Pivot - Parler goes dark, Trump's power without Twitter, and a Friend of Pivot on the history of coups

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Kara and Scott talk about how an alt-right social media app got shut down. They also discuss Trump's permanent ban from Twitter. In Friend of Pivot, we talk to NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat about the history of fascists, how they rise to power, and where Trump fits into that context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. What the actual fuck? Well, things have happened while you've been away. Really? Things have happened. Yeah. Well, hold on. Do you know what one thing I read this morning kind of summarizes the moment? What? First off, that guy with the horns and the makeup and the fur covering, he lives with his mother. Yeah. Porn enthusiasts, RAV4, used RAV4 enthusiasts, discovery card, and slow learners that showed up to our Capitol.

It wasn't just them. We're going to talk about that more. We're going to talk about that more, but go ahead. The physician for Congress, they have a physician, I guess, sent out a memo, an email saying that there's a chance, you should all get tested because there's a chance when you are all huddling on top of each other, hiding and barricading yourself, that you might have contracted COVID because certain members of Congress refused to wear masks. I know, in the room. They were being begged to by other people. People huddling are elected officials.

And when you think about it, these people, they aren't elected officials. They're America. They call the U.S. House of Representatives for a reason. Our elected officials. And when you think about it, these people, they aren't elected officials. They're America. Yeah. They call the U.S. House of Representatives for a reason. Yeah. That we, as a nation, had to huddle on top of each other and barricade our doors with furniture because of these village idiots that showed up. Yeah. Not just village idiots.

We're going to talk about that more. But by the way, the people, it doesn't get enough attention. I'm going with village idiots. The people who, the representatives who refuse to wear masks, they can go fuck themselves. In this crisis situation, this is,

they've moved to ridiculous. Can you believe that? They're an embarrassment to the United States government. Can you believe that? Not just an embarrassment. They should be voted out. They will be,

I don't know if they'll be voted out of office, but let me just say, fuck them. Anyway, we're going to spend most of the show talking about major platforms,

Twitter and Facebook, banning Trump from platforms, where the alt-right movement is headed next. And, of course, my parlor interview with the CEO, which I caused a little bit of a ruckus. It closed down, essentially. Good trouble. Yeah, good trouble. But first, Scott, you've been away a few weeks since we talked, so let's banter a bit about what you missed. Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world.

That call continues to suck. He surpassed Jeff Bezos last week with a whopping $190 billion. Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world. That call continues to suck. He surpassed Jeff Bezos last week with a whopping $190 billion. When are we going to see the world's first? If he becomes the world's first trillionaire, I don't know what you should do, Scott Galloway. Something, something. Yeah, I don't know. Return my Tesla.

What think you of this? I know you have a Tesla. Of course you love it. But actually something you said struck me. You said that you thought that the world's first trillionaire was going to be someone who solved the climate. Which he is doing. Sort of, but it does fit- He is moving in that direction.

It does fit into that narrative. I am just so blown away by this, but I think it feeds into a bigger point and that is, and we'll circle back around hopefully moving to remedies. I think when people add that type of extraordinary wealth in an era where we have trillions of dollars in deficits, I think we need to revisit capital gain strategy. Ah, interesting. Why is that? Well, one of the biggest problems I think presented by this is that billionaires on average speak to their senator once every three months, and there's just no getting around it. The shareholder class has more influence. Someone worth $100 million has more than 100 times the influence of our government and our policies than someone who has a million dollars. And we have to counterweight that. We have to have a ballast to that. And unfortunately,

I think when the financial incentives around this form of tyranny and having Trump in office and having income inequality, it's easy to talk a big game that you're worried about Trump. It's easy to talk a big game about how terrible the pandemic is. But when your wealth is exploding and you're the individuals that control the government, then our incentive structure is misaligned and will only create more pandemics and more income inequality. And I would say in companies, when you have a problem,

look at compensation strategies. So our incentives are all fucked up here. And when we have the, if you will, the shareholder class influencing our economy, reaping huge benefits in a pandemic and during an insurrection, that means our incentives are off. It is.

It's really amazing how well she does. And in another related story, speaking of large companies, Amazon's healthcare venture with JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, Haven Health has disbanded after three years. You know, not a surprise. This was a lot of press releases.

This is the biggest non-story story of the week. And that is everyone took it, as usual, the sleeveless dresses and Joe Kiernan saw this as some sort of evidence. Joe Kiernan looks great in a sleeveless dress. Let's just be clear. That's another thing. Why do the guys get sleeves at CNBC?

Why do the guys get sleeves? I wear sleeves. I wear sleeves. Anyways. I wear sweatshirts, but go ahead. But this was the media getting it so wrong. They somehow interpreted this as, oh, Amazon is rethinking its healthcare strategy. Okay. You know what this was? This was Jamie Dimon, who is friends

with Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett saying, we should really do something around healthcare. And they started this thing. And again, Amazon wants to create a zero cost or a lower negative margin business to get people to sign up for Prime. J.P. Morgan wants to figure out a way just to lower their healthcare costs, and Berkshire Hathaway probably wanted to do something cool that they could offer the report. They all have different incentives. Do you know how many people were working on this? How many? 60. Okay, so if Amazon is hiring 10,000 people a week, which they are, that means in 18 minutes, they hire 60 people. So this was the non-event of non-events of the century.

But Amazon is still moving into healthcare. That's my point. That's my point. This is meaningless. Them closing it is meaningless. Yeah. Yep. Agreed.

Agreed. Agreed. But it still is interesting to watch what Amazon's going to do here. But I'm going to move over to our big story because we need, we have a really great friend of Pivot today. After last week's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, I would call it a coup, insurrection, whatever you want to call it, incited by President Trump. And that's, let's be clear, that's what happened. Twitter permanently banned Trump from using the platform. Trump has also been banned by Facebook indefinitely, along with Instagram, Shopify, and Stripe. The payment company that was processing transactions on Trump's website

is also severing ties with Trump. There's tons more. There's tons, tons more of people doing that, including the PGA not appearing in Trump properties. Meanwhile, the app Parler, Parler, it's called, it used to be called Parlay, which was the alt-right alternative to Twitter, has gone dark. Over the weekend, Apple and Google kicked it off their app stores. Amazon said it would no longer host its site on Amazon Web Services. A spate of smaller vendor companies like Okta and others have suspended their vendor relationships. So a lot has happened over the weekend. Suddenly, the things we had been talking about for years, Scott, suddenly come to Jesus, as they say.

Yeah, but let's be clear. Let's be clear. Jack Dorsey did not kick Trump off the platform. Mark Zuckerberg did not shut his account down. Stacey Abrams did. Yeah. All of a sudden, these people have woken up. And, okay, I want to be clear.

Let's give credit where credit is due. Jack Dorsey decided to stop hate polarization and insurrections 1,449 days into a 1,460-day tenure. Way to go. Way to go, Jack. And just to personally just— Yeah, it was a little late. Yeah. We were talking about this this morning.

Yeah, we were talking about this this morning. If I come home after being on vacation for two weeks and I see my son vacuuming the living room, your first inclination should be, oh, that's great. He cares about the house and wants to be a good guy. No, he's not. No, he's not. He's thrown a rave and has been selling meth and molly for the last two weeks out of the house and is trying to cover his tracks. Yeah. And that's what these guys are doing. There was a lot of tweets of tweets about that yeah flushing drugs around the toilet when a hundred when a new this is lorraine brocco trying to like cover up the evidence they deserve

absolutely no credit so okay first off first off stacy abrams kicked trump off these platforms and not only that amazon by winning in ge Georgia, meaning the Democrats have control- Sit back, you're going to love this because it's about you. Amazon, Jeff Bezos didn't kick Parler off AWS. Kara Swisher did. Because that interview with him that you did pointed out, this guy is the newest addition to the menace economy. And people have realized that, wait,

you know, Japan and Europe, they decided that Nazis are a bad thing and they can lead us down and hate speech can lead us down a bad road. So they don't have the same first amendment protections that we so dearly hold and have been totally perverted, which make absolutely no sense. And guess what? They still have a pretty free, open, progressive society where people get most of their viewpoints across and everyone realizes that is just total bullshit and then it is interesting the the reaction i mean it was interesting let me this interview was an interview that i i had been talking to him for a while to come on the show and then when the coup happened i'm sitting a mile away from it i thought now is the time and so

i got him on in the evening as this was still being controlled over in the Capitol again, which is about a mile, a mile and a half from my house. And I was sort of, the way I wanted to approach the interview was let him talk, let him say what he's doing. What does he think? And what I think was the devastating thing is not so much everyone's like, oh, Carrie, you got him. I'm like, I didn't get him. He got himself. He just said the truth. He said the quiet part out loud. And he did the unfortunate thing, which is telling the truth about what he thinks. And then he talked about the system to police the site, which of which it was laughable. It was a laughable system. And so I just let him go on.

And then when he said a bunch of ridiculous things, like the New York Times promotes looting, I pushed back. And one of the things I think worked really well, as I said, a line that has gotten around a lot, which is feelings are not facts. And he kept doing that. He kept doing the Trumpy things. And I pushed back appropriately. But what I think the most devastating thing in that interview was I just let him talk. I just got out of the way, which it's difficult in an interview to do that, but I think it worked best. I think one of the things I thought, and we talk about this a lot, is the lack of thought,

the lack of thought about consequence, the lack of thought about impact, just like we talk about Robin Hood or Facebook or anything else. He is sort of the quintessence of that. Like, well, not my problem. I just, you know, I just have the room where they're planning the assassination of Lincoln. What do you, I know about it, but it's not my fault that they're planning the assassination of Lincoln. I know about it, but it's not my fault that they're planning it. They're mad. They kept going, they're mad. I'm like, I'm mad, but I don't go over to the Capitol and trash it like I'm with some like duck dynasty terrorists.

And by the way, let me just say one of the things that was- Duck dynasty terrorists? That's good. That's good. That's good. Yes. That's what they look like. But here's the deal. We all laugh about it, like horn guy and guy doing parkour and this and that. If you see the videos coming out now and you see the intent of the people, there was an intent to kill our representatives. There was an intent to kill the vice president. You can laugh all you want about horn guy, like fine, whatever. This was, as you begin to see them beating a police officer to death,

as you begin to understand that there were a lot of paramilitary people in there, this was an attempted coup, as funny as they look. A lot of them were there for just taking selfies and doing stupid shit, just like dumb, just dumb people. Others were there for much more malicious intent.

And the whole thing being egged on by Josh Hawley, whose career it looks like is ruined, Ted Cruz, same thing. They deserve every single bit of people not funding them and everything else they want. And they can go on and on. What's fascinating is they all shifted. I want to know what you think to this idea.

Like if you've noticed a lot of them, like Matt Schlapp, who is really talk about village idiots. He was going on about AWS without revealing that he is a lobbyist for Oracle, by the way, which was, I pointed out pretty quickly. He's in charge of CPAC, the conservative political action, whatever.

How do you think about their argument? Like this narrative, I've lost 50,000 people. I've lost this many people. It's because Twitter started cracking down on QAnon. What do you imagine? Matt Gatz, another fatuous poppin' J. What do you imagine that argument, that they're losing people on Twitter because of this?

I just, you know, you wonder how we got here. And I also, I do want to acknowledge, there's an end of the seriousness and the tragedy of the moment on so many dimensions. There's an image that really rattled me. And it was an image in, I guess, the rafters of the Congress. an absolutely terrified uh representative an elected representative of our country who was lying flat on her back and you could see she was in a state of sheer terror and they'd had to they'd had to board up or secure the room with furniture and you saw in this woman's eyes she thought she was going to be murdered and these these are the people who, these are us. Every 675,000 of us is represented by one of these individuals. This was an absolute mob rule. And the notion that, and then post it,

we're all trying to figure out a way to have 30-something CEOs met out justice for us. I mean, how did we get here? Right. That's our solution to get Mark, to beg Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey to take them off their platform. But what do you, this idea of the First Amendment, which is driving me crazy, it's like, it is not a First Amendment issue.

These are companies, this is at one point I was like, these people, the people who are the Ted Cruz's and everybody else and Lindsey Graham's, you're socialists. You want to have the government tell private companies to do business with organizations that allow terrorist activity. I don't think so. I don't, you know, I used, I compared it to the, to the, remember when the Christian baker didn't want to make the wedding cake for the gays? By the way, you wouldn't want a cake from that guy anyway, if you're a gay. In any case, that was a big case for them. It was about the First Amendment versus the 14th Amendment. It was tried. It was brought to the Supreme Court and the Christian baker wins. He doesn't have to. It's a religious thing over equal rights under the law. Fine. That

was a regular case. I don't agree with it, whatever. But now they're saying, you know, you should have to do this because of the First Amendment. This has zero to do with the First Amendment. Companies are private companies. They can do whatever they want. They can do whatever they want and they're not bound by the First Amendment. In fact, you're violating their First Amendment rights, forcing them to help terrorist language to go on. It's just, it is like the selfishness of these people to focus on their Twitter account over what happened at the Capitol is, I'm going to ride them to the end, this group of people.

It's really, it's an astonishing reaction. And then to try to say, besides saying, oh, let's move on. Like, yeah, you want to move on? No, let's look at it for a good, that's what tech people do, by the way. Remember when I did that interview with Mark, where he said, you know, Myanmar and India, let's move on and think about solutions. That's exactly what Mark did, the same thing. These people are doing the same things. They complain about tech.

Okay. So you're exactly right. The first amendment goes something like this, that Congress should not prohibit speech of any body. And there's some carve-outs. You can't run into a theater and yell fire. But for the most part, they say you have to let people and organizations have free speech. But the First Amendment doesn't demand that private companies have to allow speech. I went on CNBC every Wednesday for five years. And then for whatever reason, they decided they didn't want me back on. And guess what? That's their right. Censorship, Scott. That's their right. They're a private company. They get to make this. And let's be honest about Twitter. Let's talk about Twitter. Twitter stock was at about 27 bucks when Trump got elected. It had dipped, it had dipped, it had dipped. And then when he got elected, it started skyrocketing. It went to 55. And this

morning when he was kicked off, first trading day after he was kicked off, it dropped 10%. Twitter has built an economic model, and they know this, to enrich the shareholders and the management team and the board based on invective, venom, and incursion. And when you build a business where you link enrichment to hate and to a mob overrunning our government, it means that company no longer works and the CEO and the board should be held accountable. The notion that this has anything to do with the First Amendment is ridiculous. It has to do with when companies decide to build an economic model based off of teen depression, off of weaponization of our

elections, and at this point, in violence. And another thing, everyone's saying, Senator Pat Toomey, who I actually like, was on Meet the Press, and their big talk track is, he crossed a line. We never expected him to do this. Well, guess what? Do you realize drunk drivers typically have driven drunk 200 times before they get a DUI? And by the way, we've seen him drunk driving, Trump, all the time. He drunk tweets all the time.

Not only that, but on Twitter. Hate tweets, hate tweets. On Twitter, there's been plans to kidnap the governor. There was a woman run over at UVA. He made fun of that. At UVA. He made fun of that. And basically, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have been driving drunk,

and they never got pulled over. And they knew that eventually a family full, a minivan full of people and kids was going to get killed. And maybe they didn't want them to get killed, but they have been driving drunk. They've been behaving irresponsibly. And this notion that, oh, we were just complying with the first amendment, Twitter knew that it had direct link to financial incentive and keeping his incredibly vile communications. And what's happened, and by the way, First Amendment, we pay for a podium and a press room at the White House. That got stolen.

These guys have no problem getting media coverage. Yeah, that's right. That's the other thing is I can't speak now. I'm like, hello, you've got the entire press corps of the world staring at you. Come out and talk to us. He will not talk. In fact, that whatever, Kylie, who couldn't leave soon enough, went out there and said 14 words right after this. You haven't heard from him about this, except in one video where he encouraged the rioters that he put out. And then that's what got him kicked off. And then the second one, which looked like a hostage video.

But then he did one full of dog whistles, like right-wing fascist dog whistles, which was amazing. What's really interesting is that, look, he's not coming back. This is one thing. And he does really use Twitter to do this. And there are, doesn't seem to be very, as I wrote many months ago, there aren't other platforms he can do a really good job on like here. He's only got the podium he's got right now is of the presidency. He has that. And eventually he'll have cable when he stops being president and et cetera. So what is a, what, let me ask you another question, money, money getting kicked. I think he's still going to make a lot of money though. I think he faces enormous liability, criminal and, and other liability. Meanwhile, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is suspending its political contributions to Congress members who objected to the electoral college

count. American Express and JPMorgan Chase said they will no longer donate to candidates who supported last week's insurrection. Citigroup also confirmed that it is pausing all federal donations for the first three months of this year. Business leaders are really piling on. Does this, again, too little too late as far as I'm concerned, because they sort of love the tax cuts and the deregulatory atmosphere. What do you think? I think this is actually a bigger deal because, I mean, the Manufacturing Association of America wanted the 25th Amendment and impeachment. So what do you think about this?

I think it's healthy. And actually, just a shout out, I think Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Yale has played a critical role here. He's been assembling all the CEOs and saying, are you comfortable with this? And unfortunately, we have this enormous vacuum, and it's unhealthy when we need Jamie Dimon stepping into the role that Ted Cruz and, quite frankly, Elizabeth Warren should be playing. Money in politics is obviously the mother's milk. And they've said, all right, we've got to cut off their funding. And unfortunately, I think when corporation stock kept going up and the tax rate that they paid on their options kept going down, despite what they saw were very troubling behavior out of the president.

You know, when it's raining money, your incentives and your sense of urgency just kind of go away. And I think they thought, Jesus, this is, you know, it doesn't matter how rich we are if we lose the democracy, if we lose the republic. So I salute them. And all of us are guilty of a certain what I'll call lack of sense of urgency and what I feel we're infected with is both-sidedness where we feel, and you said this, we feel this need to understand them. And that's just not true. There's a right and there's a wrong. These guys have been wrong for a long time and we should have taken action earlier.

But I hope, I really hope there's a level of accountability. I want facial recognition software. And by the way, I want facial recognition software for the people who destroyed property or hurt people from Black Lives Matter. And I want every person that set foot in the Capitol to be tracked down and prosecuted. You can't have, and I'm already skipping to healing, you can't have healing without accountability. Right. I agree.

I agree with that. That whole moving on thing, no. Moving on? Yeah. Yeah. Let's not move on. How about we investigate jail and trial people, and then we can move on. That is how we move on, by the way.

But this is what's so scary. Accountability, Scott! Jesus! Incentives, the algebra of deterrence. What's so scary, though, is that, and it's difficult to obviously anticipate his next move, but I generally believe he believes he's going to jail because the risks he took and what he did here, I think he's done the calculus and said, and been advised, if you're no longer president, you're going to jail. I just think there's so many attorneys generals lining up to serve him with civil and criminal suits within 30 days of him leaving office. And it's very difficult. I mean, one of the interesting things, I love this guy, this Carlo Cipolla, a professor in Berkeley, wrote a book on stupid. And he basically says that the

definition of stupid is someone who levies damage on other people and other things with no apparent benefit to themselves. And it's hard to imagine. And the reason why stupid people are so dangerous is in addition to the damage they levy, they're very hard to counterattack because you can't predict their movements. This was a difficult thing to predict. And what I don't understand is even the MyPillow guy probably isn't going to advertise in the new Trump network. I just don't, I don't understand. And the only thing I can figure out here is that someone advised the president close to him and said, if you're no longer president, you're going to jail. Look at these cases they have against you. Yeah, that was Pat's sickle.

Otherwise, why would he take a risk? Why would he? I'm the CEO or I've been the CEO of companies. I can't imagine saying to my number two person, people show up at that person's office and say, we want to hang that guy. And from my window, I reach out and go, you're very special. I love you. I mean, did you see what he has done to Pence? Well, our next guest is going to talk about that in a second, but one of the things is because he's thinking it could work. Right now, the FBI now reports in a bulletin that armed protests are being planned in all 50 state capitals from January

16th through January 20th, and that the U.S. Capitol from January 17th through the 20th. So he thinks he can pull this off. He still thinks he can pull this off somehow through armed insurrection. I think that's really the game. What's fascinating about it, and then we're going to get to our Fred of Pivot, is the amount of—one of the things that struck me watching, not the violent people, because they were there to cause violence 100%, but the others who just were wandering around doing selfies like they were at Disney World. That to me was like, are you kidding me? All right. So, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

And when we come back, we have a perfect person to talk to about, friend of Pivot and fellow NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She's an expert on the rise of fascists. Perfect timing for a book and what she's talking Ben-Ghiat. She's an expert on the rise of fascists. Perfect timing for a book and what she's talking about when we get back. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting,

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Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Scott, we are back. We have Ruth Ben-Ghiat here. She's a professor of history and Italian studies at NYU. Oh, my son is a studies, Italian studies at NYU. Expert on authoritarianism, fascism, propaganda, and threats to democracy. Author of the book, Strongman, Mussolini to the Present. Thank you. Ruth, thank you for coming. First off, shouldn't your Strongman, Mussolini to the Present. Thank you. Ruth, thank you for coming. First off, shouldn't your book been called Mussolini to the President?

Yes, some interviewers make a slip and do Mussolini to the President, but that's basically what it is. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about you talking about, you saw last week's insurrection coming. Why do you think it was able to escalate

to the point it did? I know that seems like a, just talk through your thinking about what happened. It's the product. It's able to escalate because it's the product of five years, if you include the campaign of Trump, you know, making these people feel like they mattered and preaching to them and signaling to them, you know, that he was their man using the we term, which he did even in his January 7th, you know, concession speech, right? So, there's that. And the other part of it, which is really important in leader-follower relationships is that the authoritarian is an aggressor, but he's also the victim. He always has to be the victim.

So these were people who were responding to, they were rescuing the leader in distress. And Trump's always been the victim of the press, the prosecutors, everyone who wants to unseat him. Nancy Pelosi. And that's, yeah, Nancy Pelosi. And that's very, very potent. That combination of making people feel like they're on a mission together and rescuing the leader, which goes back to fascism, like the black shirts, the brown shirts, that's kind of irresistible.

lawlessness, this celebration of lawlessness. And that's one of the big lessons of the Trump era, is that lawlessness can be glamorized and put on TV. So all of those things were mixing in to cause this escalation. Can you talk about the impact of social media? Because right now, obviously, the social media has finally cut off the, I don't know, the heroine of doing it. Talk about that impact. Because, you know, look, Mussolini happened without Twitter. So did so many other strongmen. So talk about what it does here. Is it just another way to communicate or does it have a special impact? What it does, I mean, I would just as a preface, it's really interesting. I didn't realize until I wrote this book how many of these men who have success come to politics with a background in mass communications. So Mussolini was a journalist, but so was Mobutu. And this matters because they know how to be what their people need them to be.

They're amoral, but they're also actors. A lot of people used to say about Mussolini that he was an actor, he'd be whatever you wanted him to be. So, some of these things haven't changed, right, across the century. But the social media, it allows us to see in real time what is going on in a way that we couldn't before. This has another side to it. We're also able to see the drama of dissidents and resistors. And that's been very effective in Putin's Russia to gaining support for resistors, where you have the police knocking on the door and now they stream it live or they show their drone being flown out with their hard drive to rescue.

But you also have this, where if it doesn't exist on TV or on social media and then it can be tweeted, it doesn't exist at all. And this is partly, this also we will have to reckon with what Trump, the entertainment president, has brought us. Professor, over the weekend, I started doing some research on coups. Don't unsuccessful coups usually lead to successful ones? I mean, is this a canary or are we about to see more of this? I mean, most coups, the majority of coups are to get somebody into office. Although there are, this is like a self coup, right? But it's true. And it happened in Chile before the famous 1973 coup. There were one or two, especially one other coup that failed, but it was part of making this climate of uncertainty. So that in fact, people expected a coup. You start creating a narrative of expectation.

And I actually, Chile is more relevant than I think people think or know, because what I what I am worried about is before the coup, when Allende came in in 1970 as socialist president and this U.S. and Chilean right worked together to create a kind of climate of uncertainty with constant violence, with economic downturns, with political impasse so that Chile didn't seem like it people, by the time Chile's Pinochet did succeed, people had coup bags packed. I talk about that in my book. In case for their kids, like go-to bags packed because it was like something people came to expect. And I'm worried that we will enter into this kind of uncertain climate that will make people more eager for another savior like a Trump. So we'll put him into context of other directors rise to power. What do you expect to see from him next? So he could, you know, he can perhaps become like an agitator. And in a way, it's true that he

won't have the presidential imprimatur, he no longer has Twitter, but that and in a way it's true that he won't have the the presidential imprimatur he no longer has twitter but that could in a way unleash him and he could be a very effective outside agitator working well effective is not a word you use with trump but i think it's been very effective he's somewhat lazy so do i yes yes yes right I'm talking about discipline, the discipline that Pinochet has. Yes, he's a very different personality in that way than Pinochet. He's not disciplined, but that's part of his appeal. And in fact, Pinochet surprised everybody because they thought he was Mr. Constitution and then he became Mr. Torture. it. But Trump could be, you know, he could work with extremist elements that are not only outside with these ragtag, malicious-seeming people, but they're inside our institutions. And the more we know, and more is going to come out about who was involved, we see it was Republican donors, Republican officials, people from the military, law enforcement. So the threat is inside our

institutions. And Trump could work very effectively with some kind of media, you know, TV network, whatever that will be, to be more than a thorn in the side to be an active advocate for overturning democracy. So do you think the Democrats pursuing the second impeachment of Donald Trump, it seems somewhat, even that seems too weak when he leaves office. Do you think it's an important move? It's very important. I mean, he needs to be detained, in my opinion. He's a danger. He's an inciter of violence. That couldn't be more clear. But it is important to have this because it's incitement to insurrection. And it also shows the link between rhetoric and propaganda and violence. And it's classic Trump, as it was Mussolini and Hitler, to light the flame, put down the kindling, light the match, and then say, oh, I'm going to be with you, but then they're not really there. So they're not on the site.

This is very important, and they all did this from Mussolini forward. So that's plausible deniability. And in fact, the logic of authoritarianism is a lot of the people around them go down, but they rarely go to jail because of this. They're very skilled at exploiting others, at playing others like violins, and then retreating for self-preservation reasons. Can you think of any other societies that mimic what's happened to here where we've kind of come to this ledge or we've peered into the abyss, if you will, of tyranny or fascism, and then they've come back and they've actually built healthier societies? Is there a best practice for what you'd like to see in terms of a healing? Is there a best practice for what you'd like to see in terms of a healing?

I mean, healing is important, but we've had a huge wake-up call. And actually, we have done something, just the feel-good moment. We've done something really unusual in that we interrupted by voting Trump out this process of authoritarian capture, which was clearly going on and had we had a second term. And the Senate and the House. I mean, there are some immunities do appear to be kicking in, right? Yeah. Yeah. And and it's also exposed that there's a world of people who worked for this on the ground and in institutions. And one of my laments, which I end in my book, that democracy needs heroes and media need to cover them. Like all this large Greek chorus of people who are working, legal pushback, bureaucratic pushback, people who speak

out as academics, all these people were all involved together, but the media, it's easier to glamorize villains. So you give Dana Lush of NRA a New York Times styles, you know, a styles profile. But if we're going to be serious about protecting democracy, we need to give people role models. And of course we have some Stacey Abrams. We haven't even been able to enjoy the Georgia victory. No, remember that? There are so many more

angles that could be pursued to lift up people who are doing this important work and incentivize the culture to work for good instead of being complicit. Although you also have to let people hear the actual voices of some of these people that are problematic. I just did the Parler interview where he just said what he thought. And I think that killed off that company. I think it was just listen to what he's saying and judge whether you want to do business with them. And I don't think I was, I didn't stop him. No, it's very important. It's very important to do that because we can't, we have to know

what we're combating against. It's just that it's been asymmetrical. Yeah, 100%. So can I ask you, when you're thinking about these platforms, what do you think the responsibility of tech platforms to regulate the rise

of authoritarian figures are? And now that Trump has been stripped of Twitter, his favorite mode of communication, it's been so quiet. It's actually quite lovely. Do you think he'll be able to maintain that somewhere else? Twitter is uniquely suited to an authoritarian personality because, and it's classic that he and Bolsonaro use their personal accounts. Right. That's right. Just so people don't know, he uses real Donald Trump and not POTUS. And he tried to move over there when he got kicked off, but then Twitter shut him down. That was ridiculous for five minutes.

It's also important because authoritarian politics is a personalized politics. politics where, and the process is that all of the party, and if they're successful, more and more of society become tools of the leader's whims and particular private financial needs, and everything gets sucked up and focused around his person. So it makes sense that, and Twitter in particular for its instantaneity. Instantaneousness. Qualities is highly suited to ego, you know, egomaniac and insecure and needing affirmation 24-7, which is how these guys are. Kara and I can relate to that. That's why Scott and I like it. Both of us were racing for a comment on that one.

Yeah. But we don't want to talk. One of the paradoxes of this is, and you- Professor, let me just interrupt you right there. What do you think, when you look back on different mediums that have been leveraged by these fascists or dictators, what do you think should happen to the mediums? What do you think should happen to Twitter and Facebook?

And maybe give us which each one of these people used, you know, Hitler, Mussolini. Well, the key is that they have to have an unmediated, direct connection through the media of the day with their people. So Mussolini had newsreels and he was highly skilled at using his body. And because at first it was silent and his voice and he was he was incredibly effective that way. Hitler used newsreels, too. But of course, Hitler's tool was radio. And he had this very particular voice where he would he would become so emotional people would feel an intimate connection with him. Now we call it digital intimacy, but it existed at every era of communications and history, and the ones who succeeded best were the ones who knew how to manipulate this. So, one of the

paradoxes is that the more that these rulers are skilled at this media, Paul mediatized politics, the better they seem, the more they seem authentic to their people because, and Modi uses Instagram, that's his platform. And he's highly, he's kind of Instagrammed his life. So this sense of authenticity,

which is important for populist, especially depends on this unmediated connection that these platforms give them. So where does he go? I'm not sure where he's going to go. I'm only asking because about six, eight months ago, I said the problem is once he gets kicked off Twitter, he's got a problem. Especially if Instagram doesn't let him, because none of the other, even Facebook is good for ads and all kinds of group organizing. It's not the same. It doesn't coalesce people. And Parler really wouldn't have worked because it was,

it's talking to one side essentially. And he needs all of everybody there. He needs the liberals. He needs the politicians. He needs the news media. They are all together. So is there a place he can do this? Because he's also not going to be able to command television in the same way. Will his own network really work except to talk to a small base of people? No, and he won't. There isn't an equivalent of Twitter. And the one thing he'll still be able to do is rallies. And these men need the affirmation and excitement that rallies give them. And there's an anecdote, when Goebbels signed on very early to work with Hitler, he realized that if he put Hitler in a studio, Hitler was wooden, he was boring. He needed the like energy of the crowd. And Trump is the same way. So he can do rallies,

but he has a big problem. He has a communications block because there is no substitute for Twitter. And he's not always good on television. He's not always as dynamic. Yeah. And he seems a little crazier on television. When there's any pushback, he falls, as you noticed from all the interviews with Chris Wallace or John Swan of Axios, anytime he gets any pushback, it's a problem for him. So this is going to really limit his impact because the other part of this, as we all know, is that he was amplified incessantly. I had followed him years ago, and I remember in 2018, I published an op-ed in the Washington Post that said how to push back against Trump's propaganda machine. And it was like, don't amplify him. You know, don't retweet him.

And, you know, we know all about the circuits, but he's going, he's deprived of that now. What about any of his followers? Do you see any of them rising to the occasion? Tucker Carlson is one I look at really strongly. Who are you worried about going forward? Yeah, I'm worried about Tucker Carlson. I mean, he's he's a death dad, is what I'm saying. And if you analyze the content of what he says, it hits the best, the low peaks of all authoritarian rhetoric from talking about, quote, gypsies to he's got all of it there and he's quite skilled at it. And he also has a veneer

of respectability in his person, the way he looks, which is important for some people because they can justify that he's not. Yeah, Trump seems crass. Yes. And in fact, one of the reasons that the GOP, I think, are angry at Trump for many reasons, those who are, is that he wrecked it for them because the gloves were off. He was too crass. He was too open about all the games that they play. And he led those games to their logical extreme conclusion, which was January 6th and all the other things he did. And it's much better to have people who do it behind the scenes and have the rules, you know, respect the rules of politics where you're just as dirty, but you do it and you're wearing a, you know, you look. Mitch McConnell does that really well.

Yes. And the Paul Ryans and all of the Kevin McCarthy's, the people who kept the secrets about Russia. But this undisciplined, as you put it before, this is why these people love him. It's exactly why they see him as different than all other politicians. And that's been the secret of his success and why he got more votes in 2020 despite the pandemic crisis.

Right. I'm going to ask one more question. It's got me. So what are you scared of most now going forward? Lay out the next two weeks and then the next six months to a year. In the short term, the two weeks, I'm very concerned about these coordinated... Well, it's actually 10 days, right? Yeah. I'm worried about these coordinated violent aggressions and the sense they will give of a society in crisis and the damage, physical and traumas they will cause. And when Trump said on his January 7th speech, he said, our journey is only beginning. 7th speech, he said, our journey is only beginning. This was important because it's the start of, it may be the end of his, it was the end of one stage of his quest to stay in office,

but it's the start of something that's more viscerally dangerous. Okay. And then out into the next year, what would you see him do that you would worry? As I said before- And what would you see him do that would say, okay, he's just a lazy golfer who- Well, golfing was actually not lazy at all. It was about promoting Trump branded properties. Sure, absolutely. But I'm saying that he just wants to make money.

Like he's not really interested in actually being king. He just wants to make money. Yeah, he wants to make money. But he's also put a lot of effort into, he's not really making money from signaling to all these militias, but yet he's done that. That's one of his top things he's done. So I'm very worried about the instability and sense of crisis and the Republican enablers making it impossible for Biden-Harris to govern properly. The attempt that's been going on to sabotage the, you know, help for coronavirus victims, for economic relief, so that Trump, you know, his famous 2013 or 14 Fox News interview where he says the only way to get the right kind

of government is to have a total collapse in society. You have riots, you have people who are desperate, will do anything, and then you can have a national unity. I'm worried about that scenario. Let them speak. Yes. But that's my, the longer term. Any hopefulness whatsoever? Ruth, I know you traffic in Mussolini, so, and Hitler, and Pinochet, so. Yeah, I mean, we've had a huge wake-up call, and there are people who had, you know, voted for Trump who don't approve of

what he's done. My mother, she's shifted. Yeah. Lucky's on board now? She don't like attacks on the kid. Lucky's on board, although she still hates Nancy Pelosi. So I have one final question for the kid. Lucky's on board. Although she still hates Nancy Pelosi. So I have one final question for the professor. I think that there's a cold comfort that once Trump is gone, a lot of this goes away. And he was elected by an American electorate.

He surrounded himself with enablers who are Americans, who went to American schools and have American children. What does this say about us? We're the latest nation to find out that no one is immune from the temptations of authoritarian politics, from a cult of macho lawlessness. And what Trump has done is to give a roadmap to the GOP for a future way of doing politics where election results that don't go your way become just another

item or fact to be denied or fabricated because you find the votes. And there's plenty of politicians in that party who would go along with this. And the GOP has become a largely authoritarian party now. They have one foot outside of democracy. a largely authoritarian party now. They have one foot outside of democracy. So that's the problem for the future. All right, Ruth, this has been so great. This is an astonishing thing.

The name of your book is Strongman, Mussolini to the President. I keep saying the President. I didn't want to say it. It's an amazing book. Thank you so much. And you are continuing to teach at NYU? Have we met, Professor? I don't think so. No, we haven't. Yeah, try not to. Once you all get the vaccine, stay away. No, I'm kidding. Well, have a lovely time there. I'll come up there. My son's up there. It'll be really fun. I really appreciate all the

work you do. And it's astonishing. I hate to say it well time, but it's an important read and you should all read it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on. All right, Scott, that was a big bummer from Ruth Ben-Gayet. She is her book on Mussolini to the present, Strongman. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making content that no one sees and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers.

Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform can help your businesses stand out, stay top of mind, and see big results. Sell more, raise more, and build more genuine relationships with your audience through a suite of digital marketing tools made to fast track your growth. With Constant Contact,

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And I think that we in America didn't think we would need scholars on fascism, and unfortunately, it's become very appropriate and very relevant. So, I think Professor Benghiet is a gift, and that's why I think universities are wonderful things. Should I leave D.C. during this next couple of days? I can't imagine. You know, that's a really interesting question. You're down there. I'm not. Are you actually worried about what's going to happen?

You know, last week on Pivot, when Stephanie was on, I said I was worried about violence on January 6th because I thought they would go right up to Capitol Hill and try to stop the electors from making them official. I said it. I said, I think there's going to be violence. And my kids did want it. I had been reading because I was preparing for the parlor thing eventually. And I was reading them and I was like, they're organizing on this platform.

They're organizing on Facebook. And so I, it's happening. I went back and forth and I said, my kids wanted to go down there. I said, absolutely not. They're stupid on Facebook. And so I went back and forth and I said, my kids wanted to go down there. I said, absolutely not. They're stupid people with guns and I think they're going to mount an attack. Like, I don't think, I think this is not a peaceful protest or will not, a lot of people there were not intending it to be. I think a lot of people did.

And by the way, go for it. Like God's good, Godspeed on if you want to scream about Hillary Clinton being a lizard. Go for it in lots of ways. But I was worried. I was totally worried. And I don't know what I think now. I think what's going to happen is there's going, hopefully, are real, I think the insider stuff, she's absolutely right. There's a lot of people within our government that went along that are on that side. The guy who was killed was a Trump supporter, which was amazing. And they're going to find out a lot of lawyers from the RNC. I think a lot of stuff's going to

come out. Not just that. Military people, there's a lot of police presence was in the crowd. There's a lot of people in the army who are not against this kind of thing. And so, Germany is suffering this problem. And so, I hope they are planning in each state capital and here, what I'm fearful of at this point is a massacre of people, including law enforcement and military people. None of them, I think they're going to come in with heavy force. And some of these people are going to be killed. And this is not an outcome that I think anyone wants.

I don't think that'll happen. You know why? Because they're white. Why? Well, that's fair. But I don't know this time. I think if they start pulling out those guns, they are going. I think they're ready for it. I think they'll show up with such a level of force that they're basically going to.

Well, just this week, I went up to the Capitol. I went down over to Capitol Hill this weekend. It's a lovely area called the Eastern Market. And driving home, it looked fine, everything normal up on Capitol Hill. But the minute you got down near the Capitol, there were black fences, tall black fences around the Supreme Court, around the Capitol, which you've never seen ever. You used to be able to drive up to it, but that's over. Very high fences. There was deployed National Guard at every 10 feet along this fence inside.

There was deployed National Guard at every 10 feet along this fence inside. And then police officers, the amount of whom, this was on a Saturday or Sunday. It was a Sunday. I've never seen with their lights on. Dozens and dozens and dozens of police cars all the way down the mall for several blocks. And it was a show of force. And I think the issue is the visuals of the military. I think correctly, the visuals of the military patrolling the Capitol is disturbing. There was also a bunch of military in front of Trump's hotel, which was really interesting to see right down there. And so I don't know. I don't know. So maybe that's my fail.

But I think probably my biggest fail is, as this is happening, as the Capitol was being stormed, is also the deadliest day of the pandemic. I think that's really it. I think we've forgotten that, by the way, there's a pandemic going on and people are dying at an astonishing rate, 3,000 deaths a day or more. And that is also a gift from President Trump that keeps on giving. Not a gift. I mean, it's a toxic gift that keeps on giving.

So that's my fail. Win? I find it hard to find a win. I don't have a win this week. Scott? Yeah, my fail is this plague or this virus that infects us called both-sidedness, where through some fucked up version or a version of wokeness, we feel a need to try and understand and make excuses for people saying, oh, they're the Americans that America left behind, or they didn't have access to higher ed. And the reality is when you show up and you insult America like

that, when you are violent, when people die, I always go back to World War II. 1941, a lot of young men said, I'm the only person supporting my family. I've been drafted. My father came back and slowly suffocated to death because of a gas attack and we got nothing for it. So no, I'm not going back. I need to support my family. And we stuck them in jail.

And there is a right and a wrong. And in America, we have a certain set of values to try to discern what is right and wrong. And we need to start holding people accountable. And I don't think this is a time, I just think it's so ridiculous that we feel this need to try and understand how they feel and not hold them accountable.

I also want to highlight that there's a difference between showing up to the Capitol and protesting loudly with an American flag. There's a difference between that person, the person who trespasses and goes in and puts people in Congress under threat, and then the person who breaks into the Speaker's house and throws his feet on the desk. And by the way, I can't wait. I love seeing that guy's mugshot. So there is a difference, but I think there's both-sidedness. I think there is a right and a wrong, and we need to show more

leadership and start holding people accountable. I think when's both-sidedness. I think there is a right and a wrong, and we need to show more leadership and start holding people accountable. I think when Representative Gates from Florida gets up literally minutes after this incursion and starts spreading misinformation and saying that it was Antifa, when he knows that is a lie. He knows that is a lie. He should be censored, and he should be prohibited from any matching funds because when you lie and those lies directly, and you know you're lying. You're not just stupid. Like, I think Rep. Gomer, I think he's a fucking idiot, okay? But I think Matt Gatz will show in his emails that he knew he was spreading misinformation and that misinformation is directly linked to violence and he should pay a price. There is a right and there is a wrong here and I'm done.

We have been infected with a level of both's a wrong here, and I'm done. We have been infected with a level of both-sidedness that is damaging to our nation. Yeah, that is, I think, a perfect thing to end on. We have to have a positive thing, Scott. We got to stay up on it. Well, the immunities are kicking in. We've had all three houses of government change hands. We've had a lot of people, including business leaders, say, all right, the line has been crossed here.

He's been silenced. By the way, hasn't social media been nice and better? Do you realize there's something like— It has. There are 37 accounts. I think it was the New York Times-Atlantic did an analysis. There are only 37 accounts that are responsible for like 60 to 70% of the misinformation that could result in violence. Because what people fail to realize, it's not what you say, not only what you say, but how powerful you are.

And this is a lesson for me. I try to be more thoughtful as my audience grows about leading with opinion as opposed to facts. Because what you realize is when you have shitty takes on things, they have shittier outcomes based on how much influence you have. And when a house, when a representative takes to the floor after something like this and spreads them misinformation, that is dangerous. And all Twitter needed to do, all Facebook needed to do, and they did that analysis, was recognize the accounts

that were causing and levying the most damage on the Commonwealth, and they failed, and they should be held accountable. They failed. Yep, I think we're going to end on that, on that note, but what positive thing we think Scott, I am so happy. I missed you. I called you Friday. I wanted to do a hot take and a quick take. No, you did. You called me a lot more than I call you. I come on. Come on. Yeah. What was the thing that Tom said at the end of that movie I

I know that no we're not in that movie no the one where he goes I need you or you complete me you do say it to me

you so you complete me I want you to say you complete me absolutely you are the missing piece thank you it's true you are the missing piece

sad state of affairs you are the Zacapa to my Cialis seriously I did miss you. Amanda was like, you see my name, Scott. Go on. Go on.

I can't believe it. Even though your tasteless beginning of this show. And by the way, can I just, let's celebrate the officer. I believe his name is Officer Goodman at the Capitol who threw that asshole who was attacking him. This guy who's been since arrested. I'm not going to say his name because he's such a douche. This guy, Officer Goodman, who deserves the Medal of Honor or Freedom, whatever we can give him, who fended off people. Individual, you know, she was, Ruth was

talking about individual leaders. This guy was amazing. What he did, he saw that he was being, that they were going towards the Capitol to the Senate. I think it's the Senate of the Capitol Police. And he risked his life. It's Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. I also hope, just sorry, I'm going back. Black man, black man being chased by white people. I really, I really, I hope and I hope our elected officials for a brief moment when they were sitting in Senate conference rooms, hiding and barricading their doors with furniture, realized we're all Americans. I hope, I hope. No, they were keeping their masks off those assholes. You gotta hope some of them saw the middle here.

You gotta hope some of them saw the middle. No. Yes, I think a lot of them did. A lot of them did. Okay, Scott, that's the show. As a reminder, we love listener mail questions, so we're trying something new. Go to nymag.com slash pivot

to submit your questions for the Pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes. Read us out, Scott. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Our engineer is Ernie Endretot. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed on the show and on Apple Podcasts.

What a terrible week, Kara, but what a wonderful time to rethink what's required to make sure that it doesn't happen again. This has been, what an awful week. Hopefully the immunities are kicking in, but let's not take for granted that these things can't happen.

They can happen and they have happened. And let's trust that it's a wake-up call. And get your vaccines if you can. The number, the ages are going down. I'm very close to DC to getting it. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. Get your vaccines.

Let's start America. Let's build back. I think it's Biden's thing is build back better. Let's build back. Well, we have been back. That's a great analogy. We've gotten a little bit of this hamstrung virus called tyranny and fascism. Let's touch that our immunities will recognize it and respond more aggressively. Hopefully, this nation has

been vaccinated and hopefully we're all in the midst of being vaccinated on a number of dimensions. Thank you. performed by a select few. Well, Clawed by Anthropic is AI for everyone. The latest model, Clawed 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price. Clawed Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems better than any model before. You can discover how Clawed can transform your business at anthropic.com slash Claude. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners.

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