In uncertain times, aspiring autocrats promise a return to greatness, while reaching for more power and permanence. In 'Surviving Autocracy,' Russian-American Masha Gessen suggests this is President Trump's strategy, modeling himself after Vladimir Putin.
Americans are suddenly consumed with multiple crises. Even before the outbreak of social unrest following yet another African American's death in police custody, the ravages of COVID-19 and economic freefall had disrupted the national life.
For many readers, comparing an elected American president to a Russian dictator is simply beyond the pale. But if the comparison seemed strained a week ago, it seems less so on the morning after Trump dressed down the governors of the affected states and brandished the threat of federal troops taking over their streets.
Brought to New York by immigrating parents in the early 1980s, Gessen returned to this birthplace on journalistic assignment a decade later. Gessen then spent most of the next 20 years as a writer, editor and activist in post-Soviet Russia, observing the rise of the former KGB officer who now holds that nation's highest office.
"The first three years [of Trump's term] have shown that an autocratic attempt in the U.S. has credible chance of succeeding," Gessen writes."Worse than that, they have shown that an autocratic attempt builds logically on the structures and norms of American government; on the concentration of power in the executive branch, and on the marriage of money and politics."
Gessen is also exercised about the change Trump has wrought in the perception of reality. In a chapter entitled"The Power Lie," Gessen explains the difference between an ordinary lie that may"collapse in the face of facts" and"the Trumpian lie."
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