Can Police Violence Be Curbed?

Summary

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The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Can Police Violence Be Curbed?

Date: June 5, 2020
Host: David Remnick
Contributors: Jelani Cobb, Ron Davis (policing veteran), Tony Williams (Minneapolis activist), Masha Gessen (journalist and author)

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Brief Overview

This episode, airing amid nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd, delves deeply into the entrenched problem of police violence in the United States. Host David Remnick introduces conversations that examine whether and how policing can be fundamentally reformed or transformed. Key perspectives include: Ron Davis, a veteran police officer and former DOJ official; Tony Williams, an activist with deep roots in Minneapolis’s anti-police violence movement; and journalist Masha Gessen, discussing the Trump administration’s autocratic tendencies in light of recent protests.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction: The Moment of Crisis ([00:10])

• Remnick opens by referencing James Baldwin and setting the scene for the current national anguish over police brutality, framing George Floyd’s murder not as an aberration but as part of a long-standing pattern.

  “The cruelty, the heedlessness with which George Floyd was killed is sickening to consider… what was most appalling is that it was hardly exceptional.” – David Remnick (00:10)

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Segment 1: Jelani Cobb with Ron Davis – Policing from Inside ([01:30] – [11:10])

1. Ron Davis’s Initial Reaction to the Floyd Video ([01:32] – [03:07])

• Despite decades in law enforcement, Davis was “shocked” and “disgusted” by Floyd’s killing.
• He expresses anger at collective progress being undone:

  “It put me also in a little bit of anger that we were heading in the right direction… But we allowed ourselves to get pulled back…” – Ron Davis (02:33)

• Emphasis on turning anger to action and pressing for local and state-level reforms, even if the federal government resists.

2. Is Policing Broken or Working as Designed? ([03:07] – [05:46])

• Davis asserts that the system “is working as it was intended to work,” referencing its origins in enforcing racial hierarchies.

  “It is working as it was intended to work. It is working as designed. That’s why we still have structural racism…” – Ron Davis (04:06)

• He advocates for reimagining policing from the ground up:

  “We really have to start over again. We need to go back to square one and ask ourselves, if we had to build this thing today, what would it look like?” – Ron Davis (04:49)

3. Why So Many Fatal Police Encounters? Systemic Shortcomings ([05:46] – [07:40])

• Lack of data: U.S. does not systematically track police killings.
• Need for accountability, better de-escalation, and mental health crisis response.

4. On Being a Black Police Officer ([07:40] – [10:30])

• Davis discusses the dual reality of being Black and an officer, teaching his own children to protect themselves from police.

  “I’m a black man that chose to be a cop. I can stop being a cop. I will never stop being a black man.” – Ron Davis (09:04)

• He insists on the need for “authentic diversity,” not tokenism, in police ranks.

5. Defunding and Reinvestment in Public Safety ([10:30] – [11:10])

• Davis cautiously supports “defunding” if it means reallocating resources to mental health and social services—not punishing police but reducing unnecessary police encounters.

  “It makes sense if you're going to defund and reinvest in those areas, that would reduce the need to use the police to begin with.” – Ron Davis (10:35)

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Segment 2: Jelani Cobb with Tony Williams – Grassroots Alternatives and Abolition ([11:19] – [21:21])

1. The Reality of Racial Disparity in “Top 10” Minneapolis ([12:44] – [14:24])

• Williams notes the city’s publicized high quality of life is mostly true for white and privileged residents; deep racial disparities persist due to historic redlining and segregation.

2. The MPD150 Report: 150 Years of Minneapolis Policing ([14:24] – [17:36])

• The activist coalition’s report explores the department’s history of violence and the failure of reforms.

  “Everything that is rolled out in response to issues of brutality has been ineffective and or immediately opposed by the police union and rolled back.” – Tony Williams (16:18)

• Argues that policing’s origins and ongoing mission make true reform impossible.

3. What Could Replace the Police? ([17:36] – [18:52])

• Williams describes envisioning a “police-free future,” already glimpsed in certain suburban communities with low police contact.
• Calls for reallocating functions: mental health professionals for crisis calls, victim advocates for domestic violence, etc.

4. Community Concerns: Safety vs. Policing ([18:52] – [20:53])

• Jelani Cobb pushes Williams on whether abolition is truly popular in affected communities, given that some residents express a desire for more policing.
• Williams argues these are really demands for more safety, not necessarily more police; suggests investment in poverty reduction and community supports as alternatives.

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Segment 3: Masha Gessen – Autocracy, Protest, and the Media ([22:39] – [37:01])

1. Trump’s “Dominate” Response and Militarization of Protest ([22:26] – [23:40])

• Discussion of the government’s aggressive tactics, invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying troops as signals of autocratic behavior.

2. The Autocratic Playbook and Weaponizing Anxiety ([24:02] – [26:19])

• Gessen draws on social psychology (Erich Fromm) to argue that autocrats exploit high societal anxiety to consolidate power.

  “Polarization and violence and high anxiety are all things that benefit an autocrat… freedom becomes so unbearable that people want to give up agency…” – Masha Gessen (24:21)

3. Media, Misinformation, and American Distrust ([26:19] – [27:50])

• Arrests and violence against journalists at protests viewed as a consequence of Trump labeling media “the enemy of the American people.”
• Even left-leaning students internalize skepticism toward the press.

4. American vs. Russian Autocracy: Personal Experiences ([32:11] – [34:35])

• Gessen recounts being fired for refusing to cover a Putin-staged event, then getting a direct call from Putin offering her job back.
• Observes both Trump and Putin see power as personal and total.

5. What Happens After Trump? ([35:09] – [37:01])

• Gessen worries that Trump may refuse to accept election results, warning of civil unrest rooted in personal grievance.

  “I think there’s a very real possibility that he will refuse to recognize the results of the election. … His supporters are absolutely prepared and will be credulous when he calls fraud if he loses.” – Masha Gessen (35:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ron Davis on policing’s design: “The system is working perfectly. It is working as it was intended to work. … I was not successful in changing the basic operational systems. We really have to start over again.” (04:06)
• Ron Davis on Black identity and the uniform: “I'm a black man that chose to be a cop. I can stop being a cop. I will never stop being a black man. And they're not exclusive. They do not conflict with each other.” (09:04)
• Tony Williams on the limits of reform: “Everything… in response to issues of brutality has been ineffective and or immediately opposed by the police union and rolled back.” (16:18)
• Masha Gessen on the power of anxiety: “That kind of anxiety … can be a revolutionary opening, but it's also very likely an opportunity for the autocrat to weaponize the anxiety, to weaponize the fear, and certainly to weaponize the division.” (25:12)
• Masha Gessen on Trump and autocracy: “If Joe Biden's elected, how much of Trumpism lingers? ... I'm actually more worried about what happens on November 4th. I think there's a very real possibility that he will refuse to recognize the results of the election.” (35:46)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:10 – David Remnick’s opening monologue (Context, Baldwin quote)
• 01:32 – Jelani Cobb interviews Ron Davis: initial reactions to Floyd’s death
• 03:07 – Systemic racism in policing: intended function, need for redesign
• 05:46 – Why so many fatal police encounters? Data and systemic flaws
• 07:40 – Ron Davis on being Black and a police officer
• 10:30 – Ron Davis on “defunding the police” and public safety alternatives
• 11:19 – Jelani Cobb interviews Tony Williams: lived experience in Minneapolis
• 14:24 – Tony Williams explains the MPD150 report and history
• 17:36 – What a police-free Minneapolis could look like
• 18:52 – Community safety needs vs. policing
• 22:39 – President Trump’s autocratic response to protests (with Masha Gessen)
• 24:02 – The psychology of autocracy and weaponized anxiety
• 26:19 – Arrests of journalists and growing distrust of media
• 32:11 – Gessen’s experiences with Putin; parallels with Trump
• 35:09 – Prospects for post-Trump America and risks of election unrest

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Final Summary

This episode unflinchingly examines the roots and realities of police violence, grounding the discussion in both lived experience and broader historical and systemic critiques. From Ron Davis’ internal reckoning with policing’s legacy to Tony Williams’ case for abolition and reimagined safety, and finally Masha Gessen’s warnings about the fragility of democratic norms, the conversation traces the contours of a society struggling not just with its policing, but with deeper questions of power, race, and civic identity.

Transcript

[Producer/Announcer]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. To look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep. James Baldwin wrote that in 1978. And the same thing can be said of the terrible moment in which we live now, the cruelty, the heedlessness with which George Floyd was killed is sickening to consider. With Floyd face down on the street and begging for his life, a Minneapolis police officer dug his knee into Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, every second of it captured on video by bystanders. But perhaps what was most appalling is that it was hardly exceptional. It follows the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and many other deaths at the hands of law enforcement in a decades long litany of racist police abuse. Where do we go from here? Jelani Cobb has been writing about this for the New Yorker for years. And last week he spoke with both an activist based in Minneapolis and a former police officer. We'll hear first from Ron Davis, who served as an officer and then a police Chief for almost 30 years. And he was then appointed to the Department of Justice by President Obama, where he led several initiatives to improve policing. Here's Jelani Cobb with Ron Davis.

[Jelani Cobb]

Mr. Davis.

[Ron Davis]

Yes, sir.

[Jelani Cobb]

Thank you for your time. I guess I would ask you personally, when did you see this video of Mr. Floyd's death and what was your initial reaction to it?

[Ron Davis]

I think I might have saw it when it first came out. You know, I've seen a lot, obviously in 35 years in law enforcement and working in the Obama administration for three and a half years, I've seen a lot. But this one was shocking. It was obviously a heinous act. It was disgusting. But immediately, besides thinking about the pain and agony this man is going through and his family having to watch this, you know, it did make me think, you know, where are we at right now? Why am I looking at this again and what have we learned and where are we going to go from this? And it put me also in a little bit of anger that we were heading in the right direction with a lot of work to do. But we allowed ourselves to get pulled back and to be paused and to stop and to accept that. And so I think where most of us are at right now, there's still this sense of anger. And so I think the idea now is to turn an anger into action, is to start realizing that if the federal Government is not going to do it the right way. We have the ability to do it ourselves other ways, through voting at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level, by demanding policies, by forcing departments to change. So there's still a lot of work we can do. Even though this administration doesn't seem willing to do it. We'll do it without them. And then we replaced them. So that's my feeling. It was really frustration and anger.

[Jelani Cobb]

Yeah. I think one of the things about that video and the trauma, collective trauma that it imposed on people was this division, I think, in what people saw and what they believed it represented. And so one side of people, one side of the people I was talking to would say that this is a miscarriage of justice, it is a seriously broken system, that something is malfunctioning in the ways that this institution relates to people in the community, specifically African Americans in the community. But another line, people said to me that, no, this is exactly how the system was intended to function, that it is doing what it was created to do to enforce and reinforce the subordination of black and poor people. What do you make of that?

[Ron Davis]

I think the system is working perfectly. It is working as it was intended to work. It is working as designed. That's why we still have structural racism institutional deficiencies. And the more people acknowledge that, the more we can get away from the we versus them. Structural racism institutional deficiencies mean that many of our brothers and sisters in blue are victim to the system as well. And so when I look at my department, and I was guilty as charged, I made a lot of program changes, I made a lot of activity changes, and tried to do a lot of things in fighting crime and reentry and try to be as progressive. But I was not successful in changing the basic operational systems. We really have to start over again. We need to go back to square one and ask ourselves, if we had to build this thing today, what would it look like? What would police be used to do?

And what would be the role of.

Police in a democracy? But if you have operational systems that are flawed, then even good people have bad outcomes and bad people get to operate with impunity. So law enforcement looks like. We keep saying the vast majority are good men and women who are honorably serving. I concur. But many of those good men and women are still having terrible outcomes, very disparate to communities of color. Not because of malice, because we're still using the same systems that were designed on purpose to oppress communities of color. We cannot forget our history that we were used to reinforce and to protect the institution of slavery. We were there to enforce Jim Crow laws and black codes. We're using tactics that have, even today, a disparate impact and outcomes on communities of color. And we're doing it in the name of public safety. And it's having the opposite effect.

[Jelani Cobb]

I wonder. We see this come up again and again. And I think one of the things that made the death of Mr. Floyd such a spectacle and such a horrific spectacle was the fact that this video is almost nine minutes long. And at any moment in there, a person could have intervened or Mr. Chauvin could have changed his mind. Just an infinite number of opportunities for Mr. Floyd to still be alive right now. But most of the time, when we see these kinds of situations, they're not like that. They involve shootings. In the United States, there were more than a thousand people who were killed by law enforcement in 2019. And why do we have so many fatal encounters between citizens and police in the United States?

[Ron Davis]

You know, and that is a great question. And the first part of the question is there's a thousand. But as you know, Jelani, and I've heard you cover this very well. That's a number that mostly the community and media has counted because we don't track. We don't actually track when local governments kill one of our citizens.

[Jelani Cobb]

Yeah, nobody has those numbers.

[Ron Davis]

Exactly. So the first part is to make it important enough to require every police department in the United States, all 16,000, to track it. The second part is to take a look at the use of deadly force. We need to better understand people that are under mental crisis or psychological distress. We need to have better de escalation, which we started to do. We need to make sure officers understand that the symptoms of someone in an autism related crisis is the exact same symptom that we were teaching them of a person that's about to attack. But if we don't collect, if we don't analyze, if we don't learn, if we don't debate, then we'll keep doing the same thing over and over again.

[Jelani Cobb]

A couple years ago, you wrote an opinion piece about the complexities of being a police officer and being a black man in this country. In one moment, you described teaching your children what to do if they're stopped by the police, a conversation that's familiar to a lot of black parents. And yet I imagine that was also complicated by the fact that you're an officer.

[Ron Davis]

You know, and thank you for bringing that article up. It was about my Truth, as a black man and a black cop, I came to the conclusion that the only way for me to balance them was to accept each as the full truth that they represent. First part, as a black man, I do have to teach all three of my kids, two girls and a boy, what to do when stopped by the police. Now, that says a lot, because I'm teaching them how to survive a deadly encounter with people that's wearing the same uniform that I wore for 30 plus years. That is the truth. I have to acknowledge the truth of the role that police have played in our history, the role that we still play in discriminatory practices and disparate treatment. But being a cop has exposed me to working with some of the most honorable and courageous men and women I've met in my life. And so I know this is not about a field being just saturated with a bunch of bad apples, but here's the one thing I would tell every officer of color. The profession will try to change that reality. And over the years, I used to always hear that, look, you're blue. You just happen to be black. Right? That's the kind of concept of how you can get a profession to operate with one mind, a groupthink. And we have to push back from that as law enforcement. And I should tell my colleagues, I am not a cop that happens to be black. I'm a black man that chose to be a cop. I can stop being a cop. I will never stop being a black man. And they're not exclusive. They do not conflict with each other. And I will not allow you to allow them to conflict. Right. And in fact, my experiences of a black man should help me make me a better cop. So we have to be willing to go into these agencies, otherwise diversity means nothing. We have to be able to go in these agencies and embrace our heritage, our culture, and stand there as a proud black man or woman in the uniform. And, and make sure that as you're developing strategies and tactics, that that life experience, that culture, who you are, what you represent, comes out. Otherwise, diversity is just a showpiece to be able to say, look, we have five black guys on the department or five black women. So I think it's a struggle, but it doesn't have to be that two things can coexist. I can accept being a proud member and a cop for 30 years and thinking that my people that I serve with are honorable men and women. I can absolutely say without hesitation in my colleague's face, like I'm doing right now, but we still are still Plagued with structural racism, institutional deficiencies, and we are not holding ourselves accountable the way the community deserves.

[Jelani Cobb]

What do you make of calls to defund police departments or to defund police?

[Ron Davis]

I think it's a good idea. Here's what I would offer for the defunding. It makes sense if you're going to defund and reinvest in those areas, that would reduce the need to use the police to begin with. Right. So not as a punishment to police, but to say that I don't want you to be the primary responder to a personal mental crisis.

[Jelani Cobb]

Well, we'll see how this plays out. And like you, a lot of people will be watching it very closely. Thank you again for your time on a day where I know that you must have a lot of demands on it and stay safe.

[Ron Davis]

Thanks.

[Jelani Cobb]

The day after I talked with Ron Davis, I called up an activist in Minneapolis named Tony Williams. He's been out on the streets protesting nearly every day since the killing of George Floyd.

[Tony Williams]

We had a thunderstorm here and it had been so humid for. For the week before that people just like sweating through Covid masks. Right. And I think last night, finally things started to slow down a little bit.

[Jelani Cobb]

Tony Williams is involved in an effort called NPD150, a coalition of activists, researchers and artists that came together in 2016 to do a review of the Minneapolis Police Department over the past 150 years. Ultimately, they proposed to gradually reduce the policing budget and instead allocate the funds to social workers and community led organizations. That approach of quote unquote, defunding the police has now become a rallying cry at protests across the country. Minneapolis has seen a number of police involved killings of black men before George Floyd, which seems like a stark contrast to the city's liberal reputation. Last year, Minneapolis was rated as one of the top 10 cities to live in, according to U.S. news rankings. I brought this up with Tony Williams.

[Tony Williams]

Minneapolis is definitely one of the top 10 places to live for white people and for people with economic and cultural privilege. Right. I mean, we're a state and a city with some of the worst racial disparities in the entire country. Right. When you look at our home ownership rates for black folks, when you look at income disparities, when you look at the opportunity gap in the schools, there's an immense discrepancy between the opportunities that are afforded to white residents of the city and the opportunities that are afforded to everyone else. And that is built into the geography of the city. We had the same housing covenants and redlining systems that were present all over the United States. And it's resulted in very specific enclaves of particularly the African American community. Most folks live on the north side. And that's a community that was sort of riven into by the construction of Interstate 94 back in the 50s. And so that means that it's quite literally separated from the rest of the city. And my parents, even my dad in particular, had deep connections to the vestiges of that community. And I've grown up with an immense amount of privilege, personally. Right. I'm a very light skinned black man. I'm biracial. And I have had a lot of economic opportunity that a lot of our brothers and sisters have not had access to. So I'm the exception in many ways to the rule of how black folks are treated in Minneapolis and am constantly aware of that when I move through.

[Jelani Cobb]

Our city during the great Migration, when there are lots of African Americans coming from the south to cities in the north and the Midwest. And in a lot of ways, that sets the template for how policing functions in these communities to this day. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the MPD150 report, the performance review for the Minneapolis Police department on its 150th anniversary.

[Tony Williams]

Absolutely. Well, and I think the historical context that you just mentioned is so important to understanding the context of the department. And that's why we wrote the report. And again, it wasn't just me. It was a huge collection of community members who came together to collaboratively produce this report. So the reason why the MPD150 report came to be is because there were conversations happening around that history in the wake of the murders of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. And it was 2016, and people had said, it's clear at this point that this is a cycle and that we keep seeing these killings, but that we don't even really know the history of the police department or of racialized violence within the police department here. And how can we tell that story fully without understanding the context we're operating in? And how do we know where to go from here? How can we find our way out of this cycle? We sectioned it into three parts. The first section of the report is the past section. And we had again, dozens of community members putting in hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of primary source research into looking at the history of the department and also the failed reform attempts. And then the present section of the report, we interviewed dozens of community members across Minneapolis, especially black community members. But in addition to that, Community members who are involved in social services work about what they see community safety as and the intersections that do and don't exist with their work, with police work, and how they find the police department to work with. The final section of the report lays out a trajectory towards a police free future and basically says that from our analysis, it's going to be impossible for us to reform the police department. Everything that is rolled out in response to issues of brutality has been ineffective and or immediately opposed by the police union and rolled back. And the fact of the matter is there are too many structural obstacles to shifting a 19th century paramilitary force designed to keep black and native folks in check into an instrument of effective 21st century safety. And so we lay out sort of what that means and what that looks like. We talk about all of the different functions that police fulfill, and then we talk about how those functions are already being met by alternative safety strategies in Minneapolis and what future implementation of those strategies in lieu of the police might look like.

[Jelani Cobb]

So what does a police free future look like for Minneapolis and what are some of the alternatives to conventional policing that are happening right now?

[Tony Williams]

Yeah, I mean, when I think about a police free Minneapolis, I actually have seen it in the last couple days, right? Minneapolis police and the National Guard here have been mostly focused on criminalizing, brutalizing and arresting protesters the last few days, rather than keeping our community safe. And if you think about, for example, like a lot of suburban white communities, they barely have contacts with police, right? And for the most part, like their needs are met in other ways. Right. And so I think that's a good example of what some things could look like. And then from like a crisis management and safety response perspective, again, we can have mental health professionals respond to mental health calls. We can have victim survivor advocates respond to domestic violence and sexual assault calls. If and when people need to be deployed, whose job is to be prepared for violence, they don't have to be people who are unaccountable to our community, who are from outside our community, and who have a deep systemic culture that shoots first and asks questions later.

[Jelani Cobb]

Let me ask you something on the other side of that. When I've gone into communities like communities that have systemically been plagued with problems about police violence. And, you know, reporting from Ferguson, reporting from Newark, reporting from Baltimore, I have to tell you, when I talk to people in these communities who are at the brunt of police violence, they tend to also bear the brunt of community violence in. And one of the things that was probably ironic, or maybe not, is that you are as likely to get concerns from them that there aren't enough police in their communities. And so it kind of doesn't connect to that. So I wonder if, like, is this something that there's a broad groundswell for? Are people in the community saying this, or is there a kind of more complicated scenario here?

[Tony Williams]

Yeah, here in Minneapolis. I mean, it's different right now. Right. I mean, the last five years, we've seen demands for reform mostly at every protest, and now we're seeing demands for abolition and defunding at every protest. And the conversations about officer diversity and de escalation training are largely gone here in Minneapolis on the ground. And. And we're seeing city council members come out and actually say that they want to fundamentally restructure the department and. Or disband it. Right. And create something different. Well, I think when people are demanding more of a police presence, what they're really demanding is more safety. And we know that crime isn't caused by bad actors. The vast majority of the time it's caused by poverty. It's caused by disinvestment. And there are alternatives to this. Again, we spent millennia as a species finding ways to care for each other in community outside of policing. And we don't know exactly what that looks like in the 21st century, but I do deeply believe it's possible and that we're on our way there.

[Jelani Cobb]

Well, I think that that report has pointed to the really kind of disturbing elements of the history that is common to a lot of police departments and the way in which we are rooted in that history, particularly as we've seen the events taken place over the past two weeks. So, Tony, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for the work you're doing and look forward to hearing more from you.

[Tony Williams]

Thank you, Jelani. It was relaxing and productive to be having this conversation instead of running around trying to put out fires on the ground here in Minneapolis. So I appreciate your time, I would imagine.

[David Remnick]

Staff writer Jelani Cobb talked last week with Tony Williams, a member of the Minneapolis Group MPD 150. We need to clarify that no charges were brought against the officer who killed Jamar Clark, and the officer involved in the killing of Philando Castile was acquitted. Jelani spoke also with police veteran Ron Davis, now a partner with the consulting group 21 CP Solutions. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

[Ron Davis]

We have all the men and women, the Chinese. If people aren't calling them up, you have to dominate. If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you. You're going to look like a puncher. Jerk. You have to dominate.

[David Remnick]

In his response to the uprisings triggered by George Floyd's killing, the president tells governors to dominate protesters. Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection act of 1807. He's called Military Forces to Patrol Washington, D.C. and he issued this ominous threat when the looting starts, the shooting starts. His administration used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters for a photo op, though they claim otherwise. For staff writer Masha Gessen, these actions are just more fodder to reinforce something that has seemed obvious to them for years. Masha's new book is called Surviving Autocracy. It's a series of essays making the case that the president thinks and acts not at all like a Democratic leader, but as an autocrat, a strong man for whom laws and norms are just hindrances to be ignored. The book was informed by the years that Masha spent as a journalist in Vladimir Putin's Russia. We spoke last week.

[Masha Gessen]

It's been a bizarre few days for me and my social news feed. I see posts from my friends in the States and my friends in Russia about their children getting arrested, I suppose, from my friends in the States and my friends in Russia about journalists getting arrested or beaten up at protests. And sometimes I forget which language I'm reading in.

[David Remnick]

How do you see what's going on? Are these protests going to set out a kind of civil division that can be exploited by Donald Trump in an election and in power in such a way that his autocratic tendencies will deepen and deepen and get even more profound.

[Masha Gessen]

You know, I mean, I really try not to make predictions, but what I think we do know is that polarization and violence and high anxiety are all things that benefit an autocrat. And actually, of all of those, I think anxiety is perhaps the most important element. My favorite social psychologist, Erich Fromm, has, I think, the best theory of how autocracies come to be. His famous book, Escape From Freedom, which was published in 1940, when he felt the world was on the verge of catastrophe. And it seems he was right. But his theory is that there are times when a critical mass of people is experiencing such extreme anxiety about having to invent themselves, about not knowing who they are or what the future will be like. And that kind of anxiety can be caused by economic upheaval, by the dislocation of people. And at that point, freedom becomes so unbearable that people want to Give up agency, give it over to a figure that from called the Magic Helper, Somebody who promises to transport them to an imaginary past where they felt more secure. And we've, we, you know, this is just the perfect storm with where we've been in a state of high anxiety bordering on terror because of the coronavirus now for three months. And we're reopening into this state of extreme anxiety and, and violence. Right. And that can be a revolutionary opening, but it's also very likely an opportunity for the autocrat to weaponize the anxiety, to weaponize the fear, and certainly to weaponize the division.

[David Remnick]

Masha, I want to return to the demonstrations early on in all of this. Members of a CNN crew were arrested in Minnesota by the police as they were covering the protests. And other reporters have been hit with tear gas and rubber bullets, and there have been arrests all over. I wonder what went through your mind when you watched that video of Minneapolis police arresting the CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez.

[Masha Gessen]

Several things went through my mind at the same time, and I think they're probably all obvious. One is, you know, this is what you get for broadcasting while being a person of color. But also, you know, being labeled the enemy of the people has consequences, and that's what we're watching. First Steve Bannon and Donald Trump started labeling the media the opposition party and then the enemy of the American people. I think that is a very strong label that has spread far beyond what we imagine as Trump's space of support. Actually, I see it, you know, when I, when I talk to my students.

[David Remnick]

How so? You're sort of left leaning students or think of the press as enemy of the people as well.

[Masha Gessen]

My left leaning students at a very liberal college have clearly been affected by this idea that it is not cool to like or trust the media. They're suspicious agents.

[David Remnick]

And you think that's the influence of Trump or the failings either occasional or often of what's now called corporate media?

[Masha Gessen]

I think it's both. I think that we obviously saw declining trust in the media long before Trump. I mean, it was on a long downward slope. And then Trump came along and amplified this beyond anything we could have imagined. I think a few years ago.

[David Remnick]

I know that your daughter was detained at one of these protests in New York and you wrote about it so well. I wonder what someone that age makes of Donald Trump. I know when I'm talking to sometimes with younger people and I start in on Trump, they're bored with it. Not bored with it, but they just think that enough already about that. You're missing the essence of things, and I think I'm not that Trump actually, as an individual, is important. How do you view that, and how does your daughter view it?

[Masha Gessen]

You know, my daughter has had kind of a tragic history. She was born under Vladimir Putin. There was a moment when we were all protesting PUTIN now, almost 10 years ago. And I talked to her about the protests, and she said, you mean there may not be Putin at some point? And I realized that to her, she was 10 years old at the time. To her, that was almost unthinkable. He had always been there. And fast forward a few years. We had immigrated to the United States, and I came home on election night, and she was in tears, and she said, it's Russia all over again.

[David Remnick]

But what did you say to her? Did you say, yes, it is Russia all over again, or it's something else?

[Masha Gessen]

I said it something else. I said, this country has a different history. This country has a different political culture. No institutions will not save us. But here we still stand a fighting chance of a peaceful transfer of power that is external to Donald Trump.

[David Remnick]

Masha, one of the things that seems to me particularly alarming is the sort of insistent misinformation that you see coming from the administration. I mean, you see this in his tweets, in his remarks, of course, but it's been hard to get even transparent data from federal agencies. The CDC's numbers on COVID 19 deaths have been called into question by epidemiologists and even politicians. How do you explain this utter lack of transparency, even around numbers, when you're thinking about an autocracy?

[Masha Gessen]

You know, one way that I have found that it's useful for me to think about the hard to explain events that we have witnessed is a question of audiences. In a democratic country, the audience of public health agencies, of politicians, is the public, right? Whether it's represented by the media or directly in an autocracy, the audience is one person, right? It's the autocrat. And that can take various shapes. One of the reasons that it's to this day extremely difficult to work with Soviet archival materials, even when you can get access to them, is that there's that lingering question of okay, of audience and intent. What was this for? Was this something that was just created to get whoever wrote up this document out of trouble or to get him a promotion? Perhaps it has no relationship to reality. So my question, in looking at those kinds of reports that we find inexplicable, is, who is the audience? It's the same question that arises for me, when we look at some CDC reports that are impossible to reconcile with state by state data, it's possible that it's explained by incompetence and some sort of bureaucratic mess, or it's possible that it's explained by looking at who the audience of these reports is.

[David Remnick]

Trump, in many ways, is a very transparent being. He talks to loads of reporters. He may not give the kind of press conferences that we're used to, but he's quite available. And that is not the case with Vladimir Putin. You're one of the few journalist I know who's had experience in both countries. That's really deep. And I remember that you had a very interesting encounter with Putin when you were an editor of a magazine that really. I guess I could compare in some ways to National Geographic in Russia.

[Masha Gessen]

Yes. Well, I was fired from my job at the magazine for not sending a reporter to cover Putin's hang gliding with the Siberian cranes.

[David Remnick]

Explain what that is, because you gave that in shorthand. Most autocrats or leaders of any kind do not hang glide with Siberian cranes. So what exactly was happening there?

[Masha Gessen]

Most autocrats like spectacle, and that was a spectacle. He was proving that he was not just president of the country, but also king of the jungle. And so he was going to. I mean, it's a thing, people. There's a way to show migratory birds new migratory routes that are safer by kind of pretending to be a flock leader. So Putin actually dressed as a Siberian crane and hang glided, and I refused to send somebody. That didn't go over very well. I got fired. And then Putin called me.

[David Remnick]

And you're in a car, you're at a restaurant. You're. You're.

[Masha Gessen]

I was in a taxi. Yeah, I was in a taxi. He called me on my cell phone.

[David Remnick]

And you say, hello, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

[Masha Gessen]

Well, I thought I was talking to a prankster. So I was like. I kept trying to come up with something smart to say.

[David Remnick]

What did he say to you?

[Masha Gessen]

Well, he said, you know, I heard you got fired. I heard I'm unwittingly at fault. Would you like to come in and talk about it? And I said, yeah, but how do I know you are who you say you are? And he actually started laughing. He said, well, after we hang up, my. The deputy head of my administration will call you, set up an appointment. They'll all show up, and then you'll know.

[David Remnick]

How did the meeting go?

[Masha Gessen]

It was ridiculous. He offered me my job back.

[David Remnick]

The President of Russia offered you your editorial job back as the head of Russian National Geographic, as it were.

[Masha Gessen]

Yes, because, I mean, this is back in 2012, but by that point, Putin really could not tell where he ended and everything else in Russia began. Basically, if he liked something, he thought he owned it. And I think this is something that is important to keep in mind as we observe Donald Trump. I think that it's not dissimilar to how he conceptualizes power. Power is everything. Power is control over everything.

[David Remnick]

Masha, is this reversible in an immediate sense? Let's say right now we're looking at polls from CNN and elsewhere that have Joe Biden, whatever his limitations, far ahead of Donald Trump nationally. And I believe that he is the running highest in modern polls ever for somebody challenging a sitting president. Now, that could all change. But if Joe Biden's elected, how much of Trumpism lingers? Does he leave office peacefully? What happens the next day on January 21, 2021?

[Masha Gessen]

Well, I'm actually more worried about what happens on November 4th. I think there's a very real possibility that he will refuse to recognize the results of the election. I think he has certainly rhetorically laid the groundwork for that. Again, I think that journalists should never make predictions. But we can observe that he has laid the groundwork. He has continued to talk about voter fraud to the point where it finally got Twitter to fact check him for the first time ever. So his supporters are absolutely prepared and will be credulous when he calls fraud if he loses.

[David Remnick]

So in a way, the country's fate and the possibility of civil unrest in that sense rests upon one man's sense of personal humiliation.

[Masha Gessen]

Possibly. There's a slight hope that he is lazier than he is likely to feel humiliated. But I'm scared. You know, again, the sort of the theory of the case is already out there.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker's Masha Gessen. The new book is called Surviving Autocracy. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening this week. Be well and be safe. See you next time.

[Producer/Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrant. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby Kalalea, David Krasnow, Caroline, Lester Gofen, Mputugwele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses and Stephen Valentino, with help from Allison McAdam, Danny Bonner, Meng Fei Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsarina Endowment fund.