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Surviving Autocracy
A bestselling, National Book Award-winning journalist's essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Masha Gessen stood out from other journalists for the ability to convey the ominous significance of Donald Trump's speech and behavior, unprecedented in a national candidate. Within forty-eight hours of his victory, the essay "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" had gone viral, and Gessen's coverage of his norm-smashing presidency became essential reading for a citizenry struggling to wrap their heads around the unimaginable. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Gessen has a sixth sense for signs of autocracy--and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate its emergence to Americans. This incisive book provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Gessen not only highlights the corrosion of the media, the judiciary, and the cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years have changed us, from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages but also a beacon to recovery--or to enduring, and resisting, an ongoing assault.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Masha Gessen stood out from other journalists for the ability to convey the ominous significance of Donald Trump's speech and behavior, unprecedented in a national candidate. Within forty-eight hours of his victory, the essay "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" had gone viral, and Gessen's coverage of his norm-smashing presidency became essential reading for a citizenry struggling to wrap their heads around the unimaginable. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Gessen has a sixth sense for signs of autocracy--and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate its emergence to Americans. This incisive book provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Gessen not only highlights the corrosion of the media, the judiciary, and the cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years have changed us, from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages but also a beacon to recovery--or to enduring, and resisting, an ongoing assault.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2020
About the author
Masha Gessen
27 books1,150 followersMasha Gessen (born 1967) is an American-Russian journalist, translator, and nonfiction author. They identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns.
Born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Russia, in 1981 they moved with their family to the United States to escape anti-Semitism. They returned in 1991 to Moscow, where they worked as a journalist, and covered Russian military activities during the Chechen Wars. In 2013, they were publicly threatened by prominent Russian politicians for their political activism and were forced to leave Russia for the United States.
They write in both Russian and English, and has contributed to The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta and Slate. Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering international politics, Russia, LGBT rights, and gender issues.
Born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Russia, in 1981 they moved with their family to the United States to escape anti-Semitism. They returned in 1991 to Moscow, where they worked as a journalist, and covered Russian military activities during the Chechen Wars. In 2013, they were publicly threatened by prominent Russian politicians for their political activism and were forced to leave Russia for the United States.
They write in both Russian and English, and has contributed to The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta and Slate. Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering international politics, Russia, LGBT rights, and gender issues.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 478 reviews
August 27, 2020
An important book, a book that is a uncomfortable wake up call, but those who need it will doubtless not pick it up. If they do, they will either not believe, nor care. Such is this Presidents power over his base, despite actions that shows he really doesn't care. Presents analysis of how he has preverted language, the meaning of words, neutralizing journalists and fostering mistrust in their reporting and what we read and hear in the news. So much else is included but I found it balanced between what us happening and hope that we can recover from it and this administration.
How we lose our democracy, how unreality and the unimaginable can become normality. Other dictators have used this template, making a country smaller, cut off by claiming they are doing it for the people's good, for their safety. Sound familiar?
Yet, a choice remains. It is up to us and my fervent hope is that this unreal reality show will be cancelled in November.
ARC by Edelweiss.
How we lose our democracy, how unreality and the unimaginable can become normality. Other dictators have used this template, making a country smaller, cut off by claiming they are doing it for the people's good, for their safety. Sound familiar?
Yet, a choice remains. It is up to us and my fervent hope is that this unreal reality show will be cancelled in November.
ARC by Edelweiss.
July 24, 2020
Surviving Autocracy is a valuable book in order to understand Trumpism, which she describes as “aspirational authoritarianism.” She essentially means by this that Trump wants to be a king, wants to be a dictator, and his followers want him to be as well, but it remains “aspirational” because he is still constrained such that he can’t fully dominate society the way it is in the thugocracy of Russia or North Korea. But it’s why he admires them so much…he wishes to be like them and to have their power. To put it simply, Trumpism is the doctrine of Might Makes Right. That is what Trump believes and what is fully endorsed by the Republican party.
The thread of authoritarianism has run through the Republican party for a long time, and the Democrats have been weak and complicit in significant ways to the demeaning of democracy. The foundation has been laid for many years to weaken institutions and the system of checks and balances so that a bully with a cult of personality behind him could steamroll over rules and laws and norms to begin instituting tyrannical actions—such as we see right now with unmarked federal troops kidnapping protestors off the streets of Portland. Trump’s private militia. And you are naïve if you don’t think he plans to use them to disrupt swing states at election time to increase his chances of winning. This is fascism in action, happening before our very eyes. You know the phrase “It couldn’t happen here.” It is happening here.
Gessen focuses on both the language of authoritarianism as used by Trump, the specifics of his authoritarian statements, and the specifics of his authoritarian actions.
When it comes to language, Trump’s absurd word salad, illogic, contradictions, and constant lies are actually quite in keeping with authoritarian practices such as in Putin’s Russia where they host “elections” that are single-choice voting. What does an election mean when the victor is guaranteed? The meaning of the word “election” itself is discredited. They seek to destroy political language—to turn “justice” or “fairness” into meaningless concepts. His jumbled language also serves well to confound the press who are trapped not knowing how to write about absurdity and take it seriously.
Trump’s statements are racist, sexist, and elitist. Trumpism is about reducing the size of “us” and expanding the enemy of “them.” The only people who really matter in his statements are white males. (The only people he really cares about are himself and a few other rich power-folk, but his statements pretend to care about white males in general.) It’s also important to his project to demonize the media because the less the news media can critique and question his authority, the more he can get away with. Trumpism itself is appealing to his MAGA supporters because just like Nazism made enemies of Jews, gays, gypsies and immigrants in general, it creates an easy target to blame for all the problems of society and the elevation of their own identity as superior. His macho tough guy talk is actually one of the biggest factors in creating Trumpism. As Gessen says, it’s “aesthetic” not “political.” In other words, his followers care less about policy and more about attitude. Stick it to those libs. Show you’re strong. And that’s why flip-flopping and lying is not important. It’s doing it with style that matters. Their style. The tough-guy mob boss is what they admire. A rejuvenation of masculinity as brutality.
His actions are corrupt. As we’ve seen over and over again as when he directs taxpayer dollars to Trump properties (the many stays at his hotels) and uses our tax dollars as bribes to leverage against political opponents (the Ukraine). We just learned how he directed the UK ambassador to pressure the British government to move the British Open golf tournament to Trump’s Scottish resort. Anything he can loot, he will loot. And his cronies all follow the same pattern, all those swamp suckers he put in charge of the departments of the government. In fact, this type of corruption is REQUIRED in authoritarian regimes. Because it ensures that everyone in the government is vulnerable and can be turned on at will. They must kow-tow to Putin (or Xi or Trump) because if they don’t, he can easily enforce corruption charges against them and crush them. It’s just like the mafia. You can’t turn on your boss when you’re involved in all the criminality equality. The guilt is spread around equally although the boss always profits the most. In the Trump world, corruption is in fact a requirement.
Gessen’s prescriptions regarding how to address Trump’s authoritarianism are primarily directed at the press and how the press must evolve their language and response to him and his authoritarian movement. As well as some guidance for the opposition party. Her advice is all useful for those groups although I think her primary success here is in diagnosing the situation. I must admit that I was disappointed that the title of this book is misleading. I had expected Surviving Autocracy to include significant recommendations for average citizens (those not in the press or in the opposition party) on how they can literally…survive autocracy. I expected more chapters with tips from citizens in countries that have devolved further into tyranny—how they survived and overcame. How did the underground in Hitler’s Germany work? How can we work it here? Are there any tips from Stalinist Russia or in Bolsanaro’s Brazil? If Trump cheats our next election to a stalemate and stays in office and continues to evolve his fascist powerplay into new and terrifying avenues, how will we fight back? How will we avoid being kidnapped off the streets by…wait was that a white supremacist cell or was it Homeland Security? Can you tell the difference?
Despite my disappointment, this book is a welcome addition to analysis of the Trumpist government and Trumpist agenda and well worthy of five stars.
The thread of authoritarianism has run through the Republican party for a long time, and the Democrats have been weak and complicit in significant ways to the demeaning of democracy. The foundation has been laid for many years to weaken institutions and the system of checks and balances so that a bully with a cult of personality behind him could steamroll over rules and laws and norms to begin instituting tyrannical actions—such as we see right now with unmarked federal troops kidnapping protestors off the streets of Portland. Trump’s private militia. And you are naïve if you don’t think he plans to use them to disrupt swing states at election time to increase his chances of winning. This is fascism in action, happening before our very eyes. You know the phrase “It couldn’t happen here.” It is happening here.
Gessen focuses on both the language of authoritarianism as used by Trump, the specifics of his authoritarian statements, and the specifics of his authoritarian actions.
When it comes to language, Trump’s absurd word salad, illogic, contradictions, and constant lies are actually quite in keeping with authoritarian practices such as in Putin’s Russia where they host “elections” that are single-choice voting. What does an election mean when the victor is guaranteed? The meaning of the word “election” itself is discredited. They seek to destroy political language—to turn “justice” or “fairness” into meaningless concepts. His jumbled language also serves well to confound the press who are trapped not knowing how to write about absurdity and take it seriously.
Trump’s statements are racist, sexist, and elitist. Trumpism is about reducing the size of “us” and expanding the enemy of “them.” The only people who really matter in his statements are white males. (The only people he really cares about are himself and a few other rich power-folk, but his statements pretend to care about white males in general.) It’s also important to his project to demonize the media because the less the news media can critique and question his authority, the more he can get away with. Trumpism itself is appealing to his MAGA supporters because just like Nazism made enemies of Jews, gays, gypsies and immigrants in general, it creates an easy target to blame for all the problems of society and the elevation of their own identity as superior. His macho tough guy talk is actually one of the biggest factors in creating Trumpism. As Gessen says, it’s “aesthetic” not “political.” In other words, his followers care less about policy and more about attitude. Stick it to those libs. Show you’re strong. And that’s why flip-flopping and lying is not important. It’s doing it with style that matters. Their style. The tough-guy mob boss is what they admire. A rejuvenation of masculinity as brutality.
His actions are corrupt. As we’ve seen over and over again as when he directs taxpayer dollars to Trump properties (the many stays at his hotels) and uses our tax dollars as bribes to leverage against political opponents (the Ukraine). We just learned how he directed the UK ambassador to pressure the British government to move the British Open golf tournament to Trump’s Scottish resort. Anything he can loot, he will loot. And his cronies all follow the same pattern, all those swamp suckers he put in charge of the departments of the government. In fact, this type of corruption is REQUIRED in authoritarian regimes. Because it ensures that everyone in the government is vulnerable and can be turned on at will. They must kow-tow to Putin (or Xi or Trump) because if they don’t, he can easily enforce corruption charges against them and crush them. It’s just like the mafia. You can’t turn on your boss when you’re involved in all the criminality equality. The guilt is spread around equally although the boss always profits the most. In the Trump world, corruption is in fact a requirement.
Gessen’s prescriptions regarding how to address Trump’s authoritarianism are primarily directed at the press and how the press must evolve their language and response to him and his authoritarian movement. As well as some guidance for the opposition party. Her advice is all useful for those groups although I think her primary success here is in diagnosing the situation. I must admit that I was disappointed that the title of this book is misleading. I had expected Surviving Autocracy to include significant recommendations for average citizens (those not in the press or in the opposition party) on how they can literally…survive autocracy. I expected more chapters with tips from citizens in countries that have devolved further into tyranny—how they survived and overcame. How did the underground in Hitler’s Germany work? How can we work it here? Are there any tips from Stalinist Russia or in Bolsanaro’s Brazil? If Trump cheats our next election to a stalemate and stays in office and continues to evolve his fascist powerplay into new and terrifying avenues, how will we fight back? How will we avoid being kidnapped off the streets by…wait was that a white supremacist cell or was it Homeland Security? Can you tell the difference?
Despite my disappointment, this book is a welcome addition to analysis of the Trumpist government and Trumpist agenda and well worthy of five stars.
April 15, 2020
I really enjoyed this examination of the Trump era, through the lens of Masha Gessen - a woman who was a journalist in Russia through the rise of Putin.
I largely find keeping up with Trump news a pointless exercise, because anyone who has the power to remove him seems happy to act as a malignant cancer on the world. However, Masha reframes the argument through the changing language and media coverage pulling our discourse to the right.
It was an interesting read. While she offers no concrete solutions to Trumpism - I think it would be hubris to present answers.
A quick and interesting read.
Thank you to the publisher, via Edelweiss, for providing me with a copy for review.
I largely find keeping up with Trump news a pointless exercise, because anyone who has the power to remove him seems happy to act as a malignant cancer on the world. However, Masha reframes the argument through the changing language and media coverage pulling our discourse to the right.
It was an interesting read. While she offers no concrete solutions to Trumpism - I think it would be hubris to present answers.
A quick and interesting read.
Thank you to the publisher, via Edelweiss, for providing me with a copy for review.
October 22, 2020
A solid, thoughtful and eye-opening analysis of how autocracy works and how Trump's behaviors are what Gessen calls "An Autocratic Attempt," because Trump's not quite there. (Or as the author succinctly puts it, "Trump's incompetence is militant.") Gessen, who has won the National Book Award and who writes for the New Yorker, is widely recognized as one of the world's experts on the political culture of the Soviet Union (where she grew up) and Putin's Russia. Hence, she brings a lot of insight and personal experience to the subject. Her focus is less on Trump himself than what his presidency has revealed about existential vulnerabilities in the American political system. In this, "Surviving Autocracy" stands out as different from and, to my mind, more important than, the many other analyses and exposés of the Trump Presidency. Her vision is expansive. The jacket copy refers to the book as an "inventory," and that's not a bad way of describing it. For me, though, it's more a taxonomy that explores the internal and interconnected processes of autocratic politics.
Case in point: Trump's behavior, Gessen writes, performed impulsively and without evident forethought, has profoundly altered a fundamental dynamic of American political culture. In the first year of his presidency, Trump had effected a remarkable shift in American politics -- a shift of political audiences. In a representative democracy, a politician's primary audience is their voters, the residents of their district, state, or county who will decide whether to bring them back to office in the next electoral cycle. In an autocracy, the politician's primary audience is the autocrat himself, because he is the patron who apportions power and influence. In Trump's America, Republican politicians perform for Trump.
One of the most impressive (and disturbing) contributions the book makes is to be found in its exploration of the role of the media in Trump's America. Gessen is not speaking here, as others have, of the inordinate and unwarranted coverage the media has given Trump, but of something far deeper. The attempts by journalists to analyze Trump using the language of normal, objective political discourse and journalism ended up not exposing Trump but empowering him. It leveled the ground so that what normal journalism says and what Trump says are of equal weight in defining reality. Trump was in essence being put in the middle between two sets of groups "with different but equally valid views of his presidency." That is to say, in their efforts to be objective and non-partisan -- and definitely not adversarial -- the media was saying they would not take sides in "the war on reality." In short, they became "reluctantly though not unwittingly, the president's accomplices."
In her penetrating analysis of the first half of Trump's term, she notes by way of example, the serious media focused heavily on Russian interference, alleged collusion, conspiracy, and so forth. None of this was baseless, of course, Gessen says, but it misses the point: "Conspiracy thinking focuses attention on the hidden, the implied, and the imagined, and draws it away from reality in plain view."
In plain view" she goes on to say, Trump was flaunting, ignoring, and destroying all institutions of accountability. In plain view, he was degrading political speech. In plain view, he was using his office to enrich himself. In plain view, he was courting dictator after dictator. In plain view, he was promoting xenophobic conspiracy theories... All of this, though plainly visible, was unfathomable, as Trump's election itself had been. The more Trump assaulted the sense of the possible and the acceptable, the louder became talk of a sinister, all-powerful, all-knowing, world-dominating Russia. And while everyone was looking for the smoking gun that would reveal that Trump was a Russian asset or puppet, he was busy tearing down the political norms that enable the country to function.
Truth and lies no longer matter in Trump's America, just as they don't' in Putin's Russia. What Gessen says of Putin is equally true of Trump: "He communicated that his power enables him to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is president of his country and king of reality."
The psychic cost of living in this new altered reality has been high. Being an engaged citizen of Trump's America means living in a constant state of cognitive tension. One cannot put the president and his lies out of one's mind, because he is the president. Accepting that the president continuously tweets or says things that are not true, that are known not to be true, are intended to be heard or read as power lies, and will continue to be broadcast -- on Twitter and by the media -- after they have been repeatedly disproven means accepting a constant challenge to fact-based reality. In effect, it means that the two realities -- Trumpian and fact-based -- come to exist side by side, on equal ground. The tension is draining. The need to pay constant attention to the lies is exhausting, and it is compounded by the feeling of helplessness in the face of the ridiculous and repeated lies. ("He lied about the weather!")
The risk America faces is not state terror (which may well not even be necessary) but something more insidious. The biggest danger, Gessen says, is the one that has been demonstrated again and again over the past century and a half: "One way out of [this] anxiety is to relieve the mind of stress by accepting Trumpian reality. Another... is to stop paying attention, disengage, and retreat to one's private sphere."
Gessen has a gift for expressing complicated issues in easily understood language. I was particularly struck by her discussion of the "It Can't Happen Here" phenomenon and all the psychological processes that lie beneath it: "A logical fallacy becomes inevitable. If this can't happen, then the thing that is happening is not it. What we see in real life, or at least on television, could not possibly be the same monstrous phenomenon that we have collectively decided is unimaginable."
I am really not doing "Surviving Autocracy" justice. (So many passages I want to share here!) It is smart, utterly readable, and engaging. And the importance of what Gessen is saying cannot be overstated. When reality, morality, language, and every other pillar of shared existence are made entirely contingent, no political structure or national community can be built or sustained. "Democracy" becomes an empty word, and form is celebrated over substance. The truth of this observation is made clear in an anecdote shared early in the book. At his Inaugural Ball in 2013, President Obama had a cake made by a celebrity chef. For Trump's Inaugural Ball, the order was given that the cake must be an exact copy of the celebrity chef's design, with one major difference: "Only a small portion of Trump's cake was edible; the rest was Styrofoam." The anecdote ends literally with a parenthetic mic drop. "(Obama's was cake all the way through)."
Case in point: Trump's behavior, Gessen writes, performed impulsively and without evident forethought, has profoundly altered a fundamental dynamic of American political culture. In the first year of his presidency, Trump had effected a remarkable shift in American politics -- a shift of political audiences. In a representative democracy, a politician's primary audience is their voters, the residents of their district, state, or county who will decide whether to bring them back to office in the next electoral cycle. In an autocracy, the politician's primary audience is the autocrat himself, because he is the patron who apportions power and influence. In Trump's America, Republican politicians perform for Trump.
One of the most impressive (and disturbing) contributions the book makes is to be found in its exploration of the role of the media in Trump's America. Gessen is not speaking here, as others have, of the inordinate and unwarranted coverage the media has given Trump, but of something far deeper. The attempts by journalists to analyze Trump using the language of normal, objective political discourse and journalism ended up not exposing Trump but empowering him. It leveled the ground so that what normal journalism says and what Trump says are of equal weight in defining reality. Trump was in essence being put in the middle between two sets of groups "with different but equally valid views of his presidency." That is to say, in their efforts to be objective and non-partisan -- and definitely not adversarial -- the media was saying they would not take sides in "the war on reality." In short, they became "reluctantly though not unwittingly, the president's accomplices."
In her penetrating analysis of the first half of Trump's term, she notes by way of example, the serious media focused heavily on Russian interference, alleged collusion, conspiracy, and so forth. None of this was baseless, of course, Gessen says, but it misses the point: "Conspiracy thinking focuses attention on the hidden, the implied, and the imagined, and draws it away from reality in plain view."
In plain view" she goes on to say, Trump was flaunting, ignoring, and destroying all institutions of accountability. In plain view, he was degrading political speech. In plain view, he was using his office to enrich himself. In plain view, he was courting dictator after dictator. In plain view, he was promoting xenophobic conspiracy theories... All of this, though plainly visible, was unfathomable, as Trump's election itself had been. The more Trump assaulted the sense of the possible and the acceptable, the louder became talk of a sinister, all-powerful, all-knowing, world-dominating Russia. And while everyone was looking for the smoking gun that would reveal that Trump was a Russian asset or puppet, he was busy tearing down the political norms that enable the country to function.
Truth and lies no longer matter in Trump's America, just as they don't' in Putin's Russia. What Gessen says of Putin is equally true of Trump: "He communicated that his power enables him to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is president of his country and king of reality."
The psychic cost of living in this new altered reality has been high. Being an engaged citizen of Trump's America means living in a constant state of cognitive tension. One cannot put the president and his lies out of one's mind, because he is the president. Accepting that the president continuously tweets or says things that are not true, that are known not to be true, are intended to be heard or read as power lies, and will continue to be broadcast -- on Twitter and by the media -- after they have been repeatedly disproven means accepting a constant challenge to fact-based reality. In effect, it means that the two realities -- Trumpian and fact-based -- come to exist side by side, on equal ground. The tension is draining. The need to pay constant attention to the lies is exhausting, and it is compounded by the feeling of helplessness in the face of the ridiculous and repeated lies. ("He lied about the weather!")
The risk America faces is not state terror (which may well not even be necessary) but something more insidious. The biggest danger, Gessen says, is the one that has been demonstrated again and again over the past century and a half: "One way out of [this] anxiety is to relieve the mind of stress by accepting Trumpian reality. Another... is to stop paying attention, disengage, and retreat to one's private sphere."
Gessen has a gift for expressing complicated issues in easily understood language. I was particularly struck by her discussion of the "It Can't Happen Here" phenomenon and all the psychological processes that lie beneath it: "A logical fallacy becomes inevitable. If this can't happen, then the thing that is happening is not it. What we see in real life, or at least on television, could not possibly be the same monstrous phenomenon that we have collectively decided is unimaginable."
I am really not doing "Surviving Autocracy" justice. (So many passages I want to share here!) It is smart, utterly readable, and engaging. And the importance of what Gessen is saying cannot be overstated. When reality, morality, language, and every other pillar of shared existence are made entirely contingent, no political structure or national community can be built or sustained. "Democracy" becomes an empty word, and form is celebrated over substance. The truth of this observation is made clear in an anecdote shared early in the book. At his Inaugural Ball in 2013, President Obama had a cake made by a celebrity chef. For Trump's Inaugural Ball, the order was given that the cake must be an exact copy of the celebrity chef's design, with one major difference: "Only a small portion of Trump's cake was edible; the rest was Styrofoam." The anecdote ends literally with a parenthetic mic drop. "(Obama's was cake all the way through)."
July 30, 2020
Moving Towards Autocracy?
"We relate to the virus, in some ways, as we relate to Trump. We yearn desperately to return to a time of imagined normalcy, before Trump and before the coronavirus."
In the midst of the horrific global pandemic it is easy to become isolated socially as well as politically as we try to navigate our needs while avoiding the virus. Of course, the government's guidelines in regards to the virus are, eerrr, quite variable (to say the least). Masha Gessen’s book is a great opportunity to review the chaos of the last four years, i.e. she brings up the highlights (well, trauma) of the major events in “politics” since the 2016 election. I don’t think it is news for anybody that has stayed informed during these last few years, but it is a good reminder of how the world has shifted. Gessen suggests that the United States is a nation potentially on its way towards autocracy. The book also made me think more about how the debate as well as the news coverage has shifted these last few years. Nothing is “normal”. Gessen suggest that people ultimately either adopt the “reality” of Trumpism or retreat into their own individual spheres of existence. To stay “awake” is to invite a feeling of loss and a crazy world – in a sense a bit like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but perhaps redrawn with the help of Dali into Alice’s Nightmares? Regardless, Gessen made me think more about how difficult it is to have a normal discussion of issues as the government’s perspective is about power and twisting reality into fake news with daily oscillations of what is true. Besides, the move towards a complete rejection of the Other is unsettling. I wonder how our world will turn this year as the reality of the waves of the virus, human suffering, the crumbling economy and the politics finally sink into and shatter our own individual lives? This fall.....
"We relate to the virus, in some ways, as we relate to Trump. We yearn desperately to return to a time of imagined normalcy, before Trump and before the coronavirus."
In the midst of the horrific global pandemic it is easy to become isolated socially as well as politically as we try to navigate our needs while avoiding the virus. Of course, the government's guidelines in regards to the virus are, eerrr, quite variable (to say the least). Masha Gessen’s book is a great opportunity to review the chaos of the last four years, i.e. she brings up the highlights (well, trauma) of the major events in “politics” since the 2016 election. I don’t think it is news for anybody that has stayed informed during these last few years, but it is a good reminder of how the world has shifted. Gessen suggests that the United States is a nation potentially on its way towards autocracy. The book also made me think more about how the debate as well as the news coverage has shifted these last few years. Nothing is “normal”. Gessen suggest that people ultimately either adopt the “reality” of Trumpism or retreat into their own individual spheres of existence. To stay “awake” is to invite a feeling of loss and a crazy world – in a sense a bit like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but perhaps redrawn with the help of Dali into Alice’s Nightmares? Regardless, Gessen made me think more about how difficult it is to have a normal discussion of issues as the government’s perspective is about power and twisting reality into fake news with daily oscillations of what is true. Besides, the move towards a complete rejection of the Other is unsettling. I wonder how our world will turn this year as the reality of the waves of the virus, human suffering, the crumbling economy and the politics finally sink into and shatter our own individual lives? This fall.....
July 6, 2021
More like 2.5. How do you rate a book full of ideas and observations all of which seem pretty much exactly right but not one of which you feel you haven’t read before already? (And, by the way, how do you rate a book that so obviously reads like an article fattened up to book length, which is exactly what this is?) Despite the apparent promise of Masha Gessen’s position as an expert on totalitarianism in general and on Putin in particular, there’s not a sentence in this book that one needs a Masha Gessen for. Instead, in rounding up of all the usual rhetorical suspects—Trump has corrupted the language; Trump has made journalists unwitting collaborators and thus eroded the fourth estate; Trump has normalized the abnormal; Trump has both exposed and increased the toothlessness and dysfunction of state institutions—this book just reads like every “Trump is a textbook twentieth-century autocrat” think-piece that has run since his campaign began, all rolled into one. Again, Gessen is not wrong about any of this, but we’ve read it all before. So much of the book is just a straightforward recital of many of the appalling things Trump did as president, but this is (all-too-) familiar stuff as well, and by the end I found myself skimming and waiting for a strong and original analytical conclusion that never came.
August 16, 2020
Full disclosure: I have been Masha Gessen's fan for a long time, and this book fits with my worldview and politics to a T. So my review is very biased
I really like how she summarizes and crystallizes events of recent history. Not that I did not know how horrendous Trump has been for the US and the world, of course, I knew all of it. I have resisted his rule by marching, joining FB groups, signing petitions, voting etc.
Nevertheless, I believe this short book needed to be written and read. It may not contain any new facts or even very new ideas, and it may be read and appeal to only to the "choir", and it may not be seen or change the views of anybody in Trump's "base", but even with these limitations, it is so important.
Thank you, Masha
I really like how she summarizes and crystallizes events of recent history. Not that I did not know how horrendous Trump has been for the US and the world, of course, I knew all of it. I have resisted his rule by marching, joining FB groups, signing petitions, voting etc.
Nevertheless, I believe this short book needed to be written and read. It may not contain any new facts or even very new ideas, and it may be read and appeal to only to the "choir", and it may not be seen or change the views of anybody in Trump's "base", but even with these limitations, it is so important.
Thank you, Masha
September 21, 2021
Since the Trump presidency started in 2016, many books have been written about the threat to democracy and the possibility of autocracy eroding western democracies such as the US. Masha Gessen's book is one of the best I've read on this topic, perhaps as she has had good practice in writing about Putin's Russia, the origin of much of the latest autocratic and oligarchic practices that Trump seems to cherish so heartily.
Other authors have also have drawn such comparisons, but Gessen goes deeper with some unique perspectives on methods and praxis. One area in which the Trump presidency became quite skilled was the debasement of language. It reminded me of Victor Klemperer's Language of the Third Reich, in which he documented how the Nazis used language to twist meaning or, even better, remove it altogether. For example, the Trump administration avoided using the more accurate terms of immigrant or asylum seeker when discussing the large crowds coming up from Central and South America, instead using terms such as "migrants" travelling in large "caravans". Migrants is really just a term for people moving from one place to another, obscuring the actual reasons, such as poverty and political instability for their move. The Trump administration wanted Americans to forget about the reasons people were coming. It is easier just to paint them all as "rapists and drug dealers". Also, the term "caravan" has a bit of a wandering nomad and Arabic ring to it, which is handy for getting the American population riled up after two decades with Islamic terrorism on their minds.
It is quite sad how the likes of Trump--he is definitely not the only one--lie to deceive and thereby enrich themselves with direct monetary gain or sheer power or both. It is even sadder how so many people were taken in by such a well-documented con man.
This book was very clear and well-argued with good examples to clarify the author's points. We would all do well to heed them and learn how to identify the signs of politicians with autocratic tendencies. I don't think we are clear of such scammers yet. The gains to be made are just too enticing, which is why I believe we are seeing the slide of the US Republican party over the abyss into self-serving autocrat wannabes. The truth is too inconvenient when it stands in their way.
Other authors have also have drawn such comparisons, but Gessen goes deeper with some unique perspectives on methods and praxis. One area in which the Trump presidency became quite skilled was the debasement of language. It reminded me of Victor Klemperer's Language of the Third Reich, in which he documented how the Nazis used language to twist meaning or, even better, remove it altogether. For example, the Trump administration avoided using the more accurate terms of immigrant or asylum seeker when discussing the large crowds coming up from Central and South America, instead using terms such as "migrants" travelling in large "caravans". Migrants is really just a term for people moving from one place to another, obscuring the actual reasons, such as poverty and political instability for their move. The Trump administration wanted Americans to forget about the reasons people were coming. It is easier just to paint them all as "rapists and drug dealers". Also, the term "caravan" has a bit of a wandering nomad and Arabic ring to it, which is handy for getting the American population riled up after two decades with Islamic terrorism on their minds.
It is quite sad how the likes of Trump--he is definitely not the only one--lie to deceive and thereby enrich themselves with direct monetary gain or sheer power or both. It is even sadder how so many people were taken in by such a well-documented con man.
This book was very clear and well-argued with good examples to clarify the author's points. We would all do well to heed them and learn how to identify the signs of politicians with autocratic tendencies. I don't think we are clear of such scammers yet. The gains to be made are just too enticing, which is why I believe we are seeing the slide of the US Republican party over the abyss into self-serving autocrat wannabes. The truth is too inconvenient when it stands in their way.
July 31, 2020
If you read this book thinking that Masha Gessen is going to give tips for how to survive autocracy, you will be disappointed. Instead, they analyze the Trump presidency as an autocratic attempt. The chapters on political language and journalism in the Trump era are particularly fascinating. Gessen contends that Trump has rendered a lot of political language that we are used to hearing meaningless now, and that legacy journalism (New York Times and the like) has helped to normalize Trump's behavior by covering it neutrally as though this were a normal presidency. The only parts of the book that come close to advice on surviving autocracy come late in the book, when Gessen writes about healing and rebuilding after Trump. What will be needed, they say, is leaders who can bring us back to a discussion of what American moral values and ideals are, and help us move in the direction of those ideals.
August 4, 2020
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Is America better off than it was four years ago?
Vote wisely. --My personal commentary on this issue, not the author.
Interesting and well worth the time to read, but the people who need to read it most won't and the others will just be incensed seeing it laid out so clearly. I literally tried to power read, push through fast like ripping off a bandaid, because I knew that lingering would just anger me, that and my closing library loan window.
Gessen does an adept outlining of Trump's deconstruction strategies as the basis of his power grab. I am just going to add in my reading updates because I think they give a good view of the content. For clarification, though I chose quotes that addressed Trump's autocratic aspirations, Gessen makes it very clear that the groundwork was set for Trump's rise and calls out various presidents and policies that helped provide fertile ground. Additionally, we like to think of a single event being the genesis of a downfall--a Reichstag Fire--and Trump's election was not it. Gessen proposes 9-11 as the origin event for where we are now as a society.
Is America better off than it was four years ago?
Vote wisely. --My personal commentary on this issue, not the author.
Interesting and well worth the time to read, but the people who need to read it most won't and the others will just be incensed seeing it laid out so clearly. I literally tried to power read, push through fast like ripping off a bandaid, because I knew that lingering would just anger me, that and my closing library loan window.
Gessen does an adept outlining of Trump's deconstruction strategies as the basis of his power grab. I am just going to add in my reading updates because I think they give a good view of the content. For clarification, though I chose quotes that addressed Trump's autocratic aspirations, Gessen makes it very clear that the groundwork was set for Trump's rise and calls out various presidents and policies that helped provide fertile ground. Additionally, we like to think of a single event being the genesis of a downfall--a Reichstag Fire--and Trump's election was not it. Gessen proposes 9-11 as the origin event for where we are now as a society.
Every political project requires a definition of "us," the community of people it aims to unite and protect.And Trump has been narrowing that "us" over the course of his presidency. America and being a True American, a Patriot, has become smaller, less. After all, anyone who doesn't agree with you isn't a patriot, isn't American.
But a reading of contemporaneous accounts will show that both Hitler and Stalin struck many of their countrymen as a men of limited ability, education, and imagination--and, indeed, as being incompetent in government and military leadership. [...]It was rather the blunt instrument of reassuring ignorance that propelled their rise in a frighteningly complex world.
Magyar's description of the mechanics of autocratic attempts in post-Communist countries {...} talks about capturing the institutions of the state, obliterating distinctions among branches of government, and packing the courts. In Trump's case, the takeover of the state institutions has consisted of two parts: using them for personal gain and handicapping their service to the public.
Trump's lies are outlandish because they are not amendments or embellishments to the shared reality of Americans--they have nothing to do with it. When Trump claimed that millions of people voting illegally cost him the popular vote, he was not making easily disprovable factual claims: he was asserting control over reality itself.
Here were two possibilities of viewing the relationship between the nation's leading newspaper and the president: as adversaries; or as, explicitly, not adversaries. By choosing to act as though in the war on reality it was possible not to choose sides, the Times--and with it, the American media mainstream--became, reluctantly though not unwittingly, the president's accomplices.
Speaking from a place of moral authority--and moral aspiration--is the strategy historically adopted by dissidents in undemocratic regimes such as totalitarian Poland, apartheid South Africa, or contemporary autocratic Belarus. Trump, an attempting autocrat, intuits that moral authority poses a threat to his project.
September 28, 2020
There is no bibliography in this book, and the notes cite mainly news reports and articles from the the dates covered by Trump's presidential campaign and administration. That's because this book is not designed to apprise of you facts about Trump's rise to power you might have missed; it's designed to provide a framework in which to understand the threats Trump embodies and the motives and consequences of some of his most outrageous actions.
I found Gessen's interpretation of Trump's behavior insightful and useful, and strongly recommend this book. It's a quick read; the font is large, the kerning and line-spacing generous.
Here are some of the insights I found particularly compelling:
I found Gessen's interpretation of Trump's behavior insightful and useful, and strongly recommend this book. It's a quick read; the font is large, the kerning and line-spacing generous.
Here are some of the insights I found particularly compelling:
Donald Trump has played this trick on Americans many times, beginning with his very election: first, he was impossible, and then he was president. Did that mean that the impossible had happened—an extremely hard concept to absorb—or did it mean that Trump was not the catastrophe so many of us had assumed he would be? ...It is the choice between thinking that whatever is happening in reality is, by definition, acceptable, and thinking that some actual events in our current reality are fundamentally incompatible with our concept of ourselves—not just as Americans but as human beings—and therefore unimaginable. The latter position is immeasurably more difficult to hold—not so much because it is contentious and politically risky, but because it is cognitively strenuous. It makes one’s brain implode. It places concepts—moral concepts in particular—above the simple human need to be unconflictingly present in the present. It is also the only meaningful response to Trump’s attempt to redefine the nation. (200-201)
The two realities of Trump’s America—democratic and autocratic—collided daily in the impeachment hearings. In one reality, Congress was following due process to investigate and potentially remove from office a president who had abused power. In the other reality, the proceedings were a challenge to Trump’s legitimate autocratic power. The realities clashed but still did not overlap: to any participant or viewer on one side of the divide, anything the other side said only reaffirmed their reality. The realities were also asymmetrical: an autocratic attempt is a crisis, but the logic and language of impeachment proceedings is the logic and language of normal politics, of vote counting and procedure. If it had succeeded in removing Trump from office, it would have constituted a triumph of institutions over the autocratic attempt. It did not. The impeachment proceedings became merely a part of the historical record, a record of only a small part of the abuse that is Trumpism. (81)
Trump’s lies are outlandish not because they are amendments or embellishments to the shared reality of Americans—they have nothing to do with it. When Trump claimed that millions of people voting illegally cost him the popular vote, he was not making easily disprovable factual claims: he was asserting control over reality itself. When he insisted that the Obama administration had had him wiretapped, and continued to insist on this even after FBI Director James Comey said that it wasn’t true, Trump was splitting the country into those who agreed to live in his reality and those who resisted and became his enemies by insisting on facts. When in the fall of 2019, he lied that he had traveled to Alabama to aid in preparing for Hurricane Dorian, which, in fact, was never expected to hit Alabama, and when he insisted that the National Weather Service had predicted that Dorian would hit Alabama—lying about the weather again—Trump was making a reality claim by way of a power claim. When, in the winter and spring of 2020, Trump claimed that the United States was prepared for the coronavirus pandemic, when he promised quickly to triumph over the virus, when he said that hospitals had the necessary equipment and people had access to tests, when he promised health and wealth to people facing illness and precarity, he was claiming the power to lie to people about their own experience. (106-107)
We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people. Our own moment, filled as it is with minutiae destined to be forgotten, always looks smaller in comparison. As for history, the bigger the event, the more mythologized it becomes. The myth becomes a caricature of sorts. Despite our best intentions, the myth becomes a caricature of sorts. Hitler, or Stalin, comes to look like a two-dimensional villain—someone whom contemporaries could not have seen as a human being. The Holocaust, or the Gulag, are such monstrous events that the very idea of rendering them in any sort of gray scale seems monstrous, too. This has the effect of making them, essentially, unimaginable. In crafting the story of something that should never have been allowed to happen, we forge the story of something that couldn’t possibly have happened. Or, to use a phrase only slightly out of context, something that can’t happen here.
A logical fallacy becomes inevitable. If this can’t happen, then the thing that is happening is not it. What we see in real life, or at least on television, can’t possibly the same monstrous phenomenon that we have collectively decided is unimaginable. In Russia, people who know Vladimir Putin and his inner circle will insist that they are not monsters. Yes, they have overseen assassinations, imprisonments, and wars, but they are not thoroughly terrible, those people will claim—they are not like Stalin and his henchmen. In other words, they are not the monsters of our collective historical imagination. (199-200)
January 8, 2021
The first shocking thing about Surviving Autocracy — an utterly of-the-moment book released in early June which begins with events in March and Trump’s catastrophic handling of COVID-19 — is that it’s already dated. What would Gessen make of the George Floyd protests, Trump’s comment to governors to “dominate” protestors, or peaceful protestors being tear-gassed to facilitate a photo-op of Trump holding “a” Bible?
The thesis of this book — that Donald Trump’s autocratic impulses have been hiding in plain sight from the very beginning, and that our system of government is ill-equipped to weather them — becomes more persuasive by the day, and one of the helpful things Gessen debunks is the ahistorical idea that autocratic leaders of the past 1) announced their intentions from the beginning, or 2) were seen as competent and effective in their own time. “We imagine the villains of history to be masterminds of horror,” Gessen writes. “If a historical event caused shocking destruction, then the person behind this event must have been a correspondingly giant monster.” (We’ve all seen the argument that we should be thankful Trump is so incompetent, as if his ineffectiveness offsets his authoritarian desires.)
Gessen is especially trenchant in analyzing the way language (especially what Gessen terms Trump’s “word piles”) and public discourse have been corrupted and diminished. “Being an engaged citizen of Trump’s America,” Gessen says, “means living in a constant state of cognitive tension.”
Surviving Autocracy serves as a helpful, if numbing, catalogue of all the offenses and outrages of the past four years; you’d be forgiven if impeachment proceedings and COVID-19 have supplanted memories of, say, the Kavanaugh confirmation, the Sharpie-altered map of Hurricane Dorian’s path, or Kellyanne Conway using her government perch to promote Ivanka’s business line.
The worst thing you can say about this book is the hope its subject will be repudiated at the voting booth and Gessen’s arguments will be less urgent, though Gessen offers this caution: “Recovery will be possible only as reinvention: of institutions, of what politics means to us, and of what it means to be a democracy, if that is indeed what we choose to be."
The thesis of this book — that Donald Trump’s autocratic impulses have been hiding in plain sight from the very beginning, and that our system of government is ill-equipped to weather them — becomes more persuasive by the day, and one of the helpful things Gessen debunks is the ahistorical idea that autocratic leaders of the past 1) announced their intentions from the beginning, or 2) were seen as competent and effective in their own time. “We imagine the villains of history to be masterminds of horror,” Gessen writes. “If a historical event caused shocking destruction, then the person behind this event must have been a correspondingly giant monster.” (We’ve all seen the argument that we should be thankful Trump is so incompetent, as if his ineffectiveness offsets his authoritarian desires.)
Gessen is especially trenchant in analyzing the way language (especially what Gessen terms Trump’s “word piles”) and public discourse have been corrupted and diminished. “Being an engaged citizen of Trump’s America,” Gessen says, “means living in a constant state of cognitive tension.”
Surviving Autocracy serves as a helpful, if numbing, catalogue of all the offenses and outrages of the past four years; you’d be forgiven if impeachment proceedings and COVID-19 have supplanted memories of, say, the Kavanaugh confirmation, the Sharpie-altered map of Hurricane Dorian’s path, or Kellyanne Conway using her government perch to promote Ivanka’s business line.
The worst thing you can say about this book is the hope its subject will be repudiated at the voting booth and Gessen’s arguments will be less urgent, though Gessen offers this caution: “Recovery will be possible only as reinvention: of institutions, of what politics means to us, and of what it means to be a democracy, if that is indeed what we choose to be."
September 27, 2020
Masha Gessen is a journalist who's covered Putin for decades, so she knows autocracy. In Surviving Autocracy, Ms. Gessen focuses on Trump and the post-2016 United States. She pulls no punches and offers insightful analysis about recent events.
I've read several books by Ms. Gessen and found them all to be intelligent and enlightening.
Highly recommended.
I've read several books by Ms. Gessen and found them all to be intelligent and enlightening.
Highly recommended.
July 3, 2020
This is an amazing, breathtakingly beautiful and important book. A brilliant analysis of what is going on in the United States and a sincere warning that democracy might be lost for good if Donald Trump is reelected. Gessen speaks about the importance of language and wording and shows why even the opposition and the media from the New York Times to CNN and MSNBC have contributed to create the dangerous situation the US are in right now. They also explain how the current rulers have shortened the "us" and how effectively they have created a "them" to be afraid of and to hate. But they also give a possible solution to overcome Trumpism.
April 26, 2021
Masha Gessen's Surviving Autocracy is at once an unsettling and reassuring read. Gessen draws on their childhood in the Soviet Union and their experience with the Putin regime to point to ways to survive and even overcome autocracy, while also reminding the reader of just how egregious the Trump administration.
Where I think Gessen's writing is particularly valuable is in the succinct, clear way they point out how the generation of cognitive dissonance was such a valuable tool in the Trumpian toolkit (everyone knows that an American president would never do X, so what is happening in front of my eyes must not really be X, so everything is fine). They show how thanks to internalised ideas of American exceptionalism, U.S. institutions, from opposition politicians to the media, really are to are really ill-equipped to defend against incipient authoritarianism. Even though Trump is now out of power, he's written a clear playbook for others to follow. Admittedly as an outsider looking in, I'm not overly sanguine about what the next decade or so will bring for American politics.
All that said, Surviving Autocracy is a slim book which felt a little uneven and lacking in truly deep analysis. Gessen resists the worst impulses of the #Resist genre, but it feels like they're preaching to the choir here and I wanted more substance.
Where I think Gessen's writing is particularly valuable is in the succinct, clear way they point out how the generation of cognitive dissonance was such a valuable tool in the Trumpian toolkit (everyone knows that an American president would never do X, so what is happening in front of my eyes must not really be X, so everything is fine). They show how thanks to internalised ideas of American exceptionalism, U.S. institutions, from opposition politicians to the media, really are to are really ill-equipped to defend against incipient authoritarianism. Even though Trump is now out of power, he's written a clear playbook for others to follow. Admittedly as an outsider looking in, I'm not overly sanguine about what the next decade or so will bring for American politics.
All that said, Surviving Autocracy is a slim book which felt a little uneven and lacking in truly deep analysis. Gessen resists the worst impulses of the #Resist genre, but it feels like they're preaching to the choir here and I wanted more substance.
Read
August 16, 2020It starts off strong, especially with chapter one, but turns into a recap of what most of us know.
Would have worked better as a magazine article, with an expanded discussion of the following....
"The Reichstag Fire in Nazi Germany was used to create a “state of exception,” as Carl Schmitt, Hitler’s favorite legal scholar, called it. In Schmitt’s terms, a state of exception arises when an emergency, a singular event, shakes up the accepted order of things. This is when the sovereign steps forward and institutes new, extralegal rules.....
Trump emerged not as an exception to this history but as its logical consequence. He was building on a four-hundred-year history of white supremacy, and he was building on a fifteen-year-long mobilization of American society against Muslims, immigrants, and the Other."
William Barr is Trump's Carl Schmitt.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Would have worked better as a magazine article, with an expanded discussion of the following....
"The Reichstag Fire in Nazi Germany was used to create a “state of exception,” as Carl Schmitt, Hitler’s favorite legal scholar, called it. In Schmitt’s terms, a state of exception arises when an emergency, a singular event, shakes up the accepted order of things. This is when the sovereign steps forward and institutes new, extralegal rules.....
Trump emerged not as an exception to this history but as its logical consequence. He was building on a four-hundred-year history of white supremacy, and he was building on a fifteen-year-long mobilization of American society against Muslims, immigrants, and the Other."
William Barr is Trump's Carl Schmitt.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
June 15, 2020
After reading several books on the subject of the Trump administration (and more broadly, American autocracy), I am faced with the fact that I feel like I know less. No book agrees on the reasoning for the Trump's administrations actions, let alone intentions.
Compare:
A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America
Trump makes snap decisions based on what he thinks looks strong.
Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
Trump makes decisions to enrich himself.
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
Surviving Autocracy
Trump jerks people around to feel powerful, no matter how petty an action it takes.
What is the truth? How could I possibly know?
(Audiobook note: I rather enjoyed the 'unpolished' narration by the author. Personally, when a professional narrator adopts the radio voice, I find it difficult to pay attention. That was not the case here.)
Compare:
A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America
Trump makes snap decisions based on what he thinks looks strong.
Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
Trump makes decisions to enrich himself.
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
Surviving Autocracy
Trump jerks people around to feel powerful, no matter how petty an action it takes.
What is the truth? How could I possibly know?
(Audiobook note: I rather enjoyed the 'unpolished' narration by the author. Personally, when a professional narrator adopts the radio voice, I find it difficult to pay attention. That was not the case here.)
July 4, 2020
Gessen’s book is so rich with ideas that it bears multiple re-readings. I had two key takeaways from my first reading. The first concerns the stages of autocratic takeover, of which we are in the first: the autocratic attempt. Her framework comes from a Hungarian scholar’s analysis of post-communist mafia states. The second takeaway is Gessen’s careful examination of Trump’s perversions of language. Excellent work, but I believe she missed a chance to broaden her analysis through reference to Klemperer’s Language of the Third Reich. Surviving Autocracy is absolutely necessary reading, highly recommended.
November 18, 2020
This was a difficult book for me to read, even though it is short and well-written. It is basically a blazingly clear collection of all the most painful truths about the Trump years. In a way it almost felt traumatizing. Did I really want to relive Bret Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, for example, which almost destroyed several of my family relationships and resulted in me and many women I knew talking openly for the first time about experiences of abuse that were dismissed and demonized? (My personal take is that the Kavanaugh hearings were the Dreyfus Affair of our time.)
The book is preaching to the choir of those of us who have seen the hatemongering, bigotry, authoritarianism, and abusive corruption of Trumpism for what it is all along. It also does not offer many "how-to" practical tips on getting through the years of a wannabe autocracy such as we've been subjected to the past several years. For me, the most useful and insightful part of the book was where she examines the twisted relationship between Trumpism, words, and reality. To process trauma, it helps to have clear words to talk about what we've been through, and Gessen nails it in describing the warping of language and meaning.
In a way, I think it's almost too soon for a book like this summarizing what we've just lived through, but I could see this becoming a valuable testament about life under Trumpism for future generations struggling to understand the incomprehensible and absurd nature of the whole business.
The book is preaching to the choir of those of us who have seen the hatemongering, bigotry, authoritarianism, and abusive corruption of Trumpism for what it is all along. It also does not offer many "how-to" practical tips on getting through the years of a wannabe autocracy such as we've been subjected to the past several years. For me, the most useful and insightful part of the book was where she examines the twisted relationship between Trumpism, words, and reality. To process trauma, it helps to have clear words to talk about what we've been through, and Gessen nails it in describing the warping of language and meaning.
In a way, I think it's almost too soon for a book like this summarizing what we've just lived through, but I could see this becoming a valuable testament about life under Trumpism for future generations struggling to understand the incomprehensible and absurd nature of the whole business.
September 22, 2021
Gessen kan som få andra förklara orsakerna till och konsekvenserna av den framväxande auktoritära högern. En livsnödvändig bok för alla oss som tar demokrati på allvar.
Read
June 13, 2020This is a book that might be of great use for historians (not least with about 1/3 being notes and references), when the Trump era is long past. It has no use to help topple the Trump autocracy, as it will change very few minds about things.
The book has almost no discernible structure (at least to me) and piles anti-Trumpian reproaches on top of each other from start to end, even the Epilogue has an identical narrative to every other chapter (I skipped a few in the middle). So it's not a great read by any means.
If you look for answers to what could counter the downspin of democracy in the US and around the world, using Trumpian events as a guide, this book does not really help I would say. I can only assume that the purpose of the book would be that, and to help remove Trump and restore normalcy. Well, I don't see how it does.
I'm so sick and tired of Trump and the events unfolding in the US as a result of his presidency. I'm so sorry for the US not being able to get its act together but I almost stopped caring some time ago - my caring or not will not fix anything that's broken there. And I found no joy in reading this book.
I might read it again in 25 years, if we all are still alive then. Maybe then it can provide a piece of fact-based evidence as to what really went on, and why things came to where they went.
The book has almost no discernible structure (at least to me) and piles anti-Trumpian reproaches on top of each other from start to end, even the Epilogue has an identical narrative to every other chapter (I skipped a few in the middle). So it's not a great read by any means.
If you look for answers to what could counter the downspin of democracy in the US and around the world, using Trumpian events as a guide, this book does not really help I would say. I can only assume that the purpose of the book would be that, and to help remove Trump and restore normalcy. Well, I don't see how it does.
I'm so sick and tired of Trump and the events unfolding in the US as a result of his presidency. I'm so sorry for the US not being able to get its act together but I almost stopped caring some time ago - my caring or not will not fix anything that's broken there. And I found no joy in reading this book.
I might read it again in 25 years, if we all are still alive then. Maybe then it can provide a piece of fact-based evidence as to what really went on, and why things came to where they went.
December 25, 2020
Alternate title: Laundry List of Reasons Trump is an Autocrat.
I've got nothing wrong with the content or arguments of this book. Trump is clearly an autocrat, of this there is no doubt. What I was expecting was a book about the nature, management and survival of autocratic states. This book gave almost nothing about the nature of autocracy, rather this is a book simply about Donald Trump. The target audience of this book will learn nothing new from this book. If you think critically and have followed the news for the past four years, there is nothing here for you.
On a more important note, this is not the book that we need right now. We don't need a recitation of the obvious; of all the atrocious language, leadership and legislation of Donald Trump. We need a book about how to look forward, heal and to change the forces that are in place to prevent autocratic rule again (Citizen's United, break up monopolies, strengthen labor force, tax the wealthy ect.)
I agreed with everything said in this book but was hoping for more education about autrocracy.
I've got nothing wrong with the content or arguments of this book. Trump is clearly an autocrat, of this there is no doubt. What I was expecting was a book about the nature, management and survival of autocratic states. This book gave almost nothing about the nature of autocracy, rather this is a book simply about Donald Trump. The target audience of this book will learn nothing new from this book. If you think critically and have followed the news for the past four years, there is nothing here for you.
On a more important note, this is not the book that we need right now. We don't need a recitation of the obvious; of all the atrocious language, leadership and legislation of Donald Trump. We need a book about how to look forward, heal and to change the forces that are in place to prevent autocratic rule again (Citizen's United, break up monopolies, strengthen labor force, tax the wealthy ect.)
I agreed with everything said in this book but was hoping for more education about autrocracy.
June 15, 2020
Russian-born award-winning author, journalist, and public intellectual, Masha Gessen is known as an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. In this book, some parallels are drawn between Putin and President Trump. Using the ideas of Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar, Gessen notes that autocracy comes in stages: the attempt, the breakthrough, and the consolidation. The upheaval we are experiencing now actually works well for an autocratic breakthrough, according to Gessen. People want stability and respond to a leader who offers a path back to some imagined latter-day normalcy. The book is offered more as a warning than a prescription for how to proceed. For me, the real value of such a book is the wonderful opportunity to know the thoughts of a person who has seen and experienced more than I have. In our troubled times, how fortunate we are to still have books that offer varied insights. We can take them all, mull them about, and strive for understanding.
I am grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
I am grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
May 4, 2021
3.5 stars
I have read quite a few books about fascism since the attack on the Capitol January 6th, 2021, and was excited to read Gessen's exploration of the subject. They are American-Russian which provides an interesting and nuanced perspective to current events.
While I think Gessen did a great job talking about autocracy through the lens of the Trump administration, those familiar with the concepts won't mind much new here. The part I most appreciated, and is often skipped over by other writers, is how to recover from autocratic attempts. They emphasize the importance of journalism, language, and societal reinvention in fending off the next potential Dear Leader. It's a sliver of hope where others offer none.
A good read, and probably better the less you know about the subject.
I have read quite a few books about fascism since the attack on the Capitol January 6th, 2021, and was excited to read Gessen's exploration of the subject. They are American-Russian which provides an interesting and nuanced perspective to current events.
While I think Gessen did a great job talking about autocracy through the lens of the Trump administration, those familiar with the concepts won't mind much new here. The part I most appreciated, and is often skipped over by other writers, is how to recover from autocratic attempts. They emphasize the importance of journalism, language, and societal reinvention in fending off the next potential Dear Leader. It's a sliver of hope where others offer none.
A good read, and probably better the less you know about the subject.
June 28, 2020
This is a quick, yet not simple, read. True insight in plain language and examples of how we have an autocrat in office, how voters helped get him there, and how the media have been complicit, inadvertently and overtly, in getting us to this point. Read it, read it, read it!
Shelved as 'wish-list'
June 8, 2020
June 26, 2020
very disappointing?!
essentially a comprehensive catalogue of Trump's (political) misdeeds....and not much else.
essentially a comprehensive catalogue of Trump's (political) misdeeds....and not much else.
September 23, 2020
Published in March 2020, this is a powerful and timely examination of the Trump presidency years and is a must-read in today's election cycle.
I've had to stop watching the news because it makes me feel crazy. The world has gone insane and I just can't believe it's true. When I came across this I wanted to shout: Someone else gets it!
" This can't be happening. This is happening--the thought pattern of nightmares and real-life disasters has become the constant routine of tens of millions of people. Every Trump tweet, televised statement, and headline causes a form of this reaction. If the word 'unthinkable' had a literal meaning, this would be it: thinking about it makes the mind misfire; it makes one want to stop thinking. ...It is waging a daily assault on the public's sense of sanity, decency, and cohesion." (p. 132)
So much more I wish I could quote here but I would end up retyping the whole book. You need to read it yourself--this year, before November, if you can.
I've had to stop watching the news because it makes me feel crazy. The world has gone insane and I just can't believe it's true. When I came across this I wanted to shout: Someone else gets it!
" This can't be happening. This is happening--the thought pattern of nightmares and real-life disasters has become the constant routine of tens of millions of people. Every Trump tweet, televised statement, and headline causes a form of this reaction. If the word 'unthinkable' had a literal meaning, this would be it: thinking about it makes the mind misfire; it makes one want to stop thinking. ...It is waging a daily assault on the public's sense of sanity, decency, and cohesion." (p. 132)
So much more I wish I could quote here but I would end up retyping the whole book. You need to read it yourself--this year, before November, if you can.
November 9, 2020
Born in Russia, Gessen fled in 1981, returned to post-USSR a decade later, only to be forced out again in 2013 by prominent politicians there. They bring a unique perspective to reporting on American democracy as it morphed into something more reminiscent of their homeland. This book is an expansion on the essay Gessen published just after The Election™ titled “Autocracy: Rules for Survival”.
The following excerpt has really stuck with me:
“The key distinction of this new crop of politicians is not that they hold left-of-center policy positions, though many of them do, what makes them different from the last couple of generations of American politicians is that they come to the public not only with policy proposals, but with a vision of a different politics, a different life, and a different society that may be possible in the future.
Distinct as their visions may be from one another, all focus on dignity rather than power, equality rather than wealth, and solidarity rather than competition, these new ways of thinking about politics have not yet bubbled up into mainstream consciousness. The Democratic party and most media still discuss the vote in terms of policy proposals, solutions, and of course fundraising and electability, however they measure it. But what will make Trump's opponent successful, if they can indeed be successful, is the ability to counter his simple promise of returning to an 'us', from a white male supremacist past, with a vision of who we are that is more complicated, offers fewer certainties, but is also more inspiring to more Americans. A vision of America as it could be.
The poet Langston Hughes described this vision, and the need for this vision, with absolute precision in 1936, in his poem Let America Be America Again. It ended with the following lines:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
In our times, this would be an audacious slogan.”
The following excerpt has really stuck with me:
“The key distinction of this new crop of politicians is not that they hold left-of-center policy positions, though many of them do, what makes them different from the last couple of generations of American politicians is that they come to the public not only with policy proposals, but with a vision of a different politics, a different life, and a different society that may be possible in the future.
Distinct as their visions may be from one another, all focus on dignity rather than power, equality rather than wealth, and solidarity rather than competition, these new ways of thinking about politics have not yet bubbled up into mainstream consciousness. The Democratic party and most media still discuss the vote in terms of policy proposals, solutions, and of course fundraising and electability, however they measure it. But what will make Trump's opponent successful, if they can indeed be successful, is the ability to counter his simple promise of returning to an 'us', from a white male supremacist past, with a vision of who we are that is more complicated, offers fewer certainties, but is also more inspiring to more Americans. A vision of America as it could be.
The poet Langston Hughes described this vision, and the need for this vision, with absolute precision in 1936, in his poem Let America Be America Again. It ended with the following lines:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
In our times, this would be an audacious slogan.”
July 27, 2020
Frankly, this was a disappointing read for me. I have read and admired Masha Gessen for several years now, with particular appreciation for their powerful recent histories of Vladimir Putin and the fever dream years spanning from Soviet collapse to Russia’s present condition. Gessen’s personal courage as a dissident journalist in the face of authoritarian power in Russia (and their personal experience as an LGBTQ activist persecuted by that same power) means that they have been a clear-eyed, cerebral, cross-cultural, and at times prophetic critic of Donald Trump. They can speak to what democratic collapse and autocratic rise look like with an authority of experience. And yet, this book feels less like a clarifying treatment of ongoing democratic backsliding in the United States under Trump so much as it feels like a scattershot sprint through Trumpian misdeeds. In this, it is a serious letdown.
The chapters and arguments in this volume are strikingly uneven: in length, depth, and quality. In certain chapters, Gessen offers helpful, persuasive political critique. They are at their best when writing about dynamics of democratic collapse in central and eastern Europe and exploring how these phenomena map onto what has transpired in post-2016 America. A few examples include: the Nazi legal framework of “the state of exception,” and how this legal frame takes shape in the American legal system; the inapplicability of liberal democratic vocabularies during autocratic attempts, and how this very imprecision of language aids autocratic attempts; and how the government’s narrowing definition of who is considered a full citizen is achieved logistically over time. But elsewhere, I was surprised to find shallow and sporadic chapters that accomplish little besides recounting play-by-plays of some of the plentiful Trump administration scandals. Many chapters finally reach a place of Gessen making an interesting original observation or argument only to end abruptly. Subjects that merit and call for thorough analysis get cursory summaries in favor of moving on to other scandals. Worst of all, in some places, Gessen elevates gestures as equals to politics. For example, in one chapter they write with great seriousness about the import of Trump’s Oval Office curtain selection (gold), and about the meaning of the cake he chose for his inauguration party (a cheap knockoff of Obama’s, and mostly made of styrofoam). These, though apt metaphors for Trump‘s insatiable/tacky desire to project power and lack of substance or preparedness, are not substitutes for politics, nor am I persuaded that the symbolic meaning imbued in them was a carefully crafted message about a forthcoming autocratic attempt. I found the scattering of moments like this in the text exasperating, and distracting.
To be clear, Gessen does not sink to the gormless, prolific genre of Resistance anti-Trump books, which have formed a cottage industry of misplaced nostalgia for the very pre-2016 American status quo that made room for Trump’s rise. In this book, Gessen appropriately excoriates Democratic politicians and mainstream journalists who have proven themselves completely unable to understand or undermine’s Trump agenda, and have often in fact accelerated it. The performative and substance-less politics Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are torched; the media’s breathless and worshipful orientation toward Robert Muller — architect of the American surveillance state — to save the day is ridiculed; the shortcomings of the Obama administration are addressed bluntly. Gessen gives us a clear thesis (that the United States is in the midst of its first full-fledged autocratic attempt), and they have no illusions about the distressing unpreparedness of liberals and institutions to prevent it from succeeding. So that is refreshing (though, paradoxically, depressing). But the project still feels uneven and incomplete. Though there are compelling glimpses of a first attempt at a cohesive historiography for the Trump era that peek through the text, the book too often ends up feeling merely topical.
Overall: not mad that I read it, but wouldn’t particularly recommend it. I remain a fan of Gessen’s work and am always interested in what they have to say. But this book didn’t do it for me.
The chapters and arguments in this volume are strikingly uneven: in length, depth, and quality. In certain chapters, Gessen offers helpful, persuasive political critique. They are at their best when writing about dynamics of democratic collapse in central and eastern Europe and exploring how these phenomena map onto what has transpired in post-2016 America. A few examples include: the Nazi legal framework of “the state of exception,” and how this legal frame takes shape in the American legal system; the inapplicability of liberal democratic vocabularies during autocratic attempts, and how this very imprecision of language aids autocratic attempts; and how the government’s narrowing definition of who is considered a full citizen is achieved logistically over time. But elsewhere, I was surprised to find shallow and sporadic chapters that accomplish little besides recounting play-by-plays of some of the plentiful Trump administration scandals. Many chapters finally reach a place of Gessen making an interesting original observation or argument only to end abruptly. Subjects that merit and call for thorough analysis get cursory summaries in favor of moving on to other scandals. Worst of all, in some places, Gessen elevates gestures as equals to politics. For example, in one chapter they write with great seriousness about the import of Trump’s Oval Office curtain selection (gold), and about the meaning of the cake he chose for his inauguration party (a cheap knockoff of Obama’s, and mostly made of styrofoam). These, though apt metaphors for Trump‘s insatiable/tacky desire to project power and lack of substance or preparedness, are not substitutes for politics, nor am I persuaded that the symbolic meaning imbued in them was a carefully crafted message about a forthcoming autocratic attempt. I found the scattering of moments like this in the text exasperating, and distracting.
To be clear, Gessen does not sink to the gormless, prolific genre of Resistance anti-Trump books, which have formed a cottage industry of misplaced nostalgia for the very pre-2016 American status quo that made room for Trump’s rise. In this book, Gessen appropriately excoriates Democratic politicians and mainstream journalists who have proven themselves completely unable to understand or undermine’s Trump agenda, and have often in fact accelerated it. The performative and substance-less politics Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are torched; the media’s breathless and worshipful orientation toward Robert Muller — architect of the American surveillance state — to save the day is ridiculed; the shortcomings of the Obama administration are addressed bluntly. Gessen gives us a clear thesis (that the United States is in the midst of its first full-fledged autocratic attempt), and they have no illusions about the distressing unpreparedness of liberals and institutions to prevent it from succeeding. So that is refreshing (though, paradoxically, depressing). But the project still feels uneven and incomplete. Though there are compelling glimpses of a first attempt at a cohesive historiography for the Trump era that peek through the text, the book too often ends up feeling merely topical.
Overall: not mad that I read it, but wouldn’t particularly recommend it. I remain a fan of Gessen’s work and am always interested in what they have to say. But this book didn’t do it for me.
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