WEBVTT - Interview Only w/ Gal Beckerman - How To Be A Dissident 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.040 This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you 0:00:02.080 --> 0:00:04.440 by Ethos and what Ethos does is it helps you 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:06.880 find life insurance. Let me tell you why life insurance 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:09.360 bailed me out. My father died when I was sixteen. 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:11.680 We didn't have a lot of money when it happened, 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:14.640 and we were in a pretty tough financial spot after 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.520 it happened. I'm an only child. Suddenly my mother's single, 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.360 single mother. She had a job, suddenly lost a job, 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:23.799 looking for another job, and we were struggling. You know, 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:26.720 my dad didn't leave us in the best financial situation, 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:29.080 but he did make one purchase. He bought a life 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.680 insurance policy. 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Application times may 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:47.840 vary and rates may vary. So one of the questions 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.120 I get a lot from various people frustrated by the 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.480 current political system, and this comes from folks throughout the 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.720 spectrum is what do I do? What can I do? 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:00.480 Versus I need to do more referring to me and 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:07.240 or media, et cetera. And my answer is always the same. Well, ultimately, 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.960 my vote is the same as your vote. You've got 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.480 to just everybody has a role here, but he's got 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:14.560 to do something well. The conversation I want to have 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:19.880 today is about it's it's a new book that's out 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.720 called How to Be a Dissident. It's by Gal Beckerman. 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.840 That's my guest. Gal's here now. But the real point 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:28.959 is it's sort of like, when you're living in a 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:34.800 fairly free society and you feel as if you're not 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:40.680 being represented, what do you do and what is it? 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:44.280 What did others do? And are there is there inspiration 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.040 to take from others who lived in less free societies. 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.320 And obviously when you hear the words dissident, it immediately 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:57.880 invokes people fighting less free societies. But the current situation 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.720 we're all in, I think there's this feeling that we 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:06.000 when you feel unrepresented or underrepresented, do you start? Is 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.440 it good to start to think like a dissident? So 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.280 this is a question that we're going to simply ask, 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:13.639 and Gal's going to give us the answer. Gal, welcome 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:14.320 to the podcast. 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:15.920 Thank you so much for having me. 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:18.160 So let me start with the premise of the book, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:22.640 How to Be a Dissident. Is it intentionally written for 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.240 an American audience in your head, like who were you 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.160 talking to when you when you when you frame it. Look, 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.480 the book's about it's a little bit history, it's a 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.000 little bit of communications, it's it's a little bit of 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:36.040 a lot of things. But you must have had a motivation. 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:36.600 What was it? 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:40.000 Oh? Yeah, for sure, I was thinking about an American 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:44.880 audience that needed to hear about the experience of people 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.960 in other times historically, and needed to hear about the 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.040 experience of people right now in other places in the world, 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:57.800 like Iran, like China. Why did they need to hear 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:02.800 about those experiences? Because to my mind, being a dissonant 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:10.120 is saying no, experiencing a reality that somehow violates your 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:16.240 sense of what is normal, what the normal conditions for 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:21.560 a sort of free human life should be, and refusing 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:26.520 to go along with it. Now, in authoritarian systems, that 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:28.760 can take on a pretty extreme form. You know, you're 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:32.000 not allowed to say whatever you want to say, You're 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.480 not allowed to read whatever you want to read. You're 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:36.320 not allowed to wear your hair in the way that 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:38.160 you want to wear your hair or leave it covered 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:42.280 or uncovered. You're not allowed to gather with other people. 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:48.320 But there are ways that I began to feel that 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.400 those sort of conditions for a quote unquote normal life 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:56.160 were beginning to be impeded upon even here in the 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.320 United States, and in ways that I had never really 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:03.479 I had never really experienced them, certainly in my lifetime. 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:07.240 And you know, to take an example that's just fairly recent, 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:12.640 if you think about Minneapolis, when that happened, when people responded, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.279 when citizens in Minneapolis responded the way that they did, 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:17.840 I saw dissidents. 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.400 I saw, yeah, they even created these networks like you 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.279 hear about in other countries that they had a code 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.200 or they would honk ORNs or you know, you hear 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.360 this stuff. But it was yeah, yeah, ID to hear 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.680 stories like this in Cuba, for instance, if you thought 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.080 somebody was watching the little things you do, right. 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:37.000 But but I mean, even at the level of motivation, 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.800 I think what happened in people's minds is I don't 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.719 think this was political. I think people said, look at 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.039 what's happening to my neighbor, look at what's having the 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:50.640 people who live in my community who are afraid to 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.479 send their kids to school, or hiding in their houses 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:58.400 or are being harassed on the street. And those are 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:03.359 those were pulses that Vak club Hubble, who is the 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:07.440 great Czech dissident, playwright, check dissident who became the president 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:12.360 of a free Czechoslovakia. He had a concept, he said 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:17.039 that dissidents starts with the pre political It's not these 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:21.800 aren't These aren't sort of motivations which say, oh, here's 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:23.800 this one leader in charge. I want to put my 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:28.320 guy in charge. It's about those conditions of life. It's 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.760 about saying how do I think my neighbors should be treated, 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:37.240 and then seeing that being violated and saying I have 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:40.159 a choice. I have a moral choice. I can put 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.599 my head down and do nothing, which is actually very 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:47.360 hardwired in human beings right to do nothing in those circumstances, 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.120 to just conform, or I can say no, I can 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.279 refuse and do something about it. And I think that's 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.920 it's out of that. It's at that crossroads that the 0:06:58.360 --> 0:06:59.799 dissident is born. 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.640 So in your mind, what makes a dissident is somebody 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.360 who's not looking for political power but is just looking 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.000 for to write a moral wrong. 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.600 It's it's less even about writing a moral wrong than 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.760 than saying no in an instance where they feel that 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.800 a certain value or a certain part of their conscience 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:26.640 has been violated. I have a great sort of I 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:31.280 love this particular quote in the book from Hanaharant. Hannah Rent, 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.840 the German philosopher, was trying in the post war years 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:40.480 to understand why certain Germans, very few of them refused 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.600 to go along with the Nazis. They refused in every 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:48.320 circumstance to just conform. And she came to an interesting conclusion. 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.040 She said, these weren't people who just like you know, 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.920 had a strong kind of set of moral precepts and 0:07:56.640 --> 0:08:01.200 and and those were the things that guided them. In fact, 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:03.280 a lot of the people with moral precepts were able 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.520 to switch from thou shalt kill to thou shalt not kill, 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:08.880 you know, as soon as somebody sort of switched them 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:11.720 from one side to the other. She said. The people 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.880 who refused were the like perpetual sort of doubters and 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:20.840 skeptics who took everything, everything that they experienced and it's 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.000 at face value, and tried to answer it with one 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:29.120 single question. Can I live with myself? Can I live 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.720 with myself if I don't do anything in this situation? 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.560 Can I live with myself if I go along with 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.720 something that I may ask to go along with and 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.240 she said those people. For them, it was quite quite simple. 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:45.040 It's they didn't want to live with themselves because who 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:48.520 they would be would be murderers. So they didn't want 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.400 to live with a murderer. So it's it's this sort 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:57.120 of very essential question of conscience, of kind of of 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:01.160 your gut in a way. I know it can sound 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.559 a little bit sort of vague when when you talk 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:06.400 about it that way, but I think we all know 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.840 like those moments where we have I call it in 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:12.720 the book moral nausea, you know, where you open the 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:17.360 newspaper and you see something and you just you just 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.640 don't it doesn't feel right to you. But then you 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.439 have this next moment where you think, well, I've got 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.439 to go on with my day, like I'm not gonna 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.440 you know, and so I I you know, and we 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:30.160 can't all be dissidents, you know. I mean, I think 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:32.520 that's one of the takeaways that I have from this 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.760 experience of spending time with Dissonance. It's in some ways 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:39.160 it's a very extreme position, you know, to always be 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:43.160 the one at the front line of that particular moral quandary. 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:46.880 But what I learned is that like, I need to 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.840 understand that I do have choices. There is moral choice. 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:53.240 Even when I look in the newspaper and I see 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:55.439 something that really bothers me, that gives me that kind 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:59.280 of nausea, I can choose to do something about it. 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:01.480 I can all so choose not to do something, which 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.120 is also a choice. But it's the accepting the idea 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.079 that there is a choice, that I have some agency 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:10.240 as a human being in these circumstances. 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:13.120 Let me let me get it something that you're an 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:15.640 expert on because you've written another You've written a book 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:17.600 on it. Right, You've written a book about the Soviet Jewelry. 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:26.800 What made the dissidents in the Soviet Union successful that 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:33.280 the dissidents in today's Russia are struggling with? It's same 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.160 country in theory. Obviously it's a smaller version of it, 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.160 but sort of similar ways, although it's slightly different how 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.000 the Soviet Union operated versus how Putin operates. 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:46.679 Is it? 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.040 Is it because the Soviet Jewelry is no longer there? 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:52.240 Is that it? I mean, you know, and if if 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:58.640 they were, you know, I mean, what's what's what's your 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:05.000 explanation for why the Soviet jewelry was so successful and 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.400 so far the dissidence in Putin's Russia had not been. 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:11.520 It's a good question. It's not something that I really 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:16.160 thought about. But you know, I I the thing about 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.920 Soviet this jury movement, which for those who don't know 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:24.640 about it, was a movement of Jews who were trapped 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.120 inside the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not let 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:29.800 them leave. They would not give them exit visus to leave. 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.120 At the same time, their existence as Jews in the 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.400 Soviet Union was pretty terrible. They couldn't really like have 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.480 any kind of Jewish identity, but they were also actually 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:44.640 there was also actually a lot of a lot of 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.040 prejudice against them. Schools that they couldn't universities you couldn't 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:50.400 go to, professions you couldn't go to. But at the 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.000 same time they couldn't leave. So the Soviet Union had 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:58.440 almost like this, you know, it was they were yeah, yeah, 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:03.800 and and and so they made a cause out of 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:09.000 this desire to leave. And here again just to point, 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:11.199 you know, to go back to something earlier, I said, 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:16.679 what made their cause powerful was that they were drawing 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.000 on I think what is a very human impulse, which 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.800 is that we want to be able to live where 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.320 we want to live. So the idea that they were 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:31.079 actually imprisoned in the Soviet Union once they were able 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.560 to dramatize that to the world, and they did in 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:36.920 all kinds of ways over a long period of time. 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.200 That's the other thing we can talk about is dissidence 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.880 takes time. It takes time to sort of incubate in 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:47.040 a way. These were small communities of people. They built 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:51.840 loyalty amongst themselves. They were outcasts within their own societies. 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.000 As soon as they asked to leave, they were thrown 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.040 out of their jobs, out of their sometimes out of 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.960 the department buildings. So they really formed these tight communities 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:06.679 of people and they appealed to the world, the United 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.400 States in particular, which then put pressure back on the 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:15.080 Soviet Union, used it as a leverage in negotiations. You know. 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.160 The benefit I think they had was that that was 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.080 a world in which shame, the kind of shame that 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:26.520 was being worked, it still worked. The idea of human 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:32.040 rights was still had currency and not something that you know, 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.319 an American president could sort of just like, you know, 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:40.440 laugh off. So those are all powerful levers that they 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:42.199 could use against the Soviet Union. 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:47.680 So you might make the argument then that take the 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:53.880 navalney dissidents, okay, and just loosely that you know, it's 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.439 in the same stages of where Soviet Jews were in 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:01.439 the sixties, and it's going to take time and that eventu. 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.000 I mean, look, I'm with you. I mean, every dictatorship 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.920 ends the same way. It takes forever and then it 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.200 happens overnight, right like a sod in Syria. Just one night, 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:14.120 he's like, oh, he's now in Russia. It's over, right, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.559 like all of a sudden. You don't think it's ever 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:18.239 going to end, and then it ends immediately. 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:23.280 Well for you, yeah, I'll give you an even more contemporary, 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.360 very very contemporary example. I've been doing some reporting today 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.760 on what happened in Yahan, Hungary, because we saw this 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:33.680 the fall of Orbon, which people didn't think was going 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.840 to happen, you know, or happened quite as dramatically and 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:40.280 you know, as it did, and as totally as it did. 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:44.600 You know, two thirds of the country voted against him. 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.400 But I learned that there was something you know, incubating, 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:53.560 percolating over the last two years in the Hungarian countryside, 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:59.080 in rural areas which were strongholds of Orbon. This is 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:01.280 where most of just where it came from, where for 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.240 people who lived there, it seemed almost impossible to imagine 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:06.400 that they would ever be a different leader than Orbon. 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:12.400 There began to be these small groups they called them islands. 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.480 Actually Tisa Tisa, which is the political party that won. 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:22.040 They call them Tisa islands. And this was like civic organizations, 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:26.080 you know, in places where civil society had really almost 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:30.920 disappeared under Orbon. So you have like the local entrepreneur 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.560 and the doctor and maybe like a you know, a farmer, 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.840 and they start meeting to discuss things like a local 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:44.080 factory that's causing pollution. They organized to do clean up, 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:47.960 like cleaning up later in the village or having like 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:52.000 a movie night or something. And these were happening in 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:56.760 hundreds and hundreds of rural areas. People weren't they were 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:01.160 not directly connected to the party that but they were 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:04.040 sort of affiliated with the idea of some kind of change. 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.680 But what it did was it built up this kind 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:13.080 of like citizen muscle, and it made people less scared. 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:15.760 It made them I mean I heard today what people 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:17.920 told me is that it got people out of this 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:22.200 spiral of fear and of silence that there could ever 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.840 be anybody but orbone, because otherwise people understood that things 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.600 were not great and hungary. The economy was not good, 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.640 you know, there was the education system is not good. 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:33.840 There was all kinds of ways that they wanted to change, 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.920 but they needed to take this kind of step of 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.040 both recognizing there were other people who felt like they did, 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:46.080 to do activities that were not at first risky, and 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:51.160 have those sort of slowly ramb up to the then 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.400 bigger task of voting against the man who they had 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:59.360 voted for for the last sixteen years. So it's I mean, 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.640 it's a kind of a perfect example of how dissonance 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:06.560 needs to grow. I'll give you another example, if you 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:10.160 want from here, is the No Kings Day rallies. You know, 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:14.240 people witness those and they say, well, on one hand, 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.959 like what's the immediate effect? We always want to know, 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:21.120 like is this going to translate into midterm election wins? 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:23.320 But I think that's a really wrong way of thinking 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.880 about it. I think these organizers have really been smart 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:32.600 about how they've ramped up these rallies or these demonstrations, 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:36.480 which have been totally decentralized. They have happened in I 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.000 think the first one had like two thousand and the 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:43.800 last one had like four thousand. They're local, people can 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:48.359 come with whatever cause they care most about under the 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:54.120 umbrella of creeping authoritarianism, and they are seeing each other. 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.040 They're seeing each other in real life. They're saying, Okay, 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:01.000 I'm not alone in this feeling right, doing things like 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:05.879 being irreverent or jokey about the president, which you know, 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:08.719 doesn't sound like it should be important, but it actually is. 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:10.920 Like it's important to be able to spend a whole 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:11.840 chapter in comedy. 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.119 I do that. 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Now available in 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.800 Canada too, so go to q u I n CE 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:14.920 dot com slash chuck for free shipping three hundred and 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:19.680 sixty five day returns quints dot com slash chuck. Use 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:24.320 that code. 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:25.680 It's interesting. 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:32.120 I'm hungry. And one of the things that I'm trying 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:37.679 to digest is the fact that the leader of the 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:41.960 movement that toppled Orbon was was once a member of 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:47.159 Orbon's party. That it was not somebody who had been 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.239 part of the loyal opposition for twenty years, but in 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:55.600 fact had been You know, I and I wonder, how 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:58.480 is that is that a model? Are the best dissidents 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:00.640 the ones that used to be a part of the system, 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:03.919 Are they the most effective dissidence? What's Is there a 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:06.480 pattern that you feel like you've uncovered. 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:09.680 I think in Hungary it certainly made a difference because 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:14.040 it provided a kind of like permission structure. The permission yeah, 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:17.000 people said it. And and this is of a piece 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:19.760 with these islands I'm talking about, because it's like once 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:22.159 you see your neighbors start to say, okay, I'm not 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:25.119 going to vote for Fidez this time, then you think, okay, 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.199 it's okay for me too. And the leader of the 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:29.439 party is a guy who was once a loyalist and 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.040 turned his you know, turned around. So it all sort 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:33.360 of like trickles down. 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:37.560 Unique to hungry or is it in any system like that? 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:42.359 I don't know. I mean I do think of somebody 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.840 like Navalny, who was like, you know, very much a 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:49.840 creature of the establishment in Russia. He wasn't like wild 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:51.760 eyed you know outside No. 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:53.879 In fact, some of the critics of him say, you know, 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:55.960 he's not really this and he's not really that. Well, 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:57.359 you know what he is. He's a guy who stood 0:21:57.400 --> 0:21:59.480 up to Booten and that many people were willing to 0:21:59.520 --> 0:21:59.720 do it. 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:03.840 I know, he actually got a lot of heat for once, uh, 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:08.320 sort of becoming too cozy with nationalists, you know, when 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:09.960 he was trying to build. 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:11.960 I think in his own way, he is a Russian nationalist, 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:16.399 but he thought Luton wasn't a real nationalist, right, I mean, right, right. 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:19.320 Right, But you know, I think people saw in Navalny 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:22.040 also like he created it that creates the kind of 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.479 safety to say, like, Okay, if this guy who is 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:27.720 like comes from a sort of I mean, he was 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.359 a lawyer, he kind of has a sort of you know, 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:34.480 elite background, if he's the one who's willing to take 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:37.640 on the dictator, like, we can't too. 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:40.480 Let me ask you this, Why didn't Liz Cheney serve 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:44.359 that purpose for the for the opposition to Trump? 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:45.520 Yeah? I don't know. 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:49.480 I mean, she in some ways fits that definition, right, 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:52.280 And I mean I look at it, it's like, yeah, well, 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:54.040 she never really was part of the Trump movement. In 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:56.000 fact that you could argue she was a member of 0:22:56.000 --> 0:22:58.960 the establishment that Trump overthrew inside the Republican Party too. 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:01.880 So maybe maybe that isn't the right you know, maybe 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.679 Mike Pence is the better is the better avatar? I 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:05.400 don't know. 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:09.240 Yeah, I mean I think in both instances, and this 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:11.560 is true of Hungary and Trumanavalney, you have to build 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:14.040 a base, right, you can't be you know, to have 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:19.119 an individual who does a brave thing is helpful as 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:21.879 an example, but it has to sort of create a 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:25.679 culture of people each doing their brave things, you know. 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:30.720