Opinion Listen to Trump or not to listen to

In 1978 my parents went to Poland, the first foreign trip in every their lives. When they returned to our home in Moscow, my mother couldn’t stop talking about what they saw – not about a place, but a movie, a “cabaret” Bob Fosse. Especially one scene remained with it. Three friends return from a weekend trip. Sleep-Deprised, hung and interested in their sexual and romantic entangles, stretch in a café on the road. There he begins to sing a teenager who wears the youth unifler Hitler. It is serious and in your brown pants tucked into white socks knee, Puerile. But after a minute, other young people in uniform will join and soon everyone except one customer is standing and singing. The protagonists occur. They pushed Nazism out of their mind, but at the moment they realize that they are in a minority, that life, as they live, has ended. The song everyone around them is “tomorrow belongs to me”.

I was 11 when my mother couldn’t stop talking about the “cabaret” and I was confused. I thought my parents went to the real cabaret and somehow gained insight into the nature of the Soviet regime. A few years later, after I saw the film myself, I realized that my mother was right: the scene is the only liveliest display of what it is like to live in a society that falls in harmony before the totalitarian leader. I experienced it in real life as an adult when Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, and my world suddenly felt like a chessboard from which the invisible hand chose pieces faster than I thought it was.

Now in America Donald Trump I live something similar and is still moving faster. For me it started before the elections, when the owners of Los Angeles Times and Washington Post decided to pull their documents Kamaly Harris for the president. He continued with Mark Zuckerberg Remake Meta to reflect what he called the “cultural point of overturning”, which was the presidential election; with ABC news awarding millions of dollars in response to one of Trumps frivolous courts and CBS considering do the same; And most recently, with great deletion: records of trans-people about minors provided by hospitals and diversity and collection policies at many universities and corporations. Now some university They quietly switch their programming in the hope of adapting to expectations that have not yet been clearly determined.

I am not talking about removing pages from government websites, such as the White House and Center for the Control and Prevention of Diseases, probably ordered by newly installed officials; I am talking about events that individual people or private institutions have taken preventively, with a certain degree of free will.

Historian Yale Timothy Snyder called this “pre -obedience”. In his book 2017 “About Tyranie: Twenty lessons from the twentieth century” was lesson 1 “do not follow in advance”. Those who expect the requirements of the repressive government and undergo these requirements before they are submitted, wrote Snyder, “teaching much what he can do”.

Of course, Snyder is right, but his admonition is irrational by listening in advance. It’s not. In my experience, most of the time when people or institutions voluntarily proceed much, they act not so much for fear, but rather from a set of apparently reasonable arguments. These arguments tend to fall into one or more of the five categories.

First, the argument of responsibility for mothers. In 2004, I assigned and edited an article by a man who protested against Putin’s treatment of the hostage of a crisis at a school in which more than 300 people died. I headed with the title when one of the responsible people materialized beside my table. If you publish it, he warned me, the entire publishing staff could lose a job. To the best of my knowledge, the Kremlin has never threatened or criticized the publishing house for editorial content. (The man in question now says he’s never tried to stop me.)

The great Russian sociologist Yuri Levada created the term “collective hostage” to describe this phenomenon when individuals cannot act freely because of the constant and credible threat of collective punishment. The collective hostage is particularly insidious because different sets of values ​​will face each other: for example, my boss asked me to consider the value of one article against the livelihood of hundreds of people. The article was not published.

The second argument is the argument of a higher purpose, which is a close cousin of the collective hostage. In 2012, during the winter, when More than 150,000 The Russians protested against the manipulated elections and Putin’s intention to take over the Presidency for the third term, the popular actress, Chulpan Khamat, broke ranks with liberal intelligence and came to support Putin. Khamat co -founded an organization that helped children with cancer. She faced some criticism, but said, “If it meant another hospital was built, I would do the same.” After all, her dignity was a small price for saving the life of children.

I suspect that some US hospitals who cease to translate young people use similar logic: serve their patients to protect their federal financing – although it means that they will cease to serve another group of patients.

Another comes pragmatic argument. Rational people do not stand out basically because of the principle. They choose their battles. Or this argument goes. Perhaps it was a logic that led the greatest private donor of biomedical research in the country stop A Diversity Program of $ 60 million, aimed at canceling your DEI or ABC reports to resolve Trump’s lawsuit for honor. As this argument sounds, it is also rooted in the values ​​and obligations to others – shareholders, business partners, clients.

There is also an argument IF-I-do-it-audaone-else-Will. A few years ago, several journalists who fled Russia in fear of their lives took the task of making a video that I looked like, and many others like pure Russian propaganda. When I asked them why they did it, they replied that someone would do it anyway – and needed money. The rejection of the task would not change anything, so why not? Perhaps it is the logic of the highest lawyer companies that tried to hire Trump loyalists and otherwise stood up as the allies of the new administration. Perhaps it is also the logic of the Democrats of the Senate who voted for Trump’s Cabinet candidates: the nominated ones would be confirmed anyway, so these senators could also support support in their attacked states.

In the end we have the argument of the Zeitgeists. “We are now in the new era,” Zuckerberg said when he announced that the meta would end his facts checking program. Companies should have more “male energy” and have a “culture that celebrates aggression”, he added a few days later and talked about the podcast Joe Rogan. This kind of argument is the very definition of rational. Society defines common sense as corresponding to dominant beliefs and culture. In totalitarian societies, cultural and intellectual rebels are often limited to psychiatric institutions. In the Soviet Union, dissidents were often diagnosed as mad – and they were according to the standards of this society.

There are many good reasons to adapt to novice dictators, and only one of the reasons not: predictive obedience is a key building block of their strength. The 20th century autocracy relied on mass terror. Those out of 21. Often it does not have it; Their objects will be submitted voluntarily.

But as soon as autocracy gains power, it will come for many people who have quite rationally tried to protect themselves and their business. This boss from the publishing house now lives in exile, as well as an actress. Of course, many people, including wealthy entrepreneurs, still live in Putin’s Russia. However, they found that to keep themselves and their business safe, they had to advance more and more money and more and more to the regime – the regime they helped build. If obedience was detained in advance, an autocracy could not be built, which now controls almost every aspect of their lives and their businesses.

A few weeks to the second term of Trump, it may feel as if we were already living in an irreversibly changed country. Yet my parents, who belonged to the second generation of people born under Soviet totalitarism – never knew another society and their own parents – experienced a moment of recognition when they saw this scene in the “cabaret”, the moment when a new, dark era seized. My mother died more than 30 years ago, so I can’t ask her where this recognition came. All I know is that it was obvious to maintain the feeling of facts and values ​​- not only to follow in advance, but not to listen at all. If it were possible in the Soviet Union half a century ago, then it is certainly possible in the United States.

M. Gessen is a publicist for The Times. In 2024 they won the George Polk Award for writing. They are the author of 11 books, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclated Russia”, which won the National Book Award in 2017.

The Times is determined to publish the diversity of letters editor. We would like to hear what you think of this or some of our articles. Here are some Tips. And here’s our e -mail: Letters@nytimes.com.

Follow the New York Times views section Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, WhatsApp, X and Fibers.