Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 29

How Foreign Dissidents Can Help Renew U.S. Democracy | The Washington Post | November 29, 2021

Q&A with @JRubinBlogger and @Kasparov63: How foreign dissidents can help renew U.S. democracy https://t.co/hDxdtWWLn5

— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) December 1, 2021

This article is a reprint. You can read the original column at The Washington Post.

By Jennifer Rubin

“The Renew Democracy Initiative, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, has been on the front lines of the battle to preserve American democracy since its founding in 2017. Its newest project: Using dissidents from oppressive countries around the world to highlight America’s veer toward authoritarianism.

The initiative, called Frontlines of Freedom, brought together 52 dissidents from 28 countries in an open letter calling on the United States to serve as a “global democratic inspiration.” I asked RDI chairman Garry Kasparov, a Soviet dissident and former Russian chess grandmaster, about the undertaking. His message was simple: “The very existence of well-functioning liberal democracies threatens dictators’ legitimacy.” He explains that authoritarians “will do all they can to undermine free nations and make them appear to be as corrupt as their own. This ties the fate of the free world to the fate of global dissidents. By supporting them, we are defending the integrity of our own free societies.”

What follows is our conversation, edited slightly for length and style:

Rubin: Why did RDI believe the experience of foreign dissidents could help promote American democracy?

Kasparov: Foreign dissidents benefit from two things Americans by and large lack: personal experience resisting authoritarianism, and the ability to look past partisan politics and see threats to democracy for what they are. In some ways, you can call them the global experts on how authoritarian tendencies spread through society and how democratic institutions crumble. We’d be crazy not to consult them.

They can’t be accused of having a dog in the partisan fight. They have nothing to gain and, if American democracy falls, everything to lose. Most importantly, they want to help Americans see the U.S. through their eyes. During the darkest days of their struggles, American democracy often inspired them. RDI launched Frontlines of Freedom in the hopes that their stories might now inspire us.

Rubin: To what degree is the United States’ current situation a reflection of worldwide trends, and to what extent is it uniquely American?

Kasparov: From 1990 to 2008, the world experienced one of the greatest increases in prosperity and freedom that it’s ever known. However, during that time period, democratic nations assumed that liberal democracy had essentially won the narrative war and failed to make a case for it. Needless to say, history did not end because evil does not die. It might stay dormant under the rubble of the Berlin Wall for a while, but inevitably, it will reemerge. Meanwhile, because most free nations did not offer a sufficiently strong defense of democratic values on their own merits, many people supported democracy only so long as it brought economic prosperity. As soon as the financial crisis hit in 2008, everything changed.

Wealthier democracies had to begin dealing with a public backlash to automation, immigration, an increasingly interconnected world and rapidly evolving social values. In most industrialized democracies, this has led to the rise of radicalism on both the left and right, though the far right has enjoyed a particularly powerful resurgence. Ultimately, both sides promise simple answers to the complex problems facing liberal democracies. Their answers are more satisfying and easier to understand than the answers offered by more moderate groups. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

The current situation in America is a local version of the broader global crisis. Each nation has its own unique history and culture which helps determine the exact contours its conflict will take. But the underlying forces remain the same.

Rubin: What can we learn from other countries about the necessity for and means of forging cross-partisan coalitions in defense of democratic institutions and values?

Kasparov: Dictators know that divided societies are easier to subdue, so their goal is to sow dissension. Unfortunately, they often succeed. The key is for us to recognize three things: First, that we are going to have to work with people we may not like; second, that we’ll have to prioritize the broader struggle for democracy over our personal policy preferences; and third, ego is the enemy of unity.

The Spanish Civil War offers us a cautionary tale. In the late 1930s in Spain, moderates were essentially sidelined and society was ripped apart at the seams by fascists and communists. This reminds us that any movement we build in defense of democracy must be inclusive. We need to avoid purity tests and welcome people with a wide range of political views. Ultimately we need to prioritize the survival of democracy over all else. In chess, when your king comes under threat, you don’t think about what you’re going to do during the endgame; you focus on dealing with the immediate danger. We should approach democracy the same way.

Rubin: How big of a problem is social media?

Kasparov: Social media is a democratizing force, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to put out whatever information they want into the world and also to consume whatever information they want. This of course is both a problem and an opportunity.

We’ve all heard about its harms — that it allows people to live in information silos hearing only that which will reaffirm their preexisting beliefs; that it not only allows for the spread of misinformation, but actually algorithmically promotes false or misleading information more than the truth; that it represents yet another weapon in a dictator’s tool kit against dissidents and the free world. All of these are of course incredibly dangerous, and there’s a certain irony to dictators using technology that was developed in the free world to attack the free world.

But ultimately, social media is a tool like any other. It can be used for both good and ill. Much in the same way that dictators have been able to weaponize it to attack democratic countries, democracy activists can leverage it to get around authoritarian restrictions, organize themselves, share information, protest, etc. [Russian dissident Alexei] Navalny was using social media to great effect in Russia. His video about Putin’s secret palace garnered over 100 million views and sparked a rare conversation in Russia. YouTube should never have agreed to take down Navalny’s videos in Russia. Meanwhile, Twitter may well have been justified in banning [former president] Donald Trump, but why were Iranian mullahs allowed to continue using the platform?”

Garry Kasparov Lost at Chess to an A.I. Can He Get Revenge Against a Video Game? | Muse by Clio | December 1, 2021

This is a reprint from Muse by Clio. You can read the original article HERE.

By Tim Nudd

“The 1997 chess match between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue was both a great ad for IBM and a humbling experience for the Russian grandmaster—the first defeat of a reigning world chess champion by a computer.

Kasparov, now 58, prepares to play a new A.I. opponent, though, in a campaign for Hearthstone, a digital card game from Activision’s Blizzard Entertainment that’s known as a cerebral challenge for players.

Will he get his revenge? Hearthstone made the six-minute documentary below about the showdown. It’s from the agency Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) and was directed by Lance Oppenheim, the 25-year-old filmmaker who earned raves for Some Kind of Heaven, his documentary about The Villages retirement community in Florida.

It’s a fun way of trying to broaden the game’s appeal to potential new players. And the plot twist in the middle, while sinking the original premise, does make the piece warmer than it would have been—and probably saved Garry from some déjà vu nightmares down the line.

“I still remember Deep Blue vs. Kasparov back in 1997,” Activision CMO Fernando Machado tells Muse. “That was such an iconic moment in time. So when BSSP brought us the idea of bringing Kasparov to learn and play Hearthstone against an A.I., we felt we had something powerful to play with. Hearthstone is a very cerebral game. It’s easy to learn but hard to master. Kasparov also loved the idea and was all-in. He really invested in learning the game. In fact, he is still playing today and climbing the ranks of the game.”

“Kasparov’s battle against the A.I. was iconic,” says Sinan Dagli, BSSP’s executive creative director. “We wanted to make sure we told the tales of the match in 1997 and set the scene for Garry’s new challenge in Hearthstone. The documentary approach gave us the freedom to show Kasparov’s incredible journey of learning Hearthstone and going up against A.I. once again.”

Oppenheim has also been a big Kasparov fan ever since seeing the documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. “I first watched it when I was 10 years old, and its hyper-stylized, paranoid thriller elements—made up from the stuff of everyday life—really stuck with me and went on to influence my work as a director,” he says. “Kasparov is the perfect documentary subject. One of the greatest strategic thinkers alive, he’s a natural fit for Hearthstone—a game that, much like chess, requires a deep amount of strategy, preparation and mental acuity. Being involved in this project, and getting to work with a legend and one of my personal heroes, was a dream come true.”

CREDITS

BSSP
Sinan Dagli – Executive Creative Director
Ed Patterson – Creative Director
Jeff Hornung – Creative Director
Justin Hargraves – Creative Director
Will Sands – Associate Creative Director
Robison Mattei – Associate Creative Director
AJ Marino – Account Director
Gustavo Feria – Account Executive
Shelby Deffterios – Creative Project Manager
Chrissy Wamsher – Senior Producer
Tess Rockers – Senior Producer
Liz Corsini – Head of Production

Blizzard Marketing Team
Fernando Machado – Chief Marketing Officer
Pelle Sjoenell – Chief Creative Officer
Walter Kong – Executive Producer
Todd Harvey – Head of Marketing
Matt Small – VP, Global Consumer & Digital Marketing
Marcella Ziccarelli – Consumer Marketing Manager
Rachel van Essen – Associate Consumer Marketing Manager
Shelina Kurwa – Associate Counsel
Lara Tran – Senior Producer
Meaghan de Wolf – Associate Marketing Manager
Melissa Smith – Brand Manager
Ajay Ravi – Senior Marketing Manager
Josh Kerwin – Senior Director, Publishing
Scott Conway – Senior Brand Manager
Andrew Reynolds – Senior Director, Corporate Communications
Fabio Lo Zito – Public Relations Manager
Cristiano Alburitel – Global Director, Consumer Marketing”

Garry Kasparov on Resisting Authoritarianism

“In 2006, we said ‘[Putin’s] regime will not leave power through elections or the normal democratic process […]’

In the West, nobody wanted to hear it.”@Kasparov63 describes how the early warnings about Putin’s authoritarianism went unheeded.

Link: https://t.co/LdPPxToOLF pic.twitter.com/LgefPXjtHQ

— Persuasion (@JoinPersuasion) November 30, 2021

This article is a reprint. You can read the original interview at Persuasion.

By Yascha Mounk

”

Garry Kasparov, the former World Chess Champion, is the founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative and chairperson of the Human Rights Foundation. He is a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors.

In this week’s conversation, Garry Kasparov and Yascha Mounk discuss how he came to oppose the Soviet regime, why he quickly recognized the dangers posed by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and what to make of illiberal tendencies on the left.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Yascha Mounk: Garry, one of the things that really strikes me is that you were right on the big thing at every critical juncture. You were right about the Soviet Union. You were right about Putin. You were right about Trump. You may even be right about some of the transformations in America today.

How did you start getting interested in politics? You were a champion chess player. The incentive was to shut up about politics, to become a stooge of the regime like some other chess players were. How did you get drawn into distancing yourself in various ways, small and large, from the Soviet regime?

Garry Kasparov: First, I was right about many things. But I was wrong about many things. I’m not a Nostradamus. Everything I said was based on my experience, and the fact that I read tons of books. Also I had the chance, thanks to my Soviet education, both in school and also in life, to apply this knowledge to reality. It’s probably a much easier task for those who were born on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

As a rising star in the Soviet Union, I had to face a lot of challenges based on my race, my blood. I’m half Armenian, half Jewish, and the man I had to challenge [for the world champion title] was Anatoly Karpov, the darling of the system and the Russian champion. I always want to tease my American audience by saying I was born and raised in the deep south, right next to Georgia, which is technically correct: deep south of the USSR, right next to the Republic of Georgia.

Going back to the Soviet days […] I stayed in a house with my grandfather, who was a diehard communist, but my uncle was more of the classical Jewish intelligentsia. He introduced me to people that had a very opposite view of the Soviet Union. And also, I was a voracious reader. So that’s why I read a lot of books, and many of them, actually, probably all of them, were not available to me through public libraries.

Very quickly, I could see the gap between the official propaganda and story of the great Soviet Union and the reality. My first trip abroad was in 1976, when I was 13. To travel to France in 1976 was a big deal. I was probably the only person who did so from our neighborhood—and Baku was a big city, the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, after Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, with more than a million people. I became kind of a hero, not because I played chess, but because I saw something that nobody could actually imagine, except in watching movies.

Mounk: There was presumably a narrative about the Soviet Union being politically and economically superior to Western countries. As a 13-year old, you got to see Paris and you said, “Hang on a second…”

Kasparov: Absolutely. But in the Soviet Union, the average person on the street had very little doubt about the economic superiority of the West. There was a growing gap between official propaganda and people’s senses. They saw the reality of the long lines just to buy food or proper clothes. The whole system was based on the power of distribution. If you were connected to party or government structures, you had access to special shops where you could purchase normal things, but they were not available for the general public. And, of course, there was a black market.

Having said that, I don’t want to pretend that I wanted to become a hero. All I wanted was to become world champion. That’s it. I don’t want you to upgrade my story. It is what it was. In ‘79 and ‘80—while I was highly critical of the system, and we talked in the kitchens and had jokes about Brezhnev—all my mind was about winning the title, which meant I had to play by the rules, because I already had problems as I described—being half Armenian, half Jewish, and from Baku, trying to challenge [reigning world chess champion] Anatoly Karpov was a big deal.

Mounk: How did you come to have this reputation as somebody who’s critical of the regime?

Kasparov: I don’t think it took long for party officials in Moscow and the KGB to figure out that I will not be like Karpov, controlled by authorities and a loyal party soldier. If not for some lucky political changes in the Soviet Union—lucky from my perspective—I wouldn’t have made it to the very top because Karpov had many layers of protection before I could beat him at the chess board. I had to play by the rules. I attended official events, Komsomol events. In 1984, I had to become a member of the Communist Party. You had to play by the rules in order to actually challenge Karpov.

In 1984 I played my first match with Karpov. That was the longest match in the history of chess or any other sport. It took more than five months. And it was no result. While Karpov was winning in the beginning of the match, I picked up my game at the end. After game 48, when I had just won two in a row, they decided to close the match. That was a big scandal. And that was the first time where I took a stand. If you want to look at the beginning of my “dissident career,” that’s when we have a date: February 15, 1985.

Mounk: They think you are about to win this epic match.

Kasparov: I was still trailing five to three. But after losing five to zero and winning three games, especially the last two games, I had the initiative and Karpov was in terrible psychological shape. So I had a real chance of winning. And the Soviet authorities didn’t even want to consider this possibility. Let’s say my chances were 25-30%, as I myself anticipated. That was still too much for them to live with. So they called for the FIDE [chess association] president, who had a long history working with the KGB. He showed up and closed the match. I was there, and I said, “No, I’m not tired. I’m not exhausted. I’m here and I want to play.”

That was the first time I said something in public. The auditorium was packed with cameras. So I made a statement in front of the foreign press, which means in front of the world, challenging the decision of the Soviet authorities. That was the beginning. Basically, it reinforced the suspicions of top authorities about Garry Kasparov’s reliability as a good member of the Communist Party, because I didn’t hesitate. I just said, “No, I want to play.” Eventually the match was still closed. But the authorities had to actually announce a second match.

In May 1985, I had an interview with Der Spiegel magazine. I called FIDE an international chess mafia controlled by the KGB. Now, in 1985, Gorbachev had just taken over, but it was still the Soviet Union. And I faced disqualification because there was not just an uproar [about the interview]. It was more than a scandal. Again, I was lucky: the head of the ideological department of the Communist Party, Alexander Yakovlev, told me that when the matter went all the way up to the Politburo, he convinced Gorbachev, saying “What the hell? One Soviet grandmaster playing another Soviet grandmaster, why should we bother? Let them decide who is the best at the chessboard.” And Gorbachev said “guys, you know, we’re too busy. Just move on.” So that’s how I was saved.

When I became world champion, the dominant thought in my mind was “I did it. So many people never made it. So why should I keep silent?” It was like a duty. I had to show the other people that they could rise. The Soviet people had genetic memory of what happened to those who raised their voice in disagreement. But World Champion was a very sacred title. I was almost untouchable by Soviet standards. Chess was viewed as the most important ideological tool to actually prove the intellectual superiority of communism over the decadent West.

Mounk: In the mid to late 1980s, did you think the idea of communism was sound and the problem was the Soviet regime? Did you hope it could be reformed? Or were you already convinced of the superiority of something like free markets and liberal democracy?

Kasparov: You’ve pointed out the big debate in the Soviet Union. I grew up on the impression that things were probably not that bad: “Maybe we have to find a new clean version of communism. Maybe if you just go to the origins and you analyze it, you actually can make something out of it.” For me, and for many like me, the late 1980s was the time when these illusions died.

Fairly quickly, I shifted from the naivete of someone who believed in Gorbachev’s attempts to reform the Soviet Union into far more radical opposition, recognizing that it’s not shortcomings. The whole system is rotten and had to be replaced. When Gorbachev talked about socialism with a human face, my response was, “Frankenstein also had a human face.” In 1989, I was already quite adamant in my opposition to communism. I was a member of the Communist Party from 1984, and I’m not proud of that. But I’m proud that in January 1990, almost two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I sent an official letter to the Azeri sports committee where I was registered, informing them that I was leaving, that I had no more illusions, that it was a criminal regime, that I just wanted nothing to do with it and to consider me gone.

And I immediately jumped into the pool of the newly-born politics. I couldn’t resist the temptation to become part of this very chaotic gathering in Moscow that ended up creating the first non-communist party in the Soviet Union since the Bolsheviks abolished the parties in the 1920s. […] In September 1990, I became the first Soviet athlete to announce I would no longer play under the Soviet flag. […]

In 2005, I stopped playing chess and decided to dive into the muddy waters of Russian politics. I publicly stated my opposition to Putin’s regime, and I made many warnings. Those are warnings I’m proud of, but they were not heeded. They were ignored. People said “that is radical.” In 2006, the organization that I founded, United Civil Front, had a congress and we published a document looking at the trends of Putin’s regime. We said “this regime will not leave power through elections or through the normal democratic process. It will not be changed by the ballot.” We were labelled radicals and told we were standing in the way of evolution. Inside Russia, many liberals thought we were cursed. And in the West, no one wanted to hear about it.

I remember in 2006 when Putin hosted the G8 meeting. It was impossible to explain [our concerns] to Americans or Europeans. Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov—who was one of the earliest defectors from this systemic opposition into the radical wing—no matter what we said, people looked at the TV screen and saw Putin sitting with Bush, Merkel, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi, and thought, “of course, he’s a democrat!”

So how could we beat this? How could we beat this picture and the state propaganda that had been trumpeting the fact that Putin was fully recognized as a democratic leader? Now we know we wasted very precious time. If the free world had seen the threat the way we saw it back in Russia, we probably could have stopped Putin from coming back after 2008. Maybe there was still a chance to force Putin out and at least to avoid the clear threat of a one-man dictatorship that was really looming on the horizon. We already had the Nord-Ost theater where gas was used to kill so many hostages. We had the Beslan school tragedy in which more than 300 people were killed. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was killed in 2006. Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. By 2007, we already had enough to recognize the danger of Putin’s staying in power.

Mounk: When I was a grad student at Harvard University, you came to speak there to present one of your books. I think this must have been around the time that Barack Obama ran for reelection, and it was striking because at this point you were in political exile from Russia. You were warning about Putin being a dictator, but also about Russia having expanded ambitions to be a spoiler on the international scene. This was around the time Obama had announced the reset with Russia.

Kasparov: In my book, Winter Is Coming, I talked about all the top American officials who became aware about the threat coming from the KGB and Putin after they left office. It’s amazing. You read their memoirs, whoever—Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright, a long list. They all knew, but somehow when they were in office, they acted differently.

From my previous life, I already knew what the KGB was. I read enough books, and I saw the growing threat of Putin to the free world, not only to Russia, but also to neighboring countries, the rest of Europe, and eventually to America. And Putin was not shy in using his resources to bribe politicians. The fact is that he could buy former German Chancellor Schröder and many other politicians, though few of that caliber. Former Prime Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen and now former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon are on a long list of politicians who decided to sell their souls and principles—if they had any—for Putin’s cash. That was a clear and present danger. Putin attacked the Republic of Georgia—technically Medvedev was in power, but I have no doubt that it was Putin’s push—to punish Saakashvili for his independent politics. It was not rocket science: Any country that tried to escape from the sphere of influence of the Kremlin would be subject to an attack. Thank God the Baltic states were under the NATO umbrella—though, these days, probably even NATO doesn’t offer full protection. But Ukraine was a clear target of Putin’s aggression. I had no doubt that he would look for any opportunity to spread chaos around the world, because that’s what he needed. You can’t blame him with hiding his intentions. You just had to follow what Putin had been saying all along. His speech in Munich in 2007 was a clear message to the world that he was going to depart from the arrangements of the post-Cold War and would restore Russian imperial power. Today, in 2021, we still have people saying that maybe we shouldn’t take these types of words at face value. We must, because with every success they become more emboldened. Dictators never ask “why?” It’s always “why not?”

Mounk: Tell us how you took some of the insights you developed in Russia, seeing the rise of Vladimir Putin, and applied them to the candidacy of somebody like Trump.

Kasparov: I think of Donald Trump’s ascent, and the KGB operations to help him get elected. I saw the Russian propaganda machine fully supporting Trump, and using the newly-built troll factories and fake news industry to help Trump to be elected. And whatever Trump’s relations with the KGB were in the past—I believe there were—it was clear that Putin thought that was a time to go for this final blow to divide America, to create in American democracy a friction it couldn’t heal. Trump was an ideal agent of chaos. It’s like an icebreaker, destroying the American political system. I don’t think Putin expected Trump to win, but I think he thought that Trump could do what he is doing now [sowing division].

Now, the new administration that needed to heal the damage caused by Trump demonstrated its impotence, or some would say incompetence, with the clear and present danger in dealing with Putin. The summit in Geneva was a disaster beyond imagination.

Mounk: How do you see the state of American democracy now?

Kasparov: I’m an incorrigible optimist by nature. I still believe American democracy is strong enough to survive this challenge. But the challenge is much tougher than I thought. In chess, you always look at trends—not just the current result, but where things are going. The latest trends are not looking good. It’s the polarization that bothers me so much. That’s why I founded the Renew Democracy Initiative, and I spent nearly five years working with people in the center trying to bring people from the left and right to just work together to build a strong coalition that could resist the pressure from radicals on the far left and far right. It’s not there yet. Both parties are under tremendous pressure from different forms of radicalism. On one side, we have a cult of personality. The criterion for being Republican now is loyalty to Trump. On the other side, their loyalty is to a concept, to ideology. It’s a principle to win debate by ending debate, and knowing that there are certain unchallengeable dogmas that you must obey. In the morning, you look at the New York Times and you’re horrified. In the evening, you hear Tucker Carlson. You have a plague and you have cholera.

How are you going to deal with that? Practically, I think the country needs a third party, because it’s no longer about debating small issues, like higher tax rates; it’s about preserving the country. My biggest nightmare is that in 2024 we will see Donald Trump running against a progressive. That’s what both sides hope for. Donald Trump cannot beat a reasonable Democrat, any moderate Democrat. Even a past-his-peak Joe Biden beat Trump. It’s the same story in reverse: any reasonable Republican will beat the progressive.

Mounk: The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recently implied that American political correctness reminded him of the Cultural Revolution in China. What do you make of that comparison? Do you think the culture of ideological purity has an authoritarian streak? Or do you think that is a significant overstatement?

Kasparov: It’s something that threatens the free flow of ideas, the freedom of speech. Our recent RDI project was released on CNN, and it’s called Voices of Freedom. We brought together 52 dissidents from 28 countries that expressed their grave concerns about the current state of American democracy, looking at both sides—looking at January 6 and “cancel culture,” whatever name you want to use for this—to warn Americans about dangers to democracy. I was recently part of a debate on the Intelligence Squared platform called “Cancel Culture is Toxic.” It’s good that we’re debating it. It seems to me that the defenders of cancel culture have two contradictory arguments: that cancel culture doesn’t exist, and that those who have been canceled deserve it. It’s difficult to bring them together.

More and more of the Democratic party understand the risk of the party being hijacked by the radicals. Hopefully the latest elections in Virginia and New Jersey send a clear message. […] If Donald Trump is again the candidate, and the Democrats do not have a proper candidate to stop him, then American democracy could be in grave danger.

Mounk: What can those of us who are very worried about the prospect of Donald Trump coming back in 2024 do to minimize the likelihood of that outcome? And what can the world do to stand up for liberal democracy against its enemies, foreign and domestic?

Kasparov: Speaking about Trump’s chances to be reelected, there are two stages: one is whether he will be nominated. And until recently, I thought it would be impossible. After the vote in Wyoming, I’m not sure. Few are taking the side of Liz Cheney. That sends a very bad signal about the chances of Donald Trump not being reelected and re-nominated in 2024. Having the third candidate, unfortunately, is unlikely. I would love to see someone in the middle. Someone strong like young Schwarzenegger but born in America, just as a fantasy. I don’t see anyone on the horizon right now. The radicals need each other. I always say that the best fundraiser for AOC is Trump, and the best fundraiser for Trump is AOC.

As for global affairs? I don’t know if this administration can do it, but we are all waiting for this global summit on democracy. There’s no way that America can look inwards and just concentrate on domestic affairs. America must lead the world. Because if America walks away, we know what happens. When Yankee goes home, Putin, Xi Jinping, the Taliban, and Iranian mullahs all come in. They’re not just coming for regions that they want to control. Eventually, it hits America as well. I think now more people recognize it. There was [for example] a great article by Anne Applebaum. I hear the voices that confirm what I knew 15 years ago. But as we say in chess, better late than never.”

Garry Kasparov’s Gambit | Reason | November 19, 2021

“Unlike @KingJames, I’m not on the payroll of any dictatorship.” @HRF‘s @Kasparov63 discussing how he fought against authoritarianism in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. From my @reason Q&A with the chess champion: https://t.co/C3615uNLJl

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) November 19, 2021

This article is a reprint. You can read the original interview in the December 2021 issue of Reason.

By Nick Gillespie

“Reason‘s December special issue marks the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This story is part of our exploration of the global legacy of that evil empire, and our effort to be certain that the dire consequences of communism are not forgotten.

If the Soviet Union was notoriously incapable of producing blue jeans, smokeable cigarettes, and durable cars in the numbers its citizens craved, it was unrivaled at producing world-class chess grandmasters. From the end of World War II until the Evil Empire dissolved in 1991, all but one world champion—the American Bobby Fischer, who claimed the title in 1972 from one Soviet and surrendered it to another in 1975 when he refused to defend his crown—represented the USSR.

None was better than Garry Kasparov, who became world champion in 1985 at the tender, record-setting age of 22 and held the title until 2000. Widely considered the greatest chess player in modern history, he held the global top ranking for a total of 255 months between 1984 and his retirement in 2005.

Yet Kasparov was never a pliant supporter of the system that produced him—far from it. Born in 1963 to parents who were Jewish and Armenian, two minorities regarded as suspect, and raised in the relatively provincial city of Baku, Azerbaijan, he grew up feeling alienated from the Soviet Union’s cultural and political centers in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Because of his chess prowess—which he emphasizes was greatly nurtured by the same government that immiserated and imprisoned so many of his countrymen—he was able to travel abroad for competitions, and he describes youthful trips to France and Germany as nothing short of revelatory. The casual “abundance” of what used to be called “the free world” “just felt different,” he says. “I could immediately see the quality of life….It was different and it was more natural.” Beyond the Iron Curtain, he encountered the anti-communist works of George Orwell and was able to read exiled dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s suppressed indictments of totalitarianism.

Kasparov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1984 but was critical of the regime during that decade. In 1990, he joined the Democratic Party of Russia and became increasingly outspoken in favor of human rights, representative democracy, and limited government. In post-Soviet Russia, he used his celebrity and influence to spearhead attempts to build civil society and conduct fair elections, emerging as a leading critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He aborted a run for president in 2007 only after authorities made it impossible for his followers to meet. By the early 2010s, he had been arrested for participating in unauthorized anti-government demonstrations and was widely believed to be the author of a popular petition demanding Putin’s resignation. Today he resides in New York City and Croatia with his wife and two of his children; they cannot return to Russia for fear of persecution.

Kasparov continues to lobby for freedom, in the former Soviet Union and beyond. Since 2011, he has served as the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, an organization that focuses on reform in closed societies such as North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and several former Soviet republics.

In September, Reason‘s Nick Gillespie spoke with the chess grandmaster in New York about what it was like to be the beneficiary of a catastrophically failed Soviet system and what lessons the world—especially American democratic socialists—should remember three decades after its collapse.

Reason: Can you describe where you were when you first realized that the Soviet Union was finished for good?

Kasparov: Believe it or not, I cannot recall my whereabouts on December 25, [1991]. The reason for that is probably that I was not surprised. I knew that the Soviet Union was dead long before they lowered the Soviet flag and raised the Russian flag. Somehow, I felt, even in the late 1980s, that the end was near.

I remember speaking in Germany, I think in 1987, for a group of German businessmen, just a chess presentation. They asked me about [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, perestroika, and about the future—whether [the reforms] would last. I stunned them by saying, “Absolutely,” because I believed the Soviet Union was moving in one direction. The system just couldn’t sustain the pressure of time. So I knew that the whole concept of the Iron Curtain would no longer hold.

I had a few moments like that in the next couple of years, because I always believed that things would go faster. And after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, I was the one who said that reunification of Germany would be in the agenda very soon, while people said, “Oh, no, it’s impossible because of the historical memories. And other European nations might be against it.” But again, it all happened, because the time was right for the Soviet Union to be gone.

Also, inside of the Soviet Union I had a lot of connections. I was a world champion, and being the chess world champion in the Soviet Union, this would give you not just privileges but a lot of authority. I could speak out and my voice was heard, even though I was young. I became a world champion at age 22 in 1985. In 1989, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, I was just 26. And I was 28 when the Soviet Union collapsed. But I always played chess relying on my intuition. And my intuition kept telling me, “It’s over. It’s over.”

Did the Soviet Union collapse from within or without?

It’s a combination of factors. You cannot simply say it’s the pressure from within or pressure from outside. It’s a combination, but the pressure from outside was a very important factor. [U.S. President Ronald] Reagan’s fantasy about “Star Wars” [the American missile defense program formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative] played a significant role in the Soviet Politburo deciding to open up.

If we remember it now, this is what Gorbachev said when he was elected in March 1985. When he talked about perestroika, it was about the military-industrial complex. It was all about matching American technological prowess.

The idea of the Star Wars was like a thorn in the minds of members of the Politburo. That’s why Gorbachev desperately tried to convince Reagan to drop it. The real beginning of the democratization could be marked clearly by the end of 1986, after Gorbachev failed in Reykjavik to convince Reagan to drop Star Wars.

Then Gorbachev, after coming back, recognized that they would need to do something to open up the energy of society and do something to make the USSR more competitive. He called [the nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei] Sakharov, who was in the city of Gorky in exile, and brought him back to Moscow. That’s the end of 1986.

By the beginning of 1987, we saw the changes in the Politburo. The rise of Alexander Yakovlev, the man who was the real ideologue behind the democratization. And again, I have no doubt that it was the combination of these factors—pressure from outside, but also the inability of the Soviet system to compete against new technologies. They required more engagement of talent, and working the old way didn’t help.

Why did Gorbachev decide to open up instead of closing down even more?

Again, they needed to be competitive. The system didn’t function well. And they didn’t have other alternatives. When people say, “Oh, there was a Chinese alternative,” I don’t think this suggestion would stand rigorous analysis. China had a massive rural population. It’s like a reservoir. They could bring people in. They could rely on these people to form the army, police. The Soviet Union, especially the European part, was urbanized. They needed to find a way to satisfy this population. And it was more and more difficult to keep people misinformed about what’s happening in other parts of the world.

Tiananmen Square and the Berlin Wall in 1989: Were those events widely understood and seen in the Soviet Union?

Absolutely. By that time, the Soviet Union was quite—I wouldn’t say free, but it had a lot of press that could go after sacred cows of the communist regime. We followed the news, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall was a really big event. It was symbolic, but symbolism is a very important part of any dictatorship. It sends a signal all over the place.

I first met [Czech-American film director] Miloš Forman in 1988. It was organized by a Czech grandmaster who wanted us to be introduced to each other. We had dinner in Paris, and Miloš was very skeptical about perestroika and about everything that was happening in the Soviet Union. I was very optimistic. And he kept asking me, “Garry, tell me how you think it could happen. Twenty years ago it was Prague. And before ’68 it was Hungary. Didn’t work.” And I said, “Miloš, I don’t know. But I can tell you one day you’ll open your window and you’ll find out they’ve gone.”

After the collapse of the Czechoslovakian communist regime, one morning, I don’t recall where I was in the world, but I got the telephone call. “It’s Miloš. You know, Garry, you were right. I opened the window and they’ve gone.”

Then at the very end of 1989, we had the Congress of Soviet Chess Players, which actually was another sign of democratization, just going away from the Soviet Sports Ministry. In the middle of this meeting, we got news from Romania about the revolution. I stopped the meeting, saying, “Now I’ve got to congratulate the Romanians. They toppled the last communist dictatorship,” and it was a big ovation.

So it’s about the mood. People didn’t want to go with the old regime. The gap between public expectations and the ability of the regime to serve them was too great to close.

Do you remember when Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire”? Were you kind of like, “He’s onto something,” or was that a calumny against your country?

The Soviet propaganda did not push the message. It was briefly mentioned, but they did not want Soviet people to actually start chewing on it.

Let’s talk about the system that produced you. The Soviet system famously was bad at producing goods like cars or blue jeans, but it did produce chess champions, and it produced you, in particular. You were the world’s youngest chess champ at 22. Before we get to the Soviet thing, tell me what it felt like to be 22 years old and to be the best goddamn chess player on the planet.

That was a hilarious moment. Because as you said, chess was a big thing in the Soviet Union. Winning the world title, becoming the world champion, that was like entering the legend. I grew up as a kid reading these books. And for me, it was all about, you know, gods or at least high priests serving the goddess of chess. The fact that I could enter this pantheon, it was just hard to explain.

But I also recognized, after becoming the world champion, that I could actually do something to help my country, because I had my voice to raise. Somehow it’s a paradox. The Soviet system always nurtured world champions. The system was proud of it. Chess had huge state support in the Soviet Union, because it was viewed as a very important ideological tool to prove intellectual superiority of the communist regime over the decadent West. So it was very important for the Soviet regime to demonstrate that intellectually, it’s way ahead of the rest of the world, because they knew that they couldn’t compete in doing cars, or jeans, or producing quality food.

That’s why when Bobby Fischer crushed Soviet players and became world champion, that was a moment of panic. And that’s how Anatoly Karpov, my opponent, my nemesis, the man I played five world championship matches with, was raised—he was a great talent, but he received phenomenal support from the highest echelons of power, because the Soviet Union needed this title back.

And then he beat Viktor Korchnoi, right? Who was a defector.

Yeah, he beat Korchnoi in ’78. He played two matches with Viktor Korchnoi, who had defected, which boosted Karpov’s standing as the hero of the system, a soldier of the Communist Party. He was congratulated by [General Secretary Leonid] Brezhnev himself. That turned my match against Karpov as a challenge against the system.

That’s also interesting because a lot of people, famous people who rooted for me, they saw the change on the Chess Olympiad in 1985. Garry Kasparov, a half-Armenian, half-Jewish boy from Baku, beating the Russian champion was a sign that change was possible. Again, it’s very difficult even just to grasp this moment, but I remember some of them were crying. Famous artists—these are people who just were well known in the country. I had a lot of friends. I was very young, but they treated me as one of their own. And they said, “Wow. It’s possible.” And I think millions of my fellow citizens shared the same feelings. If Karpov could be toppled by this young kid from Baku, maybe the whole system is no longer invincible.

So when you became a chess champion, you are at the apex of Soviet society. You are a national hero. The messages that you wanted to send—how did you do that? Because we see even today, when somebody like LeBron James or Michael Jordan says something political in America, they get in trouble. What were the messages you were trying to send, and how did you have to do that within the context of the Soviet Union?

Unlike LeBron James, I’m not on the payroll of any dictatorship. I was 22, then 23 in ’86. So I was very busy playing matches with Karpov, but I didn’t have any political agenda. It was too early to become a dissident. I knew that the system was doomed. It had to change. How? I had not the slightest idea how. I just knew everything was going—it was like a one-way street.

I became more acute with my political statements in ’88, ’89, when I joined the nascent pro-democracy movement in the Soviet Union. In late ’88, I met Andrei Sakharov, actually in Paris. His first trip abroad, because he always lived in secrecy and then was in exile. We met there, and I was truly impressed by his clear-cut ideas about the future. I thought that it was time for me to play a more aggressive role as a role model, because I knew I was somewhat protected by my title. I could speak freely. I could afford more than ordinary citizens, even prominent citizens. I could travel around the world. I was financially independent already.

If I remained silent that would be a bad message to millions of my fellow citizens. If I could speak out, and if I could just—not even with a very clear and articulate message, but something just about the future, about us getting involved—that would send the right message and could encourage them, not maybe all of them, but many, to join the pro-democracy movement. To recognize that, “Wow, our chess world champion is speaking against power abuse of the system, is talking about changes, is talking about democracy, elections. Maybe we should also join.” So I knew that that was an important contribution. Again, it sounds very chaotic, because I had no plan. But I always felt that my title and the uniqueness of my position as the chess world champion from the Soviet Union almost forced me into these kinds of confrontations with the regime.

You’ve talked in the past about how you started to have doubts when you were traveling abroad at age 13. Can you talk about what was it like? Your day-to-day existence in the Soviet Union, was it pleasant? And then you go abroad, and you’re like the Buddha, who leaves the family compound and starts to see poverty, old age, and disease? How did you start to realize the world you were living in in the Soviet Union was not the only thing that was possible?

Yeah. If you want parallels with Buddha, it’s exactly reversed. Because I saw the other side of the world, the world of copious [riches] and abundance. So it was contrary to the Soviet Union, the world of deficit.

I grew up in a family where I had access to books and information that were not available in public libraries. My father died when I was 7, but his younger brother, my uncle, brought me into these circles of Jewish intelligentsia in Baku. I had my doubts, and I remember having debates with my grandfather, my mother’s father, who was a member of the Communist Party since 1971.

He also was a bit concerned about the way things were working in the ’70s. He’d spent his life working for the Communist Party and for the state. And he wasn’t sure that his life was spent well, because it was not what he expected, not what he believed when he started his life journey. But we still had a lot of debates. We had in our small apartment, in the dining room, a big political map of the world. He was also very political, just having a few Soviet magazines where we could read about foreign politics. And so between these two worlds—my uncle and the Jewish professors, and my grandfather—these ideas were just boiling in my head.

I also had good analytical skills. I could look around. The Soviet Union had many movies already, a few American, but mostly Italian, French. And there was the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, BBC, Deutsche Welle. So I knew about the existence of the other side of the world, but when I could travel at age 13 and return, wow. It sounds so trivial. “OK, big deal. You traveled to France.” My 6-year-old son has already traveled to so many countries. He was in France, Estonia, Croatia. And my 15-year-old daughter has already visited half of Europe—she was born in America, of course.

I think in my neighborhood in Baku—and Baku was the fourth-largest city in the Soviet Union after Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, [with] over a million inhabitants—when I say neighborhood, it’s just a very large part of the city. I think I was the only one who visited a capitalist country. I became not a hero but someone unique. “Forget chess. He went to France and he came back.” Because to be sent to a capitalist country, I mean, you had to go through so many layers of due diligence. They had to vet you before you were allowed to go. And of course my mother couldn’t travel with me, because that was a rule. It’s like a hostage rule. The family must stay [behind] to make sure that the talent, by accident, by spontaneous emotional decision, is not asking for political asylum.

Do you remember what it was about France that…?

I could immediately see the quality of life. It’s so different. I could see the way people lived. It was different and it was more natural. This world was built on a very different foundation, but it felt right. All of the minor details, from the airport to other places.

In 1980, I was 17. I was already one of the top players, and we flew to Germany. I had to play the under-20 world championship with one of the coaches—not my coach; one of the Soviet chess officials. And I just recently discovered in my mother’s archive my diary I wrote at 17. I already had quite an experience traveling, and still I was quite shocked. So it’s the effect of the world, of this abundance. I inevitably came to the conclusion that the regime that was so [far] behind the free world would face challenges that it couldn’t cope with.

You have talked a lot about how in the Soviet Union there was an ongoing myth of “good Lenin, bad Stalin.” How did that filter into your thought, particularly as you got older?

Yeah, it’s very important to analyze the stages of Soviet mythology, because every dictatorship is mythology. It’s like a religion: Ideology has to be built on cult. It’s not just an invention of the Soviet communists. Go back to the early days in every country and you had a propaganda machine, though primitive during revolutionary times, that tried to convince people of certain things that were contrary to their previous beliefs. The Soviet Union started with Lenin and Lenin’s cult. Stalin used it. And then after Stalin’s death, the Communist Party bosses tried to separate. They were very cautious. They revealed Stalin’s role in the big terror, but they always tried to make [those out to be] excesses, to keep the system from criticism.

There were also attempts to rehabilitate Stalin. This is in the late Brezhnev years. There was more [said] about Stalin’s role in World War II. But then, during Gorbachev’s years, Stalin became the No. 1 target. And they desperately tried to keep Lenin out of that, but it was impossible, because more and more people looked: “Wait a second. The things [are] connected.”

The irony is today, in Putin’s Russia, the roles are reversed. Stalin is the big hero. Lenin is just ideology; Stalin is a pure cult of power. Putin’s dictatorship looks at Stalin, Ivan the Terrible, and those figures of Russian and Soviet history as the role models. Because Stalin at the end of the day just didn’t care very much about ideology. Yes, he was a communist leader. But it’s power, it’s terror, it’s spreading the influence, building empire, expanding it. And that resonates very much with the modern Russian dictatorship.

What was it like to encounter the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn? I understand you read those while abroad. What was that like, when you’re traveling under the aegis of the Soviet system that produced you and that is paying your bills, and then you’re reading this incredible critique of the system?

I read Solzhenitsyn at age 18. I already knew about the existence of his works. They had been, of course, banned in the Soviet Union. But we could hear parts of that on radio, on the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Liberty. You could read some of it as samizdat. But in full, I read it in 1981.

Solzhenitsyn’s importance was to demonstrate that it was not about excesses of the system. It was not about bad Stalin. It was about the system itself. It’s a system built on terror, on denial of fundamental human rights, on ideology that doesn’t stop at anything to promote its most aggressive agenda. And it was a very important contribution to my education. It was like a milestone. And you keep adding things. It’s not just Solzhenitsyn. It’s a long list of authors not as known, but they helped you to understand that the system was beyond repair. It helped to crystallize my views. And that’s why, by the end of the ’80s, I knew that I was anti-communist.

These feelings are getting only harder with time, because I’m seeing now the revival of it and I’m terrified to see that many Americans have sympathies toward communism without even understanding what they’re talking about.

Can you explore that a little bit more? What sympathies do Americans have with communism?

Communism and socialism are things that America never experienced, but they [have] become popular because people don’t recall what happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And of course, that was ancient history.

I spoke to many American audiences when I had my book, Winter Is Coming, published [in 2015]. Younger audiences, I think many of them, they couldn’t even tell apart the Cold War and the Trojan War. It’s just something that belonged to ancient history.

Let me play devil’s advocate: There’s no question that socialism, both as a concept and as a set of policies, is more popular now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. How would you talk to somebody like AOC—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.)—or another democratic socialist in America, who would say, “You know, what I want is free health care for everybody; what I want is a minimum wage that is $15 or $20; what I want is equal opportunity for all”? How is that like socialism under the Soviet Union? Or what lessons from history are contemporary socialists in America forgetting when they push a progressive agenda?

First of all, I’d like to quote Winston Churchill. There are many quotes, great quotes from this greatest politician of the 20th century, if not all time. “Socialism is the religion of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”

Let’s start with semantics. I don’t know whether AOC understands it. Probably she’s too young. Maybe she does, but many of the followers do not. Bernie Sanders definitely does. This is not a man who just embraced socialism by accident. Someone who decided to have his honeymoon in the Soviet Union just has a stronger affection to Soviet socialism.

Now, they call themselves “democratic socialists” and pretend that they are like the social democrats in Europe. But the reverse of those words actually makes a great deal of difference. It’s very important which one is the noun and which one is the adjective.

So the social democrats in Europe, in Scandinavian countries or in Germany, they are trying to do exactly what you said. They are trying to find some kind of social harmony. We can agree or disagree with their program. Some of them are more on the right, some of them are more on the left, but again, they all act within the limits. It’s about improving conditions for individuals within the system, fighting for better deals for working people, and looking for certain social and health benefits.

The moment you reverse the words and say “democratic socialist,” the emphasis is on socialism. And the suggestions that came from this far left in America, they go way beyond simple improvements of working conditions or health care benefits. They attack the very foundation of this country, saying this country was built on evil. Bringing together all issues, from environmental to racial issues, and using them. In Britain, for instance, many of these green activists are called “watermelon politicians.” They’re green on top, red inside.

So I could smell it, that their agenda goes way beyond simple improvements of the conditions for working men and women and offering equal opportunities. There are equal opportunities in this country. The American political system or American economic system, it’s not perfect, but nothing is perfect. It still offers more opportunities for people of all races and genders, and coming from all different quarters, than any other country in the world. And the radical suggestions that are being received from the far left, they, in my view, just are aimed at dismantling America as a global factor.

Also, speaking about rights and protecting minorities here, they turned a blind eye to the worst dictators in the world. The same people who are arguing about police brutality in America are willing to close their eyes to the Uyghur genocide or to the narco-state in Venezuela or to slavery that still exists in Africa. And that’s a big problem, because it diminishes America’s leadership role in the eyes of people like me and millions of others who are just confused that America is now going against itself.

So how do you address the Republican side of that? On the left, people seem to be stupid about history—they haven’t learned the lessons of history or they don’t understand the continuity between controlling the economy and controlling people. On the right, you have this rise of really stark nativism and of a kind of “America alone” idea. How do you convince those people that immigrants like you are not a threat to the country but are rather its future?

Again, it’s historical ignorance. It’s just ignoring the fact that America was built by immigrants and always benefited from immigration. But that’s not the only sin of the modern Republican Party. The party is still very much beholden to Donald Trump, and they try to turn a blind eye on power abuse during Trump’s years.

If we look at both wings of American politics, one could get desperate. You don’t know where to go. This country now is forced to choose at every election for the lesser evil. This country that was built on striving for excellence, and all of a sudden, it’s “This is bad, but this is worse.” The last two elections were just about who’s worse. That’s a really bad sign. That’s how democracy dies, when it’s being attacked simultaneously from both sides.

People say, “Oh, Hitler won elections in Germany.” He never won elections. His best result was around 38 percent in 1932. But the Communists made nearly 16 percent, which means that the majority of Germans voted against democracy.

Right now, I see that in America. It becomes not even partisanship. It’s tribalism. “I belong to this tribe, and whatever happens on the other side, it’s bad.” And every time that we have a crisis here, you hear people pointing fingers. I wouldn’t call it double standards, but it’s the purest form of hypocrisy.

When Democrats and the Biden administration, who own this crisis in Afghanistan, point at Trump, it’s hypocrisy: You were in charge. But then the Republicans say, “[Joe] Biden blew it up,” ignoring the fact that Trump signed the deal with the Taliban. And we can look at every complaint [this way] now. Trump was in office and you saw outcries on the left, “Oh, executive orders, terrible. How can he do that?” Biden comes into office and the same people demand, “Now you have to sign everything. Undo Trump’s executive orders.” That’s not the way to move forward.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity. The full video version can be viewed here.”

Democracy in Doubt | Smerconish: SiriusXM | November 17, 2021

Did you miss @Kasparov63 @Renew_Democracy with me today @SXMPOTUS @SIRIUSXM – WATCH here: https://t.co/7Hwf6wyJPU pic.twitter.com/UKQtos4UpY

— Michael Smerconish (@smerconish) November 17, 2021

You can watch the original recording at Smerconish for Independent Mind‘s channel.

‘Woke’ is a Bad Word for a Real Threat to American Democracy | WSJ Opinion | November 17, 2021

Language has power, and phrases like “cancel culture” and “woke” are used and abused as weapons. We must call things what they are if democracy and its values are to be preserved. My latest in @WSJopinion: https://t.co/hxZY94uVEO

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) November 18, 2021

You can read the original article at the WALL STREET JOURNAL.

By Garry Kasparov

“The search is on for new words for old ideas. “Cancel culture” and “woke” have become overused and abused, part of a struggle to define one’s political opponents in the harshest possible way, to dismiss ideas as not only wrong or harmful, but intolerable.

As a nonnative English speaker, I am content to avoid rhetorical fashion and use older phrases. Call it the mob mentality, groupthink, or punitive neo-Puritan orthodoxy. It is the abuse of power—mostly social, not yet governmental—to silence debate and paralyze the spread of any ideas that challenge the prevailing ideological dogma. It is the coordinated, coercive attempt to win a debate by ending debate—to punish, not to educate.

The leading practitioners of these tactics have two contradictory responses to criticism. First, they say it isn’t happening, that it doesn’t exist, that drawing attention to it is a rhetorical whine to silence critics of the establishment and shield the privileged from accountability. Second, they blame the victims, calling them bad people with bad ideas who should be banished to make room for more diverse voices. Claiming you are fighting fire with fire can be used to justify any excess; the only way to fight back is to take freedom away from someone else.

The politics of personal destruction have run amok online and off. Full disclosure: I’ve been friends with Peter Thiel for years. I disagree with him on many things, especially lately, but the attacks on him have been disturbing. In his recent book “The Contrarian,” journalist Max Chafkin assigns an ideology to Mr. Thiel, then defines it as “fascist” and even tries to blame this concocted “Thielism” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. There is little doubt that the book would never have come to be had Mr. Thiel not supported Donald Trump in 2016. Suddenly, a secretive libertarian tech investor with a complex history and identity—immigrant, gay, Stanford Law grad, coastal elite—became simply evil, and Mr. Chafkin was quickly paid to fill hundreds of pages to support that preordained conclusion.

Criticism of politically active billionaires and tech giants is essential. But as the left did with the Koch brothers and the right has done with George Soros, demonizing people for wealth and political activity can spin out of control. Muckraking books, screaming mobs—in person, not only online—and rumors about your personal life shouldn’t be the price of political involvement in a democracy.

Tearing down the powerful may be satisfying, if briefly, but remember who inevitably suffers most when justice is abandoned in favor of vengeance and destruction. Black Lives Matter, a necessary idea and important human-rights movement, has been hijacked by leaders who seek only power—and who are willing to sacrifice their supposed beneficiaries to achieve it. Who will be harmed most when the police are defunded, the public education system wrecked? Not the elites. The Russian Revolution dispatched some wealthy landowners, but its natural outcome was a new form of slavery under totalitarian Communism—all in the name of equality and freedom, of course.

Putting ideology and politics ahead of reason is as dangerous as putting them ahead of justice. Mr. Trump and his administration used the possibility that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory to bash China and deflect attention from his administration’s catastrophic pandemic response. A corresponding rise in hate crimes against Asians helped turn a crucial line of inquiry into a politicized bludgeon.

The left’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was instructive. Anyone who mentioned the lab-leak theory was assailed as pro-Trump. Social-media companies removed posts mentioning it. By January 2021, it was obvious that shutting down debate was the true antiscience position. Invaluable months were lost, time the Chinese Communist Party used to destroy data and spread disinformation about the virus’s origins. We may never know the truth, but we do know there was a coverup.

Increasing numbers of Americans believe their freedom is under attack, and I agree. Antidemocratic forces are on the rise. Election results are treated as suspect. Threats of violence are becoming routine.

Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less.

This is why the Renew Democracy Initiative launched the Frontlines of Freedom project, which gives voice to dissidents from authoritarian regimes around the world. Americans have the rights and self-determination that people in Russia, Hong Kong and Zimbabwe are literally dying for. We see the pillars of American democracy under attack from within, by rioters at the Capitol and online mobs. Rights are violated in the U.S. when the system fails. They are violated in dictatorships when the system works as intended. Heed this warning.

Destroying the mechanisms of democracy to preserve democracy won’t work. We can’t promote marginalized voices by telling them what is acceptable to say. We must fight to preserve the free flow of ideas, of debate and an open society, however uncomfortable it makes us. Democracy has never been a safe space.

Mr. Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative.”

Grandmasters of Supply Chain and Manufacturing | Noodle.ai Fireside Chat | November 10, 2021

You can watch my keynote address at NOODLE.AI

WATCH NOW: Our Grandmasters came, spoke, slayed! Our @Kasparov63, #SupplyChain + #Manufacturing + @wef replays are ready here: https://t.co/oks1XFwmKI pic.twitter.com/RFhrWZTlbV

— Noodle.ai (@NoodleAI) November 15, 2021

 

Grandmasters of Supply Chain & Manufacturing | Noodle.ai Fireside Chat | November 10, 2021

WATCH NOW: Our Grandmasters came, spoke, slayed! Our @Kasparov63, #SupplyChain + #Manufacturing + @wef replays are ready here: https://t.co/oks1XFwmKI pic.twitter.com/RFhrWZTlbV

— Noodle.ai (@NoodleAI) November 15, 2021

You can watch my keynote address at Noodle.ai

US ‘Has No Strategy’ for Cyber War, Garry Kasparov Warns | Newsweek | November 15, 2021

You can read the original article at Newsweek.

By Jacob Jarvis

“Legendary chess master Garry Kasparov said the U.S. is “lagging behind” in cyber warfare and lacks a strategy in countering threats.

Kasparov, who is antivirus software company Avast’s security ambassador and has written at length on cyber security, told Newsweek that America must be tougher on hostile actors.

Speaking at Web Summit in Lisbon, Kasparov said the U.S. is behind others on cyber warfare “but not for the lack of technology, because in every war, you know what’s important is political will, is will behind your army.”

“So you can have the strongest army in the world, but where the commander could be not even a coward, but, you know, indecisive, and that may decide the outcome of the battle. Now, what we’re saying is that America has no strategy,” Kasparov said.

“It [the U.S.] still has tremendous capability, it is still by far the leading force on online. But there’s no strategy.”

He suggested that “dictators don’t care about consequences unless they see the immediate threat to them. They never ask why, they ask why not.”

Kasparov said that the Biden Administration is “extremely weak,” but also noted that previous administrations also did not do enough on cyber warfare, adding “it seems that America lost its…appetite to lead the world. America has to come up with a plan to punish hostile actors.”

He said there are “so many ways of going after hostile actors,” including “attacking their infrastructure and their countries, paralyzing it” and gathering “valuable data” about them because they often keep their money in Western countries.

“So if there is a political will, the free world is well equipped now to do damage [to] the hostile actors. Again, if there is a policy and a determination,” Kasparov said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft warned of hundreds of cyberattacks against U.S. companies, and there has been a range of major attacks thought to have come from foreign actors in recent years.

A report from the company outlined most state-sponsored hacks came from Russia. There have been recent hacks linked to groups with Chinese government ties. Last month, the U.S. launched a new bureau to combat cybercrime.

In 2020, SolarWinds software was hacked. The software company provides services to the White House, Pentagon and NASA. This breach is believed to have been from Russia. However, Russia denies being behind such cyber offensives.

In July, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the U.S. “will respond” to further such acts.

“If Russia continues to attack us, or to act as it did with the SolarWinds attacks, the intrusions into our elections, and the aggression against Navalny, then we will respond,” he said, Reuters reported.

Newsweek has contacted the White House and the State Department for comment on Kasparov’s remarks.”

Cancel Culture is Toxic | Intelligence Squared Debates | November 9, 2021

You can view the original program at Intelligence Squared.

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“FOR THE MOTION: Garry Kasparov Garry Kasparov came to international fame in 1985 as the youngest world chess champion in history. He was 22 at the time and is widely considered among history’s greatest chess players. In 2005, Kasparov retired from the sport to devote his time to writing and human rights activism. He is currently chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes human rights globally and organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum, and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative dedicated to global democracy. He is a frequent contributor to major international publications including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.”