>> Since the events of last Wednesday, I have spoken quite a bit about it. But the entire time,
I have been waiting here at The Damage Report to speak to one
individual waiting for his return to the show. Jacob Barofsky, Professor of Philosophy at
Yale University and author of How Fascism Works, Jason Stanley returns to the show.
Jason, how you doing? >> Well, I wish I could say good,
but here it is, so. >>
I'm assuming busy. I assume you've been quite busy for the last week.
>> Yeah, unfortunately I wish I was not busy but. >> Well, you wrote the book on how fascism
works and over the last two years, I actually rewatched our interviews.
We've spoken three or four times.
And now watching what you had said you expected to happen after the events of last week, it really
does feel like we were sort of always moving to this point. But before we launch into all of it,
I'm curious as Wednesday was developing, what were you thinking as it was going on?
>> I'd been expecting it. So I mean, when you look at the literature on when leaders call
for political violence against their opponents. What you see is there's always a years long lag
between when political rhetoric becomes violent. When you start calling
your political opponents traitors, when you start calling for them to be violently punished.
Attacked, when you label them as dangerous to the future of your nation.
There's always a lag of years between that and mass violence. So how long that lag
is is differs from country to country. I have a friend who survived the Rwandan genocide,
not to compare what's going on to that, but just the political violence aspect.
And I spoke to her once, and she said, well, they were talking about Tutsis as
snakes and cockroaches but nothing was happening. So we had nothing happening here,
I mean we had a lot happening, but we didn't have this mass political violence happening.
But when the President of the United States is calling for open rebellion.
At some point, someone's gonna act. So when I saw that crowd in front of the White House, and I was
watching the entire time with my children, as it happens. My young children and I was explaining to
them, this is what happens when you call your opponent's traitors, you call for revolution.
This is what happens and you're watching a lesson in history.
>> I'm curious about that lag that you're talking about. And I'm wondering does it
work in the opposite direction because he since that event has only appeared publicly,
literally the morning that we're recording this, and he did say multiple times, I want no violence.
There can't be any violence. He did threaten social media companies and he threatened
congressional leaders with retribution if they impeach him, but he did say several times he
doesn't want any violence. So If you're out there as one of his followers, and he's saying that,
how do you interpret that message assuming you get it?
>> So the philosopher of language Jennifer Saul has a concept that she calls
vaguely. And she says that she came up thinking about Donald Trump's rhetoric.
And she coined it when he made the comment when he first ran for office and said,
Mexicans are gang members, they're rapists, and I assume some are good people.
And she said what Donald Trump does is he says something and then he takes it back at the end.
So that he cannot be blamed for the things he clearly said. So, Donald Trump today said
that everything he said was completely appropriate. What is it that he said?
He said they're stealing the election. You can't be peaceful. He said all sorts of things
that can't be read in any other way than by calling for like what we saw on January 6th.
So, it is part of his rhetorical tactics as Jennifer Saul has shown he regularly does this.
He regularly at the end of doing that says okay,
I'm not really saying that. >> Yeah, geesh, he also said,
the afternoon or night of the day, he said in a video to those people, I love you,
you're very special people, it was quite sweet. It was like he was speaking to a lover of many years.
>> He was speaking to his followers, his children. It's a leader.
Donald Trump is an expert in mass politics. He's a very skilled mass political speaker.
This is why it's not as though the Republican party has figures. I mean, the Republican party
has a lot of figures who are now defending and standing up against that to their credit.
But it has some people like Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz and Senator Holly Republican Party elites,
just elites who are trying to follow in President Trump's footsteps. But
I don't know if they can do that kind of trick that you just said. I don't
know if they have the same rhetorical skills to bond with their audiences.
>> So I think you're quite right to point out there are some in the Republican Party,
including Mitch McConnell said the election's over. Biden won and all of that. But then at
the same time, like they cleared out all of the people that attacked the Capitol. And then
Hawley and Cruz went back in and they tried to pursue politically
the same thing that those attackers had tried to pursue with violence.
So you have this split. And at the same time the Democrats are saying we now need to
make an example of Trump or stop him from exercising power in the future by impeaching him.
And there are all these Republicans who are saying that would be divisive, even people who
criticize Trump for being involved in Wednesday's thing, are saying let's not impeach him though.
And you had a tweet where you said it was post Civil War calls for unity that led to Jim Crow.
They're all calling for unity and no division right now. Tell me a little bit about that
tweet and what you think might happen if Trump is allowed to just go off with no consequences.
>> So let's first begin by pointing out that it's not just Trump, Senator Hawley and Senator
Cruz. We're talking about two people who are the elite of the elite. I went to the
State University of New York at Stony Brook, paid my own way through college.
I'm a professor now, but Josh Hawley is a banker's son.
He went to Stanford University and Yale Law School,
he didn't go to state schools like I did. Ted Cruz went to Princeton,
he's the national runner up or one of the top college debater. These are the elite of the
elite. These are among those of us who have, these are people born on between third base and home.
And so, these are the elite's elite and these elites have taken on
this. So they know about her, they obviously know about her. So we're not talking Tommy Tuberville
here who thought the Second World War was a fight against socialism. We're talking about
people born to the elite, groomed in the highest best universities in the world,
now explicitly endorsing the idea that democracy is irrelevant.
No election in which a Republican loses is valid and so that's very disturbing, and that
needs to be called out, and it's a disturbing development. And if we don't stop it and call
it out and do something, then it's a social and political movement moving into the future.
Let's look back at our America's past and see what happened in the Civil War.
The reconstruction was a period of around a decade when Black Americans in the South were able to
vote and hold office. For people of my generation, we've seen, we remember first black congressman
since Reconstruction because during Reconstruction there are many black Congress people.
So, how did Reconstruction end? Reconstruction ended when in the mid 1870s, 1876, 1877. It was
decided as part of a compromise that we want to unify the South and the North and get over
the wounds of the Civil War, to remove federal troops from the South. There
which was completely known, would lead immediately to no more black voting.
And Black Americans in the South couldn't vote for 90 years and that's because of the
desire to unify the country. Who will suffer now from the desire to unify the country?
We all will suffer, democracy will suffer, because
unifying without accountability means a strong signal especially to the elites of our country.
The Senator Hawley's and Senator Cruz, from the elite class, educated in the elite universities,
to the elites, that their behavior will go unpunished. So democracy will lose and
we saw this really, we're reaping in my view, the consequences of President Obama's failure
to do accountability in 2008, with the financial crisis on the Iraq War and the torture regime.
The message then was it doesn't matter what you do, what sort of violations you do. You
can lie to the American people, you can cheat us out of money as the bankers did,
and there are no consequences. And to have no consequences again. Well we'll have a
social and political movement that will make Trumpism seem mild by comparison is my worry.
>> Yeah, the issue with the philosophy of looking forward,
not backwards is sometimes someone's behind you. >> Sometimes a lot of someones are behind you.