Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

The vocabulary of American political conversation is vague. “Authoritarian” is used to mean any regime or approach to governance that’s not democratic. The Trump era saw a surge in the use of such words as “fascism,” “coup,” and “treason,” often deployed less in reference to specific events or actions than to signal that American politicians were acting in ways American politicians ought not act. “Democracy” stands for everything we miss about the way politics used to be. But all of these words have clear, if sometimes multiple, definitions in political science, history, and law. If politicians, journalists, and even kitchen-table debaters adopted the habit of defining their terms, we would understand each other better—and begin the process of restoring language.