Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

As Trump’s policies have created a moat around the shrunken circle of “us,” his speech has invited—though a better word may be “incited”—his supporters to patrol the borders of this new, smaller American society. Trump’s campaign promise of a return to the imaginary past was largely a promise to transport Americans to a time when racism, misogyny, and xenophobia were mainstream attitudes. More than that: it was the promise of a new history in which a greater inclusivity not only had not happened but would never happen. In this story, Archie Bunker, the comically racist, sexist, and xenophobic protagonist of the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, is not the clueless old man who will have to cede his house and his country to new times and new, different people—in the Trump script, he owns the place, and he is not going anywhere. He is Edward Gallagher, who has had his status upgraded from criminal to hero and who posts a picture of himself wearing a wife-beater emblazoned with an American flag and holding a coffee mug inscribed with the words “I love it when I wake up in the morning and Donald Trump is president.” From his bully pulpit in the White House and at rallies, Trump calls out to the worst in his people. He models and molds the language of the time. Speaking on immigration, he referred to members of the gang MS-13 as “animals.” When he was criticized, he said it again and again. “I called them ‘animals’ the other day and I was met with rebuke,” he said. “They said, ‘th...