In 1978, my parents went to Poland the first foreign trip in each of their lives. When she returned home in Moscow, my mother could not stop talking about her words – not a place but a movie, “Caber” of Bob Foos. In particular, a scene remained with him. Three friends are returning from the weekend. Sleep, hung and suffer from their sexual and romantic confusion, and they pull in the cafes on the side of the road. There, Hitler starts singing a young Youth uniform. They are both very high and, in their brown pants, the white knee is high, collided with the pyall. But after a minute, other young people in the uniform also join it, and soon a customer is standing and singing. The main character is removing Nazism from their minds, but at the moment they realize that they are in the minority, as they are living, it is over. Everyone around them has the song of singing “I belong to tomorrow.”
I was 11 years old when my mother couldn’t stop talking about “cabbage”, and I was confused. I thought my parents had gone to an original cabbage and somehow had gained an insight into the nature of the Soviet government. A few years later, after I watch the movie myself, I realized that my mother is fine: that scene likes to live in a society that feels living in a society that is in front of a absolute leader. Is I experienced it in real life as an adult, when Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia and my world suddenly felt like a diligence, causing a hidden hand to raise pieces faster than him. I thought it was possible.
Now, in Donald Trump’s United States, I am living a similar life, and it is still moving at a rapid rate. For me, it began before the elections, when the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post decided to confirm Kamla Harris’ papers for the president. Mark Zuckerberg, with remaking of Meta, reflected it, which he called the “Cultural Tipping Point”, which was the presidential election. ABC News considered doing so, handing over millions of dollars in response to Trump’s serious cases and CBS. And recently, with great deletion: Transcare records for minorities provided by hospitals and diversity and participation policies in many universities and corporations. Now some universities are quietly re -performing their programming in hopes of being expected, which have not yet been clearly placed.
I’m not talking about deleting pages from government websites, such as White House and Disease Control and Prevention Centers, which are probably essential to new installed officials. I am talking about the actions that individuals or private entities had taken somewhat independently.
The Yel historian Timothy Sanider has called it a “expected obedience”. In his 2017 book “Lovely: Twenty -Base Lessons”, Lesson No. 1 “Do not obey” in advance. Snyder writes that those who expect a repressive government’s demands and present these demands before making these demands, Sanider writes that “he is teaching power that he can do.”
Of course, the SN Snadeer is fine, but his admonition makes the voice irrational. This is not. In my experience, most of the time, when people or institutions voluntarily refer to power, they are working on a set of seemingly reasonable arguments, not by fear. These arguments fall into one or more of the five categories.
First, argument for responsibility. In 2004, I assigned and amended an article by a person who protested against a hostage crisis at a school in Putin, killing more than 300 people. When I was ready with my desk, I was stirring with the headline. If you publish it, it warned me, the entire Publishing House staff could lose their job. According to my best knowledge, the Kremlin never threatened or criticized the publishing house for editorial content. (Now the person who says he never tried to stop me.)
The great Russian economist Yuri Levada developed the term “collective hostage” to describe this phenomenon when individuals may not be free to work because of the permanent, reliable threat of collective punishment. Making collective hostages is especially captained because it messes up different sets of values ​​against each other: for example, my boss is asking me to weigh the value of an article against hundreds of people’s livelihoods. It was The article was not published.
The second argument is the argument for the highest purpose, which is a close cousin of collective hostages. In 2012, when the winter More than one and a half million The Russians protested against the rigging elections and the intention of taking over Putin’s third term, a famous actress, Cholpan Khumatova, broke the ranks of liberal intellectuals and came out in support of Putin. Khumatova laid the foundation of an organization that helped children with cancer. He faced some criticism, but he said, “If that meant another hospital was built, I would still do the same.” Its dignity, however, was a small price to save children’s lives.
I suspect that some American hospital organizers who are shutting down transcares for young people are using similar logic: serving their patients, they have to protect their federal financing – even if it means It is to stop serving another group of patients.
The next practical argument comes. Rational people do not stand on the principle for the principle. They choose their battles. Either this is an argument. Perhaps this was the logic that guided the country’s largest private fundraiser of biomedical research Halt A million 60 million diversity programs, a target of eliminating your DEI goals or ABC News to resolve Trump’s corruption case. As the sound of this argument comes, its roots are also linked to the values ​​and responsibilities for others – shareholders, business partners, clients.
If II-Don-Don-It-Someone-Else-Will is also the argument. A few years ago, a couple of journalists who fled Russia for fear of their lives took an assignment to make a video in which I and many others were seen as pure Russian propaganda. When I asked them why they did so, they replied that anyone would have done this – and they needed money. Denying the assignment does not change anything, so why not? Perhaps this is the logic of advanced legal firms that are wandering around to hire Trump’s loyalists, and otherwise holds themselves as allies of the new administration. Perhaps this is also the logic of the Senate Democrats who have voted for the nominees of Trump’s cabinet: nominated candidates will be confirmed anyway, so these senators can get support in their competing states.
Last, we have a Zetjist argument. Zuckerberg observed that when he announced that Meta would abolish her facts checking program, “we are now in a new era.” Companies should have more “male energy” and they should have more “a culture that celebrates aggression”, he said a few days later, talking about the Rogen Podcast. Such an argument is very definitively defined. Societies have explained seriousness to the dominant beliefs and culture. In absolute societies, cultural and intellectual rebels are often confined to psychological institutions. In the Soviet Union, the unseen was often considered crazy – and according to the standards of this society, they were.
There are many good reasons for adjusting emerging dictators, and not just one reason: expected obedience is an important building of their power. The 20th century suicide relied on terrorism. The 21st people are often not required. Their articles are happily obeying.
But once sovereignty gains power, it will come for many people who have tried to rationalize themselves and their business rationally. The boss of the Publishing House is now living in exile, and so is the actress. Of course, many people, including wealthy businessmen, are still living in Putin’s Russia. But they have discovered that they have to secure themselves and their business, they have to gain more money for the government and sometimes more. If they had already stopped obedience, sovereignty that now controls every aspect of their lives and their business.
In a few weeks in Trump’s second term, it may seem as if we are already living in an irreparable changed country. And nevertheless, my parents, who belonged to the second generation of people born under the Soviet Society – they never knew any different society, nor were their own parents – when they When I saw this scene in “Cabir”, I recognized a moment. The moment is when a new, dark period is caught. My mother died more than 30 years ago, so I can’t ask her where she came from. All I know is that it was possible to maintain a sense of facts and values ​​- not only to obey in advance but not to obey at all. If this was possible in the Soviet Union half a century ago, it is certainly possible in the United States today.
M. Gasen is a voting column for the Times. He won the George Polk Award in 2024 to write an opinion. He is the author of 11 books, which has a history of “how the future is: how Russia was re -claimed”, who won the National Book Award in 2017.
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