Bulwark Takes - How Do We Fight Fascism? Flee or Fight?

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Three prominent Yale professors are leaving the U.S. for Canada, warning that rising authoritarianism in America resembles 1930s fascism. The conversation debates whether fleeing is defeatist or a powerful way to raise the alarm, with some arguing it's time to fight, not flee.

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Today in The New York Times, we had a video from three former professors of Yale explaining why they are leaving the country and heading up to the University of Toronto because of all of the incipient fascism. The professors are Marcy Shore, Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley. I imagine you have some thoughts about this, my friend. Well, everybody keeps sending it to me because it turns out I'm in it. I'm in this New York Times piece. And it's like they are saying they are leaving because of the fascism.

They're like, hey, we're historians. We know what it was like back in the early, you know, 30s. And, you know, people didn't see it coming, but we see this coming and we got to get out of here. But then they show a bunch of clips of people sort of warning how bad it is. And one of them is my, you know, close up face. It's like me on Nicole Wallace. To make people afraid of speaking out against him.

It's like when you showed up in the Mark Carney ad. I did show up in the Mark Carney ad. You're the queen of b-roll the canadian i wish we had done this but the canadian now canadian prime minister uh used in his like closing ad he's his closing ad was about how they didn't want to be like america then they didn't want us to be weak and divided and And it cuts to a clip of me yelling at Scott Jennings on CNN. And I was like, hey, I'm glad I can be there for you, bud. But it is funny when people send me these things.

I'm like, well, I don't care about this ad from the Canadian guy. And then I'm like, oh, I'm in it. Cool. But anyway, watching the thing from the professors was interesting. And actually, I really do wonder what you think about it um in light of the triad that you wrote today uh which was a a bleak bummer of a triad directed squarely at my worldview and which i mean we're gonna unpack this was it yeah yeah that whole thing was serapine i don't think. It wasn't intended that way.

It was really me talking with myself. Our listeners do not know how sarcastic you're being right now. Okay? They can't tell. I can see it in your eyes. I know. We're going to do this tomorrow on the secret pod. So if you guys want to hear a knockdown drag out between me and JVL, first subscribe to

the Borg, then read his triad, then come listen to us on The Seeker Pod on Friday, tomorrow. But for today, since we're going to have to spend all day tomorrow fighting, I just, I wonder what you think about this in light of your idea that sort of people are unsalvageable and American voters are unsalvageable. Do you think that we are that it's 1931 in America right now and that we are headed in the direction that makes one feel like as an academic, you need to go practice your ply your trade elsewhere? Because I'll just say as a short matter, I don't. I both don't think we people should be leaving or fleeing the country. I also don't. I certainly don't want it to be as a result of something I said. And they were sort of using me as a stand in for why people had to get the heck out of Dodge.

And I don't love that because I think we have to stay here and fight is just the shortest version of what I think is important. But you might have a different take on it. I don't know. I mean, that's that's the only the only look in 1931. People didn't realize it was 1931. Sure. Of course. And I think that in nearly every part of American history leading up to the last few years, with some exceptions, following the conclusion of the Civil War, we could definitively say that it was not 1931. What is unique about the moment right now is that you can't say that i don't think um you know i i you look at it and say i don't know i don't know things don't i mean you know there are some

encouraging signs the courts have held right uh there there are so far there are some not encouraging signs. Kilmar Abrego-Garcia is still in a foreign gulag because the courts have pushed back, but the government hasn't complied yet. We won't know. This is the problem. This is the problem of the 1930s. And this is the problem with authoritarian attempts is it always you can always construct a reason for why it's not as bad as it looks until the day when the tanks are actually in the streets. Yeah, I was going to say you sort of don't know that's where you are until it's too late. Yeah. And I think that's that is I think what these three professors were saying, it's what I sort of think, candidly, that it could be. It could be.

And, you know, like the history of these things, the nomenclatura, the intellectuals, they are the first ones to get put up against the wall. It's not crazy to me. Like our friend Bedwitness wrote a really stirring piece at Lawfare today, pushing back against this as defeatism. And it makes a lot of great points. And I love that. And I love you. And you're like, fight, fight, fight. I love where your guys' hearts are.

That said, I do not have the same level of certainty that you guys do that we aren't in that neighborhood. Does that make sense? It does. Tell me a little bit more about Wittes' piece because I didn't read it. What are some of the top line points that he makes about staying? So, because that's my, I mean, me and, me and Ben are also good friends. It doesn't surprise me that, and based on who Ben is, it doesn't surprise me that he has sort of a fight mentality. And I don't know exactly what points he was making are, but I, I, certainly if I wrote a piece, which chances of that are

slim, but it would be about, even in 1931, like who was fighting, right? Who was fighting as you watched people slowly capitulate? And I don't know enough about everything that was happening at the politics of the time. But I do know that the way that you avoid something like that happening again is by fighting it, right, by pushing back, by making sure that Trump's not successful. So this is what Ben says. And what Ben says is that the moment we're in is absolutely dangerous, but that the dangers are different for different people and that the people who are the most danger right now are people who are like driving to work in Georgia and, you know, have been in the country since they were four and went to college and have a job, but are going to get pulled over and arrested.

Like that person is in a very great deal of danger. But people who are American citizens, who have means and who have platforms which they can use, those people are not yet at tremendous risk, right? They're at some risk. It's not nothing. Like, you know, the president did issue EOs targeting Krebs and Miles Taylor. But the privilege that people like Ben, is what he says, people like me, the privilege that we've been afforded really requires us to stay and fight. Yeah.

So I agree with that. I think I've said literally almost verbatim that we have the privilege of platform. We have the privilege of American citizenship. We have the privilege of free speech. We have the privilege of being able to hire attorneys. And so I just – this is what makes me angry. What they're doing is not the same as what the lawyers are doing exactly because they're just people trying to protect their money and their access to this administration and they are trading democracy to do it. The thing about like professors and academics getting out of Dodge sooner rather than later

because they fear that we are not alarmed enough in this moment so I don't want to accuse them of alarmism I do think though that like they specifically were far from being threatened like not in a real way. And that I think that the signal that it sends to leave the country is a similar one. It's different, but it's similar to the law firms or the universities or the media companies, the other people who've caved, which is that to say like, is basically to say like, we're already too far gone, right? Like, what's the point of standing up? It's too, it's too, it's too, you know, we just need to put our heads down. And I just think that's exactly the wrong thing to do in this moment, like exactly the opposite. And so since

I'm in the, since I'm in the little New York Times thing, I would just like to register. And it's me saying, like, this is meant to chill. This is meant to menace. And all that is true. It is our choice, though, whether or not we give in to grant as an ideological matter what you're saying is right. But as a prudential matter, that would be – this would be true if everybody was leaving. But to have a couple high-profile people leave and try to raise the alarm on the way out the door and presumably continue to write from abroad and to stand up for democracy and to attack the regime, that could be useful in a way, couldn't it? Again, it would be bad if everybody did it.

Right. But it's not terrible to have, like, Tim Snyder's a real grown-up, you know, and him going and doing this, like, that says something. And I assume he's not just gonna sit around and start writing about the founding like a bunch of fucking conservative intellectuals have done who decided that uh 2017 was a good time to really just disengage from all the hurly-burly of modern stuff and tell you it's time to build we're gonna we're gonna really look back and the

stuff that endures and not get not with all the comings and goings. None of us will even remember two decades from now. Like that's – I can see a use in that actually. Is that crazy? You can see a use in what they're doing. Yeah, it's not crazy. And even as you say it, this is one of those areas where I think my gut reaction, just because I'm so like, that is not what I would do. But I think you're right and I'd have to think about it more to know how certain I feel about this.

But I think you could be right that perhaps what they are doing is simply trying to say, like, everybody's being too complacent about what's happening, which is a sentiment I agree with. I just hate for people to for their takeaway to be. So I need to get myself out of Dodge as opposed to. Raise the alarm, I guess, inside the country and also do. But I guess you're right, the Internet's different now, it's not like they're walking, it's they can still they can still um raise alarms from a safer place i guess this happened all through history right dissidents will leave a country because it's not safe but they don't disappear like they keep they keep writing attacking the regime from abroad um and again i i think it matters that the that these three i i don't know professor shore stanley at

all um i know timothy i mean i don't know them personally Shore or Stanley at all. I know Timothy, I mean, I don't know them personally, any of them at all, but I know Timothy Snyder's work fairly well. And it is, I think it's a big deal that somebody of his stature would say, this is bad enough that I am going someplace else. And you guys should all be concerned about this. You should be, if you're seeing what I'm seeing, that should make an impression on you. I think that is useful for, I don't know,

the resistance for the people who still care about democracy. And it would be bad if everybody, if it was a run on the bank, if it was a jailbreak and everybody left, that would not be great. But this is, I think at the end of the day, it's OK. As I think it through, let me just – let me offer then I guess my – another part of my pushback, which is if – and I don't know if this was the case as we went into sort of 19 – early 1930s Germany, whether or not there becomes a dominant sense over time where like,

at first it feels like cajoling or like you have some say in the matter. And then at some point you become afraid and you join the dominant scary thing to save yourself, right? And I wonder if you end up giving Trump too much power, right? The power for people to think the time and the opportunity to push back is over, that they will have missed the window of being able to do something. And that like pretty soon it gets too scary for them to speak up at all. And I think that I don't want people to have that message. A, I don't think it's true in this moment. I think you can still do a lot to brush Trump back with public opinion and you've got to go fight for that.

Yep. And. And I think, like, there's still enough virtue in this republic, if not to save it in order to prolong it, in order to live to fight another day, in order to, you know, wait Trump out like they're like, I don't know. I think it's too early to say we're descending into that level of madness. And I just worry that it creates a level of defeatism that gives people the sense that they, too, need to opt out of fighting back. I I hear that. I think that's a totally valid concern. On the other hand, the people who are going to capitulate are already doing it and they don't have to be told. I have two friends within conservative world who are still hanging in in conservative world who were in the last several days both fired.

And they were not. The people who fired them did not need to be told by Trump to get rid of any dissident voices. They understood. You know, this is the – it's the Vaclav Havel greengrocer story, right? And this is how authoritarianism works. So, I mean, I worry much more about the people who who simply refuse to stand up at all more than I do about the people who've been standing up, deciding to fold up their tent and leave because they're, you know, they're a handful of them. But the number of people who are never going to say any boo, they were just going to go along to get along. This is – again, there's another line about this. I don't know who this is anyway. There are many people who do not know that they are fascists but will find out when the time comes. Like that turns out to be super

true yeah um okay yeah well this is dark um i'm sorry that's just me being me i know i know i think i think i thought i had more pushback in me on them and it turns out that i i have some pushback but that um i i take your point about uh like it's not it's not entirely irrational let me let me let me try to frame it in a way that might really appeal to you um in the same do that and do it in a way that might really appeal to you. Do that and do it in a way that closes us out for this video. In the same way that when we came to like opposing Trumpism, the answer wasn't like this is – this path is the way to do it. Everybody has to do it. The idea was nobody knows what's best. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Let everybody do do and like we'll figure things out i i sort of take that approach here like if timothy snyder leaving and making a stink about it uh maybe that'll work um sarah and ben witt is staying here and uh you know going to the barricades maybe that'll work you know let's everybody try in the way that we think is best and that we think we can do the most effectively. Well, JBL, it's a rare chat where I really do come your way. That's not going to happen tomorrow on The Secret Podcast. I will just give you fair warning. Oh, boy. I might be sick tomorrow morning. It's hard to say. I may have to call in. You know, we could do a solo show where you just rant about me straight to camera for 45 minutes. No.

You might feel better. I'm going to read you passages of yourself back to you, and we're going to talk about them one at a time. Guys, hit subscribe, hit like, follow us, because you need uplifting content that is hashtag blessed in your life. And that's what we give you right here at The Bulwark. Good luck, America. Bye.