Politics of the Past, Politics of the Future

M. Gessen graced the stage of Campbell Hall on April 14, speaking to an audience of mainly gray-haired, lifelong learners that nearly filled the auditorium. As a part of UC Santa Barbara’s Arts & Lectures series, Gessen discussed not just how autocrats rise to power, but how they stay there, and how to resist.

Gessen is a Russian-American journalist who is a New York Times columnist, distinguished professor, and author of 11 books. Gessen, who uses they/them pronouns, has a clear-eyed style of dissecting convoluted systems of power — often authoritarian or totalitarian in nature — allowing readers and listeners to understand how repressive leaders take hold. Over their career, the political thinker has been very vocal about LGBTQ rights, Putin’s leadership of Russia, the Gaza war, and the rise of Donald Trump.

Before the event started, attendees were sharing their excitement, buzzing about their favorite of Gessen’s books. At the beginning of the talk, Gessen asked to keep the house lights on, as they would like to see who they were speaking to: an almost full house with guests such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Very early in the lecture, Gessen referenced Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. In this book, Fromm describes two types of freedom: freedom from (not having restriction) and freedom to (the ability to choose one’s own fate).

“People feel scared to invent their own future,” and authoritarian leaders take advantage of this by offering “to bring you back to an imaginary past,” said Gessen.

When people subscribe to this past oriented politics, they “willingly hand over their own freedom,” allowing those in power to decide what their future will look like.

By drawing parallels between Putin’s Russia, the efforts of Polish and Czech dissidents in the 1960s, and Israel’s occupation of Gaza, Gessen stressed that the Trump administration’s actions are both a continuation of authoritarian tendencies, and also an aberration.

Gessen also pulled thoughts from a lecture by a psychologist of criminology which was aimed to help prosecutors that represent victims of trafficking understand the relationship between the trafficker and the trafficked.

In this type of relationship, the trafficker convinces their victim that they have a special bond, one that others can’t, and won’t, understand. “Listen to how Trump talks to his supporters,” said Gessen.

Another tactic of traffickers is to keep their victims in a state of “low-level dread” through administering unpredictable and unfulfillable demands. This emotional state allows those being controlled to still carry out basic functions, but occupies their mind so that they cannot create a vision of the future, keeping them stuck managing the present and dreading the past.

“It is impossible to think,” in this state of low-level dread, said Gessen.

To Gessen, this sounded exactly like how autocrats manage the populations they rule, allowing them to stay in power. They drew a direct connection to Stalin’s Five-Year Plan, which aimed to rapidly industrialize the USSR. The plan installed ambitious “growth quotas” to be fulfilled by citizens, and not meeting them was a crime. “Nobody could do it, so no one did it,” said Gessen. This made everyone an outlaw, “anybody could be punished at any time.”

“Thats how terror works,” said Gessen. But fortunately, “we are not there yet in this country.”

Gessen provided two caveats: Immigrants in the U.S. are already living in a state of terror, as well as trans Americans living in Kansas after the state legislature immediately invalidated drivers licenses and amended birth certificates that do not match assigned sex at birth.

But what made this talk sing was that Gessen not only eloquently laid out a framework of how and why American society ended up with the Trump administration, but they also presented a way to fight against it.

Instead of being fearful of Fromm’s “freedom to,” Gessen says those who want to resist should lean into this freedom, and actively build “a working model of the future.”

Gessen argued that anti-Trump politics is past oriented, just like the politics that Trump uses himself. This system “does not work,” and instead offered that actively engaging in planning for a better future, one that is more inclusive and benefits more folks than past models, is the way out.

“Joining in organizing movements will keep you sane,” said Gessen, adding that when people are united by desire, they form trust and unity, which then can be used to challenge autocratic repression.