Michał Sutowski: Just after the U.S. presidential election, “New York Times commentator Michelle Goldberg wrote:“ Trump’s first choice may have seemed like a specified luck, a comparatively sad accident caused by the complacency of the Democrats. But this year, forces representing liberal pluralism and simple civic decency have engaged everything they could. And they lost, not only in the electorate college, but most likely besides in the general vote."
Today, we know, I will just say that by far besides in the general vote. "American voters, knowing who Trump is, voted for him. It turned out to be who we truly are." Was this a landmark minute for Americans as a political nation? And in your opinion, on November 7, did something irreparable, irrevocable happen in the United States?
Arlie Russel Hochschild: Few things about politics are truly irrevocable and irreversible, but I agree with Michelle Goldberg that it was a breakthrough – although many people in the US do not see it. I have the impression that we are in a situation of double denial. On the left, many people have long denied the fact that Trump voters are: they were assumed to be any irrational fools, that they are and will pass away, due to the fact that what reason do they have for real discontent?
On the right, the fact that a fascist was voted is not accepted. The speakers in my latest book convinced me: we request a freak who'll yet clean up. He'll just take immigration, lead the economy straight. They underestimated all the conspicuous evidence that Trump is just a fascist.. So first, we must face both of these contradictions.
Marci Shore: I surely believe that this was a breakthrough and the words of the writer "New York Times" are very close to me. But I don't think it's an irreversible process, due to the fact that people can change. 1 of the most optimistic discoveries that researchers have made late in Ukraine was not that Ukrainians have always tended to democracy and liberalism, but precisely the fact that this society has grown and changed in fresh decades, especially in fresh years. Something like this gives me hope – the fact that people change and societies also, especially in dark times.
So I don't think anything is set up for eternity, but I'm beautiful certain this is simply a breakthrough, it didn't happen by accident. In 2016, due to the fact that I'm a neurotic disaster, I was very worried, but I didn't think that would happen. I panicked, but I inactive believed Hillary Clinton had to win. And so, there was large complacency at the time – something as outrageous as choosing Trump as president seemed unthinkable.
This time it was something to think about. And this time too, people were mobilized, engaged, acted. We can discuss specified mistakes or another mistakes, but there was no talk of self-confidence.
The Americans truly had quite a few time to realize who Trump was, which wasn't hard to realize due to the fact that he talked about it day by day. There is simply a word in many Slavic languages, specified as “disunion”, a situation where nothing remains behind the veil. It was clear and apparent how violent, repulsive, misogynistic, sexist and racist he was.
In another words, it's not like people didn't know something. Unlike prof. Hochschild, I am not an American, and my intellectual interests have been focused on east Europe for almost a career. And erstwhile I became a historian of this region in the 1990s, erstwhile the archives were just opening, it was incredibly appealing time. You could be the first individual to see papers locked so far. I felt so guilty then, like I was in the last chapter. Cache Tales.
As you may recall, the position changes suddenly. We come out of the dystopian part of Margaret Atwood's story, there's a leap in time. And here we are at a conference, where historians sit very calmly, a small without passion discussing this totalitarian hell that has long passed. And they have this luxury of peace and deficiency of emotion, due to the fact that they look back, they effort to be objective, someway relativize the full situation by knowing that another era belongs to another ways of acting. This painting is rather ghastly, but at the same time it accurately describes the condition of professional historians and historians. With the best intentions, we effort to reconstruct things and not become emotionally involved. Well, I had this feeling that I was in the last chapter. Cache Tales And now I feel like I'm in the mediate of it.
Professor Hochschild in Lost Pride He writes about an interesting phenomenon that someway affects political dynamics in the US and it involves the concept of shame. Here are Democrats who perceive to Trump's words – all these outrageous things, insults, racist epithets – and respond with outrage, condemnation and effort to embarrass him. And then they halt listening, for that they begin to perceive to Republican elections: he expresses outrage and regret that he is criticized and embarrassed by the full establishment that beet, cham, misogin and racist. And then it unwinds, it attacks these shamers – and with this part of the message its supporters can perfectly identify themselves. With being embarrassed and angry about it. But why precisely is this shame so spectacularly failing as a critical tool for Democrats – and it is so stimulating to the another side?
Arlie Russel Hochschild: Because shame is like fuel. For the last 3 decades, a class of white workers, 42 percent of Americans, have been economically sliding down, in terms of wages and property, and suffered a full scope of social consequences. More of them live alone, worse with health, more “death from despair”, more addictions. Not only in absolute numbers and not only in comparison to whites with higher education, surviving in the alleged blue states, so dominated by Democrats, where the chances of surviving are better. due to the fact that what's more, the worse it gets, even against the background of blacks who competed from a much poorer level, but inactive their situation improves somehow.
Such Trump voters are so downsetting both in absolute and comparative terms – and this produces a peculiar approach to politics, according to which "no organization speaks to us". And nothing will change. That's why they turn to a charismatic leader. Reading Max Weber, we will realize the difference between the bureaucratic and rational leader, like Joe Biden, who says, "Don't look at me, look at what I've done," and the charismatic leader who says, "Don't look at what I've done, look at me, look at my magic qualities, I'll pull you all out of your hole."
To make matters worse, my colleagues Stealth pride They take a double punch: they are very arrogant and very individualistic. Their culture of pride makes them think: how successful I am, it's my fault, if I fail, it's all due to me and a reason for shame. I call it a paradox of pride: the people who got hit on the head economically are the same people who blame themselves most. At the same time, there are people surviving in "blue" states who have both better chances of surviving and more contextual, environmental culture of pride. You could say they did their sociology lesson. Trump treated his supporters like coal from these ruined mining Appalachian towns: he understood how crucial he was, searched for him, brought him to the surface and converted him to fuel.
He reworked through that ritual?
Yeah. minute one: Trump says Haitian immigrants eat cats and dogs. minute two: commentators compose how gross and pathetic it is not allowed, it's not actual why you lie. minute three: Trump is simply a victim of his critics. How terrible, you can't say anything, 'cause they'll choke, bite... You know that, don't you, folks? They besides mock you, make you ashamed of what you say and what you say, for who you are. I take on all your shame. And fourth, we're not going to give up, damn them, out with all of them, I'm going to get them!
And that's the ritual, week after week, day after day. In has an emotional logic that liberals don't understand, they don't hear. They think he's just giving tirades, throwing insults... Therefore, my book is kind of an invitation to become bilingual to perceive to what is rational, but besides to be delicate to the logic of emotion.
Marci Shore: I like this carbon metaphor very much, just like the metaphor of noticing, tuning – due to the fact that it is powerfully intertwined with something I have been obsessing about since 2016. due to the fact that since then we have not been able to capture phenomena in liberal-rational terms. Looking back, I conclude that Obama had this tragic flaw, that he was a man of enlightenment, a man of the university, talked to scientists, and truly believed in reason. He thought, for example, that okay, we might have different feelings about abortion, but everyone can agree that reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to their interruption is in everyone's interest, right? So we can sit together and think about how to increase access to contraception and sexual education? On the another hand, he was completely unprepared for irrationality. He truly thought that utilizing reason he could aid people realize their enlightened same - interest in cooperation. In my opinion, it was completely sincere, and that is what the full Enlightenment doctrine is based on. However, it turns out that enlightened reason is only on the surface of existence, for all the reasons that Freud has shown or earlier Dostoevsky: due to the fact that what if I do not want to be reasonable? Like in The notes from the underground... What if it doesn't satisfy me?
In 2016, before the election, I heard people say Trump was attractive due to the fact that he's so real, honest... And I thought, well, that's very interesting, due to the fact that honesty isn't about the convergence between what he's saying and empirical reality, due to the fact that there's no specified convergence. However, I felt that I was just observing what Freud told us in Culture as a origin of Suffering. It's about liberation from repression. Now you can say anything, there is no shame. You see a female on the street, you want to rape her – come on, say it. That's okay!
Freud says yes, it's actual liberation. And we only gotta pay for them a modest price to destruct civilization – and it is this modest price that we pay today. I think the Liberals never truly understood what Freud was trying to tell us, and Carl E writes very well about it. Schorske in the book Fin-de-siècle Vienna 1979. They thought that 1 could usage reason all the time – only that reason did not exhaust the condition of an existential man, so they crashed against the wall. And this is 1 of those leads we've seen in history.
By the way of history, the word “fascism” and “fascist” have been spoken respective times. And prof. Hochschild, and prof. Shore usage this concept; Jason Stanley's book How Fascism Works, describing Trump's policy among another things, was created even in Marci's kitchen in fresh Haven. But if we are comfortable with this concept, this historical analogy, possibly we should effort to point out any affirmative inspirations, any sources of hope that would consequence from the experience of opposition to fascism – and that could be applied today?
I'll start by saying that nothing is always the same as anything else. We usage these terms, more or little abstract, whether imperialism, colonialism, genocide, fascism – to be able to someway mediate between what is individual and what is universal. They're kind of like those Kantowski concepts that put glasses on our noses to aid us process radically dispersed reality data. In another words, although no 2 cases are precisely the same, calling them a single concept gives us a useful cognitive tool. Another thing: in real life we can't do a survey on the control group, there's no way to rewind it and play the scene again to isolate those variables that are liable for causality. And now about fascism: yes, I have this neurotic feeling of disaster.
One of the most beautiful and sad things I've read lately was Joel Grey's thought, who played the master of the ceremony in a wonderful movie Cabaret. He's now in his 90s, and he said something like this that we've truly seen this movie before and unfortunately we know how it ends. As to where to look for hope in this communicative – as we think of 1945 as a year of triumph over fascism, it would mean a full reset. So the full planet would gotta look different: global order, the end of Putin's regime... We won't have those conditions. But the conditions of the past can never be replicated exactly.
As for the sources of hope, looking at everything that's been happening lately, I inactive remember the different moments in the past of Soldiarity and the past of Majdan. Not so much due to the fact that it was then that 1 or another violent gangster was overthrown, as long as they were moments of revelation, comparatively exposing the fact that we human beings have the ability to become better. Even if not often, the very fact that we can afford moments of generosity, solidarity and commitment to values, even if it is simply a flash of the moment, gives us hope.
The feminist movement in Belarus was besides highly inspiring – and most likely not rather noticed. I had a feeling that this was the kind of feminism that we needed, not just about women entering the roles of men in the first place, but about changing a vertical model of relationship, based on a distinction: who's on top and who's down there, where strength is both abuse and violence, to any horizontal model in which care about each another is important. possibly it sounds like it came out of Polyanny, But I think that all those motherly, caring, sisterly motivations that, as we were taught in postgraduate studies, we should quit in the name of ambition and being taken seriously as intellectuals, they should become a valid norm in the public sphere, for both men and women.
Arlie Russel Hochschild: As far as this full “fascism” is concerned, I am not avoiding that word, due to the fact that John Kelly himself, a man from his close vicinity, said clearly: the man for whom I worked and to whom I was loyal meets the requirements of a definite fascist. And then 13 others in the close ellipse of Trump utilized the same word. So we can. Marci recalled the German context and the movie Cabaret: I think that the shame already mentioned present was very much liable for the vulnerability of the Germans to the charism of the leader, who said that thanks to it they would feel pride. Again! They besides lost much, humiliated them with the Treaty of Wessal and the full defeat of planet War I. They lacked food, they were humiliated – it was on these emotions that Adolf Hitler played, to a large extent. Many historians confirm this, so we must take this shame seriously.
But beyond shame and humiliation, there is besides a question of nonsubjective economical interests. For years, you could think that the Democrats in the United States had abandoned workers, focused on the educated mediate class, so the first ones didn't truly have anyone to appeal to. But Biden's administration's economical policy has already gone in a different direction – quite a few investment resources went to the "red" states, and factories were built by the alleged IRA, where graduates of art colleges liberated from the east coast are not working, just working, male, frequently white – though not only – American people. Does this mean that the people like to redistribute?
It never works by either-or. I spoke to a man from the most "white" and at the same time the second poorest constituency in the United States who told me something like this: you know, Trump came to the Apallachs 1 day and promised that we would be mining coal again. Of course there are no jobs in mining, and there are no better jobs either. He gave us taxation cuts, but they're alternatively for the rich, so in the second poorest territory in the country, it didn't aid us much. In another words, he did not deliver economically what he promised. But he gave us this feeling: I know what you're going through, I know how you fight desperately, I know how bad you fight. I'll aid you!
He appealed to the “choice of shame” and offered them pride. It gives them promises to heal the economy, different solutions, but besides something very strong that the Democratic organization cannot capture at all. Harris kept talking about mediate class and joy, but it wasn't that mood. It was like, I can't see what you're going through. I can't see what you're afraid of. And that's the visibility, the sense that individual responds to our emotions, it has the strength that we underestimate.
Marci Shore cited Obama's name and his attachment to reason, a policy based on technological evidence, rational dialogue, etc. But commentators point out something else: his legacy was the thought of organizing various number groups, discriminated against and women around the leader or leader of the Democratic Party. Only it turned out that an crucial part of the voters from these groups – especially the workers' men – had already voted for Trump. Does the Democratic organization present require any major reconfiguration, as in the mid-1960s in the days of Lyndon B. Johnson, erstwhile Democrats lost racist South but gained a civilian rights movement?
Marci Shore: Just after the election there were quite a few specified considerations: or possibly it was better to mark this or that group, focus more on this or another state – I was skeptical here. I'm not an expert on political strategy, but I had the impression that Kamala Harris had been campaigning with extraordinary energy from the very beginning, that although she didn't have much time, she was mobilizing for a 1000 percent. It was always possible to spread accents differently, to devote a half minute more on the subject, and to skip another speech at all – but something very dark happened here, why specified or another tactical maneuvers or course adjustments could not help.
Something that truly freaked me out was advertising about "secret ballots" at the end of the campaign. Michelle Obama gave an incredible speech at the time, which I would like to callback here, due to the fact that it was her second speech, which made specified a immense impression on me. The first was after Trump's celebrated video video leaked in 2016; she appeared in fresh Hampshire and spoke in specified a direct way as a female who knows what it means to be the object of sexual harassment, to be humiliated and to be afraid of assault. She grabbed it on a flight, just like Hillary Clinton surely couldn't, just due to the fact that she was from another generation. It was then that I thought of the first generation of assimilated German Jews, who would not even come to my head to draw attention to the fact that they are Jews who may besides fall victim to anti-Semitism. But Michelle Obama understood everything and it was an amazing, powerful speech. It was most likely a 2016 speech at all – and I naively believed that now it's over, after the competition. He won't get 1 vote from a single woman. due to the fact that what kind of female would vote for a rapist? I was totally wrong. He got 53 percent of the white women's vote.
And now, 8 years later, Michelle Obama went on phase talking about the price that women pay for limiting their reproductive rights and access to wellness – and that was 1 of the best feminist appearances of all time. She went into all these embarrassing, drastic details that people usually like not to talk about, especially on the political stage, with specified energy and specified expertise. You just couldn't do better. And at 1 point she said 1 thing – here I return to what frightened me so much – speaking of this vote secretly. She said to the women: remember, nobody knows who you're voting for. Know that you can vote differently from the men you live with under the same roof – they will not know. She besides said to the men: do not let us become at the expense of your anger, for we are the ones who bear these costs.
And then there were these ads, in respective versions, about a secret ballot, directed at those women who are afraid to vote differently than their partners would want: that in the voting booth no 1 would know what you would do – and that it was okay. I realize why it was a commercial, and I don't think it's a bad idea: and at the same time, it was a scene just out of my mind. Cache Tales. I was frozen by the force that was in the subtext: due to the fact that we all realize that it was a mass run aimed at women who clearly fear the men they live with. I watched it with my 12-year-old daughter, and she said, you know, Mom, first of all, these women shouldn't marry these guys at all? I was very arrogant of her, it was 1 of the large moments for me as a parent: yes, this is the basic problem that women should not marry men they fear.
But this kind of darkness that I've seen in this commercial is simply a much deeper problem than something that can be dealt with by 1 or another revision of a progressive program and political message.
Arlie Russel Hochschild: I realize what you're trying to tell us, Marci, although I have a somewhat different position with people from those villages in the Apaches. due to the fact that they besides listened to Michelle Obama's speech, and as a white working class they are besides large a group to be ignored.
Because it just so happens that most people do not even have a bachelor's degree, and in terms of social position they are on a downward slope. And erstwhile they hear those words, they say to themselves, "Yeah, yeah, women, you know." And women from there hear and say in turn: but it does not concern our problems, it is not our dilemmas.
And now, how do you get to them? In my opinion, the Democratic organization would request a large political reconfigurement by paying attention to the social class. We don't forget feminism, we don't forget race, but we decision on. We erstwhile had a labour movement, in the form of trade unions, but they simply lose their influence, including by moving jobs abroad. Today, only 9 percent of the private sector's workforce is tied together – and it was the unions that were the middleman between the working class and the Democratic Party. We request any kind of functional counterpart we're missing today.
I besides wonder how these people would respond to your association with A Cache Tale And what your daughter said that these women shouldn't even marry these guys. due to the fact that you can besides look at it from the position of a man with no chance of marriage. I feel like they're flying into a gap, they're in a deep crisis, and we can't ignore that.
They'd like to be good fathers, they'd most likely want to meet their wives, but most of them are divorced, they're addicted, and they're ashamed. 1 of them, who just came to my mind, told me the first time I met him: I'm specified a part of trash from a trailer. That means he was born in a trailer park and he's poor. He said, in a nutshell, I'm a stupid boob, and you're gonna look down at me, right? And then he added, you know, due to the fact that there are 2 narratives. I'm amazed how he uses this concept due to the fact that he's not an educated man. But he said very wisely to me that 1 communicative fits into the white mediate class: you work hard, you deal, you enter the mediate class, you can be arrogant of it, and he's fine.
And the second communicative is to black people. OK, if you're black, you're poor. And if that's the case, it's racist. You may not be arrogant of it, but no 1 makes fun of you. But what about a guy like me? What is poor, is white, is simply a man. I'm expected to be privileged as a man and as a white man. But what if I can't handle it? Well, it's not racism, is it? The reason must be within me: I'm lazy, I'm stupid, I didn't take advantage of the chances I got. So what is simply a man like that expected to do?
He is not a fan of Donald Trump, he does not believe in him specifically, but he feels that the Democratic organization is specified a gathering of different environments and organizations built on identity politics: women, you know, black people, you know, trans, lesbians and gays – and about the class not a word. And that's why I think we should regroup, and I think there's a fewer ways to do that.
What do I do? And what are your plans as intellectuals, academic teachers, political writers for the close future – in the context of what happened in the US in early November?
Arlie Russel Hochschild: As for what should have happened on the left, I think 2 things first. The first is to defend the safety and brakes against fascism: lawyers will be under fire, the university will be under fire, the position of nonprofit organizations on the left, present tax-exempted, it will all be at risk. We must prepare for this and defy this attack. Of course, I have no predisposition or skills for this, but everywhere I will repeat that those who have them deserve support. As for the fresh agreement in the Democratic Party: I will repeat that we must include members of the white working class. any of them were my interlocutors for the investigation I spoke about: they have average views on many things and can be appealed to.
I'm going back to the people I'm portraiting in my latest book, discussing with them, giving them books, and now they're talking to each other. late I had a distant conversation with 1 of them, a staunch supporter of Trump and the leader of east Kentucky Patriots – part of this group was in Washington on January 6, 2021. They were not breaking into the building, but supporting their leader. This man felt that God himself had sent Donald Trump to defend the white working class as a good bandit against a organization that does not perceive to or care for her. And he just wrote me an email with a proposal: hey, should we all get together who's in your book, possibly we can arrange something next spring? Many of the characters of this book are liberals, so he seems to be the least inclined to cross barriers – and yet he proposed something like this. Of course, partially due to the fact that with the publication of the book they gained recognition, the NPR radio did interviews with them and they liked it very much. After all, they crave recognition... But this can be utilized positively to build bridges.
I myself am a associate in a group called agrarian Urban Bridge Initiative, which is simply a tiny community bringing together Democrats from agrarian regions – they discuss, among another things, the fresh regulation for agrarian areas. This is 1 example that you can collect and meet different, presently dispersed and isolated forces from each other. And you gotta get free of the thought of moving to fresh Zealand and get to work on the spot.
Marci Shore: About this question: “What to do?” I think constantly and obsessively. I besides think of my friends from Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, who are incomparably braver than me and who are always willing to take the highest risk. due to the fact that I feel that something very dark is coming in America, and I feel like a hypocrite telling people not to be afraid, since I'm a coward myself. In a physical sense, I couldn't handle prison well, I couldn't stand being shot at. I'm certain I'd be a terrible soldier, and friends from Ukraine are complimenting me that I was very brave due to the fact that I wrote something. And they're under fire, and I'd be very bad at it. Physical courage is something completely different from intellectual integrity.
It is 1 thing that I can do, what we can do as intellectuals, that we talk the fact in the post-truth age – a small in specified an old-fashioned dissident spirit from the 1970s and 1980s, that even if no 1 believes in the fact anymore, we must talk it. We request to keep communication with empirical reality, we request to believe in empirical reality, even if others do not. We must want to talk a clear language that will scope as many people as possible, even if it is hard and frustrating; we simply cannot sale souls to the devil.
There is simply a book by Tim Miller, a longtime political strategist for Republicans entitled Why We Did It. A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, in which he describes how his friends and friends, like the rhinoceros of Ionesco, became Trumpists 1 by 1 – whether it be seduced or for opportunistic reasons. And after reading it, I'm certain we can't sale souls to the devil.
But as a historian and public intellectual, I will besides match a lesson, or alternatively a constant motive from various dark ages: that people normalize what is abnormal and that they do it very quickly. So fast that they will not be able to announcement how the limits of what utilized to be unthinkable decision – and after a week, a period or a 4th no 1 will even blink. Following Trump's 2016 victory, British satirist John Olivier said on American tv that he would like everyone to compose on a self-adhesive note: “it is not normal”, and then put it on his laptop or computer screen. And it wasn't a joke. due to the fact that all these threats, all this force – very rapidly they become normal, subconsciously normalized. We request to keep reminding you.
* Oh, my God *
The text is simply a evidence of the debate held in the Social Cultural Institute of Political Criticism in December.
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Arlie Russell Hochschild (1940) – an outstanding American sociologist, retired prof. at the University of California, Berkeley. The author of 9 books, any of which were regularly on the list of the best books of the year "New York Times". Translated into sixteen languages. Political criticism has published her book Aliens in their own country.
Marci Shore – prof. of Yale University past Department, historian of Central and east Europe. The author of the book Caviar and Ash, among others. past of a generation enchanted and disappointed with Marxism and published by Political Criticism Ukrainian Night.
