And programs in the coming days and weeks, adding more every day ahead of the fall, Pay Attention to our website or sign up for our newsletter for who is coming soon. We are glad to host this event this way and it is for usa have been for us during this difficult and confusing time. Copies of Anne Appelbaums book twilight of democracy are out today from doubleday on our website, listen to the link to buy it from us as a chat. As we change phases, opening for curbside pickup, for in the bookstores like ours, to post more of them, able to order a copy of Anne Appelbaums book would be greatly appreciative. At the end of the conversation, use the zoom chat function for any questions you have, i will come back and relay them to Anne Appelbaum. We are honored to present this virtual event, United Nations association of new york we have with us today, ann nicol. Thanks for the introduction. We are delighted to collaborate in bringing to our membership and others. Twilight of democracy is of interest to the United Nations association because its subject matter is relevant and timely. It provides tools of analysis that can be applied to many in the world today. With authoritarian forms of government, long intertwined with the work of the United Nations with a stimulating conversation ahead of us. With the social movement, to focus for us on the glowing global trend toward nationalism. A great pleasure to have you address it today, and give it back. Thank you very much. We are thrilled to have Anne Appelbaum in conversation with jacob weisberg, cofounder and ceo, dedicated to putting artists and creators, editor in chief, the author of today, the seductive lure of authoritarianism and Anne Appelbaum, the atlantic article, a warning from europe inspired the new book and was a finalist of a National Magazine award. And and and the history of the soviet union. And they had this to say about Anne Appelbaums new book. Anne appelbaum is a leading historian of communism and penetrated investigator of contemporary politics. One with which she herself has been deeply engaged in europe and america. And intelligence understanding is the answer. Friendships, torn, ideals, betrayed, alliances broken. In this, a great historian explains to so many of those who won the battle for democracy, proclaiming its values, liars, thugs and crooks. Analysis and memoir, twilight of democracy tells the shameful story of a political generation gone bad. We passed things off to jacob. Hello everybody, thank you for sponsoring the event and to john for posting it, good to be in a bookstore again even if it is a virtual bookstore but this is one of my favorites. I want to make sure you see this book which was very elegant. Very brief and to this point, very efficient. I recommend Anne Appelbaum a little bit who is not only an old friend but for me the person who first founded the alarm about what we are dealing with now in the United States and she had special insights as a journalist but orientation toward around Eastern Europe. Started to see manifestation of authoritarianism in american politics a lot of us had the reaction that it cant happen here, that it would remain permanently a Fringe Movement that we didnt have to take seriously and that turned out to be wrong. I think Anne Appelbaum because of the experience she writes about in Eastern Europe particularly knew what was coming and started to talk about it with a clear warning voice in 2015 at the least. But a lot of people asking the same comments. I read the book with that in mind and first thing i want to ask you is with that perspective on the global perspective on authoritarianism why you have focused the way you have on the role of the people who are accessories to authoritarianism. You might call them the intellectuals but many of them arent intellectuals and either dont get that inappropriate description, people who are publicists, commentators, some of them are intellectuals but why are you looking at these people rather than authoritarian leaders. Im delighted to be in a virtual bookstore even though it is across the atlantic. A nice feeling to speak to people around me and great to be with jacob who ive known for many years, my book on iron curtain, some weird parallels. The book grew out of the reason i wrote it the way i did, the book grew out of my reflections about people that i know and it started with me talking about people i have known for 20 years, in the us and elsewhere, a political journey in the center right, maybe part of anticommunist movement in hungary, instrumental in arguing for and helping bring about communism and over 20 or 30 years changed dramatically becomes something closer to a new form of radical right, some became nationalist, some became part of or a spokesman for authoritarian leaning political parties. I decided the best way to do it was the perspective of people i know. To some extent i am in the story. In the United States, been there for a long time in the 1990s but have deep ties to poland, for many years, somehow i felt i couldnt tell this story without being in it because that would be cheating. I couldnt do what i did for the occupation of Eastern Europe, tell the story in a balanced way from our perspective, but a story that i could best tell in my own voice without people i know. People in politics, political entrepreneurs. Higher connotations, people who are interested in ideas, to make ideas into politics, people who hang around think tanks, and political parties, newspapers, they sought to bring about political change, a group of people i know well and am familiar with. They also we underrate their roles. What people have written about voters, why do voters vote for trump, they vote for choose authoritarians, that is a legitimate pursuit in a lot of reasons why. Not many people, not voters being presented with. Not just a question for an authoritarian leader. And designs to create enthusiasm. Somebody creates social media. They go right to speeches, somebody prepares them. This is a missing piece of the story. Prehistory here particularly of the Twentieth Century, people who share the practices of liberal society. They went to the darkside if it werent ended up supporting stalinism or fascism. And putting it in that tradition, talk a lot about developing this idea, the treason of the clerks. There are some intellectuals, intellectual class who traffic. In some crucial movement make a terrible decision to ally themselves, against liberal democracy. The question for you is why does this keep happening. The most obvious answer is they want power. Is there more to it than that . Something that will annoy people is it doesnt have a single answer. And overarching theme that it is overarching. I look at several, in different circumstances. People, intellectuals, journalists who feel they were excluded, they have been left out by another group of intellectuals or by another group of journalists and a common phenomenon. A look at some resentment to attach themselves to political movements. Sometimes there are true believers, people who talk themselves, that societies that fail. This is a particular theme you see over and over from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth Century to the present that modernization can be very rapid social changes. For some people, our society is losing something, we are losing our folkways the way we used to do things. There is a cultural pessimism and cultural despair. When i listen to the language of presenters on fox news. And we are missing something. Money is a reason. Ambition is a reason. Almost sometimes nihilism is the reason, the desire to make fun of pompous authorities, that they doctored so well, you make fun of these and democracy, having time doing it, playing video games. Usually the primary vote is usually this sense, since somebody else has power, it is enough motivation. You take it further and say there is a sense of disposition, people who had power dont have it, there is a common theme of a country that has been taken away, take america back again. And and foreigner immigrants, and the communists. Is it fundamentally is it significantly different . It is the thought pattern, one of the oddities, it is about tribalism. Where is the real transmittal real americans as opposed to them, whatever, the elites, the foreigners who dont believe in our country, you create that kind of climate and that kind of polarization even in a totally homogenous country. Poland is a good example, 99. 9 , everybody is polish. Everybody speaks polish. There are tiny fringe minority groups but it is an overwhelmingly yet it is a country where you have created, where they managed to create two deeply polarized tribes who hate each other as much as if they were speaking different languages and had differences in colors. We have a phenomenon like that in the United States where blue america and red america. We still have a large group in between but there are tribes on both sides who identify one another in a profound way. The mechanism that someone has stolen our country from us, the foreigners, immigrants, communists, whoever it is, you can say that but also create the same instinct, the usurpers, the unpatriotic citizens are in charge. You can create that division and to do that kind of politics even in a country where there isnt any. I want to talk about Eastern Europe before i get back to Laura Ingraham. It was so useful the way you bring us uptodate on what has happened in poland and hungary by picking out a few of the exemplary individual stories. Even if you follow that part of the world you lose track of elections and liberal protection being defriended, how much of it is left in one country versus one of its neighbors. But the people you talk about i wonder if you could talk about the hershey brothers who to me were helpful in understanding what happened in poland. It is a very famous example. There are two brothers, twins that are a few years apart in age. How can you between the two years apart in age. They are not twins. I am listening. In polish politics, they are not, they both grew up, if you remember the city which was the heartland of the anticommunist opposition, children of the kind of opposition, even when they were in high school they were very active anticommunist activists, marched in protest in 1718, they ran, one ran the schools, Solidarity Committee and went on to work on trade union newspaper. They were active in the anticommunist movement and over the years they began to take different paths and one of them now has ended up as the editor of the main polish liberal newspaper in the New York Times as a paper of record in poland. One of them is now the head of state television which has been taken over by the ruling party and it is the most crude form of party propaganda, the last president ial election took place a few days ago. Constant stories about lgbt which is an acronym that sounds weird in polish, the opposition candidate won, forced to gay marriages, the National Independence day parade, extraordinarily, virulent nonstop homophobic propaganda and this is on state television which is watched by 30 of the country that doesnt get any other television. They cant afford table. One is running an independent paper and the other is quite extreme far right homophobic antisemitic sort of propaganda. What happened to them . The book goes into detail about their lives and part of the answer is the younger brother who run state television developed he felt with solidarity he threw rocks at the police and somehow in subsequent years he didnt become what he expected and great recognition, become an editor like his brother or have any Great Success and he became ever more reason full, running the country, journalists doing well and he began to affiliate with extreme parties and look for another way out. Resentment, interested in power and ambition led him down this particular road and now to deal with his power is head of state television, people who were mean to him or insufficiently impressed with him, includes his brother so very toxic and dont speak to each other. They rarely see each other when their mother died but other than that totally separate lives. The development of ones likes, how you evil as a person can affect you. With political decisions over the years, under rate how much one personal experience, one is ones context can push you in one direction or another. Watched polish state television and how crude it is and then you see fox news. It is a version of the same phenomena in, moving in this direction . Or are there limits in terms of how bad it will get or how much influence it could have . It already devolved enormously. I used to get asked to be on fox news. And other people who are on the left or center right used to be but also fox news is much more of sophisticated, there are some programs that are fairly neutral and then there are mostly these hosted programs, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham which are truly virulent now and dont pretend anymore. They are opinion programs that dont pretend to cover anything neutraly but even if you watch how that evolved, what is the word . Much more aggressively partisan. Laura ingraham says things that she used to be careful about not saying, but legal immigrants. Not just protecting our borders, protecting the country we are used to be in Tucker Carlson is even more aggressive. They become clearer in their messaging to their audience about what they are talking about is preserving White America or hierarchical america, both of them are very much using these tactics to transmit, to unify together against the foreigners, the dems, the libs, immigrants that are trying to destroy us. In that sense they are similar. The staging of it is more sophisticated. Here too, you write you are part of the story. We shared a meal you when we were living in washington in the 1980 numplaps1990s we would write for the same magazine, would write for the same magazines we would but the idea publish an article in the American Spectator or National Review is common practice, they write for a magazine like the new republics, it is a mystifying experience that none of those people were friends of mine but most of the people you talk about, you might have known some of them better and they share certain values with us. I would say we still have you on. Just a little glitch. Absolutely. I wrote for the National Review, the Weekly Standard and the criteria and conservative magazines. But i think the only thing that existed in the 90s this was still the tail end of the cold war and a lot of coalitions had been created, bipartisan coalitions created to fight the cold war, decade in, decade out policy, but if you think about who was part of the cold war coalition, we had different components. There was for example people who were cold warriors because they worried about russian influence, strategy and nuclear weapons. Lots of democrats, people who were cold warriors, care about human rights and democracy and that is why. There were people who were cold warriors because they were christians and the soviet union was atheists. Something that happened in the 1990s, maybe artificially held together by 9 11 is the coalition began to come apart and those people began to find themselves in different groups. The sort of it was no longer at a medically automatically the case the people who were christians were on the same side as people who believed in human rights and democracy. That is the beginning of the change. But still the events of the last three or four years have to be explained in a deeper way. This is explained in the book, people who are journalists, they worked for the Republican Party, young conservative staffers, some of them have gone off in a direction which is much more clearly not interested in democracy but kind of scornful of democracy, not interested in promoting it abroad, not mindful of it at home, seeing themselves more and more as at war with people like you and me even though we used to be more or less on the same side. Host even beyond that, the premise for example that the Mainstream Press makes up stories, something anybody a journalist in any way knows are fundamentally not true. Journalists make mistakes but there are no stories in the New York Times that are intentionally false. That has become a standard claim of everyone in the group you are talking about. People who are sympathetic to the authoritarian right and they dismiss information they dont like by calling it fake news or propaganda. When does that become an acceptable position for an american conservative . Something you never would have heard in the 1990s or the 2000s accept from extreme Fringe Groups out there . Guest it starts during the Obama Administration, the Obama Administration for a lot of them, it was an experience, a charismatic black president who seemed at least initially able to create a permanent majority for his youth. The consequent need to prove him illegitimate and undermine him at every stage which was the tactic of the Republican Party, the tactic of the republican media. I think that was the beginning. One of the really really important phenomenon, which i ignored. The idea the president isnt really the president , is an illegitimate president born in kenya, not really american, there is a hint that he is muslim, something, he is foreign. Something like 25 of americans believed that. That means 25 of americans believed we had a fake president , an illegitimate president who was mysteriously or somehow forced upon them by some cabal of what ever, media or system and once enough people began to believe that and the right wing talk show hosts began to understand that they could get enormous amount of attention and create all kinds of energy and anxiety by talking about that, that was the beginning of this idea that we can use this distrust in our favor. The game was to create distrust. How do you delegitimize the democrats, the media that write about them, delegitimize all these organizations and institutions by saying they all lie, they are fake or making things up. The Obama Presidency and Birther Movement gave them that energy and it is not accurate that donald trump was one of the leaders of that movement. Lots of people identified with that. He was the man who was brave enough to tell america it has a fake and illegitimate president and for a lot of people that was a very important attribute. People who looked at that story and said it is a ridiculous conspiracy theory, obama himself made fun of it. We fail to understand the power of it. The right wing talk show hosts did understand the power and understood as soon as they began hinting at it they immediately filled goosed and their ratings went up and their audience became engaged. Host it goes to the point about resentment of people in power with such a strong and resonant racial component, hard to imagine visited on a white president in the same way but i wanted to ask, your book is called twilight of democracy. Is your feeling the whole tendency of writing about getting worth in the United States, we are going more in the direction of hungary or poland, or do you think this is something we could come out of depending on the results of this years election . Do you think it will be a strange episode or do you think we are on the spout . Guest somebody recently asked me what i thought would happen in 2021, it depends what happened next. There is an answer like that to your question. The point is for a long time we have felt there is an inevitability in american democracy. We are the greatest democracy in history. This is the story of progress onwards and upwards, the people who blip in the middle for the civil war, but other than that everything gets better and we will and the sense of inevitability was misleading and many of us missed another kind of politics that is evidence, i wanted to remind people the future is radically open. I do think it is possible to overcome donald trump and people will look back and say what was that all about . It is also possible we could be battling with him and his shadow for a long time. A lot depends what happens with the election and how the Republican Party behaves after words. If the election obviously if trump wins and he will solidify the damage he has done and it is much worse, then we are on a very terrifying path towards a country that will not be recognized or be democratic four years from now. If he loses by a little bit, if it is very close or republicans keep the senate then there will still be a strong trump element in the party and that ellen will still have a lot of legitimacy and this could be the next president ial candidate could be Tucker Carlson who put his name around a little bit, don junior, perhaps ivanka, perhaps someone a little bit more traditional like tom cotton, perhaps mike pompeo or mike pence. If one of those people takes over the party, it will remain a party that questions many things we long considered to be fundamental. If trump loses by a lot, if it is a wipeout and the democrats take control of both houses of congress then there is at least a chance for an argument to be had inside the party about where it goes next. Then there will be multiple candidates, larry hogan, the governor of maryland or others who havent emerged yet will compete for leadership of the party and seek once again to appeal to all americans and doesnt just appeal to a white liberal base. Perhaps then we could have the argument and that is by far the best outcome. Even the farthest left democrats should be rooting for renewed and restored conservatism that is really conservative and isnt seeking to create radical change. In order to remain in balance. In the more hopeful scenario we have a problem of what to do, you more than i the a lot of your conservative friends, in elected politics, with bill kristol and others, there are some who behaved honorably who are on the outs with trump, and lots of the Tucker CarlsonLaura Ingraham types that you run into or sit on a panel with and it may be your average joe schmo runofthemill republican congressman who capitulated to trump, and the position will be we had no choice, we were put in this terrible position, never liked him and if we get back to a healthy two party system what has to happen for us to accept the good faith of people on the right who have succumbed to the lure of authoritarianism . The project of healing the nation and ending this deep gap between political tribes will be a long one that will need different moving parts and it will need organizations and communities and so on. The question of what to do, i wonder will i ever see Laura Ingraham at a party again . I wonder if we will ever be in the same room again. I think the only real answer is talk to them. We will have them on the panel and the only thing we can do is try to reconstruct some kind of common public sphere again where we agree on the ground rules and dont make bad faith claims the New York Times is always lying or we attempt to bring them back in. It is almost like a kind of dilemma countries have after civil wars, what do you to with the other side and there is never a good answer. If we jointly host a podcast, one of the people i had on the podcast a few months ago was the former president of colombia who had the dilemma of how to reintegrate guerrilla fighters into society and he wanted to bring them back in and a lot of people liked that but it will be a similar problem, how to reintegrate the conversation, to bring fox news and cnn and msnbc closer to gather. I would be in favor of dialogue. We will be lucky to have a problem but it is interesting, the question, what price we demand to readmit them to the discussion, we have a lot of questions. At this point i should hand things back to john who can moderate what people joining us will ask. Thank you for leading this wonderful conversation. Time for a few questions from the chat. The future of the European Union, the poland and hungary have feared toward authoritarianism without the eu able to do anything about it, very uneasy about the block. You are asking me this when the European Union has had an extraordinary step towards something, just agreeing on a deal where they borrow money and for viral economic, to get the feel. It looks like the eu may be cooperating at a high level. This issue about poland and hungary came up, not clear how it has been resolved. It looks like the eu has some conditionality on money that paves, calling for proof abiding by rule of law, that their judges arent criticized and so on. We will see how that works in practice. The discomfort is shared by a lot of people. The problem is the president , poland and hungary are members, there is no procedure for what was set up that way, sometimes we want to. So there is a new procedure yet, awareness is quite high and more conditionality in the future, not like an unknown problem. Another person asks what we should do with trump loses and refuses to give up power by claiming fraud, even if he doesnt refuse to give up power but if he claims fraud and revitalizes the movement that way . Guest that almost certainly will happen. Im expecting it to happen. Im expecting him to try to cheat. This is what people like him do when they are losing and there will be different ways to cheat. They will cheat by trying to prevent people from getting access to not online, mail in ballots which people will want. The virus will be with us in november. And limiting the number of voting booths in democratic neighborhoods and it is possible once the election is lost trump will say there was fraud and will barnstormer around the country and claim victory. A lot will depends how the rest of his party reacts. Will he have enabled us . At this point, at that point enabling trump will begin to border criminally. A lot will depend how fox news reacts. Ultimately if he loses joe biden will be president on january 20th, 2021, and at that point he can tell the secret service to evict the trumps from the white house. I do think it that movement will have a end but it is absolutely something all americans should be aware of and prepare themselves to think about. How will you argue with your republican friends . What will you do when trump tries to steal the election because i 100 sure he will try. Host this development, the lure of authoritarianism can be found in Early Education window child could do wrong, regardless how the child performs, he or she cannot obtain a position for which he or she believes has equal qualification as the next person, the root that you describe in Early Education . Guest i see the root of what i described in human nature and the longing for dictatorship and frustration created by democracy and noise and the unevenness and unfairness sometimes of democracy has always been a problem. Its not rooted in a particular education system. I do talk a little bit in the book about the concept of is there an authoritarian personality . This was a phrase used in the Twentieth Century, a whole lot of others, even the in this investigation, a recent behavior, an interesting description of authoritarian predisposition which is to do with people who put complicity and dislike change, there seems to be a personality type, people who prefer things to stay the same and are bothered by rapid change or economic change. I dont think it is rude in education but i do think you are right to point the early origins, it is not an accident that most states, for history, essentially dictatorships. Time for two more questions, another from the chat, do you think the recent unrest, and systemic racism for the vitality of american democracy or do you see it as that . Guest it depends what is next. Not something unusual, the others speak better for me. It did seem to me in the opinion polls, there has been a turning point, a deep understanding, deep sympathy for george floyd, blackandwhite and everything else, crosscultural multiethnic sensation that something is wrong, deep problems with the police force, but the background was a virus that is disproportionately killing people who are hispanic, theres a reason a lot of people are on the streets, they wanted somehow to show their recognition. That is a good sign. Some sort of energy after the election. The Trump Administration is now seeking to use these demonstrations in a different way. In portland and elsewhere, to seek to portray all of the protests as riots, all of the protesters as antiamerican and the policeman forcefully putting down protesters as their election propaganda and this will be designed to appeal to people who dislike change, despite protests, just like this i dislike that. Host one last question from the chat is a big one. Is there a playbook here, or are these authority and tendencies learning from each other, is it made worse by social media, can social media be a tool to combat the tendencies you identify in your book or is it more likely that it will be a weapon icing force . Guest it has already happened that these authoritarian parties and hard nationalists parties have unquestionably learn from one another. Theres a chapter about spain where there is a far right party which has been created by people who learned lessons from other far right parties and virtually using social media tactics that worked for other countries including famous websites and pumping out exciting or terrifying headlines from the website creating echo chambers of people who are for enduring rear upset about changes. There is a playbook. They learn from another, they watch each other. There are people are intuitively good at understanding the appeal. Trump is one of them. He has an intuitive way of seeking to reach people who feel anchored by political and social change. Maybe because he identified with his father who is in a different era. I havent read mary trumps book yet. But on top of that there are tactics, techniques, to get to the first question jacob asked, the people who are enablers of trump and others, those are the people using in learning those tactics and making them work, the ones that have worked in hungary making them work in italy. Host this has been really wonderful. Thank you for joining us and thank you jacob for moderating. I hope you will consider buying a copy of the book from us, ship it to your home and pick it up for me at city point but this was really great, thank you for everybody. Marymac thank you for doing this and everybody support independent bookstores. Do it again for your next book. Heres a look at some books being published this week. Donald trumps advisor Michael Cohen recounts his years working with the president in disloyal. In what can i do actress jane fonda reflects on her work as a climate activist and explains how others can get involved in the movement and inner memoir speaking for myself former White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders recalled her time in the Trump Administration. Compromise by former fbi agent and Mueller Investigation team member peter stzrok. Jenna bush hager look at the life of her greatgrandparents George H W Bush and barbara bush in everything beautiful in time. In killing crazy horse former fox news Host Bill Oreilly and Arthur Martin do guard describe the conflict between native american tribes and the United States government. Johns Hopkins University history professor martha jones explores efforts by black women to win the right to vote in vanguard. Find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Booktv, television for serious readers. Join us next saturday beginning at 8 am eastern for the best in nonfiction books. Financial regulators testified on the impact of regulations on diversity on minorities before House Financial Services subcommittee today. Live coverage at noon eastern on cspan2. Congress is set to return from summer recess with the senate back in session today. They will take up a number of judicial nominations live at 3 p. M. Eastern. The house returns for business next week with work expected on condemning antiasian antiasis during the covid pandemic. Decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level and reauthorizing use intelligence agencies, to make items not on the official schedule but we could see by the end of the week a pared down covid relief package from republicans and a deal to fund the government passed september 30 when current funding levels expire. Watch of the senate live this week on cspan2 and the house when they return on cspan. Bidens record is a shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime. He has spent his entire career on the wrong side of history. Our current president s failed in his most basic duty to the nation. He has failed to protect us pick you still to protect america, and my fellow americans, that is unforgivable. The first president ial debate between President Trump and former Vice President joe biden is tuesday september 29 at 9 p. M. Eastern. Watch live coverage of cspan, watch Live Streaming and ondemand at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. There are more than 400 national parks