Making Sense - Sam Harris - #376 — How Democracies Fail

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if

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00:00:45.180 Today I'm speaking with Ann Appelbaum. Ann was a columnist for the Washington Post for 17 years,

00:00:52.480 and now she's been a staff writer at The Atlantic since 2020. She's the author of five critically

00:00:58.020 acclaimed books, Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, Between East and West,

00:01:06.420 and Gulag, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between Poland,

00:01:11.780 where her husband is foreign minister, and Washington, D.C. And her newest book,

00:01:17.340 out this coming Tuesday, but available for pre-order now, is Autocracy, Inc. I do recommend

00:01:24.820 that you order the book now. It's quite good, and not too long a read, very accessible. As many of

00:01:31.840 you know, Ann is one of the most knowledgeable people about autocracy, and with a specific focus

00:01:37.540 on Eastern Europe and Russia. She's also an expert on propaganda, and on one of the great looming

00:01:45.500 questions of our time, which is how democracies can fail, which is the topic of today's conversation.

00:01:52.740 We discuss the nature of modern autocracies and the vulnerabilities of democracies.

00:01:58.700 We discuss the power of ideas, why autocracies seek to undermine democracies, cooperation among

00:02:05.380 dictators, how Western financial experts and investors have enabled autocracies, how Putin came

00:02:12.560 to power, the failure of engagement and investment to create political change, what's at stake in the

00:02:19.080 war in Ukraine. And then we pivot to the question at hand, certainly for Americans, which is Trump

00:02:26.620 and the prospects of a second Trump term. We talk about Trump's charisma, the current symptoms of American

00:02:34.160 democratic decline, the ideologues around Trump, the hollowing out of institutions, how things might

00:02:41.780 unravel in America during a second Trump term, anti-liberal tendencies in American politics,

00:02:48.440 the role of social media, the very different pathologies on the right and the left, analogies to

00:02:55.320 Vichy France, the weakness of the Democratic Party, the political effects of the assassination attempt on

00:03:01.720 Trump and other topics. And now I bring you Ann Applebaum.

00:03:13.300 I am here with Ann Applebaum. Ann, thanks for joining me again.

00:03:16.980 Thanks for having me.

00:03:18.200 So, remind people, I mean, you've been on the podcast before, I think it's probably been about a year and a half

00:03:25.320 or so since we spoke, but, and I will obviously introduce you properly, but remind people of the

00:03:31.060 types of topics you spend your time focusing on.

00:03:35.220 So, I'm both a historian and a journalist. I've written several history books all about the history

00:03:41.740 of mostly of the Soviet Union and of communism in Eastern Europe. They were focused on what autocracy

00:03:49.060 is, how dictatorship works, why people go along with it. And more recently, my journalism

00:03:54.760 focuses on democracy and maybe how democracy declines. I see a connection between what I do

00:04:01.740 now and what I did then, but I, it's not a happy one.

00:04:05.600 Yeah. And you also have a special focus on propaganda as well, if I'm not mistaken.

00:04:10.200 Yep. I write about propaganda and that also comes out of my interest in history of propaganda,

00:04:16.800 Soviet propaganda, how it worked, why it was effective, which it sometimes was.

00:04:20.760 Right. Well, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much for you to work on now. I think you must

00:04:27.060 be doing a lot of knitting.

00:04:30.000 As someone said to me recently, there's no news right now, really, is there? Nothing to think about.

00:04:35.380 It's quite incredible. You know, it's often heard that one wonders, one worries, you know, where the

00:04:42.940 adults are in the room, you know, one hopes they're in there. And you are always someone who I think

00:04:47.300 about on my short list of people who are one of the adults. And that's also in evidence in your new

00:04:53.820 book, which is Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Let's start with your book

00:04:59.480 and talk about the, just the phenomenon of autocracy, generally, in its modern variants and

00:05:06.200 the tension between it and democracy. And then, you know, all of this is, you know, for my purposes,

00:05:13.280 is going to take us to a discussion of American politics and the prospect of a second Trump term,

00:05:19.640 which is looming larger than ever at this point. Perhaps you can just lay out the thesis in your

00:05:24.480 book about the sort of the modern variants of autocracy. And we can talk a little bit about

00:05:30.960 what we take for granted in democracy and how we haven't given enough thought to the fact that

00:05:39.520 democracies actually need to be maintained and they can sometimes fail. And I mean, this is just

00:05:46.480 something where, you know, we're fish swimming in water, you know, and the water has always been

00:05:51.740 fairly tepid, at least in the span of anyone's normal lifespan. And so we're not really alert to

00:06:00.940 just how fully things can change. Let's talk about that.

00:06:05.800 No, I think we're not fully alert to how things can change and also how fast they can change.

00:06:10.560 But let me start with the beginning of your question, which is what my book is about.

00:06:15.300 The book describes not an autocracy, but really a network. It's not an alliance. It's not really even

00:06:23.400 an axis. There isn't a secret room where bad guys get together and make decisions. It's rather a

00:06:29.660 group of dictatorships who share some things in common. And I'm talking about Russia, China, Iran,

00:06:36.120 North Korea, and a handful of other smaller ones, Belarus, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, maybe Azerbaijan.

00:06:45.200 Others join for some issues and not for others. And these are all, they don't have anything in

00:06:52.300 common ideologically. There's no ideological link between theocratic Iran and communist China and

00:06:59.700 Bolivarian socialist Venezuela or nationalist Russia. But they have some common interests. And one of

00:07:07.540 their big common interests, and this is one of the things that distinguishes them from 20th century

00:07:12.440 dictators, or at least the biggest and most famous ones, is they're very interested in money. They have a lot

00:07:17.880 of money. The people who run these countries, their families have a lot of money. They're interested

00:07:23.680 in protecting the money. They hide the money. They use Western institutions, financial institutions to do

00:07:30.260 that and have been doing so for a couple of decades now. They're also very interested in us, by which I

00:07:37.900 mean you, me, and probably everyone listening to this podcast. They're interested in pushing back

00:07:44.820 against the ideas and ideals of liberal democracy and undermining them. Mostly, again, for the purposes

00:07:52.960 of their own power and their own domestic interests. Their own opponents use that language, whether it's

00:07:59.640 the Navalny movement in Russia, which is focused on transparency and anti-corruption, or the women's

00:08:06.020 movement in Iran, which is focused on really very basic rights, women's rights to make decisions about

00:08:11.620 how they look and what they wear, how they live. Or the opposition in Venezuela, which wants to return

00:08:19.260 Venezuela to the democracy that it enjoyed for many decades. And the leaders of those countries know

00:08:25.740 that the language of liberal democracy is inspiring to their opponents. And so they've, over a couple of

00:08:30.860 decades, have sought to find ways to undermine it. And more recently, they concluded, again, I don't think

00:08:37.100 this was a group decision. It's just something that you can see them all doing. They've decided that

00:08:41.600 part of that has to be to undermine us. In other words, to discredit liberal democracy in its homes,

00:08:48.820 you know, whether it's in Europe or whether it's in the U.S. or whether it's in some of the Asian

00:08:51.800 democracies. And they've contributed in various ways, some of which we know about and have known about for

00:08:56.520 a long time, to social media campaigns. They fund or support in other ways, far-right movements,

00:09:05.020 occasionally far-left movements, which also fight against liberal democracy or seek to undermine it.

00:09:11.100 And that's the essence and the basis of their foreign policy. I mean, it's really,

00:09:17.520 it's key to who they are and what they do. And we have, because the Western world, and especially

00:09:25.020 Americans, tend to look at the world in categories. You know, we talk about, we have Latin American

00:09:29.660 experts, and we have Africa experts, and we have Middle Eastern experts. It's very rare for people

00:09:34.940 to look at how they see the world. And they don't see the world parceled into geographic divisions.

00:09:41.180 They see the world as, you know, there's a battle they're fighting. It's against the people who use

00:09:47.600 the language that threatens them and their particular form of oligarchic and kleptocratic power.

00:09:53.140 And they're willing to push back against them in all kinds of ways, with propaganda,

00:09:58.960 economically, and more recently, militarily as well.

00:10:02.980 Yeah. So one thing you're describing there is the unavoidable power of ideas, right? So you have

00:10:09.980 ideas about individual rights and transparency of institutions and the accountability of the

00:10:15.940 government to its people and, you know, the rule of law, justice, right? And those ideas are

00:10:21.780 contagious, and autocracies recognize this. And this answers, you know, several questions we might

00:10:29.080 have if we thought about it. I mean, you might ask, well, why does a country like Russia even bother to

00:10:35.160 have elections? Why does it pretend to be a democracy? I mean, and, you know, what I gather

00:10:40.880 from reading your book is that this is, it's still important to seem to be compliant with the norms that

00:10:49.200 are kind of seeping into everyone's consciousness. I mean, I guess there are societies that control

00:10:53.800 this better than others. I mean, China is probably more locked down than most at this point. But still,

00:10:58.760 there's this, they're quite alert to the threat posed by the contagious ideas of liberalism. And I think

00:11:07.000 this goes all the way back to Mussolini, who is reported to have said that between democracy and

00:11:11.440 totalitarianism, there can be no compromise. I remember Orwell writing during the war, he was saying that

00:11:19.200 it could seem a bit of a mystery why Hitler felt the need to attack England. I mean, why couldn't

00:11:25.140 Hitler just take over Europe and let England be England over there intact? But from his point of

00:11:32.720 view, Hitler, even a successful Third Reich spanning all of Europe and perhaps North Africa, couldn't

00:11:41.380 afford to have England be the funnel, I think he said, the funnel through which deadly ideas

00:11:47.340 from beyond the Atlantic flow into the police states of Europe, right? So there's this contagion

00:11:52.280 problem. But it does seem somewhat mysterious, because it seems like, at least for the better

00:11:57.300 part of a generation, you'd think some of these societies could just simply not care what is

00:12:02.080 happening outside their borders and just lock everything down.

00:12:05.620 The trouble that they have is that the instinctive reaction to dictatorship, even among people who've

00:12:12.780 never lived in a democracy or never experienced it or never read John Locke or the U.S. Constitution,

00:12:20.280 the instinctive reaction to people who don't have rights is to demand rights. You know, the

00:12:25.840 instinctive reaction, you know, in China, at the very end of the COVID lockdown, you had these spontaneous

00:12:32.500 demonstrations led by very young people who were much too young to remember Tiananmen Square,

00:12:39.240 you know, the democracy movements of the past, who probably had very little contact with the

00:12:44.600 Western world. And yet the language they leapt to almost immediately was the language about free

00:12:51.320 speech. Why can't we say what we want? You know, why can't we make the decisions that we want? Because

00:12:56.380 they, because that's the, that's the natural reaction. Recently, I've been reading a lot about

00:13:01.060 the colonial period in the United States. And some of what they came to, I mean, some of their ideas

00:13:08.300 about how the United States should work and how the Constitution should be written also came just from

00:13:14.040 this experience of bumping up against dictatorship. You know, it was unfair that the king appointed judges

00:13:20.560 and could also dismiss judges and, you know, judges should be independent. And some of them got that

00:13:26.260 idea from Montesquieu or they read it in a book, but a lot of people understood it instinctively.

00:13:31.260 And that's, I think, you're exactly right when you talk about the power of ideas. And you're also right

00:13:36.800 to look back at history because the idea that democracy is dangerous to dictatorships is, is very

00:13:43.640 old. I mean, you can go even a little bit before Mussolini. Lenin used to talk about bourgeois

00:13:48.720 democracy and he spent a lot of time talking about how it's fake. You know, it's, it's not real. It's not

00:13:54.180 real democracy. It doesn't bring power to the workers. It's, it's based on false consciousness or the, or

00:14:00.200 the, the political parties aren't real parties. Some of which language, by the way, you can hear today. I mean,

00:14:05.560 you can hear it coming from, coming from modern Russia or you can hear it even sometimes coming from our

00:14:10.260 own far right. So the, that, that's been a, that, that's been a part of the language of autocracy also from the

00:14:16.900 beginning. And your point about the Hitler in England also has a modern version. So why did Russia invade

00:14:26.160 Ukraine? There are some reasons that, you know, there is a, Putin has some imperial idea in his

00:14:31.120 head. He's very grandiose. He imagines putting the Soviet Union back together. But the other reason

00:14:36.240 was that the Ukrainians had made a choice a decade earlier in 2014 to evict their corrupt president who

00:14:44.800 was undermining their political system and changing their institutions and to replace him with

00:14:50.620 democratically elected presidents and with a more free and open system. And they, they had

00:14:56.720 demonstrations where they waved posters calling for an end to corruption and more transparency and the

00:15:02.920 rule of law. And Putin saw that and he thought if Ukraine succeeds, if Ukraine becomes a successful

00:15:09.920 democracy, then why wouldn't someone try it in Russia? Countries are very similar. They have lots

00:15:15.080 of, lots of intermarriage. Lots of Russians know Ukraine, have been to Ukraine. The Ukrainians could

00:15:20.900 become a successful modern European democracy. Then surely someone would want Russia to be the same.

00:15:27.900 And of course he, he had to strike back at that because that would undermine his own kleptocratic

00:15:32.800 oligarchic system in which he sits on top of a kind of spider web, you know, a hierarchy of,

00:15:38.300 of, of, of dependent, codependent business people and security institutions. So the, the, it's exactly

00:15:45.820 the power of democracy and the success that democracy has had winning converts, even in places where it's

00:15:51.880 never existed before, that has inspired this new level of autocratic activism and this new desire,

00:16:00.520 even for autocratic states to help one another. You know, why does Russia support the Belarusian

00:16:05.820 dictator? Well, because they don't want him to fall because that would be bad for, that would,

00:16:10.900 would make Putin look bad. What, but why do Russia and China and Iran, which has really, it lives in,

00:16:17.100 it lives in a completely different part of the planet. Uh, why do they support Venezuela? Why do

00:16:22.240 they help keep the Venezuelan dictatorship together? And again, that's because every time a dictator

00:16:28.140 falls or every time a tyrant is defeated or every time a civic movement wins, that makes them nervous.

00:16:35.580 And it's funny because of course, in the, in the home of democracy, in the home of those ideas,

00:16:40.500 United States, Europe, a few other countries, those ideas are less and less powerful. We don't

00:16:47.000 appreciate them, but they are very much appreciated by people who live without them.

00:16:52.040 Yeah. As you point out in the book, the, the contagion of ideas goes both ways of what we'll

00:16:56.980 get to the, the way in which Kremlin talking points seem to magically come out of the mouths of

00:17:02.800 not just Trump himself, but, uh, you know, big tech investors who are now his, his most potent

00:17:08.820 enablers. I would just, I will come back to Ukraine. Maybe the one point you, you quote the,

00:17:13.900 the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov in the book, who said that the, it's a battle over the,

00:17:18.900 what, what the world order will look like. It's not just about Ukraine. It's about, you know,

00:17:22.840 who wins in the end over a much larger chessboard. But let's return to that. I think Ukraine will be

00:17:28.880 a bridge to talking about Trump and certainly his, his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance and

00:17:34.060 what the implications are there. But it is in your book, you make it clear that Western democracy is

00:17:40.420 despite their, despite having the moral high ground politically. And, you know, we were, we're

00:17:45.380 definitely, you know, we're on the side of democracy in this conversation. We nevertheless still have a

00:17:51.960 lot to answer for in how we have enabled these modern autocracies slash kleptocracies, right?

00:17:59.200 I mean, we, you spend a fair amount of time showing how our own financial experts and investors and

00:18:05.140 just the system we've built to build and, and maintain wealth in the West has not just been

00:18:11.660 gamed by these autocracies, but we, we really have just offered our services with, you know,

00:18:17.920 both hands and there's a fair amount of opprobrium to spread around on that point. What, what have

00:18:24.320 we done? I mean, I guess to sharpen this up, I'll just tell you about my, my recent walk through

00:18:28.680 Mayfair in London, which has to be, if not the most, certainly one of the most lavishly wealthy

00:18:36.100 neighborhoods in any city on earth. I mean, it's just incredible. I mean, the, and I spend a lot

00:18:41.240 of time in, in nice places, but the sense of wealth that is oozing out of those buildings is

00:18:46.880 just extraordinary. Would I be right in thinking that some of this effect is due to the expropriated

00:18:53.700 wealth from some countries where people are not quite enjoying life as it is in Mayfair?

00:18:59.040 You would be very right. I have a friend actually who wants, she was doing research for a book. I'm not

00:19:04.000 sure she ever wrote it, but it was about one particular street in Mayfair. And she wanted

00:19:07.960 to go house by house and look at who owned them or who might own them. Because in many cases,

00:19:14.180 those houses are owned by anonymous companies. They're owned by shell companies, or it's not

00:19:19.760 clear who the beneficial owner is. And many often you'll, they're empty. I mean, they, they may or may

00:19:24.920 not actually be used by anybody there. They function as sort of Swiss bank accounts. I mean,

00:19:30.140 they're a place for storing money. But yeah, in the book, I, I, I went back to a story that's

00:19:36.320 pretty well known among Russia watchers, but I don't know that it's generally known, which

00:19:40.200 is about how Putin came to power. And he, he began as the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.

00:19:46.480 Some people might remember that. And in that era, he began stealing and he originally stole

00:19:52.620 from the city. He, again, details are in the book, took the money out of the country, sent it

00:19:59.060 abroad, where it was laundered. It was then slowly brought back into the country where it was used

00:20:04.400 to acquire things, property, buildings, companies. And it wasn't just him doing this. Of course,

00:20:09.820 it was a whole group of people, his, his colleagues. And they did this with the absolutely full knowledge

00:20:16.280 and assistance of Western bankers, Western accountants, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange,

00:20:22.660 in some cases, Western governments. Many people knew that this was how he, wasn't just him, of course,

00:20:30.940 how he was getting rich and how others in Russia at that time were getting rich. And many people were

00:20:35.700 happy to help them because, you know, you could make money. And there was an idea at that time,

00:20:41.440 this is the 1990s, that business with autocratic states, not only is it politically acceptable,

00:20:48.800 but it might even be good because engagement with, with the, with the former totalitarian or former,

00:20:56.060 you know, the former Soviet world or in China, the former Chinese communist world was a way of

00:21:03.260 ensuring that they were integrated into the world economy. Maybe it would help open them up. Maybe it

00:21:08.400 would spread ideas. Maybe our ideas would spread to them. And there was even a period when a lot of

00:21:14.060 people in Russia and also in China also wanted this to be true. And there was a, much of the opening in

00:21:20.160 that period, I mean, I think there was some goodwill on both sides. I'm not saying that everybody

00:21:24.020 involved was corrupt, but it was pretty clear, again, pretty early that people like Putin were

00:21:30.580 going to take advantage of this situation and in particular take advantage of the breakdown of their

00:21:34.600 country's state. I mean, the breakup of the Russian state and the sell-off of,

00:21:38.700 of its property to, to individuals. And we're going to use the Western financial system to

00:21:44.280 make themselves not just rich, but spectacularly rich. You know, think how wealthy the Russian

00:21:49.980 oligarchs, the Russian billionaires became in a very short period of time. And they didn't become

00:21:54.680 wealthy by inventing a better mousetrap or, you know, raising themselves up by their bootstraps and

00:22:01.400 climbing up, you know, the economy or by working hard. They became wealthy because they stole assets from the

00:22:07.560 state, you know, or they acquired them very cheaply in some corrupt way. And in effect, they were

00:22:13.780 stealing from ordinary Russians because who owned the state assets? I mean, everybody owned them.

00:22:19.860 I mean, there, there's, there, of course, are forms of privatization that are legitimate. You know,

00:22:25.580 there can be a sell-off of state companies. Everybody has a chance to participate. It's done in order to

00:22:30.880 benefit the treasury. This is how British privatization was done in the Thatcher era. But that's not what

00:22:36.800 happened in Russia. What happened in Russia was that, in effect, the assets were stolen. Ordinary

00:22:42.020 people didn't benefit. The state was impoverished. And instead, a few people became billionaires or

00:22:48.820 multi-billionaires. And as I said, the West cooperated, assisted, served as accountants and

00:22:56.800 lawyers, eventually served, I mean, almost literally as butlers. I mean, selling houses to the Russians in

00:23:03.220 London, helping them buy yachts, explaining to them what art they needed to buy. You know, there became

00:23:09.340 industries grew up around them. And I'm picking on the Russians, but actually, you could make it, you

00:23:14.600 could, you could describe that of other places. There are leaders in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America,

00:23:20.440 who have become rich in the same way or in similar ways. And the international financial system enabled

00:23:26.760 this new form of corruption. It's in, also in the book, I talk about how corruption works in other

00:23:34.060 places. And I, I picked on Zimbabwe, maybe unfairly, because there are many countries I could have

00:23:38.880 chosen. But it's a country where there had been corruption in the past. And it was kind of

00:23:43.620 traditional corruption. You know, there were, you know, bosses who, who, who, you know, you had to pay

00:23:49.820 people or you had to bribe people in order to get anything done. And there were, there was a,

00:23:53.740 there was a political party that effectively operated as a, as a one party system. And there

00:23:59.220 was corruption around that. That's not how corruption works in Zimbabwe anymore. And now

00:24:03.020 it's about large amounts of money being taken out of the country, gold being stolen, money being

00:24:09.400 laundered and put into foreign banks. There's a, there's a new level. And that's true of almost

00:24:14.300 every dictatorship and indeed many democracies on the planet. And in one of my conclusions is that

00:24:21.160 one of the ways to fight these new regimes is to clean up our own act. I mean, why do there need

00:24:28.000 to be any anonymous companies for any reason? I mean, I know there are some business arguments,

00:24:32.720 but they're pretty weak when you, when you look at them. You know, why, why is it legal to hide your

00:24:37.800 money, hide billions and billions of dollars in tax havens? That's done by people who need to do so

00:24:43.040 either because they're hiding from the tax authorities or because the money's stolen. You know,

00:24:49.380 so that we've, we've created these systems and, and these are man-made systems. There's nothing

00:24:54.160 natural or automatic about them and we could uncreate them. And if we uncreated them or to be

00:25:01.120 more grammatical, if we abolish them, um, then we would at least cut off that, that part of,

00:25:07.020 you know, the, the ability of those regimes to do that.

00:25:09.280 Right. Right. So, yeah, so it, it, it wasn't just all venality and, uh, avarice. It was,

00:25:18.300 there, there was this notion. I mean, it seemed plausible at the time. I mean, I don't know if

00:25:22.440 it was first birthed in the brain of president Clinton that, um, I mean, it really follows

00:25:27.880 directly from the, the point we made earlier about the power of ideas. I mean, engagement seems

00:25:32.920 intrinsically good. I mean, how could China and Russia withstand both barrels of our abundance,

00:25:40.100 uh, of ideas and our abundance and our material abundance, uh, aimed at them decade after decade?

00:25:47.660 You know, how could they not want to moderate their politics in the face of all those good things?

00:25:52.600 Well, to, to be clear, many of them did. So many Russians did in the nineties. I knew many Russians who

00:25:57.800 did. Many Chinese did as well, but there is a, it is really interesting when you go back and you

00:26:03.680 listen and read what people were saying at this time, this is the early 1990s, whether it was

00:26:08.480 Bill Clinton, whether it was the Germans who were, who were great fervent believers in the power of,

00:26:14.560 of economic investment to, to create political change. There is an enormous amount of optimism

00:26:21.080 and faith that our ideas are so much better and our ideas are so persuasive and, and, and openness

00:26:29.660 is so attractive that this will defeat whatever remains of the Soviet system or whatever remains

00:26:36.900 of the Chinese communist system. And, and there won't even be a contest. I mean, it will be, I mean,

00:26:42.460 and, and, and, and there won't even be pushback. It was very, it was so optimistic and there's a,

00:26:47.120 and there's a version of it, which also involves technology and the internet. There's, there's a

00:26:52.320 famous speech that Bill Clinton gave right about the time he was arguing that China should be accepted

00:26:57.920 in the W, into the WTO, the World Trade Organization. And he talks about, ha ha ha, the Chinese will never

00:27:04.620 be able to control the internet. That's like nailing jello to the wall. And he makes this speech in a

00:27:10.080 room full of foreign policy scholars at Johns Hopkins, which is an institution I'm very fond of,

00:27:15.140 at the school of international advanced international studies. And everybody laughs and claps. And of

00:27:22.300 course he was wrong. And almost, almost even at the time he was saying that the Chinese were already

00:27:27.640 beginning to control the internet and already beginning to think about how, you know, how they

00:27:33.820 were going to put up what became known as the firewall, the, the, the, the, the many different kinds of

00:27:38.540 controls on what people can say. But, but the optimism of that moment, I think blinded us both to the

00:27:44.560 possibilities that the internet had of, of, of being used as a tool of control. And also to the

00:27:50.560 possibility that if we weren't careful in the way that we invested in Russia or China or dictatorships

00:27:58.160 in Africa or elsewhere, that we would, we would empower the dictators and we would, we would give

00:28:04.720 wealth to, we would allow the, the, the, the political leaders to become wealthy at the expense of

00:28:10.240 others. And I, it was, it was, it was a very optimistic moment and we overshot.

00:28:16.240 Hmm. I want to turn toward Trump and Trumpism and American politics, but I think let's cross the

00:28:24.980 bridge of the war in Ukraine to get there. As I said before, you know, his pick of JD Vance as the

00:28:31.080 vice presidential candidate seems to telegraph an intention to pull us support. I don't know how much

00:28:38.120 we can read into it, but Vance at this point is famous for saying that he, he simply doesn't care

00:28:41.820 about what happens to Ukraine. And Trump has been, um, we'll talk about the degree to which

00:28:47.480 his entanglement with Russia is still mysterious. And, uh, you know, while any interest in it is,

00:28:53.060 is now much maligned right of center as just, you know, more Russia gate conspiracy thinking,

00:28:58.580 the man has had a, a spectacular amount of exposure to, uh, Russian influence in all kinds of ways.

00:29:05.320 And it's at a minimum strange, but let's talk about Ukraine before we get there. Why should

00:29:12.820 Americans care about what happens there? I mean, I think this is really that like, this is the level

00:29:17.500 at which American politics needs to hear the question answered because it's very easy in the

00:29:24.020 current environment to say, I mean, a phrase like the, you know, the rules-based international order,

00:29:28.320 I think means nothing. You should probably give your definition of it because, you know,

00:29:32.280 to the man on the street, that is not something they are thinking about. And with a great ocean

00:29:37.780 on either side of us, most Americans don't really think we have much of a stake in what happens over

00:29:44.600 there. And over there is pretty much all of, all of the world apart from what's in our borders.

00:29:50.780 Uh, so what, what is, what's at stake in Ukraine?

00:29:53.720 So first of all, look at why Putin invaded Ukraine. I, I spoke about it a little bit

00:29:59.260 already. It was because Ukraine represented a, a pro, an ideological problem for him because

00:30:05.440 it was a democracy, but there was another aspect to it as well. He invaded Ukraine in the manner

00:30:12.060 that he did, which meant occupying territory, setting up concentration camps, kidnapping children,

00:30:18.380 changing their identities, using really a level of cruelty nobody has seen in Europe since the

00:30:24.660 second world war. What he, he did that partly to say, I don't care about your rules. I don't care

00:30:32.980 about how you think the world should be run. I don't care about the UN charter, which says that

00:30:38.800 large countries shouldn't invade small countries. I'm going to intervene wherever and however I want.

00:30:45.400 And I'm going to start here. I'm going to do it here. And I'm going to see whether you are going

00:30:49.740 to stop me. And of course he did it believing that we wouldn't stop him. That was part of the,

00:30:53.760 that was part of the plan. I think he was very surprised when not just the United States,

00:30:58.180 but a consortium of countries, NATO, but others also, South Korea, Australia, Japan,

00:31:03.900 have, have come together to block that Russian invasion. And they've done so, you know,

00:31:10.360 partly because of the atrocities that Putin commits in Ukraine and people are simply offended by them.

00:31:15.400 But also because if Putin's idea of how the world should work holds, then it's not just Russia that

00:31:22.780 will be able to do what it wants, wherever it wants. If he can prove that you pay no price for

00:31:27.220 invading your neighbors, then why shouldn't China invade Taiwan and take over the international

00:31:33.200 semiconductor market? You know, or why shouldn't Venezuela invade Guyana? Why really should any,

00:31:39.780 should any state, you know, hold back from using military force to do whatever it wants?

00:31:45.400 And really, why should any state respect American property around the world or American investments?

00:31:51.360 And if that's true, then why should, you know, why should Europe, why should our, our, our former

00:31:57.020 allies go along with the trade deals and organizations that we've created according to rules that benefit

00:32:03.260 us? You know, why should our companies enjoy any special access to any, anybody's markets,

00:32:08.600 which they do now. You know, there's a, the, the, the system that the United States created brings

00:32:13.820 economic benefits to the United States. It brings political benefits. It also brings a kind of,

00:32:19.920 I think it's Americans underestimate how important our allies are. Our democratic allies are even to our

00:32:27.860 own democracy. The fact that we are allied with other democracies and that those are our main trading

00:32:33.720 partners and that we see ourselves in the world. We define ourselves, certainly during the cold war and up until

00:32:38.920 recently, most Americans define themselves as a democracy. We're doing something good in the world. We believe in

00:32:45.100 freedom. And these are our friends, the other free nations. And that was, that was part of the definition of who we

00:32:51.220 were, who, who are our allies. If that changes, first of all, as I said, there will be military consequences in

00:32:58.000 many parts of the world. We, they've begun already. There will be economic consequences in any part. But I

00:33:02.520 think there's also an important psychological conquest. If America is just a transactional power

00:33:08.900 run by people who conduct foreign policy in their own personal interests, like the Russians do. When

00:33:15.560 Putin does foreign policy, it's not for the benefit of Russians. Ordinary Russians don't benefit from his

00:33:20.780 war in Ukraine. He benefits. And, and, and it's all about him. It's about what I do, what I, what I can achieve

00:33:27.260 for myself. If America is led by people like that, people who think American foreign policy is about

00:33:33.900 making me rich or making my family rich or enriching companies who support me, and that's all it is,

00:33:40.180 then I think America begins to suffer in many different ways. We, we begin to take on the character

00:33:46.380 of these other oligarchies, these other kleptocracies. We begin to lose some of what makes us unique. We

00:33:53.560 begin to, and eventually I think we begin to lose some of our rights and freedoms. You know, a Ukrainian

00:34:00.160 friend of mine recently was describing to me how kleptocracy almost always precedes autocracy. And by

00:34:07.180 kleptocracy, I mean a regime that steals. So, uh, yeah, leaders who use their political power to make

00:34:14.920 themselves personally rich while they're in office by stealing the assets of the state, by changing the

00:34:20.500 rules so that their friends and their family get wealthy. I mean, it's, you know, Central Asia,

00:34:25.080 typical, you know, that we've see it there. We see it in, in, in the post-Soviet world. We see it all

00:34:29.600 over the world, actually. Africa, Latin America.

00:34:32.100 Otherwise known as graft.

00:34:33.680 Otherwise known as graft. But the fancy word is kleptocracy.

00:34:36.820 Yeah.

00:34:37.420 But once you have a kleptocracy, you need to defend it, right? And so there will always be, as,

00:34:42.240 as I said in the beginning, people who automatically, who begin to say, wait, this is unjust.

00:34:46.300 Why are you able to use taxpayers' money for your own politics? Or why are you able to steal? And we

00:34:53.720 aren't. And, and there will be a transparency movement or an anti-corruption movement or a

00:34:58.600 movement for more justice. And then the leadership needs to say, right, we need to clamp down on this.

00:35:03.340 We need to block it. You know, we need to stop people from being able to have, to know what we're

00:35:07.920 doing. And we need to erect walls. And we need to get rid of gatekeepers and ethics monitors. And

00:35:14.880 we need to undermine the court system because we don't want to go to jail. And you can see that

00:35:19.680 progress in, in a lot of states. It's actually what was happening in Ukraine up until 2014. And,

00:35:25.140 and this is why my Ukrainian friend was so attuned to it. The thing that the Ukrainians stopped in

00:35:30.320 that year with their, if you will remember, that was the year of the Maidan revolution.

00:35:33.620 The thing that they stopped was the decline of their country into dictatorship. They wanted it to

00:35:39.340 stop. But when, by the time they did it, it was, it was very late. I mean, a lot of institutions had been

00:35:44.220 undermined. A lot of money had been stolen. They had these oligarchs who are, and some of them are

00:35:48.640 still kicking around. But it's a natural progression that when you have leaders who, who see their,

00:35:55.720 you know, why are they in power? They're not in power to do good things for America or to enhance

00:36:00.460 America's role in the world, you know, or to spread American influence. They're there for their own

00:36:05.920 personal benefit. Then you begin to have a different kind of country and a different kind of political

00:36:10.900 system. So I think, I mean, it's a pretty short, pretty short move from, you know, we see that

00:36:17.460 Ukraine is a challenge to us and we think it's important to defend them to, okay, we live in a

00:36:23.120 world where we don't want to defend anything and nothing matters. You know, the transfer from one,

00:36:28.840 one of those modes to another, you know, involves changing the nature of who we are, I think. And I

00:36:34.460 think that's been, you know, that's been clear in the conversation about Ukraine. And listen to,

00:36:39.200 listen to who, what kinds of people, especially in Silicon Valley, are talking about why we shouldn't

00:36:46.740 defend Ukraine and ask yourself, why are they interested in, what makes them so interested in

00:36:51.440 this, in this subject? Well, yes, I'm thinking of one person in particular. So we have David Sachs,

00:36:56.320 who's a venture capitalist and now popular podcaster. I think I've only met him once. So I've said,

00:37:03.020 I don't know him well, but we have friends in common. And he's now, as of, I guess, two nights

00:37:08.500 ago, addressing the Republican National Convention, saying that Biden provoked, this is a quote,

00:37:13.460 Biden provoked the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion and rejected every

00:37:19.360 opportunity for peace in Ukraine, including a deal to end the war just two months after the war started.

00:37:25.200 So how do you respond to that talking point?

00:37:27.860 So first of all, it's not true. I mean, there's a, I've talked about this a lot in, you know,

00:37:35.040 in other places, but the original expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe was tolerated by Russia.

00:37:42.840 There was no plan to expand NATO to Ukraine. The Russians had agreed that Ukraine could be

00:37:48.940 connected to European institutions, you know, on a number of occasions. Only later did Putin change

00:37:54.540 his mind. Multiple efforts to engage Russia and include Russia in conversations with NATO and with

00:38:01.440 NATO leaders happened over many years, many times. Biden himself, in his first year in office, made

00:38:08.120 big outreach to Russia. There was meetings with Putin in, if I remember correctly, it was in Geneva.

00:38:13.920 So there was no desire to provoke Russia. There was also no moment in recent history when NATO was on

00:38:22.000 an offensive posture in that part of the world. NATO is a defensive alliance. It doesn't invade other

00:38:27.720 countries. It's there to protect and defend countries, its members. It doesn't operate on

00:38:34.560 the offensive. And the Russians know that NATO wasn't going to invade them. And we know that they

00:38:39.180 know because, for example, recently they have, Finland joined NATO recently, and Russia has recently

00:38:44.840 taken its troops and equipment away from the Finnish border because, of course, Finland's not going to

00:38:50.060 invade Russia. You know, NATO's not going to invade Russia. They know that. So this is all, these are

00:38:54.940 just Russian talking points that are part of their justification for the war. Also, no, there wasn't

00:39:01.300 a moment at the beginning of the war when it could have been solved. The Russians demanded early on that

00:39:05.960 Ukraine give up, essentially, and demilitarize, which would have been effective. Ukraine saying,

00:39:12.520 okay, we agree we're going to become part of Russia. So there wasn't a moment like that. I mean,

00:39:16.720 these are just false stories. I mean, the question for me is why David Sachs, who really has no

00:39:22.520 interest in foreign policy as far as I can see, no stake in this conflict, no role in it previous to,

00:39:29.720 you know, a year or two ago, why he's so interested in this subject. And, you know, my guess is that

00:39:35.240 he or others around him have business interests in Russia that they would like to pursue. That's the

00:39:40.900 only logical, the only logical solution I can see. I mean, we know that Sachs is close to Elon Musk,

00:39:45.700 and we know that Musk has spoken to Putin. He said he has anyway. And we know he may have business

00:39:50.960 interests in Russia. I mean, just imagine what they are. And maybe that's the explanation. I mean,

00:39:55.500 I don't have a better, a better explanation because there is no, you know, there's no prior

00:40:01.660 moment in David Sachs's career when this would seem to be something that was important to him. But

00:40:06.900 yes, he's attached himself to this issue. And of course, he and Musk were among the primary

00:40:12.840 backers of the Vance candidacy. They were very keen for J.D. Vance to be the vice president.

00:40:19.560 Almost simultaneously with the announcement of the Vance candidacy, Musk also announced that he

00:40:24.720 would be giving $45 million a month to the Trump campaign, which makes him one of the biggest donors

00:40:29.600 to the campaign. Again, was there a quid pro quo? I don't know. But there is, you know, it's clear that

00:40:35.240 Trump did something that appealed to Musk. Again, I mean, you know, you're right and nobody wants to

00:40:40.080 be conspiratorial, but these are these are strange things. You know, why why people who have no

00:40:45.740 interest, no intellectual interest, prior involvement in this part of the world are suddenly care about

00:40:51.880 it. And when we have a president who is famously transactional and famously uninterested in the idea of

00:40:59.700 America as a democracy or the idea of America as the center of an alliance of values or, you know,

00:41:06.500 doesn't care about America playing a role in the in the battle of ideas in the world, you have to ask,

00:41:13.500 you know, what does influence him? You know, well, he's very interested in money.

00:41:17.380 Yeah. OK, so let's turn to Trump. I think I'll come back to what might have radicalized Elon and

00:41:22.460 Sachs in a minute, because I do think, you know, I don't actually know whether they have in addition

00:41:28.460 to this conflicting business interests. My theory of mine for them is is even simpler. And I'm in touch

00:41:34.480 with some of the psychological forces personally. And it's just that in Sachs and Elon, you're talking

00:41:39.940 about two guys who are just far beyond the end of their rope with respect to the kind of social

00:41:47.700 justice, moral panic that has happened on the left that has absorbed everything in American

00:41:51.960 politics, you know, left of center. And so there's some other variables here that we could talk

00:41:57.160 about that really do account for the fact that many smart people who you would think would be

00:42:03.220 allergic to Trump and to certainly to the populist wave that he's riding, nevertheless, are supporting

00:42:11.180 him in at this moment. So let's talk about Trump. What I really hope this part of the conversation

00:42:18.560 will achieve is to, that we'll be able to cut through the inability of many people, or even many,

00:42:25.820 many smart people, well-intentioned people, not morbidly selfish people, to see what is wrong with

00:42:32.580 Trump and Trumpism. I mean, because I might, you know, I have some people very close to me, some of my

00:42:37.720 closest friends who simply do not see Trump the way I do. And one of the reasons is, in fact, that he's

00:42:46.840 just, he's funny, right? And that covers for a lot. I mean, people find it difficult to take him

00:42:51.920 seriously when they should. And they also take him, you know, his enemies take him deadly seriously when

00:42:58.520 it actually seems that he was probably joking, right? And his fans recognize that he was joking.

00:43:03.740 And then this moment destroys the credibility of mainstream institutions and political opponents

00:43:09.720 who have, who just aren't in on the joke, right? So for instance, he said at one point in an interview

00:43:14.120 that he would be a dictator for a day, right? And this was taken to be just a shocking disclosure of

00:43:21.680 his real authoritarian ambitions, more or less everywhere left of center, right? I mean, it was like

00:43:26.520 the mask slipped, right? Or he pulled it off and glowered at us for a moment. But most people heard

00:43:34.240 that comment differently. I mean, I think, you know, I think everyone heard it with a frisson of

00:43:40.420 norm violation. But it was more like their uncle, you know, was going through security at the airport

00:43:46.320 and he makes a dumb joke about being a member of al-Qaeda. And then the TSA completely freaks out.

00:43:52.140 But it's still obvious that he's just their uncle and he's not a suicide bomber. And the freak out

00:43:59.060 from the authorities says everything about a climate, this climate of irrational fear and

00:44:05.480 nothing about their uncle, right? And many people perceive Trump's norm violations in this way,

00:44:11.540 right? He's just riffing. He's just like, he is not an aspiring autocrat. He's just someone who

00:44:19.820 doesn't give a shit, right? He's, yeah, yeah, these people come from shithole countries.

00:44:24.520 Presidents shouldn't say that. But if we're being honest, some of those countries are shitholes,

00:44:28.860 right? So it's just, you're taking him too seriously. And this is very hard to cut through

00:44:34.620 because it actually, you know, as I said, I've been reading Orwell of late and I stumbled upon

00:44:39.940 his review of Mein Kampf.

00:44:41.740 Oh, it's a fantastic piece of writing.

00:44:43.360 Yeah.

00:44:43.700 I know exactly what you, I know exactly what you're going to say.

00:44:45.900 Yeah. I mean, it's glorious. But what I had forgotten about is he wrote this in 1940

00:44:50.140 and I forgot about this because I'll just quote Orwell now, I should like to put it on record

00:44:56.660 that I have never been able to dislike Hitler, right? He's writing this in 1940. Ever since

00:45:01.760 he came to power, till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did

00:45:06.060 not matter. But ever since he came to power, I've reflected that I would certainly kill him

00:45:09.980 if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact

00:45:14.900 is there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his

00:45:19.620 photographs. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing

00:45:25.720 hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse, he would know

00:45:31.500 how to make it seem like a dragon. There's something fairly Trumpian about that portrait.

00:45:37.060 I mean, first there's this sense of just not taking him seriously, you know, until he comes

00:45:41.420 to power because he's just a comical figure. But he remains comical and endearing and entertaining

00:45:47.760 even, and now the truth is I'm not actually comparing Trump to Hitler. I'm not, I don't

00:45:52.540 think Trump is Hitler. And, you know, you can tell me if you disagree, but I think there's

00:45:56.580 a big difference in the fact that he's not ideological and he has no apparent grand ambitions

00:46:02.380 beyond anything other than his own self-aggrandizement. So he's a much smaller figure and far less dangerous

00:46:09.080 in my mind, even at his worst than someone like Hitler. But he has this kind of comedic

00:46:14.640 charisma that causes many people simply not to see or seen, not to care what an aberrant

00:46:23.460 person he is psychologically and ethically and just how his personal vanity, how his personal

00:46:29.220 avarice is just absolutely the wrong thing to put in power in this country. And we can talk

00:46:34.900 about the implications of that, but I just wanted to first broach this issue of just the

00:46:38.980 way he presents makes it very easy for people who you would think would be allergic to him

00:46:45.260 and who would see the downside of having this, you know, malignantly narcissistic, arguably

00:46:51.220 sociopathic personality. I mean, he is really just a black hole of selfishness. The idea that

00:46:57.680 you would put him in power and that it would just be a good time because he's such a good

00:47:02.460 entertainer, then this is the first obstacle. People just are just busy being entertained by him.

00:47:08.180 So it's funny, I'm doing this from memory, but as I remember that essay ends with another idea,

00:47:14.380 which is that Hitler understood something as well, which is that people can only take so much of

00:47:21.860 conversation about sanitation and welfare policy and, you know, do-goody ideas about how to make the

00:47:30.520 state better and that what they really want, at least some of the time in the expression I remember,

00:47:36.240 is drums, flags, and loyalty parades. And Trump is also represents a pivot from a conversation about

00:47:44.640 policy, which is hard and nuanced and difficult. And, you know, should we have high taxes or low taxes?

00:47:51.240 And what's the advantage or disadvantage? And should we build more roads or more schools? And there's,

00:47:55.920 you know, there's no right answer really. And he pivots from that to bombast identity politics,

00:48:03.720 you know, flag waving and red hats. And that's a lot easier and more fun for people. And so I think

00:48:09.180 I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying there's that aspect to it too, that the stuff of politics,

00:48:16.820 which has been the most important part of politics for the last several decades, and particularly in

00:48:21.980 the 90s, when the Cold War was over and people became very policy wonkish, if you remember, that

00:48:26.240 was the word that was invented for the Clinton era, that politics was about arguing over things.

00:48:32.440 And you had to be kind of an expert to understand it. And the big themes of the Cold War, you know,

00:48:37.400 were the democracy fighting the communism that was discarded. And a lot of people felt they wanted

00:48:43.520 identity politics and they wanted big arguments and they wanted to be part of a movement.

00:48:48.260 And Trump and the left, I think, both saw that in different ways and tried to bring it back.

00:48:54.000 I would also say, you know, obviously Trump isn't Hitler. And I think it's really important to

00:48:59.600 emphasize that, that nowadays, when democracies fall, when they begin to fail, and this is true

00:49:07.140 of Russia, but it's true of Hungary as well. It's true of Venezuela, just to take an example from the

00:49:11.580 left. They don't fall in the way that we think of Nazi Germany. So there aren't stormtroopers on the

00:49:18.080 street and there aren't men goose-stepping across the square and there isn't a coup d'etat. And,

00:49:24.000 you know, I don't know, the president shot in the palace by some lieutenant colonel. That's not how

00:49:28.740 they fall. They fall through slow decline, through the hollowing out of institutions, through, you know,

00:49:36.400 elections that aren't really elections because all the candidates are picked in advance, or through,

00:49:42.220 thanks to court systems that aren't really court systems because the judges are so partisan,

00:49:47.620 everybody knows what they're going to decide. Or through media that's not really media anymore

00:49:53.980 because it's part of some kind of big oligarchic game and it's all owned by people who are business

00:50:01.060 colleagues of the president or friends of the president. Or, you know, it's, it's, and the

00:50:06.100 alternatives are so weak that they, that they hardly matter. And that's how democracies fall. And if you

00:50:12.020 look at how, as I said, how did Hungary decline? How did Turkey decline? How did Russia decline in the

00:50:17.500 90s and 2000s? How did Venezuela decline under Hugo Chavez? When you look at those stories and when you

00:50:24.660 look at what's happening in the United States, there is a lot of similarity. So what I'm afraid of with

00:50:30.040 Trump is not that there's going to be, you know, Auschwitz in America. That's not happening. And

00:50:35.160 that's, you know, that's, that's why Hitler is always the wrong, the wrong comparison and why I

00:50:39.860 never, although some of my friends disagree with me, I would never use the word fascist because I

00:50:44.420 don't think it's useful. It just evokes the wrong, the wrong mental pictures. But what you will have

00:50:50.500 is institutions that, that have been designed and set up to, you know, is to, to balance out power,

00:50:57.040 to, to create checks and balances. You will find them declining. And it's, by the way, already

00:51:02.000 happening. You know, we already have the phenomenon, for example, of Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida,

00:51:07.220 who is acting in such a partisan way. She's the one who threw out the case, the Trump documents case,

00:51:15.120 which is, by the way, the one case against Trump, which is indisputable. I mean, that anybody else

00:51:20.000 would have gone to jail for it. You're not allowed to do that. He did it. He hid documents from the FBI.

00:51:25.060 You know, he, he, he stole them. He concealed it. I mean, it's, it's pretty black and white. And she

00:51:30.120 first found a lot of technicalities. Then she found a reason to throw out the case on the grounds that

00:51:35.860 the special prosecutor wasn't legitimate, which is a made up reason and will probably be thrown out

00:51:41.080 by a higher court. But by that time, the election will be over. So a judge like that, who is clearly

00:51:46.820 not acting in good faith, you know, she's not seeking to enforce the law. She's not abiding by

00:51:53.120 the spirit of the law. She's there as a purely partisan figure to defend Donald Trump. So that

00:52:00.280 kind of judge is already a symptom of decline. It's a symptom of the way in which our institutions

00:52:07.440 can be, can be undermined. And you can actually go across many different parts of the, of the

00:52:13.800 American government and political system and find other examples. I mean, another one that you might

00:52:17.920 know about is Jim Jordan's weaponization of government committee. This is a congressional

00:52:24.120 committee that among others investigated another guest on your show, Renee DiResta for allegedly being

00:52:31.300 involved in trying to censor conservative commentary during the 2020 election. And the whole case against

00:52:38.760 her was literally based on untrue facts, things that didn't happen. And she kept saying, this didn't

00:52:44.860 happen. This didn't happen. I can show you this didn't happen. And they weren't interested because

00:52:48.780 the purpose of those congressional hearings was not to find out the truth, which is what congressional

00:52:54.160 hearings are supposed to be for, but to create a performance. You know, they were there to make a

00:53:00.160 performance, to attract attention, to create social media narratives, you know, to create talk on far

00:53:06.980 right television shows and networks. And once you have government institutions being used in that way,

00:53:12.660 they're already not functional. And my fear about Trump is not that he would, there would be Nazis,

00:53:19.040 you know, but that more and more and more of our institutions would begin to be hollow and empty

00:53:25.160 and fake. And that's because he's not interested in them. He's not acting in good faith. He is

00:53:30.860 president because he doesn't want to go to jail and because he thinks he might make money. And his

00:53:36.280 foreign policy is always was actually based on those interests. You know, how is this good for me?

00:53:42.660 How's it good for me personally? Either help. Why does it help keep me in power? Or why does it help

00:53:47.900 make me rich or make my son-in-law rich? And, you know, in that sense, he resembles these modern

00:53:54.240 autocrats who are described in my book. And the book was conceived, by the way, a couple of years ago

00:53:59.180 before I knew who the candidates would be in in the 2024 election. But he resembles them in that their

00:54:05.720 primary interest is not the well-being of their own countries and their own citizens or the success

00:54:13.160 of the United States or the values that America stands for and has always stood for for the last

00:54:18.940 250 years. His primary interest is in himself. And that is a, that is a, that links him directly to

00:54:27.160 Putin, to Xi, you know, to the, to the, to the leaders of a range of autocracies, even the leaders

00:54:33.100 of Iran. That's what they're all interested in. They're interested in staying in power. And that's

00:54:37.020 what he's interested in. That's, by the way, why he admires them. He says freely, he said it recently,

00:54:41.420 it was, as we're speaking, he said it a few days ago, once again, how much he admires Xi Jinping,

00:54:46.880 which is, by the way, should be a red flag for all the China hawks who think that if they elect him,

00:54:51.300 they'll, you know, they'll get pushback against China. That's why he admires Putin. That's why he liked

00:54:57.140 meeting, you know, the dictator of North Korea, because they have this, they're there and he

00:55:01.600 recognizes them as soulmates. They run, they think about power and they think about money in the same

00:55:07.540 way that he does. Yeah. Well, one of the worst things about Trump is how he's pandered to and amplified

00:55:14.140 the lunatic fringe of the right wing. And, and, you know, obviously much of this is a story of what's

00:55:20.280 happened on social media, but this has happened to such a degree that even mainstream Republicans

00:55:26.040 are afraid of the violence from, possible violence from the MAGA cult. So we know from people like

00:55:33.780 Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney that there were members of Congress who would have voted to impeach him,

00:55:39.840 but they were afraid for their lives and the lives of their families. And so that's another way in which...

00:55:44.040 And it affects people at a much lower level too. I did an interview a few days ago with Stephen

00:55:48.300 Richer, who's a Maricopa County election official, who was one of the people who certified the election

00:55:54.660 in Arizona after Trump lost in 2020. And he had threats to his life. He had, you know, harassment

00:56:02.720 from people. He had, you know, people coming to his house and not only him, sort of secretaries and

00:56:09.280 very ordinary employees of the, of the election office, you know, people who, who wanted those kinds

00:56:14.780 of jobs because they pay well enough and they're nine to five jobs and they're not, not difficult,

00:56:20.420 suddenly found themselves the focus of this horrible culture war that they didn't expect

00:56:25.160 to be. And I mean, nobody goes to work for the Maricopa County Election Commission because they think

00:56:29.800 they're going to be, you know, standing up for democracy to fight dictatorship. And, you know,

00:56:34.740 and yet that's, that's where these people found themselves. So it wasn't just Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney

00:56:39.660 who might have the money and resources to have private security. It was also all the way down,

00:56:45.820 you know, small election officials, local officials, Republicans all over the country who

00:56:50.400 have been affected by the violence and the anger that this cult has inspired.

00:56:56.200 Yeah. And, but it was literally other members of Congress who don't have the resources of Romney

00:57:00.100 and Cheney who made a decision to just keep their heads down. And so it's already, I mean,

00:57:05.160 that's already harming our democracy. And it's, again, it's this diffuse threat. You can't really

00:57:10.620 draw a straight line from Trump's mouth to, you know, the, the front door of some embattled person

00:57:18.080 who's now been doxxed online and, and their, their life will never be the same, but you sort of can,

00:57:24.300 right? I mean, it's like, it's, it's all too predictable. If he's putting someone on blast on

00:57:27.800 social media, naming names and, you know, he knows what his cult is going to do subsequent to that,

00:57:35.160 it's completely irresponsible. And it really does seem like a, it's taken us to a new place

00:57:40.120 politically in America.

00:57:42.120 We're, we're, we're in a new place. I mean, the, the atmosphere of violence and the, the level of

00:57:47.100 fear that people, as I said, not even just at the top of politics, but all the way down the chain

00:57:52.980 now feel about saying what they think and about doing their jobs in some cases is something that

00:58:01.140 I don't, I, I just, I can't remember it. I would, I'd be hard pressed to find a moment in American

00:58:05.960 history. I mean, maybe it's what black Americans experienced in the segregated South. Maybe that,

00:58:10.660 maybe you can point to that as a precedent, but that's what you have to go back to in order to

00:58:15.800 find a moment when there was so much violence in the air and so much genuine fear of speaking out.

00:58:22.580 And when the price for speaking out, if you're a Republican inside the party who is in any way

00:58:28.560 critical of its current leadership, the price is very, very high. And I, I don't remember that ever.

00:58:35.160 Well, I saw a comment on my sub stack that at first glance looked completely crazy, but then

00:58:40.500 after thinking about it, thinking about it for a moment, it, it seemed not crazy. And, and,

00:58:45.700 and that fact struck me as, as a, a clear measure of just how far we've come from normal. So the,

00:58:52.380 the comment was, I don't, I don't have it here, but it was essentially the person was saying that

00:58:56.420 he thought that the safest course now would be for Trump to win in November, whatever the risks of

00:59:02.240 his presidency, because the MAGA cult is such that it will simply not believe him losing it, especially

00:59:10.780 if he, if it's at all a close election. And that poses that the inability to accept this next election

00:59:18.500 with, you know, Trump losing poses a much greater danger of civil chaos in America. Now, I don't know

00:59:25.080 if this is true, but the fact that this, the fact that I can't immediately dismiss that is a measure of

00:59:30.620 just how deranging Trump has been to our politics. No, I mean, the, the fact that Americans can now

00:59:38.820 contemplate the idea that an election will be, and could be stolen. And the fact that Americans are,

00:59:47.200 you know, afraid of the result of elections, physically afraid, I think is, you know, I think,

00:59:53.160 again, I think that's new. I mean, you have to go pretty far back in U.S. history to find a similar

00:59:58.260 moment. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sure you can, in the 19th century, I'm not sure you can find,

01:00:01.820 it compares in the same, exactly the same way. But the level of fear and anxiety and violence that

01:00:08.240 surrounds politics in the United States, once again, you know, what is it that Trump is encouraging

01:00:14.300 through this kind of behavior, through the, for example, the constant stream of lies? That's

01:00:18.500 actually the thing about him that bothers me the most. You know, I, even during the, that horrible

01:00:23.060 debate with Joe Biden, one thing caught my attention. At one point during the debate, Trump said,

01:00:28.780 Democrats want to abort babies in the eighth month and the ninth month. You know, they want to abort

01:00:33.080 babies after they're born. Democrats want to kill babies. And I was like, wait, you know,

01:00:37.680 that's insane. I mean, but the, the repetitive lies are now, we're all adjusting, you know,

01:00:43.920 we kind of screen them out. But one of the effects that they have is they mean that we screen everything

01:00:49.280 out. And this again is another, this is a tactic borrowed, borrowed from modern autocracy. This is

01:00:54.920 what Putin does. He puts out a series of lies, you know, that whenever something happens, there's

01:00:59.620 300 different ways of describing it. And eventually people say, right, I don't want to listen to this

01:01:04.080 anymore. I want to turn off the television. I want to check out of politics. I'm not going to vote.

01:01:09.160 It's too hard to understand. It's too upsetting. And I hear, that's what I hear around me. I hear

01:01:14.840 people saying, I'm not watching politics. I don't pay attention to it. I don't listen to it. You know,

01:01:20.160 people just don't want to be involved because it's so ugly. And because this, the discomfort with the

01:01:25.640 lies and the discomfort with the, you know, the fact that, you know, we have a, we have a

01:01:30.480 leading candidate for president who doesn't even want to tell the truth. That's not even his primary

01:01:36.260 goal. Who's not actually describing reality is so, it's so disturbing.

01:01:42.460 Yeah. I mean, it's beyond any sort of ordinary lying. I mean, it's just, he lies for no purpose. I mean,

01:01:49.860 like he, there are the lies that make sense. And then there are lies that are merely contradicting

01:01:55.700 what he said five minutes ago. And it's to no advantage. It's just, you know, except that the

01:02:00.620 advantage is what it does is it makes people feel, I don't want to hear anymore. I, you know,

01:02:06.360 I don't understand this. So it creates, what it creates is nihilism and cynicism and apathy.

01:02:11.860 Yeah. It's just a pessimological bankruptcy. I mean,

01:02:14.360 those are the most common, you know, political emotions in China and Russia and Iran as well.

01:02:22.920 People feel cynical. They feel apathetic. They don't want anything to do with politics. They

01:02:28.360 don't want to be involved in any civic movement. They don't see the point of it. That's what the

01:02:32.680 effect of the lies is. And so in that sense, it's intentional. It has an impact. It creates an

01:02:37.460 atmosphere.

01:02:38.580 Are you as worried or more worried about the people around Trump? I mean, there's Trump himself

01:02:44.340 this grotesque political object who is, to my eye, a unique problem to deal with. And if he

01:02:52.140 went away, I can't imagine a Trump-shaped object replacing him in quite that way. But he's surrounded

01:02:59.040 by more ideological people, more systematic people. I guess I'm, I still don't think I know who J.D.

01:03:06.320 Vance is given his tour from being the author of Hillbilly Elegy to now being the toady's toady of

01:03:12.340 Trump. But take a figure like Steve Bannon. I mean, how worried are you by the machinations of

01:03:19.500 Steve Bannon and people at that level of the movement?

01:03:24.480 So I don't know about Bannon in particular. I mean, he seems pretty post-alcoholic to me whenever

01:03:29.480 I see a picture of him. I'm not sure how enthusiastic a member of some new regime he would

01:03:35.500 be. But there's certainly plenty of other people at the lower level, and we've heard, we've heard

01:03:40.780 noise from some of them in the last year or two, who do think a lot more systematically than Trump

01:03:46.360 himself about how to change the nature of the American state. So we have Kevin Roberts, who's the

01:03:53.240 head of the Heritage Foundation, talking about a revolution coming and it will be bloodless as long

01:03:58.980 as the left allows it to be, whatever, which is a very sinister thing to say. We have people who've

01:04:05.800 been plotting out ways in which they will, you know, replace expertise and knowledge at places like

01:04:13.580 the Environmental Protection Agency and instead put in loyalists so that, and this is something,

01:04:19.840 by the way, I saw happen in Poland in the years when we had an autocratic populist government in

01:04:24.840 charge there. I lived there part of the time. And when you take them away and you put your cousins

01:04:29.440 or your party members or your, you know, flunkies in their place, what you begin to get is very bad

01:04:36.400 government and bad decisions. Again, some of it might not be dramatic. You might not see anything

01:04:40.920 happen overnight, but you will see this hollowing out, this gradual decline, this increased

01:04:47.900 dysfunctionality. You know, you could see the use of or the misuse of government institutions. So you

01:04:54.340 could see the Department of Justice used against Trump's enemies or you could see, you know, the

01:04:59.960 federal communications regulators used against media, you know, to make life hard for, you know,

01:05:06.460 whatever it is, whether it's CNN or NBC or another piece of the media that Trump doesn't like. So once

01:05:12.840 regulators and once institutions that are meant to have some neutrality or meant to act according to the

01:05:18.580 rule of law become political tools when they become, you know, partisan mechanisms, you know, whether

01:05:25.680 it's again, IRS, FCC, FDA, once they become, once they're used with specifically political partisan ends

01:05:33.680 in mind, then they, they become qualitatively something different. And then we're, we're already

01:05:38.720 ruled by a very different kind of government. And again, I, I have lived, I lived through a version

01:05:44.700 of it and what you, what you have is a pretty profound decline and you begin to have declines

01:05:50.560 in quality of life and quality of regulation and so on. And you also begin to have this increase in

01:05:56.120 the level of fear. You know, once, once the state becomes not a neutral thing that's, you know, maybe

01:06:03.300 it doesn't work very well a lot of the time, or maybe it's too bloated, or maybe it's got too much

01:06:07.620 money, but it isn't, it isn't malign. It isn't trying to destroy the president's enemies. Once

01:06:14.360 that changes and once it becomes something very different, then as I say, you're, you're living in

01:06:19.980 a, in a different political situation. And what I worry about is that there are now enough people

01:06:25.020 around Trump, which was not the case during the first term. There are now enough people around

01:06:29.340 Trump who are interested in that kind of change and who want to alter the way the state and state

01:06:35.740 institutions work and that they will, they will enable that. So it's not even so much the ideologues

01:06:41.420 like Bannon, it's the, it's the practitioners, some of whose names we don't yet know, but we may

01:06:46.740 eventually know. So, but you say you're not worried about fascism. So what, what are your worst fears

01:06:54.080 here? So I say, I say I don't use the word fascism because it's got the wrong connotations. So what are we

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - July 19, 2024

#376 — How Democracies Fail

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