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Speaker 3: I'm ord Ramos and I'm Bala Ramos, and this is the.
Speaker 4: Momentment Contactor in Astoria. Just a few weeks after Donald
Speaker 4: Trump was elected, I went to a conference in Columbia.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of experts on democracy.
Speaker 4: And the important process of participating in the society. But
Speaker 4: then everybody went to one expert, this thought leader, on
Speaker 4: what she thought about democracy in America? Is there a
Speaker 4: threat to democracy? And what's going to happen with Donald Trump?
Speaker 5: So you're talking about an Applebaum and is a Politzer
Speaker 5: Prize winning journalist, writer author. You may have read her
Speaker 5: on The Atlantic. Her latest book is Autocracy, Inc. But
Speaker 5: more than anything, and is an expert on democracies and authoritarianism.
Speaker 5: So I think this is a moment dad where we
Speaker 5: can agree that everyone is asking this one question right
Speaker 5: like is the United States headed towards authoritarianism? Are we there?
Speaker 5: Are we not? And is someone that can help you
Speaker 5: understand the elements, the environment and the signs to help
Speaker 5: us measure whether or not we're losing our democracy?
Speaker 4: And what I find so interesting is that she can
Speaker 4: talk about the dark side of history but also about
Speaker 4: hopefulness nowadays in the United States and the rest of
Speaker 4: the world. An apple Bomb when we come back.
Speaker 5: Well and thank you so much for joining us. And
Speaker 5: welcome to the moment.
Speaker 6: Thanks thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: So before the end of the year. We wanted to
Speaker 5: come to you to really take this as an opportunity
Speaker 5: to look at the past, to help us reflect on
Speaker 5: everything that this country has endured over the last year.
Speaker 5: And I think I don't have to tell you. I
Speaker 5: think a lot of people feel overwhelmed by the news,
Speaker 5: by the noise. And I think your voice, your commentary,
Speaker 5: your writing on the Atlantic, of course, your your latest
Speaker 5: book Photography, inc. I think all of that has really
Speaker 5: anchored thousands of people, including myself, And I think you've
Speaker 5: allowed for a lot of people to situate the current
Speaker 5: American moment within a historical context. And so thank you again. Today,
Speaker 5: I want to start by just looking at the last
Speaker 5: couple of days. You see an administration that has once
Speaker 5: again completely transformed the immigration system, suddenly pausing immigration from
Speaker 5: nineteen countries. You see an administration that continues to dismantle
Speaker 5: the Department of Education, someone that just pardoned the former
Speaker 5: president of Holudas, who of course is convicted drug trafficker.
Speaker 5: And all of this is happening as the United States
Speaker 5: weighs a potential invasion in Minnesuela, and so it's a lot.
Speaker 5: But my question for you is, when you look at
Speaker 5: this administration's behavior, do you see chaos or do you
Speaker 5: see an actual plan?
Speaker 7: So I think you can answer that by saying that
Speaker 7: there's more than one actual plan. There are several people
Speaker 7: who have plans and they sometimes contradict and that this
Speaker 7: is why it might look like chaos. But I think
Speaker 7: what you're actually seeing is just competition between different ideas.
Speaker 7: So on the one hand, it's clear that you have
Speaker 7: a part of the administration that wants to use immigration,
Speaker 7: not even as a real policy issue, but as a
Speaker 7: part of the culture wars. So they they're using a
Speaker 7: crackdown on immigrants, on people who look, to some Americans,
Speaker 7: look foreign or look different, as a way of demonstrating
Speaker 7: their power and showing their supporters. Look, we're cracking down
Speaker 7: on this diversity that you don't like, and we're deporting people.
Speaker 7: And some of the deliberate cruelty is part of that too.
Speaker 7: You know, they're trying to appeal to something very ugly
Speaker 7: that I don't think is in all Americans, but there's
Speaker 7: some percentage who support it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: Simultaneously, you have some people who are part of this
Speaker 7: administration because they are interested in money. And many of
Speaker 7: the pardons, the people who've been pardoned in the last year,
Speaker 7: and I'm not going to remember the numbers off the
Speaker 7: top of my head, but Trump has pardoned many, many
Speaker 7: times more people in one year than I think any
Speaker 7: previous president had ever pardoned in four years. And so
Speaker 7: some of that is about responding to donors and other supporters,
Speaker 7: maybe people who've invested in Trump's cryptocurrency company. The pardon
Speaker 7: system seems to have been set up to reflect different peoples,
Speaker 7: not just the president, but people around the president, their interests,
Speaker 7: maybe their financial interests or their political interests, and so
Speaker 7: you have these kind of, you know, as I said,
Speaker 7: seemingly different noisy things happening at the same time. And
Speaker 7: actually the story in Venezuela, which maybe we should have
Speaker 7: a step back and have a more nuanced discussion of it,
Speaker 7: also seems to me to be about several things at once.
Speaker 7: It's part of the idea that we are I don't
Speaker 7: know if we're going to invade, but we're using force
Speaker 7: against Venezuela to stop narco terrorism. Is something that's clearly
Speaker 7: part of this demean stick culture war that's useful for
Speaker 7: the administration domestically. Maybe they are also oil interests there.
Speaker 7: You know, there's there's maybe a small part of the
Speaker 7: State Department still cares about helping Venezuelans and helping them
Speaker 7: have a better government and maybe letting allowing their democratically
Speaker 7: elected leaders to rule the country rather than an illegitimate government.
Speaker 7: But you're not hearing those people. I mean, if that's
Speaker 7: what anybody thinks, they aren't saying so right now. So
Speaker 7: all of these, all of these policies are the product of.
Speaker 6: Different groups. I mean, maybe maybe one group.
Speaker 7: Or one philosophy will win out in the end, but
Speaker 7: right now we see several in competition.
Speaker 4: And the last time I saw you, I think it
Speaker 4: was in Carta, Columbia, and the world seemed very different.
Speaker 4: It was the beginning of twenty twenty five and Trump
Speaker 4: had just begun his second term as president. And I
Speaker 4: remember and that you were very concerned about the threats
Speaker 4: to American democracy post by Trump. I think you've been
Speaker 4: asked a hundred times the same question, and it's exactly
Speaker 4: the same question. La demogracia americanistem peligro and and obviously
Speaker 4: you you gave all your answers, but I wonder if
Speaker 4: you have been taken by surprise by the speed and
Speaker 4: by the extent of the changes that would seem.
Speaker 7: So honestly, I'm not surprised. The language that Trump was
Speaker 7: using during the campaign was unlike the language that any
Speaker 7: other American presidential candidate had ever used, you know, talking
Speaker 7: about immigrants and also other Americans as vermin as poison,
Speaker 7: as garbage.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: This isn't even even in the during the era of
Speaker 7: the civil rights when we had you know, segregationists running
Speaker 7: for office in the United States, you know, George Wallace,
Speaker 7: people like that, they weren't using that kind of language.
Speaker 7: In fact, they went out of their way to be
Speaker 7: very polite, you know. I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 7: they thought, but they spoke about but equal or they
Speaker 7: had other justifications. And this is the first American politician
Speaker 7: who's used that kind of language, And to me, it
Speaker 7: sounds like the language of the worst dictators of the past.
Speaker 7: I mean, and I know because I've written books about them,
Speaker 7: and so it has always bothered me. And the second
Speaker 7: thing that bothered me about Trump was that I knew
Speaker 7: that the people around him in his second term would
Speaker 7: be very different from the people in his first term.
Speaker 5: He is.
Speaker 7: He's surrounded by people who were attracted to him after
Speaker 7: January the sixth. In other words, they saw what happened
Speaker 7: on January the sixth, and they said, we like that,
Speaker 7: you know, we like the idea of overthrowing American democracy.
Speaker 7: All of them are people who who think fundamentally that
Speaker 7: something about the system needs to be overthrown. So in
Speaker 7: that sense, they aren't conservatives in the old definition of
Speaker 7: the word conservative. They aren't interested in preserving what's good
Speaker 7: from the past. They aren't interested in building on the
Speaker 7: experience of history and moving forward. These are people who
Speaker 7: are radicals, and they were interested in radical change. They
Speaker 7: were interested in making very dramatic shifts, shifts that would
Speaker 7: be visible, that would be comprehensible to some of their
Speaker 7: radical supporters. And I think they're also very interested in
Speaker 7: changing things in a way that is irreversible. The destruction
Speaker 7: of US AID, for example, they did it in such
Speaker 7: a way that it can't be rebuilt, and even if
Speaker 7: it's ever found to.
Speaker 6: Be illegal, which I think it was.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's the US administration didn't have the right
Speaker 7: to destroy an institution that was created by Congress, Congress
Speaker 7: and our system being the body that decides about funding.
Speaker 6: Nevertheless, it's too late.
Speaker 7: Because it's gone and all the people and contracts and
Speaker 7: organizations that worked with it have been cut. And so
Speaker 7: I think the speed is a reflection of that radicalism.
Speaker 7: And I think you could hear the radicalism over the
Speaker 7: last couple.
Speaker 4: Of years, yep Son, even the language, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: they keep on usume. I remember just a few years ago, nobody,
Speaker 4: nobody call on documentary illegal immigrants, illegal aliens. And now
Speaker 4: it's been used over and over again, and it has
Speaker 4: been normalized completely.
Speaker 3: It's just the language that is changing so much.
Speaker 7: And they're very conscious of this language, you know, they
Speaker 7: they use it in a way that's designed to create
Speaker 7: maximal polarization, you know, to create the idea that there's
Speaker 7: a group of and you know, they don't only just
Speaker 7: talk about immigrants being illegal, they talk about them being criminals.
Speaker 6: You know, we're arresting criminals.
Speaker 7: And so the idea is that you know, you focus
Speaker 7: your anger and distrust and dislike of whatever it is
Speaker 7: that you don't like about American life, focus it on
Speaker 7: these illegal criminals who are seeking to undermine our country,
Speaker 7: you know, or change its nature and focus your anger
Speaker 7: on them, and we're going to show you how we'll
Speaker 7: arrest them and will do so, you know, in the
Speaker 7: most brutal way possible, and we'll film ourselves doing it,
Speaker 7: and then we'll make video.
Speaker 6: Clips out of it.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's the that's that's the kind of politics
Speaker 7: that we're seeing. And and again it's it's just you know,
Speaker 7: for me, I I've I've lived in mostly in Europe
Speaker 7: over the last thirty years, and I wrote books about
Speaker 7: the Soviet system before that. And these are not new ideas.
Speaker 7: These are familiar ideas. And again, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 7: America is already a dictatorship or anything like that. We
Speaker 7: we still have lots of freedoms, we still have the
Speaker 7: ability to use, use our institutions, we can vote, and
Speaker 7: so I don't want to give people this feeling of hopelessness.
Speaker 7: All I'm saying is that they are using authoritarian tactics
Speaker 7: that have been tried in other places. They know what
Speaker 7: they're doing, you know, they're using propaganda of a kind
Speaker 7: that's familiar. It's not it's not coming from nowhere, and
Speaker 7: that should be a warning light to everybody.
Speaker 3: Will be right back we continue our conversation when and Applebam, Paula.
Speaker 5: And so it sounds like you're you're not necessarily surprised
Speaker 5: at the extent and the way in which this administration
Speaker 5: is governing. But I'm wondering if you're surprised around the
Speaker 5: language that he's using at the global stage, right, because
Speaker 5: there's something about the way in which Trump talks to
Speaker 5: authoritarian figures that I'd love for you to to help
Speaker 5: me understand. Right, I'm thinking of the way that he
Speaker 5: talks to Chi of China and Budin of Russia obviously,
Speaker 5: Orban and Hungary, even Kim jonguin in North Korea, even
Speaker 5: the way that he supported me lay Barsonado, Bugelen and Salvador.
Speaker 5: What type of impact does the sort of American president's
Speaker 5: deference to these authoritaian figures have in the international stage?
Speaker 5: And was that even surprising for you?
Speaker 7: So, again, this is something he did do in his
Speaker 7: first term, and actually it's something he's been doing all
Speaker 7: of his life. So Trump instinctively admires people who don't
Speaker 7: have to live with any kind of controls or checks
Speaker 7: and balances. And I don't think this is so much
Speaker 7: of a political instinct as a personal one. He admires
Speaker 7: people with absolute power. You know, when he speaks of
Speaker 7: the Chinese dictator, he speaks of him with admiration. You know,
Speaker 7: look at all these millions of people who have to
Speaker 7: do what he says. You know, I think he looks
Speaker 7: at someone like Orbon, who was democratically elected within a
Speaker 7: democracy and who broke a lot of rules in order
Speaker 7: to stay in power indefinitely. He looks at him as someone,
Speaker 7: you know, who really achieved something.
Speaker 6: Because of that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: So he admires authoritarians instinctively, I think, And he admires
Speaker 7: people who break rules and get away with it instinctively.
Speaker 7: So this and these are this is connected to his
Speaker 7: personality and it's not it's not so much of a
Speaker 7: political philosophy. This is this is these are These are
Speaker 7: things he was born with, and he's attracted around himself
Speaker 7: other people who feel the same way. And you you,
Speaker 7: this wasn't normal in any American administration before the the
Speaker 7: you know, certainly for the last hundred years, the people
Speaker 7: who've been in power in the United States haven't openly
Speaker 7: admired dictatorship, you know, or if they did, they kept
Speaker 7: it somewhere in the back of their head, and they
Speaker 7: didn't reveal it. It wasn't the language of American democracy
Speaker 7: or of American political leadership. And so you are right
Speaker 7: to pinpoint this as one of the most dramatic shifts.
Speaker 5: And is it's a shift that continues to decrease our
Speaker 5: credibility in the international community.
Speaker 7: I assume, well, it decreases our ability to make to
Speaker 7: have allies. So all of our old allies everywhere feel
Speaker 7: suspicious of us, and we will be hesitant to work
Speaker 7: with us. Over time, it will decrease our ability to
Speaker 7: do things or to achieve things that we want, because
Speaker 7: we won't find that people cooperate with us. Certainly were
Speaker 7: you know, there were a lot of countries in the
Speaker 7: world who cooperate with the United States on the basis
Speaker 7: of an assumption of shared values, you know, okay, where
Speaker 7: all democracies will work with you because we think that
Speaker 7: what you're trying to do, even if we don't like
Speaker 7: some specific aspects of your policy, we think you're promoting
Speaker 7: to bork per se. That's I think that's going to
Speaker 7: end pretty quickly. Maybe some future president could revive it,
Speaker 7: but right now Trump is really doing a lot of
Speaker 7: damage to those traditions and so and at the same time,
Speaker 7: you know, he is also therefore doing damage to the
Speaker 7: system of laws and rules and norms that have that
Speaker 7: have they haven't ruled the world since nineteen forty five.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's an unfair thing to say, but I
Speaker 7: mean the language of the un Charter, for example, speaks
Speaker 7: about how it's wrong for one nation to invade another,
Speaker 7: to change borders by force. And there was an assumption
Speaker 7: that big nations didn't just get to dominate small nations automatically.
Speaker 7: That you know, that wasn't There was something wrong with that.
Speaker 7: And Trump is undermining and reversing that language, and that
Speaker 7: will make it easier for future Russian invasions of Ukraine.
Speaker 7: It could make it easier for she to invade Taiwan.
Speaker 7: I mean, they're once the taboo is gone, you know,
Speaker 7: and I recognize in some cases it was only a taboo,
Speaker 7: it was it was violated in practice. But once that's gone,
Speaker 7: then why shouldn't big countries try to occupy smaller ones.
Speaker 7: Why won't we have a return to imperialism and to
Speaker 7: you know, great power conflicts of a kind that we
Speaker 7: knew in the past uh. And I don't know whether
Speaker 7: Trump is understands this or not. I think probably not,
Speaker 7: although again I suspect some people run him do, But
Speaker 7: he is he What he's doing is damaging a whole
Speaker 7: system of alliances and rules and international law and multi
Speaker 7: lateral institutions that will be pretty hard to ever put
Speaker 7: back together.
Speaker 4: Again, let me jump into Venezuela. You just mentioned that
Speaker 4: a few moments ago. In your book Autobracy, Inc. You
Speaker 4: write extensively about the warm relationship between octoretarian regimes and
Speaker 4: how economic interests keep them together. But so let let
Speaker 4: me concentrate on Venezuela, right the warm relationship between Venezuela
Speaker 4: in Turkey, also the ties between Iran and Venezuela, and
Speaker 4: how the gold all is flowing freely. But is there
Speaker 4: anything that Turkey and Iran can do now to prevent
Speaker 4: the military conflict between the US and Venezuela. In other words,
Speaker 4: has Trump changed absolutely everything, including these relationships?
Speaker 7: No? I mean, actually, the more important relationships for Venezuela
Speaker 7: right now are China, which has big investments there, Russia,
Speaker 7: which has armed Venezuela in the past, and of course Cuba,
Speaker 7: which supplies security advice to the Venezuelan regime. And I'm
Speaker 7: told actual security guards to Maduro.
Speaker 3: Personal bodyguards.
Speaker 7: Yeah, to Maduro personally, So you know, and you know,
Speaker 7: I don't have an insight into what's happening there right now,
Speaker 7: but I would be surprised if some of those forces.
Speaker 6: Aren't being activated.
Speaker 7: One of the reasons Maduro has not requished power already.
Speaker 7: One of the reasons why despite having lost a legitimate
Speaker 7: election and having facing an opposition that proved he lost.
Speaker 7: I remember this is the Venezuelan opposition showed the teallypapers
Speaker 7: from the polling booths showing that they had won the
Speaker 7: election of Madua had lost. One of the things that
Speaker 7: had given Madua the confidence to stay in power anyway
Speaker 7: was his sense of foreign support. Were his allies in
Speaker 7: the in the authoritarian world? You know, whether those allies
Speaker 7: will risk everything to come to his aid. You know,
Speaker 7: if the US uses military force against Venezuela, I don't know.
Speaker 7: I mean, Russia is in a bad position right now.
Speaker 7: It wasn't able to help its ally in Syria because
Speaker 7: they're they're they're losing so many men and so much
Speaker 7: equipment fighting in Ukraine. Iran has also suffered recently. You know,
Speaker 7: maybe you know, maybe the United States is will be
Speaker 7: facing a Maduro who's weaker in you know, for those reasons.
Speaker 7: But I mean, you know, certainly his allies haven't abandoned him.
Speaker 7: I mean they are You can't count out the possibility
Speaker 7: that they're they're there and that they're they're helping him
Speaker 7: survive now, and that they'll they'll help him survive some
Speaker 7: kind of US military pressure.
Speaker 3: Just a quick anecdote.
Speaker 4: I remember interviewing Nicolasma Dura a few years ago in
Speaker 4: Palacia Mela florist, and killing liked the interview, and at
Speaker 4: the end we were arrested and deported from Venezuela just
Speaker 4: for asking questions. But something is interesting, and what happen
Speaker 4: is I came in with a couple of Cuban American
Speaker 4: producers and they were telling me a corky tol usanas,
Speaker 4: all the bodyguards are our Cubans, And that was so surprising.
Speaker 4: Even the New York Times just recently wrote an article
Speaker 4: about about that. So going back to Venezuela, nobody obviously
Speaker 4: knows exactly what's going to happen, But is there a
Speaker 4: likely scenario for you?
Speaker 3: And why?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 4: Is the US doing that just to create maximum pressure,
Speaker 4: or or really there's going to be surgical Operation trond
Speaker 4: just to get Maduro out of Venezuela the same.
Speaker 3: Way they did with Noriega and Panama.
Speaker 6: So I don't know.
Speaker 7: I've heard that there are several scenarios still being considered,
Speaker 7: and actually I heard a month ago that they were
Speaker 7: very close to choosing one of them, and they hadn't
Speaker 7: chosen it yet, So you know, I can't tell you
Speaker 7: exactly what the scenario is. You know, the confusing question
Speaker 7: for me is why exactly are we doing this. I
Speaker 7: am the first to agree that the Venezuelan regime is illegitimate,
Speaker 7: that it's a.
Speaker 6: It's a. It's a.
Speaker 7: It's dependent on the international narcotics trade. It's a bad
Speaker 7: actor in the region. It's produced, you know, more refugees,
Speaker 7: even in a country without war, than than Ukraine and
Speaker 7: Gaza combined.
Speaker 3: It's a.
Speaker 6: You know, it's a.
Speaker 7: It's an illegitimate regime and I will not be sorry
Speaker 7: if it if it goes. What worries me, though, is
Speaker 7: the Trump administration's motives and what kind of example they're
Speaker 7: going to set by by doing this kind of operation
Speaker 7: one is I fear that some of the motives are domestic,
Speaker 7: to portray the president as a wartime president who's fighting
Speaker 7: brown skinned narco terrorists, which will then allow him to
Speaker 7: somehow amp up that same so called war inside the
Speaker 7: United States. I'm worried that there are people in the
Speaker 7: administration who think that by doing this they'll get special
Speaker 7: access to oil reserves in Venezuela or else, that there
Speaker 7: are companies around the Trump administration who think they they
Speaker 7: will get that, and that that's another primary motivation. And
Speaker 7: then third thing that worries me is, you know, when
Speaker 7: China watches this, you know, or Russia, but let's talk
Speaker 7: about China for the moment. You know, what they see
Speaker 7: is a kind of you know, dress rehearsal for what
Speaker 7: the invasion of Taiwan could look like. You know, troops
Speaker 7: on the you know, on the boats around the island,
Speaker 7: you know, putting pressure, creating some false.
Speaker 6: Reason for invasion, you know some.
Speaker 7: You know, this is exactly what the Chinese will do
Speaker 7: if they invade Taiwan. And so I fear that the
Speaker 7: United States is offering a very ugly example for for
Speaker 7: the world, and for particularly for the autocratic world, of
Speaker 7: how to repress a neighbor.
Speaker 4: We have to take another break, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 4: We're continue our conversation with Anne Apple.
Speaker 5: I was just saying that I spent some time a
Speaker 5: lot of time with with Trump supporters. I'm talking to
Speaker 5: you from from New York City, and but for a
Speaker 5: story I've been working on, and just yesterday I was
Speaker 5: having a conversation with with Trump supporters in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 5: many of them are very upset about, you know, these
Speaker 5: these alleged invasions and and sort of this administration, in
Speaker 5: their words, betraying their America first philosophy. And so that's
Speaker 5: just one thing I keep I keep thinking about. But
Speaker 5: I wanted to talk to you about the the parallels
Speaker 5: that you've that you've long seen and have been studying. Right,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about all the years that you spent researching
Speaker 5: the archives, which of course led to your monumental book, Gulag,
Speaker 5: A History, which of course discusses the repressive Soviet system,
Speaker 5: giving you and earning you a Policy Prize in two
Speaker 5: thousand and four. But I remember one of the things
Speaker 5: that you said is how when you were researching, you
Speaker 5: assumed that you were writing about a distant past now
Speaker 5: that you assume that you were writing about a type
Speaker 5: of repression and state violence that in some ways wouldn't
Speaker 5: come back. And so I'm curious looking back and understanding
Speaker 5: where you are now is a historian, what has that
Speaker 5: felt like for you personally to sort of see this
Speaker 5: distant past come back to the president? And was there
Speaker 5: specific moments that really gave you pause? So there is
Speaker 5: a very specific moment. So when the Russians invaded Crimea
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen, I watched that invasion almost It was
Speaker 5: extraordinary because I had just finished writing a book about
Speaker 5: the Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe after the Second World War,
Speaker 5: Hungary and Poland and East Germany, and I watched it
Speaker 5: with a kind of historian's I you know, the oh, look,
Speaker 5: they're doing exactly what they did in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 6: You know, they brought out.
Speaker 7: The old playbook and I even I saw how they
Speaker 7: were working with criminal groups in Crimea to take over
Speaker 7: the peninsula.
Speaker 6: And I thought, oh, you know, I missed that.
Speaker 7: I should have written, I should have looked into criminal
Speaker 7: organizations and were they cooperating with criminal organizations after the
Speaker 7: Second World War? Because I bet that was a bigger
Speaker 7: part of the story than I wrote in my book.
Speaker 7: So I saw that as really almost an exact you know,
Speaker 7: they were doing the exact same thing. And I have
Speaker 7: to say, since then, the nature of the Russian occupation
Speaker 7: of Eastern Ukraine, Crimea, but also the newer territories looks
Speaker 7: identical to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe in nineteen
Speaker 7: forty five nineteen fifty. And it also looks a lot
Speaker 7: like the sovietization of Ukraine in the nin thirties. So
Speaker 7: this is a you know, there's there's a system to it.
Speaker 7: You know, you arrest the chief of police and the
Speaker 7: mayor and the teachers, and you eliminate the symbols of
Speaker 7: the old system. And in this case, they force people
Speaker 7: to stop speaking Ukrainian, they don't teach Ukrainian history anymore.
Speaker 7: You know, they kind of eliminate the top edge of society.
Speaker 7: They terrorize everybody else. And this is not an echo
Speaker 7: of the past. I mean, this is literally the same
Speaker 7: system and to see that comeback in such a graphic
Speaker 7: way is very shocking. And then, of course for me,
Speaker 7: the secondary shock is seeing an American president, you know,
Speaker 7: he's not able to do those things in the United States.
Speaker 7: But seeing him almost admire Putin for his brutality, almost
Speaker 7: you know, imply sometimes that, look, the Russians have fought
Speaker 7: so hard, they deserve to keep this territory, ignoring what's
Speaker 7: happened on that territory. You know, you think of you
Speaker 7: think of American presidents in the past who fought against
Speaker 7: not you know, fought the Nazis, fought against the Soviet regime,
Speaker 7: understood the nature of those regimes and why they were
Speaker 7: bad and why they were you know, why they were
Speaker 7: dangerous even for Americans, why that system is so dangerous.
Speaker 7: And then you see an American president who doesn't seem
Speaker 7: particularly bothered by it.
Speaker 6: And that's say, you know, that's in It makes me.
Speaker 7: It makes me wonder whether you know, history doesn't repeat itself,
Speaker 7: but it rhymes, you know, it has echoes. And I
Speaker 7: and this is a very strange version of an echo.
Speaker 4: Right before the doing this interview, and I was listening
Speaker 4: to the NATO Secretary General, who seems to be a
Speaker 4: Trump fan all the time, and he says that only
Speaker 4: Trump can bring peace to Ukraine. And as we record
Speaker 4: this interview, there are conversations from their way in order
Speaker 4: to try to end the fighting in Ukraine, but you've
Speaker 4: expressed skepticism about a possible pieceal So, it is peace
Speaker 4: possible in Ukraine unless Ukraine seats part of its territory
Speaker 4: to Russia.
Speaker 7: Peace will only happen in Ukraine, real peace, lasting peace
Speaker 7: that isn't just a ceasefire, when the Russians understand that
Speaker 7: they can't win. In other words, that they understand that
Speaker 7: they cannot conquer all of Ukraine and that Ukraine will
Speaker 7: not become part of a new Russian empire. And as
Speaker 7: far as I can see, the Russians haven't come to
Speaker 7: that conclusion yet. You know, they aren't. You know, they
Speaker 7: aren't acting like a country that knows it won't win
Speaker 7: the war. Even though they aren't winning the war. I
Speaker 7: should say they've been for some of this territory. They've
Speaker 7: been fighting in the Dunbas since, you know, for eleven
Speaker 7: years now, and they still haven't managed to conquer it.
Speaker 7: But they've been encouraged by the Trump administration to believe
Speaker 7: that they still have a chance that they might be
Speaker 7: able to win. And what disturbs me the most about
Speaker 7: these negotiations is that they are at the moment encouraging
Speaker 7: Putin to keep fighting. I think maybe it's possible to
Speaker 7: achieve some kind of you know, temporary ceasefire or halt
Speaker 7: of you know, you know, end of end of conflict
Speaker 7: for a while. But the real test is can the
Speaker 7: war end in a way that Ukraine is a sovereign country,
Speaker 7: that it's able to protect itself against a future invasion,
Speaker 7: and that it's you know, and that the Russians understand
Speaker 7: that Ukraine will have protection and has friends and has
Speaker 7: allies and won't be won't be a country they can
Speaker 7: conquer again sometime in the future. And that's all much
Speaker 7: more important than where is the border. You know, maybe
Speaker 7: Ukraine would give up some territory.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I mean, I don't think there.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's politically possible for the president of
Speaker 7: Ukraine to give away territory that the Russians haven't come.
Speaker 7: That you can't do it, I mean he won't be
Speaker 7: allowed to do it. I mean the army won't do it.
Speaker 7: Ukrainian army doesn't work like that. It's a very decentralized
Speaker 7: army and it will not take an order to retreat.
Speaker 7: I don't think, not from not from not from territory
Speaker 7: where they aren't under pressure.
Speaker 6: So, you know, but I can I can imagine other.
Speaker 7: Kinds of negotiations being possible, but that isn't the main
Speaker 7: you know, that's not the main problem. The main problem
Speaker 7: isn't the borders of Ukraine. The main problem is have
Speaker 7: the Russians given up their goal of conquering the country.
Speaker 7: And I just don't think that's happened yet. And so,
Speaker 7: you know, the you know, I want there to be negotiations.
Speaker 7: I want people to keep talking. I but I just
Speaker 7: have a lot of doubt right now about whether the
Speaker 7: language that Americans are using in Moscow is the right
Speaker 7: kind of language, whether it's you know, remember that this
Speaker 7: team is there not only negotiating about Ukraine, but also
Speaker 7: negotiating future American Russian business deals also, something by the way,
Speaker 7: that was unimaginable in any previous administration. So I question,
Speaker 7: how are they speaking to the Russians, What kind of
Speaker 7: ideas are they giving to the Russians? What kind of
Speaker 7: ideas of the Russians giving to them, you know, because
Speaker 7: their purpose should be to say it's time to end
Speaker 7: the war and Ukraine is going to be independent, and
Speaker 7: you know, the Russians need to accept those things and
Speaker 7: then we can talk.
Speaker 6: And I'm just not hearing that yet.
Speaker 5: Sticking for one more second, just on this idea of parallels. Obviously,
Speaker 5: we spend a lot of time in this podcast talking
Speaker 5: about immigration and a lot of the issues that are
Speaker 5: affecting Latinos and immigrants in this country. And so I'm
Speaker 5: curious when you look at the images of you know, masts,
Speaker 5: ice agents and the images of them racially profound people
Speaker 5: using this violent language, separating families, driving around in unmarked cars,
Speaker 5: is it fair to say that it almost reads like
Speaker 5: a chapter in Gulac Like Is that a fair comparison?
Speaker 5: Do you see those parallels at all?
Speaker 7: I don't want to compare it directly to the Soviet Union,
Speaker 7: but I would certainly say that these are authoritarian tactics.
Speaker 7: So the creation of a paramilitary in other words, a
Speaker 7: militarized national police force like an interior ministry police, you
Speaker 7: would call it in an an old fashioned, you know,
Speaker 7: pre eighty nine East European country, giving those people unclear
Speaker 7: kinds of power. I mean they seem they seem able
Speaker 7: to break the law or twist the law with impunity.
Speaker 7: I mean they've they've arrested, by the way, you know,
Speaker 7: several dozens of Americans, people with American passports and American citizenship,
Speaker 7: and so far they don't seem to be paying a
Speaker 7: price for that, they don't seem to be apologizing, or
Speaker 7: they seem to be getting away with it, and that
Speaker 7: is a you know, it's it's not full blown Stalinism,
Speaker 7: but it's certainly the use of paramilitaries is is on
Speaker 7: the road in that direction, and so it is an
Speaker 7: authoritarian tactic. You can see it in other you know,
Speaker 7: in other countries where the system is the democratic Systan's
Speaker 7: foging part.
Speaker 6: Actually, it was one of the things Chevez.
Speaker 7: Brought to Venezuela was the use of paramilitary so not
Speaker 7: just the real military, but also this kind of other forces,
Speaker 7: you know, who had somehow weapons and they were able
Speaker 7: to they were able to repress people. And you know,
Speaker 7: and for the moment, it's legitimized in the eyes of
Speaker 7: some Americans by the fact that it's being directed supposedly
Speaker 7: at foreigners. But I fear that the you know, it's
Speaker 7: not just US citizens being arrested. It's also the way
Speaker 7: in which the presence of military on the street will
Speaker 7: change American behavior and thinking. I mean, you've heard several
Speaker 7: US governors worry that the use of ice and or
Speaker 7: maybe even the National Guard during midterm elections could be
Speaker 7: intimidate some people from voting. I think it's illegal to
Speaker 7: have armed people in near polling stations, but you could
Speaker 7: imagine them on the streets. So there are ways in
Speaker 7: which the this use of armed men masked armed men,
Speaker 7: which is also by the way, way out of US tradition.
Speaker 7: I mean, our policemen have name tags, you know, in
Speaker 7: our military have name tags, right, masked men in unmarked
Speaker 7: cars acting with you know, with apparently outside of the law.
Speaker 7: You know, this is this is something that's changing the
Speaker 7: relationship of Americans to the state, and in all kinds
Speaker 7: of ways that I think will only become clear over time.
Speaker 6: And yes, I think.
Speaker 7: It's it's it's certainly a it certainly comes directly from
Speaker 7: an authoritarian playbook.
Speaker 5: And what's interesting too, I just wanted to say very
Speaker 5: quickly that is that the polling doesn't really seem to
Speaker 5: be serving him when it comes specifically to immigration, and
Speaker 5: yet they're not stopping right, and yet it seems like
Speaker 5: this this force keeps growing and keeps becoming more and
Speaker 5: more violent. The streets are more militarized. Do you see
Speaker 5: that growing? I mean, do you see a next iteration
Speaker 5: of this sort of beginning paramilitary force in the US.
Speaker 7: Well, the next iteration is that it grows larger, it
Speaker 7: becomes omnipresent, and as I said, it begins to shape
Speaker 7: how people feel about going out of the house. I
Speaker 7: mean all people, not just immigrants, you know, or people
Speaker 7: of Latin American background.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a you know that the idea is.
Speaker 7: To create a symbolic force that's designed to discourage people
Speaker 7: from participating in public life. If it continues to metastasize,
Speaker 7: you know, you'll see more reaction. I mean there is
Speaker 7: a pushback. There's a pushback coming from the courts.
Speaker 6: Their protests.
Speaker 7: There people filming and taping what's going on, which I
Speaker 7: think helps, you know, so it's not like we're on
Speaker 7: some inevitable march towards dictatorship. I mean, I think US
Speaker 7: citizens have a lot of agency. They have a lot
Speaker 7: of ability to stop this, to protest it, to make
Speaker 7: Ice accountable. But it's clear to me, again that I
Speaker 7: said this at the beginning, there is a part of
Speaker 7: this administration that is there because they don't like American
Speaker 7: democracy and they want it changed, and this is one
Speaker 7: of the tools they're using, and that is exactly why,
Speaker 7: as you point out, they don't care about the opinion polls.
Speaker 4: And we just had a few more minutes with you,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to ask you about this. More than
Speaker 4: a decade ago, a wake of the Russian invasion or Tremea.
Speaker 4: You wrote many articles against it, but then Russia Bay's
Speaker 4: website started attacking you personally, even before the term fake
Speaker 4: news became popular. So my question is maybe a little
Speaker 4: more personal. Has this taken a toll on you? And
Speaker 4: how do you protect yourselves nowadays against authority tyrant's regimes
Speaker 4: that hate what you write about them.
Speaker 7: So when this first started, when I first became aware
Speaker 7: of slanderous things being written about me, I'm taking money
Speaker 7: from mysterious organizations whatever. There were all kinds of things.
Speaker 7: When it first happened, and this is more than ten
Speaker 7: years ago, I was very upset, and I remember talking
Speaker 7: to lawyers and what should I do. I mean, it
Speaker 7: is an awful thing to say, but of course, over
Speaker 7: time you get used to it, you learn to ignore it,
Speaker 7: you realize that what happens in the online world doesn't
Speaker 7: necessarily matter in the offline world, and you developed this very,
Speaker 7: very thick skin. I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 7: changes that has affected I mean almost everybody in public life,
Speaker 7: not just journalists, I mean university presidents and people who
Speaker 7: run companies and people who run NGOs. I mean, everybody
Speaker 7: who has any kind of public profile now understands that
Speaker 7: part of the price of being in public is that
Speaker 7: you are you can be subject at any moment to dosing,
Speaker 7: to a smear campaign and so on, and the only
Speaker 7: way to survive it is just to move on and let,
Speaker 7: you know, somehow let it pass. And so some you know,
Speaker 7: something kind of clicked in my head and I'm not
Speaker 7: really bothered by it.
Speaker 6: Maybe I should be, but I'm not.
Speaker 7: And you know that I can't, you know, to the
Speaker 7: extent that I can. We're all learning, and you just
Speaker 7: move on, and you understand that you also have friends
Speaker 7: and sympathizers and people who like you, and and you
Speaker 7: you know, you stick with them, you know, and you
Speaker 7: stay away from the people who death threats. I mean
Speaker 7: that that's that's the that's the best I can say.
Speaker 7: It's it's also I think, you know very hard now
Speaker 7: to distinguish performative threats and violence and insults from real
Speaker 7: things that matter. And so much of what happens online
Speaker 7: is performance. You know, people actually make money out of
Speaker 7: running smear campaigns or out of using extremist language. I mean,
Speaker 7: you you get, you get more clicks, you get advertising
Speaker 7: dollars on YouTube or or on x And once you
Speaker 7: understand that that's actually what's going on and it's not
Speaker 7: really about you personally, it becomes somehow easier to just
Speaker 7: live with it.
Speaker 5: That's funny because I've I've done a lot of stories
Speaker 5: with Proud Boys and Insurrectionists and Monster Liberty, and it's
Speaker 5: it's interesting that who they are online is so different
Speaker 5: from who they are in person. And that's always my
Speaker 5: first impression every time i've i've finally seen them face
Speaker 5: to face, including someone like Drigue Darrio. That's the first
Speaker 5: thing I noticed, Just there's there's almost this insecure, you know,
Speaker 5: this small personality that it really hides behind their online persona.
Speaker 7: So I remember, and making money out of those online
Speaker 7: personas exactly.
Speaker 6: You know that that's their career, you know that.
Speaker 7: So and the more extreme they become the more the farther.
Speaker 7: You know, we've created this this is longer conversation, but
Speaker 7: we've created an information system that rewards extremism, and that,
Speaker 7: to me, that's actually the real source of the problem.
Speaker 5: Just very quickly, and I'm you know, we spend so
Speaker 5: much time talking about authoritarians and autocrats monarch strong men,
Speaker 5: but I've always wondered what you think about what they
Speaker 5: say about Americans themselves, Right, this idea that we were
Speaker 5: once again capable of electing someone like Donald Trump, Like,
Speaker 5: what have you learned about Americans?
Speaker 7: I mean, look, the authoritarians always thought that America was hypocritical,
Speaker 7: in other words, that we would say these things about
Speaker 7: democracy and zone, but we didn't really believe it. And
Speaker 7: I would say that the events of the last decade
Speaker 7: or so show that that was partly true. That there
Speaker 7: were some Americans who said things they didn't believe, and
Speaker 7: then it turned out there were some Americans who didn't
Speaker 7: really believe in democracy either. But I would like to
Speaker 7: reserve the idea that there are a lot of people
Speaker 7: in this country who who are deeply distressed by what's happened,
Speaker 7: including some former Trump voters, and who understand and still
Speaker 7: identify with the deeper values on that this country was
Speaker 7: founded to project and to protect. And I think that
Speaker 7: those people will as they begin to understand what they
Speaker 7: could lose, that they will, we will mobilize, and we
Speaker 7: will we will eventually react.
Speaker 4: The final question Paula, and Paula had a question about
Speaker 4: her grandfather in Cuba, and I just don't want to
Speaker 4: leave this interview before allowing her to do that.
Speaker 5: And I think it's I'm glad that you you took
Speaker 5: us there and to to maybe end on a more
Speaker 5: positive note, I didn't want to ask you about Cuba
Speaker 5: because I was I was in Miami when when File
Speaker 5: Gastadro died, right, and so my grandfather was a political prisoner.
Speaker 5: And I come from my mom's side is they're all
Speaker 5: Cuban ice house. And so I grew up know this
Speaker 5: idea that one day, the idea was that my grandfather
Speaker 5: would one day go back to to Cuba. And I
Speaker 5: remember what you wrote in twenty sixteen, and I'm quoting you.
Speaker 5: This is right after fel Gastada dies. And you say,
Speaker 5: and I'm quoting you say, soon, I hope that Cubans
Speaker 5: will be given the freedom to understand their past, to
Speaker 5: commemorate their dead, to begin to undo the damage brought
Speaker 5: by decades of silence. My grandfather passed away two years ago,
Speaker 5: so he was never able to go back. And so
Speaker 5: do you see any hope in a place like Cuba.
Speaker 7: There's always hope. Everything always changes, there's always a new generation.
Speaker 7: There are always people who can pick up old ideas
Speaker 7: from the past, and that we've seen it happen with
Speaker 7: bad ideas, but also there are good ideas. There are
Speaker 7: always people with new experiences who will reflect on them
Speaker 7: and act in different ways. And I should say there's
Speaker 7: another thing. There's a there is a set of human instincts.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't say about so much about democracy, but about justice.
Speaker 7: You know, people know when they're living in an unjust system,
Speaker 7: in an unfair system, and there will always be people
Speaker 7: who want to make it better, fair, more equal, more
Speaker 7: accepted of more people.
Speaker 5: And that gives you hope.
Speaker 7: I assume you see it over and over and over
Speaker 7: again in history, and I hear it. You know, I
Speaker 7: travel to a lot of places and I meet a
Speaker 7: lot of people from really awful countries or places where
Speaker 7: there's really you know, there's there's you know, a lot
Speaker 7: of violence and repression, and even among those, you know,
Speaker 7: exile communities or diasporas or I still find people who
Speaker 7: still believe in the possibility of change. And they're right,
Speaker 7: because things do change. You know, the you know, the
Speaker 7: Soviet Union did collapse, and Poland did become a democracy,
Speaker 7: and you know, the system continually changes, and their will
Speaker 7: and and and the and the human instinct for justice
Speaker 7: never goes away.
Speaker 3: And thank you so much your being incredibly generous with
Speaker 3: your time. Thank you so much. How to see yourself.
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