Begin With a Lie – The Atlantic

The corruption of democracy begins with the corruption of thought—and with the deliberate undermining of actuality. Stephen Richer, an election official in Arizona, and Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, discovered firsthand how simply false tales and conspiracy theories may disorient their colleagues. They speak with hosts Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev about how conformism and worry made it not possible to do their jobs.

That is the primary episode of Autocracy in America, a brand new five-part sequence about authoritarian ways already at work in america and the place to search for them.

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The next is a transcript of the episode:

[Music]

Anne Applebaum: Peter, image this: A harsh winter has lastly come to an finish. Exhausted and ragged, America’s Revolutionary Military troopers are huddled in tents. It’s Valley Forge. It’s 1778. And on a makeshift stage, a gaggle of George Washington’s officers are placing on a play. It’s referred to as Cato, A Tragedy.

Peter Pomerantsev: So that they placed on togas in the course of a conflict?

Applebaum: Historical past doesn’t file what costumes they wore nor why, precisely, they have been placing on a play at that exact second. We do understand it was considered one of Washington’s favourite performs. It was extremely popular in colonial America. It tells the story of the tip of the Roman Republic, a democracy in its time, which was destroyed by a dictator, Julius Caesar.

Pomerantsev: So principally, Washington and the founders, you understand—their imaginative and prescient of the tip of democracy was to be a dictator taking the capital by storm and grabbing energy.

Applebaum: Each technology has a imaginative and prescient of how democracy dies, and this was theirs.

Pomerantsev: I imply, at the moment once I’m in America, I hear numerous, like, references to: The Nazis are coming. The fascists are coming.

Applebaum: You and I’ve each lived in international locations that turned extra autocratic over time, that means that the chief or the ruling occasion usurped increasingly more energy, eliminating checks and balances. And we each know that this doesn’t essentially appear like stormtroopers marching within the streets.

Pomerantsev: And it occurs kind of slowly, virtually imperceptibly, like mould consuming away a constructing. And it’s like these little issues that truly present you that you just’re going within the mistaken path.

Applebaum: Issues turn out to be much more harmful when persons are sick of the political dialog and simply need it to finish, and so they need somebody to return alongside and finish it.

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Applebaum: I’m Anne Applebaum, a workers author at The Atlantic.

Pomerantsev: I’m Peter Pomerantsev, a senior fellow on the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins College.

Applebaum: That is Autocracy in America.

Pomerantsev: On this podcast, we aren’t speaking about some distant, dystopian, totalitarian state.

Applebaum: This isn’t a present about America’s future. It’s in regards to the current.

Pomerantsev: There are authoritarian ways already at work in America, consuming away on the guardrails that forestall a frontrunner from usurping energy, and we’re going to present you the place.

Applebaum: Take a look at what now we have already: widening apathy, politicized investigations, the embrace of the strongman cult.

Pomerantsev: And on this episode: psychological corruption.

Applebaum: Peter, when did you begin to see issues in america shift—shift away from a democratic tradition?

Pomerantsev: Look, it’s a barely private concern for me. My mother and father have been Soviet dissidents in Soviet Ukraine, the place I used to be born. They have been arrested by the KGB. We have been exiled within the late Seventies (I used to be nonetheless a child on the time), and after the autumn of the usS.R., I went and lived in Russia and Moscow from 2001 to 2010. That was the primary 10 years of the Putin period and, in that point, I noticed Russia degrade from a very rotten democracy to a very aggressive dictatorship.

And I really bear in mind one second fairly clearly: This should have been nonetheless throughout the Obama period. I used to be visiting the U.S. on vacation or for a piece journey or one thing, and I immediately discovered myself amongst teams of people that subscribed to this concept of birtherism, that Obama had not been born in America.

Applebaum: Precisely. And if he wasn’t born in America, then he’s not certified to be president.

Pomerantsev: But it surely was the best way they have been speaking about it. I imply, the proof was not necessary to them. I imply, you can present a great deal of proof that Obama had been born in America—that wasn’t the purpose. The way in which they have been utilizing this conspiracy was form of an actual warning signal.

This wasn’t like, I don’t know, the Kennedy assassination, the place folks attempt to discover the reality out. Right here, folks I met who signed as much as the birther conspiracy didn’t care about proof. They stated issues I heard in Russia when it was fading into dictatorship. They might say, I don’t know. The reality is unknowable. There are not any things like actual details and even proof. However what did matter was the way you signaled your political affiliation by making a conspiratorial assertion.

Applebaum: Yep, and that is precisely how a conspiracy idea—an enormous lie—features in an autocratic political system. It helps the chief, the autocrat, set up who’s loyal, who’s on our facet, and who’s not. You recognize, when you promise to consider within the made-up story, then you may work for the federal government or the occasion or no matter, and when you don’t, you’re out. And so this then, not advantage or laborious work, determines who will get promoted and who runs issues.

Pomerantsev: To indicate that you just belonged to the Putin system, you needed to repeat absurd lies that individuals Putin was arresting have been responsible of completely absurd costs. You needed to agree that Nazis have been taking up Ukraine. You recognize, that may very well be socially very awkward at first, and other people may get fairly aggressive, particularly once they have been drunk. And after some time, it simply turned harmful as a result of when you disagreed with these absurd statements, with these conspiracy theories, you then have been basically an enemy of the state. And that might turn out to be extremely harmful.

Applebaum: After I first noticed birtherism unfolding within the U.S., my first response was, No method is that this taking place right here. People can’t fall for this sort of rubbish.

Pomerantsev: Sorry—why did you suppose People have been immune, simply out of curiosity?

Applebaum: Wrongly, I imagined our political system is simply too large, and our democracy is simply too effectively anchored, and other people don’t consider in conspiracy theories. And clearly I used to be mistaken.

Pomerantsev: You recognize, when you get into this world the place reality is a subset of energy, it principally means that you could’t have democratic debate anymore.

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Applebaum: Japanese Europeans are aware of the thought of ruling by conspiracy. However in up to date America, that is new. And it’s so new, the truth is, that I’m undecided People notice the importance of it.

Applebaum: Stephen Richer is an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona. And this disorienting accusation started, at first, as one thing utterly not possible for him to think about: that the president knew his identify and was releasing statements directed at his workplace.

Applebaum: At first, it felt considerably not possible for Richer to take this sort of accusation critically. He knew it wasn’t true. He may see all of the recordsdata on the county computer systems on daily basis he went to work. They hadn’t disappeared in any respect.

Applebaum: After which these claims began to take maintain with different large gamers within the Trump circle.

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Pomerantsev: It’s one thing proper out of the kind of absurdist tales that you just hear about politics in Japanese Europe, the place the regime is utilizing completely nonsensical costs towards you, and their very absurdity reveals that you just’re form of powerless to struggle again. As a result of how do you struggle again towards someone accusing you of feeding chickens with election ballots?

Applebaum: Proper. This was the form of archetypic, absurdist factor that occurred in communist Poland or communist Czechoslovakia. You recognize, you’ll be accused of one thing ludicrous or ridiculous, and there can be no solution to defend your self. However the entire system would by some means take it extremely critically.

Pomerantsev: You possibly can’t really struggle again towards absurdity. It’s really very—effectively, let me put it in another way: It begins off humorous, after which it turns into actually creepy.

I form of at all times thought, identical to you probably did with birtherism and with conspiracy theories, that within the U.S., false accusations can be shortly knocked down by the press—simply by the system that’s, on the finish of the day, grounded in some kind of rationality. Or on the very least, I form of thought that someone like Stephen Richer—who, effectively, let’s put it very principally, is a white election official, not a very weak member of society—that they’d be capable to defend themselves fairly simply towards blatant lies. However that’s not what was taking place in any respect.

Applebaum: No, in Maricopa County, which is a very bizarre a part of America, we see not simply accusations of fraud however ridiculous accusations of fraud, and so they have been being taken critically.

Applebaum: It obtained private, and it obtained a lot worse from there.

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Pomerantsev: So, Anne, how did we really get right here? There’s an announcement from then-President Trump. Then there’s pilgrimages from nationwide figures to Maricopa County.

Applebaum: Precisely. That is the place rumors and speak remodeled but once more, not simply into dramatic pilgrimages and strain campaigns however now into an precise felony investigation by the Arizona lawyer common.

Pomerantsev: Anne, I simply can’t assist feeling there’s a much bigger story right here. It’s not about simply what occurred in Arizona. It’s about: How did one thing so unhinged, one thing so absurd turn out to be so normalized within the Republican Celebration?

Applebaum: There are lots of people, together with numerous Republicans, who’re attempting to grasp that. That’s after the break.

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Applebaum: Peter, Adam Kinzinger is a former Republican congressman in Washington, the place numerous examples are set that then trickle right down to state and native politics. Kinzinger was in workplace from 2011 to 2023, and he noticed the modifications within the occasion as they have been taking place, and he performed together with them somewhat bit himself, no less than for some time, earlier than altering his thoughts utterly.

Applebaum: Peter, Kinzinger was very idealistic, like many individuals who be part of Congress. However then he found that the fact of politics wasn’t at all times so noble and that, to be a part of the occasion, typically you go on TV to say issues that rally the bottom.

Applebaum: Kinzinger’s capability to talk for the occasion on TV and elsewhere obtained extra sophisticated as a result of proper after Donald Trump’s inauguration—instantly—Trump began saying absurd issues about how he’d had the most important crowds in historical past. Nobody had ever seen so many individuals on the Nationwide Mall.

Pomerantsev: The images confirmed that it wasn’t a really large crowd on the market. So, you understand, he was kind of saying that to be a part of his group, a part of this new political in-group that guidelines the nation, you’ve obtained to repeat these absurd statements, and that may present that you just’re considered one of us.

Applebaum: Precisely. On this case, it was ridiculous. I imply, who cares how many individuals have been on the inauguration? However he insisted that his press spokesman get the Nationwide Park Service to lie about how many individuals there have been, as a result of solely by forcing folks to lie, forcing establishments to lie, may he show their loyalty. And that is one other basic piece of authoritarian habits.

Pomerantsev: Authoritarianism doesn’t begin with one thing enormous. It’s like taking or giving a tiny, little bribe—5 bucks or one thing. It doesn’t sound like an enormous factor. However that’s it. You’re hooked. After which it’s identical to cotton sweet. It reels you in. It simply will get greater and larger and larger and larger.

Applebaum: Proper. So all of the whereas, Adam Kinzinger was more and more pressured right into a form of psychological gymnastics. He did, for some time, proceed to go on TV, talking for the GOP on points that he cared about however with out absolutely aligning himself with the commander in chief.

[Music]

Pomerantsev: You possibly can actually hear Kinzinger looking for a solution to be loyal to his occasion and but preserve his integrity and criticize the chief.

Applebaum: And he continued to try to discover that steadiness, however he discovered much less and fewer camaraderie amongst members of his occasion, particularly because the investigation into President Trump’s ties with Russia started.

Pomerantsev: It’s a harmful second and in addition kind of the an infection of psychological corruption spreading. I noticed the identical factor occur in Russia because it tipped into being a full-blown autocracy.

It was round 2014. I bear in mind the second very clearly: Russia had simply invaded Ukraine, and folks that I knew who labored in state media and the paperwork—who’d at all times been so cynical, kind of smirking once they repeated the federal government’s traces, signaling that they knew that every one the propaganda was a silly recreation, that they have been simply taking part in alongside—immediately, when the conflict began, they’d this utterly clean look and this whole seriousness as they repeated the federal government lies, that the revolution in Ukraine, which was this unbelievable act of heroism by the Ukrainian folks, was, I don’t know, all a CIA plot. I stored on in search of their outdated smirk—the little glint within the eye—however immediately they have been simply delivering it like zombies. One thing had modified. They knew now that they needed to inhabit these lies absolutely in the event that they have been going to outlive in a brand new paradigm.

Applebaum: And this vulnerability to psychological corruption may be very human. It’s identical to what occurred in 2015 when the plane-crash conspiracy idea in Poland began to take maintain.

Pomerantsev: That is the plane-crash conspiracy that the previous authorities had really been—what? Introduced down by—

Applebaum: The president’s airplane crashed carrying numerous army and political leaders as effectively. And the airplane crash was an accident. It was extensively investigated. The black packing containers have been discovered. There had been a pilot error.

However then, the late president’s brother, who was additionally the chief of what was then the political opposition within the parliament, started claiming that the crash was deliberate—possibly it was brought on by his political rivals, possibly by the Russians. Lots of people dismissed this. There was no proof for it.

However as soon as there had been a change of energy—as soon as the president’s brother’s occasion was in command of the federal government, the conspiratorial occasion—then all types of individuals immediately thought, Nicely, you understand, they received. They should be proper. The conspiracy should be true. And even when it’s not true, it’s in my curiosity to repeat it. After which they started to repeat the identical lies because the folks in cost.

Pomerantsev: “Fact,” and I’m saying that in inverted commas, turns into regardless of the highly effective say it’s. I’m typically requested, like, Do Russians consider in all of the lies that Putin’s propaganda says?

Applebaum: And it’s utterly the mistaken query. Utterly mistaken.

Pomerantsev: Precisely. It’s the mistaken query. As a result of, you understand, if you concentrate on perception as, you understand, a set of beliefs that you just’ve considered and also you’ve labored out and also you’ve determined that represents you—you understand, these are your ideas, what you stand for—I imply, that issues in a society the place your opinion issues.

However right here it’s the opposite method round. You say that which marks your belonging with a view to really feel some kind of psychological consolation. However tomorrow if the road modifications, effectively, you then’ll consider that.

[Music]

Pomerantsev: For me, I discover it considerably petrifying as a result of principally this implies a political system the place reality and details and proof—they aren’t a forex anymore. You possibly can’t have a democratic debate about something, actually. What Adam Kinzinger is speaking about right here, it’s a really, very anxious second. And I’m not fairly certain the way you return from that second.

Applebaum: And, after all, it’s additionally true that after you aren’t having a dialog about actuality, you’re not speaking about issues which have really occurred, you then’re in a distinct form of political dialog. Then all you’ve gotten is anger and emotion and other people expressing themselves with a view to affirm their identities or to assault someone else’s id.

And you then’re not speaking about well being care or roads or the right way to construct bridges, the place the subsequent funding needs to be or how excessive taxes are. As a substitute, you’re in a distinct form of politics. And I do suppose that America crossed into that world.

Pomerantsev: There could be one thing else happening as effectively, as a result of at some stage, you understand, people who find themselves inhabiting this anti-fact, anti-truth id—at some stage, they need to at all times know that that’s not fairly them. You recognize, even when they’re now performing it very critically, they’re nonetheless performing it.

Applebaum: And so that you’re saying there’s a psychological value to having a form of double life?

Pomerantsev: And once they see somebody like a Kinzinger calling them out, saying, Maintain on. You weren’t like this earlier than. This isn’t true, then that kind of simply causes this kind of visceral anger.

Applebaum: Yeah, I feel it’s anger as a result of somebody like Kinzinger is letting down the facet. But in addition, he’s capable of say issues in a freer method, and there’s a form of jealousy there as effectively. That’s additionally the second when he was ostracized. And for Kinzinger, it lastly occurred when he made his choice to vote for the impeachment of President Trump.

Applebaum: What Kinzinger discovered when he was talking freely was not solely did his relationships with folks round him change however his complete life turned rather more harmful.

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Pomerantsev: And, I imply, it’s form of extraordinary in all of the worst potential methods. A U.S. congressman in america of America who’s afraid that he’ll be murdered as a result of he refused to associate with a set of utter lies in regards to the 2020 election and the assault on the Capitol. And, you understand, one has to really feel for Kinzinger and form of admire him. However he was experiencing these threats at a very excessive stage.

And I can’t neglect in regards to the story we began with in Maricopa County in Arizona: Stephen Richer. In a way, he was much more weak there, and he and his crew have been having the total weight of the Republican regulation machine come down on them.

Applebaum: I requested Stephen Richer to speak to me about that.

Applebaum: Not all this anger simply stays in folks’s heads. You may have the tried homicide of Congressman Steve Scalise in 2017; the plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in 2020; a gunman exterior the house of Supreme Court docket Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. And likewise, in that very same 12 months, a person broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home aspiring to kidnap her and wound up smashing her husband’s head with a hammer as an alternative.

Pomerantsev: After which, after all, this summer season, a 20-year-old in Pennsylvania tried to kill Donald Trump at a rally. The bullet grazed his ear.

Applebaum: However all of those examples contain large names—congressmen, Supreme Court docket justices. In Arizona, we’re speaking about native authorities employees. It is a county election workplace. And but, Richer and his crew in 2021 are being questioned and harassed and threatened and even investigated by the state’s lawyer common, underneath strain from the president of america. And this was actually laborious on Richer’s workers.

Pomerantsev: Anne, it is a actually necessary second, the place it’s not nearly conspiracists believing their very own actuality. They begin to drive it onto different folks. Folks begin feeling actually awkward and responsible and begin internalizing the guilt. I imply, a little bit of your mind begins going, Nicely, did I do it? What in the event that they’re proper? What if two plus two equals 5? What’s happening right here?

Applebaum: It’s unsettling, and other people speak about it years later and don’t at all times get better. I imply, the second once they have been afraid of being arrested for some absurd political declare, the second once they have been pressured to say one thing or do one thing they didn’t consider—these are moments once you immediately really feel a pointy break with what’s imagined to be regular and what life is meant to be like.

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Pomerantsev: Let’s be frank: Folks get accused of murders they haven’t dedicated. I imply, there’s all kinds of horrible issues that occur, even in essentially the most, you understand, superior democracies. So these items occur.

What’s taking place right here is a political assault on one of many establishments, the electoral fee, that’s meant to ensure the details of our democracy. So it’s a kind of strategic assault on the infrastructure of motive that helps a functioning democracy.

Applebaum: Nicely, the infrastructure of motive continues to be standing in Maricopa County. The Kafkaesque investigation into Richer ended, and the lawyer common in Arizona is an elected place. A Democrat now holds the job.

Pomerantsev: This slew of prosecutions and private assaults has a really direct consequence on democracy. It signifies that bizarre folks simply don’t wish to be a part of it. They don’t wish to work in these jobs with out which democracy doesn’t really occur.

Applebaum: I requested Stephen Richer what he’s doing as of late with a view to recruit and rehire on the county clerk’s workplace.

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Applebaum: Autocracy in America is hosted by Peter Pomerantsev and me, Anne Applebaum. It’s produced by Natalie Brennan and Jocelyn Frank, edited by Dave Shaw, combined by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the chief producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Pomerantsev: Autocracy in America is produced by The Atlantic and made potential with help from the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins College, a tutorial and public discussion board devoted to strengthening international democracy by highly effective civic engagement and knowledgeable, inclusive dialogue.

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Applebaum: I suppose that was a contented ending of a form. Though, this summer season, Richer misplaced a Republican main. The investigations ended, however many Arizonans proceed to consider that the 2020 election was stolen.

Pomerantsev: What occurs if the courts are undermined and are prepared to associate with that conspiracy? What if the psychological corruption turns into political corruption? What if the web mobs shouting about conspiracy theories and the folks calling congressmen to threaten their youngsters—what if these folks get management of a congressional committee, a authorities division, or a courthouse?

Applebaum: It’s starting to occur already.

Applebaum: That’s subsequent time on Autocracy in America.