Speaker 1: Pushkin, This is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. So these are
Speaker 1: people who are seditionists. They don't accept the legitimacy of
Speaker 1: the state, of the government, of the institutions, and they
Speaker 1: would like to overthrow them. The United States is facing
Speaker 1: a challenge we haven't confronted since the Civil War. On
Speaker 1: January sixth, we experienced a physical assault against our democracy,
Speaker 1: and a significant segment of society continues to support the assault,
Speaker 1: not our democracy. This is too many people to wish away,
Speaker 1: it's too many people to shun. It's even too many
Speaker 1: people to cancel. So what do we do about this
Speaker 1: extreme polarization? How do we live alongside people who reject
Speaker 1: our system of government? How can we get back to
Speaker 1: healthier kinds of political disagreement? Here, it's solvable. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a deeper look at the problem of American polarization.
Speaker 1: As the fits the approach of the show. We're going
Speaker 1: to have a series of conversations focused on solutions and
Speaker 1: making things better. Our question is what works to reduce
Speaker 1: extremism and division in terms of finding common ground and
Speaker 1: building bridges, in terms of redesigning social media, and in
Speaker 1: terms of political leadership Last week, we heard Ann Applebaum
Speaker 1: talk to Juan Manuel Santo's about the process of reconciliation
Speaker 1: with former guerrillas after Columbia's long, horrific civil war. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk with Anne herself. She's a Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning historian an expert on the former Soviet Bloc.
Speaker 1: Anne has been looking at vulnerable democracies around the world,
Speaker 1: and she has some ideas about what has and hasn't
Speaker 1: worked in other countries. This will sound a little strange,
Speaker 1: but another really interesting example of a place that depolarized
Speaker 1: is actually Canada. So some solutions may be closer than
Speaker 1: we realize. I'm Anne Applebaum. I'm one of the hosts
Speaker 1: of the Solvable podcast. I'm a staff writer for The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: and I believe that political polarization is solvable. Hi Anne,
Speaker 1: Hi Jacob. It's clear that we are in unprecedented territory
Speaker 1: here in the United States, and I wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of start the conversation just by asking you to be
Speaker 1: as precise as possible in naming this phenomenon and possibly
Speaker 1: comparing it to other places. Do you call it a
Speaker 1: breakdown to democracy? Do you call it polarization? What are
Speaker 1: we living through right now. Polarization is clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: a good word to use, but other words have been
Speaker 1: used in the past, division, breaking up of political unity,
Speaker 1: leading towards civil war. I think the more interesting question
Speaker 1: is what to call the group of people who were
Speaker 1: at the Capitol and genre the sixth and those in
Speaker 1: the country who support them, because this is not the
Speaker 1: same thing as the Republican Party, it's not the same
Speaker 1: thing as conservatives. This is, in fact not a conservative group.
Speaker 1: It's a radical group. And it's also very clear to
Speaker 1: understand what they were doing there. They were not Republicans
Speaker 1: attacking Democrats. They were actually attacking Congress itself, the institution.
Speaker 1: They were trying to prevent Congress from recognizing and naming
Speaker 1: the next president. This was actually an anti institutional, anti
Speaker 1: systemic group, which is not something we're accustomed to in
Speaker 1: American history, at least not since the Civil War. But
Speaker 1: it is something that you can see in other times
Speaker 1: and places. You can see it, for example, in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: where there was during the era of the Troubles, there
Speaker 1: was a group of people who lived in Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: who didn't accept the legitimate government of Northern Ireland and
Speaker 1: became terrorists or supporters of terror because they wanted to
Speaker 1: overthrow it. You can look at a country like Columbia
Speaker 1: where you see an insurgency that fought for fifty years,
Speaker 1: living in the jungle and living off kidnapping and drug
Speaker 1: dealing because they didn't accept the legitimacy of the government.
Speaker 1: And although those are more extreme versions than what we have,
Speaker 1: that's really what we're talking about. And so then the
Speaker 1: question is whether it's the best word to use, insurgency
Speaker 1: or insurrectionist. Some people have had an argument about whether
Speaker 1: to say fascist, and of course there are ways in
Speaker 1: which this group resembles fascism of the nineteen thirties. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a useful term because it conjures up
Speaker 1: all kinds of other things, and you know, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about mass murder or anything like that, and I
Speaker 1: feel it's a distracting term. And the term I settled
Speaker 1: on in a couple of things I've written recently is
Speaker 1: actually seditionists. So these are people who are seditionists. They
Speaker 1: don't accept the you know, the legitimacy of the state,
Speaker 1: of the government, of the institutions, and they would like
Speaker 1: to overthrow them. So then the question is how the
Speaker 1: rest of us deal with that. Even in that and
Speaker 1: I agree that's a that's a useful term here, and
Speaker 1: I think seditionists rather than secessionists, because these people are
Speaker 1: not trying to start their own country or break away
Speaker 1: into too a different political body as in the Confederacy
Speaker 1: during the Civil War. But even that term, seditionists can
Speaker 1: include everyone from the fairly large section of the population
Speaker 1: that will, in response to Paul, say they think the
Speaker 1: election was stolen, a much smaller segment of the population
Speaker 1: that would support violence, a smaller proportion than that that
Speaker 1: would be violent. And then maybe even within that, you
Speaker 1: know this very strange fantasy land of the of the
Speaker 1: QAnon people, which is more like, you know, ac cult
Speaker 1: within the seditionists. Would you would you describe it that
Speaker 1: way in terms of those kind of concentric circles. Yes,
Speaker 1: Although what interests me is one particular group, namely, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in the people who sympathized with the storming of
Speaker 1: the capital. In other words, you know, there is a
Speaker 1: group of people who think Trump probably won the election,
Speaker 1: or anyway somehow the election was unfair. But then there's
Speaker 1: a narrower group of people who actually think the system
Speaker 1: should be overthrown. And I say narrow, it's not that narrow.
Speaker 1: One poll that was done pretty soon after January sixth
Speaker 1: showed something like twenty percent I think it's twenty one
Speaker 1: percent of Americans said they supported that they supported the insurrection,
Speaker 1: even assuming that not all those people pay that much
Speaker 1: attention to politics, and some of them have probably since
Speaker 1: then changed their minds. And so even if we say
Speaker 1: it's ten percent, you know, ten percent of the country,
Speaker 1: that's a very large number who don't think that our
Speaker 1: political institutions work, who don't see any point in cooperating
Speaker 1: with them, who presumably don't see much point in voting
Speaker 1: or in participating in normal politics, and they would support
Speaker 1: efforts to undermine them. That's not a problem that we've
Speaker 1: had in recent history. So I guess the question you
Speaker 1: get to right away is take that twenty one percent
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. Where do we fight them, Where
Speaker 1: do we ignore them? How do we deal with them?
Speaker 1: So the lessons from countries that have had an experience
Speaker 1: like this, So countries again that have had an insurgency
Speaker 1: or a terrorist movement within their you know, within their borders,
Speaker 1: very often the things that you think will work like it,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be so great if we all got together
Speaker 1: and just debated it all out? Their number of charities
Speaker 1: in the US that actually there's a famous one called
Speaker 1: braver Angels that brings people together, you know, Blue and
Speaker 1: Red team people together in rooms and has them argue
Speaker 1: or right. I mean, most of that, while maybe it's
Speaker 1: you know, useful for a few people, is actually pointless
Speaker 1: because when you have people who see the world through
Speaker 1: such completely different lenses, you will not get them to
Speaker 1: agree on politics and anything existential. If you get them
Speaker 1: in a room together, much more useful. And again this
Speaker 1: is counterintuitive and it's not a solution that lots of
Speaker 1: people like, at least when they first encounter it. Is
Speaker 1: it's much better to change the subject. In other words,
Speaker 1: get people to work together, to do projects together, and
Speaker 1: do things together that are constructive, but without talking about
Speaker 1: or discussing the very the existential issues that divide us.
Speaker 1: And so when this has been done in towns in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, it means something like, you know, the town
Speaker 1: builds a community center, or they build a road, or
Speaker 1: they organize a theater festival and members from both communities
Speaker 1: participate and while they're participating, they're talking about the road
Speaker 1: or the community center, and they're not talking about who
Speaker 1: should be in charge of Ireland Northern Ireland, should it
Speaker 1: be Ireland or Great Britain. I can imagine, for example,
Speaker 1: in the US, a way you could. I mean, for example,
Speaker 1: we need to have secure at state capitals. State capitals
Speaker 1: have been the site of some violent protests recently, So
Speaker 1: a useful thing to do would be to have a
Speaker 1: meeting where you've got members of the different communities from
Speaker 1: the far right and the far left and mainstream politics,
Speaker 1: and you've got them together and said, let's think about
Speaker 1: how we create safety at our around the Ohio State Capital.
Speaker 1: They're not focused on the things they're protesting about. They're
Speaker 1: focusing on how they create security at the Ohio State Capital.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean they hate each other any less,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that the following day, when there
Speaker 1: are demonstrations there, they might not kill each other. You know,
Speaker 1: the goal is prevention of violence, and the goal is
Speaker 1: living alongside one another even when we don't agree. But
Speaker 1: don't we need some sense that this was an extraordinary
Speaker 1: event and that the people who supported it need to
Speaker 1: be made accountable. For it and need to realize that
Speaker 1: what they did was not acceptable. I mean in South Africa,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, there was the Truth and Conciliation Commission,
Speaker 1: and in post communist societies, you know, there was certainly
Speaker 1: a lot of delayed justice and denied justice. But you know,
Speaker 1: in many of the countries, as you've written about, you know,
Speaker 1: there was some sense of holding people accountable to just
Speaker 1: sort of go back to normal and kind of ignore it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think you're saying that the people
Speaker 1: who participated in violence in the capital shouldn't be prosecuted
Speaker 1: or that we should drop all that. But it's certainly
Speaker 1: true that anybody who broke into the capital or committed
Speaker 1: crimes at the capitol should be prosecuted. And I'm absolutely
Speaker 1: in favor of that, and I also very much hope
Speaker 1: that former president will be impeached. The trouble is that
Speaker 1: we are talking about a really large number of people.
Speaker 1: As I said, we might be talking about ten to
Speaker 1: twenty percent of the country. You know, you always have
Speaker 1: in post communist and post dictatorship situations, you always have
Speaker 1: some kind of trade off or balance between the demands
Speaker 1: of justice and the demands of practical lady, you know
Speaker 1: what can you you know, how many people can you
Speaker 1: try from the old regime before you inflame the supporters
Speaker 1: of the old regime and cause a backlash. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at history, you can see how this
Speaker 1: has been done well and badly in different places. I
Speaker 1: mean a famous example of where it was done really
Speaker 1: badly was in Iraq, where we conducted as the when
Speaker 1: the Americans were occupying a rock after the fall of
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein, we conducted a program called de Bathification, which
Speaker 1: was all the members of the Saddam's Bath Party were
Speaker 1: you know, lost their jobs, were sent home, you know,
Speaker 1: we were held accountable for the regime, and the result
Speaker 1: was that many of them reformed, regrouped, and became the
Speaker 1: terrorist insurgencies that fought American troops for years afterwards. Because
Speaker 1: we're talking about so many people, that's not a great
Speaker 1: model for us. I really understand. I mean, believe me,
Speaker 1: I understand the urge to want to shun people, to
Speaker 1: block them, to say you can't hold office, to to
Speaker 1: try and keep them out of public life. All I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that that's probably not going to work, and
Speaker 1: the and the evidence from other countries you know where
Speaker 1: you've had big insurgencies. I mean again Northern Ireland. You know,
Speaker 1: the British tried to you know, eliminate the the IRA
Speaker 1: for many years through harsh, tough police enforcement, through you know, fighting,
Speaker 1: through infiltration of the communities, and one of the main
Speaker 1: results was that the support and sympathy for the IRA
Speaker 1: grew and grew and grew. And it really only wasn't
Speaker 1: until they changed tactics and they began talking, you know,
Speaker 1: in a different way about accommodating the not just the
Speaker 1: RA but the Catholic community more broadly in Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: that they began to get a sea change in terms
Speaker 1: of public attitudes. You know, this is too many people
Speaker 1: to wish away, it's too many people to shun. It's
Speaker 1: even too many people to cancel, you know, and prevent
Speaker 1: them all, you know, you have them all be fired.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's simply not going to work. And so
Speaker 1: we need to begin looking at some other tactics, you know,
Speaker 1: in which we can somehow live together. How do you
Speaker 1: plan to handle this at a personal level, I mean
Speaker 1: I've had all these fantasies going on inside my head.
Speaker 1: I mean I was, you know, years ago once at
Speaker 1: a dinner party with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and
Speaker 1: I sort of said to myself, I'll never do that again.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm ever in a room with them
Speaker 1: on a social occasion, I'll you know, I'll storm out.
Speaker 1: You know I won't. I won't break bread with them.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking, you know, in the old days, like you,
Speaker 1: I would go on a lot of panel discussions and
Speaker 1: TV appearances where you're pitted, as in my case, the
Speaker 1: liberal opposite a conservative, and I've sort of said to myself, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that with people who rejected
Speaker 1: the election results because I feel like they're outside the
Speaker 1: boundary of acceptable democratic values. And you know, I won't.
Speaker 1: I don't think those people deserve equal time. That's my
Speaker 1: emotional feeling. I hear, absolutely hear what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: think you're right that it's not going to be productive
Speaker 1: to those people more aggressively contribute to the polarization from
Speaker 1: the other side. But honestly, I'm not quite sure how
Speaker 1: to deal with it, because I'm so enraged by people
Speaker 1: who've taken that position, including a majority of the Republicans
Speaker 1: in Congress, that I don't know how I would handle
Speaker 1: being around them. I mean, I think the way one
Speaker 1: deals with it personally depends on who you are and
Speaker 1: what I mean, what your role is. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you, as a journalist, are well within your rights
Speaker 1: to say I won't be on a panel with someone
Speaker 1: who supported the insurrection or who didn't recognize who won
Speaker 1: the election, and I might well agree with you on that. Actually,
Speaker 1: I certainly had a rule. At the time of the
Speaker 1: Russian invasion of Ukraine in twenty fourteen, I kept getting
Speaker 1: put on television programs with spokesman for the Russian government
Speaker 1: who would deny that the invasion was happening even while
Speaker 1: it was happening. I mean, you could see it happen.
Speaker 1: And I finally drew a line through that. I said,
Speaker 1: I just you know, I'm not going to waste time
Speaker 1: talking to people who want to pretend that there's an
Speaker 1: alternate reality happening. And I think you know you're within
Speaker 1: your rights to do that. I think the harder question
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, and I've been asked this
Speaker 1: a lot, and I have a you know it touches
Speaker 1: me personally, is what you do with old friends or
Speaker 1: relatives or parents or people who you're very close to
Speaker 1: who have bought into some piece of that alternate reality.
Speaker 1: In some cases, I've heard from people who have relatives
Speaker 1: who have started following the QAnon conspiracy. How do you
Speaker 1: cope with that? And then we're in the realm of
Speaker 1: sort of a different piece of sociology and experience, and
Speaker 1: that's the realm of exit counseling. What is the advice
Speaker 1: for people you'd like to help get out of qan? On?
Speaker 1: Some of the advice there is an individual version of
Speaker 1: what I just said, in other words, change the subject,
Speaker 1: find other things to talk about. And then some of
Speaker 1: the advice is try and help people to see the
Speaker 1: contrast between the reality all around them and the false reality,
Speaker 1: the alternative reality that they're seeing online, which is which
Speaker 1: is what the problem is in America, the version of
Speaker 1: events that they're reading on you know, whatever it is
Speaker 1: Newsmax or or Facebook or gab or the Discord channel,
Speaker 1: whatever whichever piece whichever social media they're seeing it on.
Speaker 1: Try and present them constantly with alternatives and try also
Speaker 1: to help them see that there is a future for
Speaker 1: them in America run by Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress.
Speaker 1: Because many of these people have come to feel. And
Speaker 1: you can see this and hear it in some of
Speaker 1: the things that the Republican congressman said. You know, they've
Speaker 1: come to feel that. You know, how disingenuous or real
Speaker 1: this is, you'll have to you know, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to know, but that Biden's president represents the end of
Speaker 1: a certain kind of America, the end of a way
Speaker 1: of life. It's something they can't reconcile themselves too. And
Speaker 1: so it's sort of our job, as their friends and
Speaker 1: their relatives, to show them how they can reconcile themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, in the way that Colombian insurgents need to
Speaker 1: be offered some path back to a legal existence in Columbia.
Speaker 1: They need to be brought back from the jungle and
Speaker 1: retrained and helped to get new jobs. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is the same process, but there's some parallel
Speaker 1: process that we should use towards people who we know
Speaker 1: and who we're closed to, who are inside these cults.
Speaker 1: But I guess two thoughts about that. I mean, one,
Speaker 1: you know, you talked to one Manuel sentis the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize for President of Columbia for this program. You know,
Speaker 1: that is a very different situation in the sense that
Speaker 1: the rebels had been lost, the CentOS government was being
Speaker 1: magnanimous towards them in its victory, recognizing, as I think
Speaker 1: he said, that there was there was a trade off
Speaker 1: between peace and justice and saying, let's get peace, even
Speaker 1: if it's at the expense to some extent of immediate
Speaker 1: justice for these people who have done terrible things. But
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't dealing with a majority of the
Speaker 1: opposition party. They were dealing with something more like a
Speaker 1: remnant cult. That's true in that sense, they were luckier,
Speaker 1: although we're not yet talking about this scale violence that
Speaker 1: the FARC. This is the Colombian rebels. I'm committed, and
Speaker 1: in Colombia, we're not talking about a illegal drug dealing,
Speaker 1: kidnapping insurgency. So that so that's also that also makes
Speaker 1: the story a little bit different. What you're now asking
Speaker 1: is a slightly different problem, which is the problem of
Speaker 1: how we you know, what happens to the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: You know, and and here I think it's in our
Speaker 1: interests as outsiders to the party, as as you know,
Speaker 1: or former members of the party, as some people are
Speaker 1: some of my friends are, or even people who are
Speaker 1: still nominally in the party. There the task is to
Speaker 1: win the battle for the heart and soul of the
Speaker 1: party and bring it back to you know, even if
Speaker 1: even if it's still you disagree with it, even if
Speaker 1: it's still um you don't agree with their policies on
Speaker 1: judges or abortion. We just want them to respect the
Speaker 1: Constitution and we want them to to respect the rules
Speaker 1: of rational discourse. And so it's therefore on all of
Speaker 1: us to try to bring the party back there. And
Speaker 1: I think, for example, what does that mean for people
Speaker 1: who aren't in the party. It means praising, thanking, respecting,
Speaker 1: giving time to giving TV time to those Republicans who
Speaker 1: are willing to fight against the anti constitutional seditionists. And
Speaker 1: even though it's people you might not like, you might
Speaker 1: not you know, Liz Cheney might not be your cup
Speaker 1: of tea. You know, certainly McConnell is not many Democrats
Speaker 1: cup of tea. But giving him space on, you know,
Speaker 1: in the media and letting him say praise Cheney and
Speaker 1: denounce you know, the QAnon members of Congress is really important.
Speaker 1: So I mean, this is really a battle that's best
Speaker 1: one inside that party. And actually this brings me to another.
Speaker 1: You know. Another lesson of countries like Northern Ireland and
Speaker 1: Columbia is that people like you and me may not
Speaker 1: be the best messengers for Republicans. I mean they may not.
Speaker 1: They're just not going to listen to us, you know,
Speaker 1: in our view of the world. So who are the
Speaker 1: best messengers? Then people inside their community, people like that
Speaker 1: are best positioned to bring the party back, you know,
Speaker 1: in the direction of respecting the Constitution and away from
Speaker 1: sedition and so. But that presumes an outcome and where
Speaker 1: the Republican Party overtime or sometimes sort of returns to
Speaker 1: relative normality, returns to reality, and sometimes parties are so
Speaker 1: split over something fundamental that they break up. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Whig Party before Lincoln, you know, couldn't be contained
Speaker 1: pro slavery and anti slavery factions, you know, which gave
Speaker 1: birth to the Republican Party in the first place. One
Speaker 1: argument on the other side would be the difference between Romney,
Speaker 1: Ben Sass, Lisa Murky, Liz Cheney even on the one hand,
Speaker 1: and you know, Kevin McCarthy as the leader of the party,
Speaker 1: but all the people who have taken these consistent votes
Speaker 1: on Trump's side, rejecting the legitimacy of the election, that
Speaker 1: that split is you can't bridge that divide, and that
Speaker 1: the party has to split. Either the moderate people leave
Speaker 1: the Republican Party and form some new party, or they
Speaker 1: capture the party, in which case the Trump people are
Speaker 1: probably going to leave the party themselves. That would not
Speaker 1: be a bad outcome, if I may say so. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that I believe is the outcome that
Speaker 1: a lot of constitutional Republicans are hoping for. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: if we lived in a political system that had slightly
Speaker 1: different rules, we would have more than one party, more
Speaker 1: than two parties. Sorry, then the Republican Party would have
Speaker 1: already split and we would have a far right party
Speaker 1: and we would have a center right party, which is
Speaker 1: what lots of European countries have. Because of the nature
Speaker 1: of our voting system, it's much more difficult in the
Speaker 1: United States. But but yeah, one outcome well be that
Speaker 1: the party splits and one side of the other wins,
Speaker 1: and our role as outsiders is to help the constitutional
Speaker 1: Republicans win. Where do you see depolarization taking place, even
Speaker 1: on a very small scale. Where do you see this
Speaker 1: culture war divide, our fundamental political divide being bridged in
Speaker 1: the sense of people working together on local issues or
Speaker 1: things they still have shared interest in supporting. So in
Speaker 1: the United States, my sense is that that does take
Speaker 1: place at the local and city level quite a lot.
Speaker 1: That Republicans and Democrats are often capable of working together,
Speaker 1: as I say, whatever it is fixing the potholes or
Speaker 1: fixing the roads. But in fact I often have the
Speaker 1: sense that politics in the US, even state politics, which
Speaker 1: can be quite nasty, but certainly city level, municipal, local politics,
Speaker 1: is a lot better and a lot healthier, and a
Speaker 1: lot more functional than national politics. And precisely because national
Speaker 1: politics has become you know, it's a realm where people
Speaker 1: perform and express their identities, where they choose sides in
Speaker 1: the culture war. When we're talking about pollution in the
Speaker 1: local river, you can get cooperation. Yeah, what what country
Speaker 1: you talked about? Northern Ireland is a place where you
Speaker 1: know you've seen this taking place. What country do you
Speaker 1: think has been the most effective at depolarizing or reducing
Speaker 1: fundamental sectional or cultural tensions. This will sound a little strange,
Speaker 1: but another really interesting example of a place that depolarized
Speaker 1: is actually Canada. As you have all forgotten, there used
Speaker 1: to be a Quebec separates and it had a violent element,
Speaker 1: and it was very angry, and there was a part
Speaker 1: of Quebec that was very embittered. This is the French
Speaker 1: speaking partists that wanted to secede from the rest of Canada.
Speaker 1: And what the Canadians did to solve that problem, it
Speaker 1: took a decade, was they literally divided it up into
Speaker 1: littler issues. They created lots and lots of committees to
Speaker 1: discuss them, the language issue, you know, the residence issue,
Speaker 1: the history issue. They created about three dozen think tanks
Speaker 1: dedicated to justice problem, sent lots of academics to write
Speaker 1: books about it. They involved everybody in the discussion of
Speaker 1: every detail, and I'm telling you, everyone got so bored
Speaker 1: of it. It became the most tedious subject, and everyone
Speaker 1: knew the ins and out so well that the thing
Speaker 1: diffused itself. It became boring. Once it wasn't my identity
Speaker 1: as a French Canadian versus your identity as an English Canadian.
Speaker 1: And once it was about what language do we speak
Speaker 1: in elementary school and what percentage of signs have to
Speaker 1: be in which language. Once it was at the needy,
Speaker 1: gritty level of policy level, it became much less interesting
Speaker 1: and people were much less angry about it, and a
Speaker 1: lot of problems turned out to be solvable. It's a
Speaker 1: really interesting comparison because the Kabaqua were poorer than the
Speaker 1: average Canadians. They you know, they felt culturally oppressed, and
Speaker 1: it was a nationalistic movement and you know, while not
Speaker 1: directly comparable to Trumpism in certain respects, it was a
Speaker 1: similar sector of society making demands against what they thought
Speaker 1: as an elite that was oppressing them in cultural terms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a that's a good comparison. And there's alsoays, you know,
Speaker 1: an urban rural split, which is a little bit what
Speaker 1: we have in America too. Although you have to be
Speaker 1: very careful with these stereotypes. There was a very very
Speaker 1: good survey done that looked very closely at the nearly
Speaker 1: two hundred people who are at the Capitol who have
Speaker 1: been arrested, and therefore we have their identify you know,
Speaker 1: we know who they are and they have and it
Speaker 1: turns out that many of them are not the stereotype
Speaker 1: of the Trumper who you think they are. They were
Speaker 1: not necessarily from red states. They were often from blue
Speaker 1: states where they felt themselves to be embattled minorities. They
Speaker 1: were often middle class. Quite a lot of them run
Speaker 1: small companies and small businesses, interestingly, small businesses badly affected
Speaker 1: by the pandemic. In some cases they were middle aged.
Speaker 1: They were middle class. They certainly had enough money to
Speaker 1: travel to Washington's, stay in hotels, and show up at
Speaker 1: the capital, so they were not It is wrong to
Speaker 1: think of this group as as the poorest Americans. I mean,
Speaker 1: they most certainly are not. Absolutely Now, one thing that
Speaker 1: is obviously different from the circumstances we were just talking
Speaker 1: about in Colombia and Quebec and even Northern Ireland is
Speaker 1: the role media in particularly social media. I don't think
Speaker 1: in any of those situations you had the equivalent of
Speaker 1: the kind of partisan media driving the distinction for sort
Speaker 1: of fun and profit the way Fox News does, or
Speaker 1: obviously Facebook at the scale it is now as a
Speaker 1: way for people to isolate themselves in their own viewpoint
Speaker 1: and kind of create, you know, self sustaining cults impervious
Speaker 1: to information from the outside. What. I know you've thought
Speaker 1: a lot about this. What do you think the way
Speaker 1: is of coping with the media impact in the other
Speaker 1: direction promoting polarization so, first of all, the phenomenon of
Speaker 1: very partisan media was not unknown, and in the societies
Speaker 1: we've been discussing, that's a familiar one. But you're right
Speaker 1: that the phenomenon of social media and actually the Internet
Speaker 1: more broadly, because it's really not just Facebook, it's a
Speaker 1: broader phenomenon, is a new one. And what's different about
Speaker 1: it is that it really does allow people to live
Speaker 1: in alternate realities. I mean, you can live online, you
Speaker 1: can get all of you know, your sense of who
Speaker 1: you are online, your identity. You can become very popular
Speaker 1: and be liked online by people you don't even know
Speaker 1: in real life. And you can get all kinds of
Speaker 1: sense of pleasure, connection and approval you know online that
Speaker 1: you can't get in the real world. And so it
Speaker 1: has a that is a very important and very it
Speaker 1: does play very toxic and complicated role. I am very
Speaker 1: um you know, I believe very deeply in um in
Speaker 1: both in the possibility and the necessity of social media regulation.
Speaker 1: I am actually writing about it right now. It's a
Speaker 1: big project. Though I would like to stress that this
Speaker 1: is the real question is not about content, and you
Speaker 1: know who's going to decide, you know, whether the president
Speaker 1: gets to have a Twitter feed or not, and you know,
Speaker 1: or who's going to regulate what content Facebook puts up?
Speaker 1: The real questions are much deeper, you know, is there
Speaker 1: a way to regulate the algorithms that decide who sees
Speaker 1: what and that that enable make it possible for people
Speaker 1: to live in alternate realities? You know? Can we imagine
Speaker 1: different kinds of social media, you know, sort of public
Speaker 1: service social media, a BBC of social media that could
Speaker 1: at least offer some people alternatives so that there are
Speaker 1: ways to connect with people whose rules are transparent and
Speaker 1: open in the way that we would like democratic debate
Speaker 1: to be prints and open and are not where the
Speaker 1: Facebook engineers aren't experimenting on us all the time to
Speaker 1: find out which algorithm keeps us on the site longer
Speaker 1: or makes us like the site longer. Creating an Internet
Speaker 1: that reflects democratic values and the values of that prioritize
Speaker 1: rational conversation and civic debate and civic virtues is a
Speaker 1: really big and important long term project for the United
Speaker 1: States and actually for all democracies. And it's my contention
Speaker 1: that it is the thing that we could work on
Speaker 1: together with other democracies because the same debate is happening
Speaker 1: in other countries. I mean, it's happening in England. It's happening,
Speaker 1: and the European Union, which actually has some regulation on
Speaker 1: the books now that will come into effect in the
Speaker 1: next couple of years, which will begin to do some
Speaker 1: real regulation of social media along these precise lines. Once
Speaker 1: we're past the immediate emergency of the pandemic and the
Speaker 1: economic collapse. I really hope that Congress can find some
Speaker 1: bandwidth to focus on this, because it's the technology can
Speaker 1: be solved. There are ways in which we could do
Speaker 1: this regulation. There are teams of their academics who are
Speaker 1: thinking about it, their proposals to be made. But what
Speaker 1: there hasn't been until now has been the real will
Speaker 1: to do it. I mean it's almost like, you know,
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties and the monopolists were in charge of
Speaker 1: the railroads and the banks and the oil companies, and
Speaker 1: everybody you know sat around and said, well, that's too bad.
Speaker 1: It's really a pity that there are all these monopolies.
Speaker 1: But there's really just nothing we can do about it,
Speaker 1: because that's just you know, that's just reality. And that
Speaker 1: wasn't true. I mean, it was possible to reform the monopolies,
Speaker 1: and it was possible to create anti trust law, and
Speaker 1: it was possible to make capitalism more civilized. You know
Speaker 1: that in that era. And it is possible to change
Speaker 1: the rules of the Internet. I mean, the Internet has
Speaker 1: changed over time and evolved because of decisions that people
Speaker 1: have made, both in the government and outside the government.
Speaker 1: And we can change it again. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: you know, it's our internet. You know, our rules and
Speaker 1: our laws and our regulations can shape it. I do
Speaker 1: hope that our political leaders come to see that quickly.
Speaker 1: And my favorite last question is always what individuals our
Speaker 1: listeners can do, and particularly around this question of your
Speaker 1: idea of finding common ground not on the big questions,
Speaker 1: but on some smaller, local type issues with people they
Speaker 1: might strongly disagree with. What are ways to pursue that,
Speaker 1: I think for people who are maybe have a little
Speaker 1: more equanimity that I do at this stage, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I will in six months, But you know, what
Speaker 1: are some ways to get involved in things that you
Speaker 1: think will have that kind of soothing effect. So look
Speaker 1: for organizations that have mixed membership, charities or local NGOs,
Speaker 1: local municipal organizations that you can work with where you'll
Speaker 1: be in contact with people who have different ideas from you,
Speaker 1: or who have a different political orientation from you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's always a useful thing to do. And of course,
Speaker 1: even as I'm advising this, I realize how hard that
Speaker 1: can be depending on what community you live in. People
Speaker 1: that you know or people who are whose orientation is
Speaker 1: different from you seek ways to communicate with them. And
Speaker 1: by the way, people who are caught up in the
Speaker 1: QAnon cult think very hard about how to help them
Speaker 1: get out of it, because that's a that's a that's
Speaker 1: a much more dangerous and insidious version in a version
Speaker 1: of this problem. Generally speaking, finding ways yourself personally to
Speaker 1: engage with people on the other side of the political
Speaker 1: spectrum is you know, can only be useful. It sounds
Speaker 1: like good advice to me. And thanks for the conversation today,
Speaker 1: Thanks Jacob. That was the historian and journalist Anne Applebaumb
Speaker 1: she's also, as you know, a co host of this show.
Speaker 1: I hope that conversation sets the table as it were
Speaker 1: for the weeks ahead, as Anna and I continue to
Speaker 1: explore aspects of the problem with other guests. Today, we
Speaker 1: briefly touched on the role of social media and all this.
Speaker 1: Solvable will continue next week with an in depth conversation
Speaker 1: with the man who invented the term filter bubble, tech
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and social activist, Eli Pariser. We'll discuss how social
Speaker 1: media platforms are contributing to our political and cultural rifts.
Speaker 1: We'll also explore ways to rethink the digital worlds we
Speaker 1: participate in. One idea Pariser suggests is for digital designers
Speaker 1: to think more like successful urban planners. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: join us for that conversation. Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank,
Speaker 1: research in booking by Lisa don Our managing producer is
Speaker 1: Katherine Girardot, and our executive producer of Pushkin is Mia Lobel.
Speaker 1: Special thanks this week to Heather Fain, John Schnarros, Carley mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Emily Rothstak, Maya Koenig,
Speaker 1: and Kadisha Holland. Solvable is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate
Speaker 1: and review us really helps to get the word out.
Speaker 1: You can find Pushkin podcasts wherever you listen, including on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and Apple podcasts. I'm Jacob Weisberg.