all, or Johnny mcintee for exatra.
Speaker 1: Jared and Ivanka, the veterans of public policy and government
Speaker 1: service exactly.
Speaker 2: So, if you are not able to join a merit
Speaker 2: based system, you, I think default to this idea that
Speaker 2: you have something in you by virtue of being anointed
Speaker 2: in some fashion by someone to do it without that
Speaker 2: kind of support, institutional and intellectual support to do that.
Speaker 2: And you see that, I think with a response to
Speaker 2: the coronavirus crisis, where you know, Jared Kushner gets put
Speaker 2: in charge and he goes out and he says, you know,
Speaker 2: we know the best people. We're going to take care
Speaker 2: of this without working through the systems. But then of
Speaker 2: course it ended up completely being a mess because they
Speaker 2: didn't understand the different requirements for the hospitals, they didn't
Speaker 2: understand supply chains, they didn't understand any kind of systems
Speaker 2: of delivery. The whole thing just blows up in their faces.
Speaker 2: And what they end up saying is, well, it's not
Speaker 2: our fault that this happened. It's the deep state. And
Speaker 2: that I think you're seeing again now as we're hearing
Speaker 2: about ideas for a second Trump presidency, in which they
Speaker 2: are already talking about finding people who pass loyalty tests
Speaker 2: rather than necessarily passing any tests of ability. And to
Speaker 2: the degree that the Trump administration was just a complete
Speaker 2: mess in terms of getting anything done, it's worth remembering
Speaker 2: that that was when there were still people around him
Speaker 2: who did know the ropes, who did understand the law,
Speaker 2: and those will be gone if there is a second
Speaker 2: Trump term.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you reminded me that I had left
Speaker 1: power out of the conversation, because I think one of
Speaker 1: the truths of the Donald Trump moment is that trump
Speaker 1: Ism will survive him whether or not he gets into
Speaker 1: the White House again, because he's demonstrated to members of
Speaker 1: his party and fellow travelers that trump Ism is an
Speaker 1: effective path to power. It is a convenient and efficient
Speaker 1: way to sort of grab power by the throat in
Speaker 1: the US. And I think that's why Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the Trump team's sort of playbook for what they would
Speaker 1: institute an American life if Trump gets into office again,
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be just a Trump document. It's
Speaker 1: a trump Ism. It's a form of trump Ism distilled,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering what kind of longevity you think
Speaker 1: trump Ism is going to have.
Speaker 2: Well, you've identified something that is definitely out there and
Speaker 2: to be concerned about. But I'm going to suggest something different.
Speaker 2: I find this concept really intellectually interesting. That is, we
Speaker 2: got Trump in large part because of a political theory
Speaker 2: called virtual politics or political technology, and the idea was
Speaker 2: that you could destroy democracies not with heavy handed tactics,
Speaker 2: by limiting anything that people can see in the media,
Speaker 2: or by overt violence, but rather by creating an information
Speaker 2: sphere in which people were being fed disinformation, which is
Speaker 2: different than misinformation. Misinformation is when I make a mistake
Speaker 2: and correct myself. Disinformation is when I am deliberately lying
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Gaslighting is what we call it now. You get it
Speaker 2: by throwing so much stuff at people that they become
Speaker 2: apathetic and they figure they can't understand what's happening, so
Speaker 2: it's fine for a strong man to take over. You
Speaker 2: get it by running false candidates who either switch parties
Speaker 2: after they're elected, or have names similar to an opponent
Speaker 2: on a ballot, so that the opponent's votes get split
Speaker 2: between the real candidate and the false candidate. You get
Speaker 2: it in all of these ways, and we know it works.
Speaker 2: You can see it worked in places like Victor Orbon's Hungary,
Speaker 2: which was a democracy and now is coming together as
Speaker 2: an autocracy under Victor Orbon. You saw it where it
Speaker 2: was first really articulated, not necessarily conceived, but articulated in
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin's Russia, which destroyed the concept of democracy for
Speaker 2: the post Soviet republics, and now, of course is very
Speaker 2: much strong man rule, and certainly that was the intent
Speaker 2: here in the United States. In fact, some of the
Speaker 2: characters are the same in the places that I've just
Speaker 2: talked about. But what's interesting to me about that is
Speaker 2: we know how it works, but we are just now
Speaker 2: learning what happens when it doesn't manage entirely to destroy
Speaker 2: that democracy. That is what happens when people wake up
Speaker 2: and say, hey, wait a minute, I am being manipulated here.
Speaker 2: And what it seems to me we are saying is
Speaker 2: that people take a number of different routes, and they
Speaker 2: can take a number of roots. First of all, you
Speaker 2: have people who are previously apathetic that were energized by
Speaker 2: somebody like Trump probably dropping back and saying, ah, they're
Speaker 2: all corrupt, I'm not going to play any longer. So
Speaker 2: you get some people who are apathetic. You also get
Speaker 2: some people who just don't care. They're going to burn
Speaker 2: it all down because they can't admit they were wrong.
Speaker 2: And I think we're seeing that as well with Trump.
Speaker 2: But then there's another group, and they're the ones that
Speaker 2: interests me and I think we are seeing nowadays in
Speaker 2: the United States, and those are the people who say
Speaker 2: not on my watch. I've watched people manipulate us to
Speaker 2: give up our democracy, and I'm going to use those
Speaker 2: same tools that they used, social media, making sure that
Speaker 2: we have accurate information, mobilizing voters, telling stories that people
Speaker 2: can get behind but that are based in truth. I'm
Speaker 2: going to use those same tools to take democracy back.
Speaker 2: And that I think is just as real an option
Speaker 2: as the idea that we're going to be living with
Speaker 2: the poison of Donald Trump and his movement for our
Speaker 2: lifetimes anyway, because we can see it in things like
Speaker 2: the overturning of Father Coughlin in the nineteen thirties, who
Speaker 2: tried to put together an anti Semitic, far right Christian
Speaker 2: organization to take over American government, or Huey Long or
Speaker 2: some of the other.
Speaker 1: Authoritarians Joe McCarthy.
Speaker 2: Joe McCarthy, some of the other budding authoritarians who got
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful until they weren't anymore. And I think that's
Speaker 2: as possible as what you are describing.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that thought after we
Speaker 1: take a break here, Heather, because that's a note of
Speaker 1: optimism in a dreary, dreary landscape. So let's hear from
Speaker 1: a sponsor and then we'll come right back. We're back,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about strong men, history and threats to
Speaker 1: the American experiment with Heather Cox Richardson. Heather, you were
Speaker 1: just talking right at the end of our last segment
Speaker 1: about ways in which some of the very dynamics that
Speaker 1: have given rise to Trump and authoritarianism various strong men
Speaker 1: around the planet these days can also be used by
Speaker 1: people who want other forms of representation and who want
Speaker 1: to affect positive change themselves. You call it. I think
Speaker 1: in the end of your book you talk about reclaiming America.
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about that, Like, what
Speaker 1: are the tools that you see average citizens able to
Speaker 1: take advantage of in an era in which power seems unfettered.
Speaker 1: Media is a wash in disinformation. People don't trust facts,
Speaker 1: people don't trust institutions. What is the avenue out as
Speaker 1: you see it.
Speaker 2: So the avenue out starts with where you started, which
Speaker 2: is the idea of a perfect past in which our
Speaker 2: American democracy sprang fully formed out of the brain of
Speaker 2: George Washington, for example, is ex authoritarian with the idea
Speaker 2: that we could get back to that if only we
Speaker 2: elected leaders who would follow a predetermined route back to there,
Speaker 2: either a route that's determined either by religion or by tradition,
Speaker 2: or by some specific plan that would take us back
Speaker 2: to that perfect past. And the only thing that an
Speaker 2: authoritarian needs to do is to get rid of those
Speaker 2: people who would stop him from doing that, with, for example,
Speaker 2: these unfortunate laws that are making him unable to do that.
Speaker 2: That idea of a past that is stuck back in
Speaker 2: some golden era and will only require an authoritarian to
Speaker 2: unearth it again is very counter to the real history
Speaker 2: of the United States, which is one that I'm calling
Speaker 2: a small deed democratic history. The idea that people, ordinary people,
Speaker 2: have agency, and that the world has never been perfect,
Speaker 2: and that America has never been perfect. It has always
Speaker 2: been burdened with sexism and racism and classism and all
Speaker 2: sorts of things that made it impossible for everybody to
Speaker 2: live their best life. But that in all of those circumstances,
Speaker 2: ordinary Americans use their agency to change the future going forward.
Speaker 2: And that's something that's really important in this moment when
Speaker 2: so many people feel like they don't have control over
Speaker 2: the world around them, and I think that is a
Speaker 2: learned lack of control because of that sort of history
Speaker 2: that has been fed to so many people for so long.
Speaker 2: Once they take back their agency, though, there are a
Speaker 2: number of critical things that people can do. So I'm
Speaker 2: an idealist, which means that I believe ideas change the world.
Speaker 2: And the way you change ideas is by changing the
Speaker 2: way you talk about democracy, talk about the world, and
Speaker 2: talk about the issues that are at stake in this moment.
Speaker 2: And you can see how important it is to change
Speaker 2: those ideas if you look at things like the fact
Speaker 2: that Clarence Thomas re accused himself from a case involving
Speaker 2: the January sixth attack on the US Capitol, which he
Speaker 2: never would have done. Did he not feel that he
Speaker 2: were under pressure from people who are concerned about his ethicsandals,
Speaker 2: So the idea of taking up oxygen, of changing the
Speaker 2: way people talk about things is number one. There are other,
Speaker 2: much more instrumental things, though, and that is the people
Speaker 2: who object to the authoritarian takeover of this country need
Speaker 2: to contest elections at every single level to some degree.
Speaker 2: And we haven't talked about the Democrats at all for
Speaker 2: obvious reasons, but for a lot of people, I think
Speaker 2: they have come to the place where they think that
Speaker 2: just electing their president is going to be enough, and
Speaker 2: the president will do magical things. In fact, it's at
Speaker 2: the local and the state levels that so many of
Speaker 2: the laws that affect our lives are being determined, like,
Speaker 2: for example, redistricting that has led to such extreme gerrymandering
Speaker 2: in places like North Carolina. That happened at the state level,
Speaker 2: and at the local level. Of course, you're also looking
Speaker 2: at school boards and at local ordinances, things that really
Speaker 2: affect people at the day to day level.
Speaker 1: And state legislatures that are dominated by one party that
Speaker 1: are no longer by cameral in any meaningful way exactly.
Speaker 2: And they got there not only by people vote at
Speaker 2: that level, but also by the redistricting that gave the
Speaker 2: Republicans such extraordinary legs up. Just a side note here,
Speaker 2: jerrymandering benefits democrats in one state in the top ten
Speaker 2: of gerrymandered states, but the other nine are all republican
Speaker 2: gerrymandered states, so it's really kind of a republican problem there.
Speaker 2: So there are lots of things that people can do
Speaker 2: to affect the future going forward.
Speaker 1: You note in the book that and I quote, democracies
Speaker 1: die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: So is the contra to that idea true as well,
Speaker 1: that democracies are reinvigorated at the ballot box more than
Speaker 1: any other form.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it is, but I would say before
Speaker 2: you get to the ballot box. You know, one of
Speaker 2: the things about the last section of the book that
Speaker 2: I think was subtle and maybe too subtle, is that
Speaker 2: each section that takes the country from its inception through
Speaker 2: the present looks at a different way that groups mobilized
Speaker 2: people to expand liberal democracy. So it looks at, you know,
Speaker 2: using organizations dramatically to change the way people understand what
Speaker 2: their rights are. It shows how the NAACP, for example,
Speaker 2: use that organization to bring transparency to the ways in
Speaker 2: which laws were crushing individuals primarily in the Southern States.
Speaker 2: It looks at ways in which people who did not
Speaker 2: have access to the vote claimed places in the United
Speaker 2: States by virtue of the way that they act and
Speaker 2: the books that they published. So it looks at a
Speaker 2: lot of different ways that people can affect their futures
Speaker 2: in and expanding liberal democracy without limiting that simply to voting,
Speaker 2: or even simply to taking up oxygen the way that
Speaker 2: I've talked about.
Speaker 1: So being as active as possible in your community, even
Speaker 1: if that's a micro community, organizing with local groups, voting,
Speaker 1: paying attention and being discerning. Is that too simplistic?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think it is. I mean one of
Speaker 2: the things that political scientists will tell you that there
Speaker 2: is literally nothing you can do that's more effective to
Speaker 2: change somebody's opinions about things and to change the way
Speaker 2: they vote. It's something that they put a very fancy
Speaker 2: name on they call it relational organizing. But all it
Speaker 2: means is talk to your friends, you know, make sure
Speaker 2: your friends understand what's at stake when they vote, and
Speaker 2: help them get to the polls. And that makes a
Speaker 2: huge difference in turnout and in the makeup of the
Speaker 2: ultimate votes. So We see this all the way back,
Speaker 2: of course, but really dramatically. The John Birch Society did
Speaker 2: this in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties to
Speaker 2: try and turn out a right wing constituency. There's no
Speaker 2: law at all that says that liberals can't do the
Speaker 2: same thing.
Speaker 1: You make a point in the book that the US
Speaker 1: is built on embracing and explicitly democratic history that places
Speaker 1: the principles of the Declaration of Independence at the forefront
Speaker 1: of civic life. Do you see that as actually more
Speaker 1: important than the Constitution? That the Constitution is a blueprint
Speaker 1: of how a government should work, but the Declaration is
Speaker 1: sort of a call for what our higher goal should be.
Speaker 1: Or am I simplifying things again?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a saying in history that if you have rights,
Speaker 2: you stand on the Constitution, and if you want rights,
Speaker 2: you stand on the Declaration. They're very different documents. One
Speaker 2: sets out a set of principles to explain to the
Speaker 2: world why it's an okay thing for the revolutionaries to
Speaker 2: throw off the government of Great Britain, which of course
Speaker 2: was radical, so totally radical thing to do. But in
Speaker 2: that Declaration of Independence they embrace the idea of what
Speaker 2: a government of the people should look like, you know,
Speaker 2: because they don't know, they're really inventing it out of
Speaker 2: whole cloth. And what they say is that it is
Speaker 2: possible to construct a government based on the idea that
Speaker 2: all men are created equal. And of course that's exclusionary
Speaker 2: in many ways, but the principle that all individuals are
Speaker 2: created equal is embedded in that document. And also they
Speaker 2: say that every individual has a right to a say,
Speaker 2: and is government of horse is expandable as well. Those
Speaker 2: principles are I think the rock solid principles on which
Speaker 2: the expansion of liberal democracy ever since then has stood.
Speaker 2: That being said, the Constitution is the body of laws
Speaker 2: that was designed to create a government for that community
Speaker 2: of equals. Again very limited at the time, but it
Speaker 2: was a set of laws designed to bring that government
Speaker 2: into existence. And as we know, of course, it was
Speaker 2: a reaction in part to the Articles of Confederation, and
Speaker 2: so it created a much stronger federal government than at
Speaker 2: first the framers believed was necessary to have a government
Speaker 2: that was based in democracy. I think that's a really
Speaker 2: important distinction. Both of the documents are important, but what
Speaker 2: the Constitution really does is it sets up the concept
Speaker 2: of a nation built on a body of laws and
Speaker 2: the institutions that will support that body of laws. It
Speaker 2: also sets up ways for us to amend that constitution,
Speaker 2: which I think is also very important. But that machine
Speaker 2: that would go of itself, as a poet later called it,
Speaker 2: is I think an important basis for our democratic concepts
Speaker 2: and remains vitally important in this moment when there are
Speaker 2: people who would tear it down.
Speaker 1: Heather, I always like to ask guests what they've learned,
Speaker 1: what their most recent AHAs are, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what you've learned about the threat of authoritarianism in
Speaker 1: the United States that you didn't know before embarking on
Speaker 1: the writing of this book.
Speaker 2: What really threw me for an absolute loop was the
Speaker 2: degree to which foreign money and the use of foreign
Speaker 2: money in our democracy since the fall of the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union influenced what happened here in the United States. Absolutely
Speaker 2: floored me. I had not been paying that much attention
Speaker 2: to it either here in the UK. That was earth
Speaker 2: shattering to me. And also the degree to which the
Speaker 2: same people who were deeply involved in the elections of
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon, people like Roger Stone and Paul Maniford, and
Speaker 2: Rick Gates and Lee Atwater, although he is going to
Speaker 2: die long before the present, how deeply they have been
Speaker 2: involved in Republican politics since the nineteen sixties. And of
Speaker 2: course we've got Paul Maniport acting briefly as Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: campaign manager in twenty sixteen and bringing on board the
Speaker 2: whole Russian oligarchs, So that connection I was not prepared
Speaker 2: to see, and it really surprised me. It really made
Speaker 2: me rethink the entire way that we conceive of American democracy.
Speaker 2: For what reason, Well, because the interplay I think between
Speaker 2: the rise of foreign oligarchs and their need to hide
Speaker 2: their money in democracies, and how that then led them
Speaker 2: to back political candidates who would focus on the protection
Speaker 2: of property rather than the expansion of the public good
Speaker 2: because they didn't want to pay money to do that.
Speaker 2: Of course, that really surprised me. I was also really
Speaker 2: surprised by the degree to which it seemed that the
Speaker 2: Nixon administration, when it was thwarted at manipulating elections at home,
Speaker 2: began to test out ways to do it in places
Speaker 2: like Chile. That is, I knew the Chilean rise of Pinochet,
Speaker 2: for example, but I didn't put it together with United
Speaker 2: States democracy to the degree that it was like they're
Speaker 2: testing stuff out over there to see if it will
Speaker 2: work here. And what sparked that, of course, was the
Speaker 2: the truck convoys that were clearly designed to hurt the
Speaker 2: economy and thereby hurt democratic governments here, both in the
Speaker 2: US and in Canada. That was actually one of the
Speaker 2: tactics that led to Pinochet taking power, and it was
Speaker 2: backed by the USCIA. And I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this was just like a test and probably has something
Speaker 2: to do with explaining why Trump followers in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: were tish sure it celebrating Pinochet.
Speaker 1: We're out of time, Heather, Thank you for such a
Speaker 1: great conversation today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Although I hate to leave
Speaker 2: on the word Pinochet, so let me just end instead
Speaker 2: with thank you.
Speaker 1: Heather Cox Frigerdson is the author of Democracy Awakening. She's
Speaker 1: also the author of a popular substack newsletter, Letters from
Speaker 1: an American. You can find her on Twitter at HC
Speaker 1: Underscore Richardson Here at crash Course, we believe that collisions
Speaker 1: can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, and always instructive. In
Speaker 1: today's Crash Course. I learned that of enough of us
Speaker 1: just hold hands with our neighbors or anyone else we
Speaker 1: can find on the block. Maybe, just maybe we can
Speaker 1: affect some positive change in this otherwise chaotic political era.
Speaker 1: What did you learn? We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion, handle at Opinion
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Speaker 1: with another Crash Course