DOCSLIB.ORG

Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation Journal of Design and Science • Issue 6: Unreal Unreality and Social Corrosion: Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation Ethan Zuckerman, Masha Gessen Published on: Jul 19, 2019 DOI: 10.21428/7808da6b.9ee0ae50 License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0) Journal of Design and Science • Issue 6: Unreal Unreality and Social Corrosion: Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation Masha Gessen is a journalist and the author of ten books of nonfiction, most recently The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which won the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Gessen is also the author of the national bestseller The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012). Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a national fellow with New America Foundation. JoDS guest editor Ethan Zuckerman directs the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and teaches at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Writing program and at MIT’s Media Lab where he is associate professor of the practice. The author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, Zuckerman researches and writes about technology and social change, social media and the future of democracy. Masha and Ethan met at Masha’s home in New York City on May 20, 2019 to discuss the role of Unreality in the evolution of contemporary politics, the relevance of the Russian experience to understanding politics in the US, and whether the left is engaging in conspiratorial thinking in blaming Russia for Donald Trump’s election. Along the way Masha and Ethan also explored the idea that many Soviet dissidents may have been on the autism spectrum, the loneliness that arises when conventional politics is abandoned and, with just a bit of hope, the idea that an appreciation for complexity coupled with the power of clear vision might help the world find a way through its current mess. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Ethan Zuckerman: This issue of JoDS explores what happens if politics becomes not about persuading someone that your interpretation of the facts is true, but persuading someone that the facts are other than what they are. By essentially constructing your own reality with these facts you are actually creating unreality. I want to understand the impact on society of this journey into the unreal. You brought ideas about unreality to the table in a talk you gave at the Media Lab’s Defiance event two years ago. You very cautiously said, “Conspiracy theory is always about oversimplification. It’s always about making the world less complicated than it is.” The danger now is that the left is oversimplifying as well as the right. Look at the whole Russiagate delusion; there’s yet another conspiracy theory within it. It seems to me that in this style of politics the idea of reality itself is up for grabs. Delusional politics, as I’ll call it, seems to have started in Russia and has spread into Central Europe. We see some of it surrounding the debate with Ukraine, and we can argue that the rise of illiberal 2 Journal of Design and Science • Issue 6: Unreal Unreality and Social Corrosion: Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation democracy and nationalism in Hungary and Poland also fit into it. If, in trying to trace this style of discourse to Russia, am I buying into yet another conspiracy theory or is there really something there? Masha Gessen: Oh, wow, that’s a really great question. I think I would answer it in two ways. First, one of the catchphrases I tend to use is, “just because there’s a conspiracy that’s no excuse for conspiracy thinking.” I use this phrase because I believe conspiracy thinking is destructive to our thinking in general, and no conspiracy is so good that it explains everything. Even if there is a conspiracy, and I mean with Russia we know that there was stuff, but it just doesn’t explain what happened to us. Those two things—Russian interference and the rise of Trump independent of Russia—can exist at the same time. Second, I think that looking at Russia as a case study in conspiracy thinking is really, really useful. But looking at Russia as a cause of that kind of thinking is probably not terribly useful because the cause of that kind of thinking, that kind of politics, is humanity. I don’t believe Russia is the birthplace of that anti-political impulse. I mean, we’ve seen it elsewhere, and certainly in the 20th century we saw it repeatedly. I don’t know if we ever really saw it before the 20th century. I think that idea is described by Hannah Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. So I think the answer to your question is yes, there is a conspiracy theory and yes, there’s something real there. And as a case study Russia is incredibly useful. Ethan: Okay. Let’s look at Russia as causing this moment for us. Now, giving away too much agency to Vladimir Putin is not helpful. You’ve pointed out that Putin may be smarter than Donald Trump, but that’s setting the bar fairly low. I’m curious to know if this style of competing realities is something that you experienced when you were reporting within Russia. Masha: Oh yes. Ethan: Can you give me an example of where you found yourself encountering this notion of leaders shaping reality rather than shaping interpretation? Masha: A very good example of course is Ukraine, and I’ve written about this. Because I think it’s such a great example of what Putin does, and it’s related to how he instrumentalizes lying. Russian leaders kept saying, “There are no Russian troops in Ukraine.” There was, if you remember, in the summer and fall of 2014, an ongoing debate in various circles about whether there were in fact Russian troops in Ukraine. This is quite extraordinary because we were actually having a debate about physical reality; about whether actual human beings in actual uniforms were actually riding on tanks in Ukraine. 3 Journal of Design and Science • Issue 6: Unreal Unreality and Social Corrosion: Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation Ethan: We saw statements like, “We don’t know who these people are. Perhaps they bought the uniforms at surplus.” Masha: Exactly. Then, in the spring of 2016 I think it was, Putin suddenly said, “Of course there are Russian troops in Ukraine. Of course. What are you, idiots?” Well, yes we’ve known all along that there are Russian troops in Ukraine, but you were saying there weren’t. He didn’t actually say this, but if I were to role-play it I’d say he might as well have said, “What are you, an idiot?” He knew they were there, so what if I said it? It all has that surreal feeling of trying to reason with a bully in a schoolyard who is holding your lunchbox. You say, “Give me my lunchbox.” They say, “I don’t have your lunchbox.” You say, “It’s in your right hand.” They say, “There’s nothing in my right hand.” Then you look around for witnesses because that’s the only way to validate what you’re experiencing. You want someone to whom you can say, “You can see, right, that he’s got my lunchbox in his left hand now?” But there’s nobody there. Ethan: One of the things you seemed to be suggesting about finding witnesses — and again, I re- watched your Defiance talk and I’ve read some of the pieces that have been written on this — is when we are paying attention to the Russiagate conspiracy we’re not paying attention to the other ways in which Russia is continuing to be abusive of global human rights, invading and occupying sovereign territory. We’re still dealing with a situation where a large chunk of Ukraine is being occupied by Russia. You referenced Hannah Arendt, and I wonder whether she gives us a way to think about this. In The Origins of Totalitarianism she talks about the idea that when you’re made to support a falsehood, it’s a way of showing your obeisance to the leader. You have to somehow admit that he is sophisticated and knowledgeable in a way that you’re not, and there’s a reason why he can’t tell you now that the troops are in Ukraine, but then later he says it was his master plan after all. Some of my writing for this issue focuses on QAnon, which is perhaps the most extreme of these different conspiracy theories, but QAnon loves the phrase “three dimensional chess.” They love to front the idea that Trump is playing a more sophisticated game than we could possibly understand. Is this part of Putin’s approach as well? Is this about flaunting power by blatantly lying? Or is it about trying to make him look even smarter than he is by making it clear that sometimes he has to lie to us for our own good? Masha: I think there are elements of both. And I think I would still analyze them through the lens of power because acknowledging that the leader is going to feed you reality as they see fit is also acknowledging that it’s the only available reality. That’s how power is consolidated. I think that’s what Arendt writes about; that you enter into the agreement of “I’m going to inhabit this reality with you 4 Journal of Design and Science • Issue 6: Unreal Unreality and Social Corrosion: Masha Gessen and Ethan Zuckerman in Conversation because inhabiting two realities at the same time is untenable.” It’s very hard on me to live in my personally observable reality and in your reality at the same time, so I’ll give up the struggle and go to live in your reality.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Board Committee Academic Policy Documents B5 1
    Board of Trustees of The City University of New York RESOLUTION I.B.5 TO Award an Honorary Degree at Commencement by the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism October 7, 2019 WHEREAS, journalist Masha Gessen is one of the keenest investigative reporters and observers of Russian politics and culture, as well as the present world of political life in the United States; and WHEREAS, Gessen, a staff writer at the New Yorker, is the author of ten books and countless articles for a variety of top journalistic outlets, including Slate, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, U.S. News & World Report, and The New Republic; and WHEREAS, their publications have been acknowledged with numerous awards, fellowships and other honors, including the 2017 National Book Award for The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia; and WHEREAS, the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism is committed to serving the public interest by cultivating the next generation of skilled, ethically minded, and diverse journalists, and Gessen represents the values to which the Newmark J-School holds true, and to which we hope our graduates aspire; and WHEREAS, in granting this degree, the Newmark J-School will recognize Gessen's extensive contributions to our understanding of Russia and the importance of free expression through insightful and provocative books, essays, and articles; and WHEREAS, the honorary degree will also recognize their commitment to a robust democratic life, an informed electorate, and an active fourth estate; and WHEREAS, with the Newmark's J-School's emphasis on investigative reporting and the importance of strong journalism that stands up to tyranny, Gessen is an ideal candidate for the first-ever honorary CUNY degree from the J-School NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY award Masha Gessen the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, at the school’s commencement ceremony on December 13, 2019.
    [Show full text]
  • March 18, 2014
    March 18, 2014 Student Highlight Faculty Updates Mazal Collection in the News Russian-A merican Journalist & A ctivist Masha Gessen Comes to CU East European Jewish A ffairs Journal Embodied Judaism Symposium Online Resources and Scholarships for Students On Campus & A round Town Student Highlight... Chelsea is pursuing a minor in Jewish Studies in addition to a major in International Affairs and a certificate in Digital Arts and Media. She first joined the Program in Jewish Studies because she wanted to incorporate genocide and religious studies into her broader major, and was specifically attracted to learning about gendered experiences within both the Holocaust and Judaism. We would like to congratulate Chelsea on recently being awarded the 2014 Jacob Van Ek S cholar Award! An outstanding student, this past year, Chelsea has also received the Wrenn Scholarship from the Boulder Chapter of the United Nations Association and the Ripple Award from the Dennis Small Cultural Center. During her time at CU, Chelsea has served as a member of the Jewish Studies Student Advisory Board, was the co-president of Hillel, played for CU's Women's Rugby team, served on CUSG and Student Outreach Retention Center for Equity (SORCE), and was on the KVCU Radio 1190 Task Force. Chelsea also works for the CU Recreation Center. This past summer 2013, Chelsea completed the CU in D.C. summer session, interning with Women's Action for New Directions and the Women Legislators' Lobby in Washington, DC. She worked particularly on women's advocacy and defense budget issues, as well as nuclear policies.
    [Show full text]
  • Autocracy: Rules for Survival | by Masha Gessen | NYR Daily
    Autocracy: Rules for Survival Masha Gessen “Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.” That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday. Instead, she said, resignedly, We must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. We don’t just respect that. We cherish it. It also enshrines the rule of law; the principle [that] we are all equal in rights and dignity; freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them. Hours later, President Barack Obama was even more conciliatory: We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country. The peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. And over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world….We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team.
    [Show full text]
  • Russia: Background and U.S
    Russia: Background and U.S. Policy Updated August 21, 2017 Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov R44775 Russia: Background and U.S. Policy Summary Over the last five years, Congress and the executive branch have closely monitored and responded to new developments in Russian policy. These developments include the following: increasingly authoritarian governance since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidential post in 2012; Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and support of separatists in eastern Ukraine; violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; Moscow’s intervention in Syria in support of Bashar al Asad’s government; increased military activity in Europe; and cyber-related influence operations that, according to the U.S. intelligence community, have targeted the 2016 U.S. presidential election and countries in Europe. In response, the United States has imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions related to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Syria, malicious cyber activity, and human rights violations. The United States also has led NATO in developing a new military posture in Central and Eastern Europe designed to reassure allies and deter aggression. U.S. policymakers over the years have identified areas in which U.S. and Russian interests are or could be compatible. The United States and Russia have cooperated successfully on issues such as nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, support for military operations in Afghanistan, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, the International Space Station, and the removal of chemical weapons from Syria. In addition, the United States and Russia have identified other areas of cooperation, such as countering terrorism, illicit narcotics, and piracy.
    [Show full text]
  • WHEN CIVILIANS ARE TARGETS What Will It Take to Stop the Carnage?
    Winners of the Overseas Press Club Awards 2017 Annual Edition DATELINE WHEN CIVILIANS ARE TARGETS What will it take to stop the carnage? DATELINE 2017 1 President’s Letter / dEIdRE dEPkE here is a theme to our gathering tonight at the 78th entries, narrowing them to our 22 winners. Our judging process was annual Overseas Press Club Gala, and it’s not an easy one. ably led by Scott Kraft of the Los Our work as journalists across the globe is under Angeles Times. Sarah Lubman headed our din- unprecedented and frightening attack. Since the conflict in ner committee, setting new records TSyria began in 2011, 107 journalists there have been killed, according the for participation. She was support- Committee to Protect Journalists. That’s more members of the press corps ed by Bill Holstein, past president of the OPC and current head of to die than were lost during 20 years of war in Vietnam. In the past year, the OPC Foundation’s board, and our colleagues also have been fatally targeted in Iraq, Yemen and Ukraine. assisted by her Brunswick colleague Beatriz Garcia. Since 2013, the Islamic State has captured or killed 11 journalists. Almost This outstanding issue of Date- 300 reporters, editors and photographers are being illegally detained by line was edited by Michael Serrill, a past president of the OPC. Vera governments around the world, with at least 81 journalists imprisoned Naughton is the designer (she also in Turkey alone. And at home, we have been labeled the “enemy of the recently updated the OPC logo).
    [Show full text]
  • Honoring the Recent Fallen Lt
    OCTOBER 27, 2016 1 THE OCTOBER 27, 2016 VOL. 73, NO. 42 ® UTY ONOR OUNTRY OINTER IEW D , H , C PSERVING THE U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AND THE COMMUNITY V OF WEST POINT ® Honoring the recent Fallen Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, leads the Army West Point Football team into Michie Stadium on a motorcycle donated by the father of fallen Cadet Thomas Surdyke, Oct. 22 at West Point. The custom bike commemorates three cadets (Surdyke, Mitch Winey and Brandon Jackson) and two recent graduates (2nd Lts. Mike Parros and Andrew Hunt) who have passed away this year. PHOTO BY MAJ. SCOT KEITH/USMA PAO INSIDE & #USMA Social Scene SEE PAGE 3— ONLINE SEE PAGE 12 FAMILY WEEKEND WWW . USMA . EDU WWW . POINTERVIEW . COM 2 OCTOBER 27, 2016 NEWS & FEATURES POINTER VIEW Army Football game day security message to community By Col. Andrew Hanson or after 5 p.m. game day. USAG-West Point Garrison Commander If you do stay on West Point, walking or using the game day shuttle buses to and from areas on West Point is highly Ensuring the protection of our Soldiers, Cadets, family encouraged. members and Civilian employees is the priority at West Road closures on game day: Point. 1.) Starting at 6 a.m., Mills Road, from Herbert Hall to Army Football home games pose certain challenges for Stony Lonesome Road, will be closed. Only those vehicles everyone on West Point and we want to ensure our garrison with a proper vehicle exception pass, or under Military and community know of our game day force protection Police escort are allowed access around Michie Stadium.
    [Show full text]
  • BASEES Sampler
    R O U T L E D G E . TAYLOR & FRANCIS Slavonic & East European Studies A Chapter and Journal Article Sampler www.routledge.com/carees3 Contents Art and Protest in Putin's Russia by Laurien 1 Crump Introduction Freedom of Speech in Russia edited by Piotr 21 Dutkiewicz, Sakwa Richard, Kulikov Vladimir Chapter 8: The Putin regime: patrimonial media The Capitalist Transformation of State 103 Socialism by David Lane Chapter 11: The move to capitalism and the alternatives Europe-Asia Studies 115 Identity in transformation: Russian speakers in Post- Soviet Ukrane by Volodymyr Kulyk Post-Soviet Affairs 138 The logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia, Ukraine, and the conflict in Donbas by Tatyana Malyarenko and Stefan Wolff 20% Discount Available Enjoy a 20% discount across our entire portfolio of books. Simply add the discount code FGT07 at the checkout. Please note: This discount code cannot be combined with any other discount or offer and is only valid on print titles purchased directly from www.routledge.com. www.routledge.com/carees4 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group. Not for distribution. 1 Introduction It was freezing cold in Moscow on 24 December 2011 – the day of the largest mass protest in Russia since 1993. A crowd of about 100 000 people had gathered to protest against electoral fraud in the Russian parliamentary elections, which had taken place nearly three weeks before. As more and more people joined the demonstration, their euphoria grew to fever pitch. Although the 24 December demonstration changed Russia, the period of euphoria was tolerated only until Vladimir Putin was once again installed as president in May 2012.
    [Show full text]
  • Discourse in Danger: Attacks on Free Expression in Putin's Russia
    DISCOURSE IN DANGER ATTACKS ON FREE EXPRESSION IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA DISCOURSE IN DANGER: ATTACKS ON FREE EXPRESSION IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA January 25, 2016 © PEN American Center 2016. All rights reserved. PEN American Center is the largest branch of PEN International, the world’s leading literary and human rights organization. PEN works in more than 100 countries to protect free expression and to defend writers and journalists who are imprisoned, threatened, persecuted, or attacked in the course of their profession. PEN America’s 4,300 members stand together with more than 20,000 PEN writers worldwide in international literary fellowship to carry on the achievements of such past members as James Baldwin, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck. For more information, please visit www.pen.org. Cover photography by Sergey Norin CONTENTS Introduction 4 Overview and Methodology 5 Legal Framework 6 Regulating the Information Space: Roskomnadzor 9 Shaping Children’s Minds 16 Closing Intellectual and Cultural Spaces 19 Reining In Civil Society 22 Conclusion: Navigating the Closing Space 24 Acknowledgments 26 Appendix 1: PEN American Center Letter to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. 27 Appendix 2: Response from Russian Embassy to PEN Request for Comment 28 Endnotes 32 INTRODUCTION Freedom of expression has been one of the worst casu- alties of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 15-year as- Putin has seized upon sault on democratic institutions and values. When Putin first came to power in 2000, he began systematically to information as a key dismantle, weaken, or fundamentally undermine dem- ocratic institutions, beginning with the press.1 Despite weapon in his fight this frontal attack on the media, some independent voic- es in traditional media remained strong and the rise in to promote Russia’s internet access and social media allowed independent online resources to flourish, including internet news sites, blogs, and social media sites.
    [Show full text]
  • Extending Russia Competing from Advantageous Ground
    Extending Russia Competing from Advantageous Ground James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams C O R P O R A T I O N For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR3063 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-1-9774-0021-5 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2019 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Cover: Pete Soriano/Adobe Stock Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface This report documents research and analysis conducted as part of the RAND Corporation research project Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff G-8, Headquarters, Department of the Army.
    [Show full text]
  • BOOKS of the MOMENT SAMPLER Dark Money by Jane Mayer: BUY
    BOOKS OF THE MOMENT SAMPLER Dark Money by Jane Mayer: BUY HERE The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt: BUY HERE Black Flags by Joby Warrick: BUY HERE American Lion by Jon Meacham: BUY HERE Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: BUY HERE Black Earth by Timothy Snyder: BUY HERE Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: BUY HERE Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult: BUY HERE The Man Without A Face by Masha Gessen: BUY HERE Weaponized Lies by Daniel J. Levitin: BUY HERE White Trash by Nancy Isenberg: BUY HERE The Very Good Gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper: BUY HERE For even more books in the news, browse through Signature’s roundup: Books and the Bully Pulpit: What the World is Reading and Why. Dark Money by Jane Mayer CHAPTER ONE Radicals: A Koch Family History Oddly enough, the fiercely libertarian Koch family owed part of its fortune to two of history’s most infamous dictators, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. The family patriarch, Fred Chase Koch, founder of the family oil business, developed lucrative business relationships with both of their regimes in the 1930s. According to family lore, Fred Koch was the son of a Dutch printer and publisher who settled in the small town of Quanah, Texas, just south of the Oklahoma border, where he owned a weekly newspaper and print shop. Quanah, which was named for the last American Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, still retained its frontier aura when Fred was born there in 1900. Bright and eager to get out from under his overbearing old-world father, Fred once ran away to live with the Comanches as a boy.
    [Show full text]
  • How People Make Sense of Trump and Why It Matters for Racial Justice
    Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 8, No.1/2, 2018, pp. 107-136. How People Make Sense of Trump and Why It Matters for Racial Justice Will Penman Doug Cloud+ Scholars, journalists, pundits and others have criticized the racist, anti-queer, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xeno- phobic rhetoric that pervades the Trump campaign and presidency. At the same time, commentators have expended a vast number of words analyzing Trump’s character: why does he do the things he does? We ask, how do the latter (analyses of Trump’s character) help explain the former (Trump’s racist statements)? Through a close rhetorical analysis of 50 diverse examples of Trump criticism, we reveal four prevailing characterizations or “archetypes” of Trump: Trump the Acclaim-Seeker, Trump the Sick Man, Trump the Authoritarian, and Trump the Idiot. Each arche- type explains Trump’s racism in a different way, with significant consequences for social critique. For example, the Trump the Idiot archetype dismisses his racist statements as a series of terrible gaffes, whereas Trump the Authori- tarian explains them as an actualization of white supremacy. We trace the benefits and tradeoffs of each archetype for resisting white supremacy. Keywords: Donald Trump, white supremacy, identity, rhetoric, archetypes Read enough critiques of Donald Trump—the president and the candidate—and you’re likely to be struck by three things: 1) there are a great many of them, 2) they expend significant effort analyzing Trump’s character as a way of explaining why he does what he does, and 3) they are repetitive—certain characterizations surface over and over and become familiar as explanations (e.g., the idea that Trump does what he does because he is an incompetent idiot).
    [Show full text]
  • Durham Research Online
    Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 22 June 2018 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Steinberg, P. and Page, S. and Ditmer, J. and G¤okariksel, B. and Smith, S. and Ingram, A. and Koch, N. (2018) 'Reassessing the Trump presidency, one year on.', Political geography., 62 . pp. 207-215. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.10.010 Publisher's copyright statement: c 2017 This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Introduction Philip E. Steinberg In the weeks leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, Political Geography received two unsolicited guest editorials opining on the surging popularity of Donald Trump and, more broadly, the movement that he represented.
    [Show full text]