Anand Giridharadas: “America stares openly at an anti-democratic movement, flirts with fascism, and talks about dictatorship. Half of America says, “Yeah, THAT!” (source: video in this article)
Even though Anand Giridharadas worked for about a decade with The New York Times as a columnist and foreign correspondent, it was not until 2018 that his national profile took an upswing. That year, his widely acclaimed book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (Vintage Books), hit newsstands. In it, he made a strong case for why we need to be skeptical about the rich and powerful and their seemingly selfless fight for equality and justice. He calls it a charade, the quest to soften the impacts of social and economic hardship while ensuring that social change does not affect their privileged place in the social order.
Today, Giridharadas is the publisher of The.Ink, a self-described newsletter “on politics and culture, money and power.” One of his analytic topics is why many Americans are drawn to Donald Trump. He spoke on that topic during the September 12, 2024, edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Here’s some of what Giridharadas had to say that day, captured in a 2-minute 35-second excerpt I posted on the YouTube channel of a nonprofit activist organization with which I am affiliated. It is titled “What Keeps Us Up at Night.” (click the title to view the video)
Two of Giridharadas’ observations stick out to me. Here is one, and I’ll reference the second at the end of this commentary.
“Eighty million people have had eight or nine years of exposure to the authoritarian offerings of Donald Trump. This is not a new thing; they’ve seen the ups, they’ve seen the downs, and they’ve seen him as President. They’ve kicked the tires and gone for a very long test drive. At the END of those nine years, we are a country where (about) eighty million people want Authoritarianism. And winning an election (by Harris-Walz) will not resolve that; it will keep it at bay.”
My take is that Giridharadas is spot on. That said, while Authoritarianism has always existed in America, one can argue that we have never seen it exhibited so blatantly as we do today. But more importantly (at least for me), the “ism” form of the term does not go far enough.
To get to the core of what is desperately wrong with America today, let us focus on a different form of the word, the form of the word that represents its real-time threat. It is people who do not just prefer or support Authoritarianism, but people who are Authoritarians.
Hardly out of sight, Authoritarians are family members, neighbors, work colleagues, institutional managers and leaders, and more. They use easy-on-the-ears words and phrases to describe themselves, “Moms for Liberty” and “Oath Keepers,” to name just two. They are a diverse lot, including White Supremacists, Christian Nationalists, Misogynists, Xenophobes, and Homophobes, and those five are the beginning of a longer list. They are organized, too. The Southern Policy Law Center is tracking nearly 1500 organized efforts nationally, including people who are anti-Muslim, antisemitic, anti-LBGTQ, and more.
These people and groups have been legitimized and energized by Donald Trump—what he stands for and says—and they are delighted, encouraged, and emboldened by the prospect of him retaking the reins of government. Furthermore, Trump is not positioned on the political margins as have other pre-Trump authoritarians (e.g., George Wallace). Trump is the choice of a mainstream political party to run for the presidency. That tells us how far and hard politics has fallen.
The ties that bind these people and initiatives keep me up at night. They want to take charge and control, to dictate that we live by their tenets and rules.
Reproductive choice? No!
Diversity/Equity/Inclusion offices/programs in public institutions? No!
Access to a range of literature? No!
Gender-affirming care? No!
WOKE? It’s a “lib” thing, and it’s a joke.
Critical Race Theory? That’s a left-wing fabrication.
American Exceptionalism? Yes! Ax “revisionist” portraits that speak against it.
Democracy? Diversity? They get in the way.
“Freedom,” a word enthusiastically used, means regulating others’ rights, including what everyday people can and can’t do.
Choice? It is inherently problematic. Instead, there is one way, their way. America needs order, structure, prescriptions, and citizens willing to follow preordained and dictated ways of thinking and living.
That leads me to the second point that struck me from Giridharadas’comments on his 9/12/24 Morning Joe appearance:
“You have to invite citizens into a vision more compelling than what they are being attracted to (currently), and we have to win them back. There is no long-term strategy in this country other than winning them back. There need to be people who are willing to invest in what will be a multi-decade effort to win them back.”
…just as the Republicans invested in the 40-year effort—starting with the Reagan years, if not before—to get that party (and America) to where it is today.
Anand Giridharadas gets it. Will we? Activism is the only alternative. We must speak out, stand up, and engage. It is the only prospect to keep America from devolving into something many thought could never happen, not here … ever.
It is happening here, and it is happening now.
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This article is drawn from a longer piece published in LA Progressive.
Article cover photo courtesy Scientific American.
Fear is correct, I think. Since the 60’s some of us have become lazy, wrapped in a false security that the fight is over. As Fear writes, we must get active if we want to same America.