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.