I am a historian of Totalitarianism. I look at fascist rhetoric. I have been thinking of the sources of the worst types of history for a quarter of a century. “Experts say that the constitutional crisis here is now.” “The Trump government deports hundreds of men without a test.” “A huge purification at the FBI” “to frighten people to speak out against him.” I leave for the University of Toronto because I want to do my work without the fear that I will be punished for my words. The 1933 lesson is that you will end up earlier instead of later. In the past decade I spent a lot of time preparing people if Trump was chosen once, let alone twice. “See what happened. Is this crazy?” [CHEERING] I did not fled Trump. But if people leave the United States or leave American universities, there are reasons for that. One thing that you can certainly learn from Russians – – is that it is essential to set up resistance centers in places of relative safety. We want to ensure that if there is a political crisis in the US, Americans are organized. “We have just started. You haven’t seen anything yet. It’s all just in operation.” My colleagues and friends, they walked around and said, “We have checks and balances. Let’s breathe in, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.” And I thought, my God, we are like people on the Titanic who say that our ship cannot sink. We have the best ship. We have the strongest ship. We have the largest ship. Our ship cannot sink. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink. “The Golden Age of America has only just begun.” America has long had an exceptional story – fascism can happen elsewhere, but not here. But talking about the American exceptionality is actually a way to get people in line. If you think there is something that is called America and it is exceptional, that you don’t have to do anything. Whatever happens, it must be freedom. And so your definition of freedom is simply narrowed and narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, and soon you use the word freedom – what you are talking about is authoritarianism. Toni Morrison warned us: “The descent in a final solution is not a jump. It is one step. And then another. And then another.” We now see those steps accelerating. Especially in Russian there are words in Russian that I feel to help us understand what is happening in the United States because we now have those phenomena. “Prozvol”: It is the idea that the forces that are can do everything they want and that you have no story. This does not know who the next is, creates a state of paralysis in society. The Tufts student whose visa was removed because she was a co-author of an article in the student newspaper of Tufts. [DESPERATE YELLING] I thought, what would I do if boys in masks tried to grab my student? Would I scream? Would I run away? Would I try to pull the mask off? Would I try to make the scene on video? Would I try to pull the boys off her? Maybe I would get scared and run away. The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know terrified. It is a deliberate act of fear. It is not necessary. It is just done to create a spirit of us and them. “Prodazhnost”: it’s a word in Russian for corruption, but it’s bigger than corruption. It refers to a kind of existential state in which not only anything but everyone can be bought or sold. “Critics call this a Quid Pro Quo deal between Adams and President Trump.” “I am committed to buying and possessing Gaza.” “He earned $ 2.5 billion today and earned $ 900 million.” There is an expression in Polish: “I was at the very bottom and then I heard from below.” In Russian, this is abbreviated to “there is no soil.” “We cannot allow a handful of communist radical judges to hind the enforcement of our laws.” What matters is not what is hidden, but what is normalized. There is no limit to the corruption – “President Trump did not exclude the possibility of a third term.” – and sadism – “The White House released this video entitled ASMR Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” – And the cruelty that we now view in real time. “This facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use.” You have to constantly ask yourself: “Is this okay? Is there a line that I would not exceed? Is there anything that I wouldn’t do?” People say, oh, the Democrats should do more. They should repair things. But if you want the Democrats to do things, you have to make the platform for them. You have to make the spectacle, the penterry, the positive energy, the physical place where they can come to you. Poland recently went to authoritarianism due to a shift. Unlike in Russia, in contrast to Hungary, the media remained a place in Poland, where you could criticize the regime. And as a result, democracy returned. The moral of Poland is that our democratic institutions – the media, the university and the courts – are essential. You know that you live in a fascist society if you constantly go in mind, the reasons why you are safe. What we want is a country where none of us should feel like that.
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