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