
M. Gessen and Rachel Louise Snyder on the parallels between authoritarianism and domestic violence.
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This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
Masha Gessen
I am M. Gessen, an opinion columnist at the New York Times. I often write about autocracy and what it's like to live under a totalitarian government. I spent my childhood in Russia and later went back as an adult and reporter from the country through the rise of Vladimir Putin. Now in the United States, I often write about what's happening during the Trump presidency. So I've been writing about autocrats and aspiring autocrats for most of my professional life. I often find myself thinking about a lecture I happened to listen to several years ago. It was a talk by a psychologist about a completely different domestic violence. As she talked about the way abusers control their victims, I kept noticing how much overlap there is between that experience and what happens to people under autocratic governments. And then as I looked into the subject more, I realized that this was not a coincidence. For one thing, the study of trauma suffered by totalitarian subjects has informed the study of trauma in victims of domestic violence. I wanted to talk about it with a friend and a colleague of mine, Rachel Louise Snyder. Rachel is a contributing writer at Times Opinion who often covers domestic violence and she's helped me think through this connection between violence against women and autocracy. Thanks for being here, Rachel.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Thanks for having me.
Masha Gessen
Before we get to the meat of the conversation, can you talk to me about how you got into your area of expertise?
Rachel Louise Snyder
I can. You know, it's a funny. It's sort of a funny answer. I had been sort of a baby journalist and I lived overseas. I lived in London for a couple of years. I lived in Cambodia for a long time, six years. And I had traveled to like 60, 65 countries. And I did stories of gender based violence in all those countries. Stories of, you know, child marriage, trafficking, all this sort of Darkness and domestic violence was in all of those stories. But I was so young and naive that I would be like, but that's not my story. So I'm not going to ask this young 12 year old married Roma girl about the violence in her house. And it wasn't until I moved back to America in 2009, I was standing on the driveway of a friend of mine, my dear friend, the writer Andrew, whose sister Suzanne works for a domestic violence agency. And she drove up, he introduced us, I did that very American thing like, oh, what do you do? You know? And she said, oh, I work for a domestic violence agency. So I thought, oh, like, you have a shelter? And she was like, well, we do, but that's not primarily what we do. What we actually do is we have looked at the research to determine the highest risk indicators of domestic violence homicide in order to prevent it. So we basically predict domestic violence homicide. And I was like, you do what now? Like, this is a crime that happens behind closed doors. This is a crime that I, as a journalist with all of the privileges that came, you know, I'm a white journalist, I'm traveling the world, I have education, I was blind to it. And in some ways my career ever since that day has been an attempt to pull off my own blinders, to say, wow, this is something we need to talk about, we need to study. And so that's what I've done ever since that. That day.
Masha Gessen
So let's try to unpack some things. And I want to start by talking about control and mechanisms of control. And I'm just gonna go through a list, right, of things that stood out to me when I first started thinking about the overlap. And I wanna get your reaction. So, growing up in the Soviet Union, I was used to seemingly every aspect of our lives being controlled. The state decided who could live in which city, which building, which apartment, where you would work after university, whether you could travel even inside the country. How does that relate to what happens in domestic abuse?
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the primary questions, really. Abusers will start slowly. They'll talk about clothing, they'll talk about makeup. They'll say things like, mm, you know, I see the way men look at you when you wear that short skirt. And so I don't think you should wear that. Right. So it's a sort of couched in this protectionism. And they'll chip away at attachments to meaningful things or people. And eventually you'll see somebody control money and work and how much a victim interacts with Friends or family. And you'll see the threat of violence as sometimes more effective and certainly more ubiquitous than actual physical violence.
Masha Gessen
Yeah. The threat of violence as we get more into talking about the Trump administration. Right. Just the amount of violence that we are witnessing now, given that this is a very violent society and has been for a long time. Right. But the spectacle of violence, ice and political violence taken together, I think it has transported us into a different space where the threat of violence feels much more sort of palpable to many more people.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah. Also, it is in the language that people in this administration are using. Right. It is in Trump sort of saying, well, Iran, you know, they better do the right thing. So there's an implicit threat there of violence, but there's also, you know, to connect it to domestic violence. It's also absolutely victim blaming and gaslighting.
Masha Gessen
Right. It's the. Look what you made me do.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Totally. I mean, look what you made me do is essentially what all scholarship up until second wave feminism looked at when it came to domestic violence. Right. Like, you know, well, he wouldn't hurt her if she didn't bring it on herself. Right. If she could just act a certain way, be obedient a certain way. And we'll save this for another day. But it's also part of the trad wife conversations that are happening today. But, you know, I'll put a pin in that one.
Masha Gessen
All right. Okay. Pins in place. Let's go to number two in my list. A special relationship. Right. So the domestic abuser convinces his victim that no one can understand the special love bond between them. And don't you think an autocratic leader does something similar? I'm turning the tables on you here. Right?
Rachel Louise Snyder
You are. You are. I'm like, well, do autocratic leaders give intermittent rewards? I bet they do.
Masha Gessen
Yeah, they do. They do. Absolutely.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Do you see what I did? I turned the tables right back on you right there.
Masha Gessen
Well, well done, Rachel.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Thank you. Thank you. No, I think that's at least from a domestic violence perspective. And trafficking is the same way, you know, sex trafficking or even labor trafficking. Actually, the. The what undergirds all of them is how complicated these relationship, because victims will get these intermittent rewards. You know, they'll get gifts. They'll sometimes get the gift of attention or time. And then, of course, they have a violent episode and the cycle continues. So you're destabilizing the relationship, but you're also forcing that person into a state of dependency and often gratitude. Right. Like, oh, my gosh, this person has fed me Today, Right. Withholding food or withholding sleep is common. I'm interested. Actually, I want to ask you how that works in an. Okay, we're going to get back to your list, but how does that work in an autocratic society?
Masha Gessen
So one thing, and I think this is a key similarity actually between gender based violence and particularly human trafficking and totalitarian societies is totalitarian leaders often set unrealistic goals for the people. Right. So for example, in the Soviet Union there were these labor quotas and they were completely insane. And especially in the early 20th century, they would set these quotas and then there would be like one factory worker somewhere in the country who was able to meet those quotas. But then it would turn out like that the whole factory was working to falsify this person being able to meet the quota. Right. So you don't meet the unrealistic quota. Most people can't. And they don't know whether they're going to be penalized for not meeting it or spared or rewarded for their factory performing better than the other factory. Right. And so you're always working on something where you can't fulfill the expectation. Right. You're at the mercy of the regime or its representatives who are the factory directors or whoever they are. Right. So they can, if they paid you, it was like you're grateful. If they didn't report you for not filling your quota, you're grateful. But you may also be penalized for not fulfilling your quota.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Right.
Masha Gessen
So that actually gets me to unpredictability and instability, which is key in a totalitarian society because you're always in some way outside the law and so you're always punishable.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Right, Right. That's absolutely. One of the key elements in domestic violence and sex trafficking is that destabilization. You're degrading. You know, I'll just be gender specific in this. Although the acknowledgement that anybody can be a victim of violence, domestic violence, but you're degrading women over time. And I think, you know, I've interviewed at this point, I don't know, probably thousands of domestic violence victims. And they often use that phrase, that cliche, living on eggshells. And when you really live on eggshells, your own sense of your humanity collapses in on itself. By which I mean you don't see yourself in relation to others anymore. You're really isolated. And so you check your own behavior. The abuser has taken up residence inside your own mind. Right. And so you know, you know, for example, that you've gotta have dinner on the table at 6 and have the kids toys cleaned up. And then, you know, the abuser comes home and the goalposts are moved. It's no longer dinner at 6. It's that you made chicken and you were supposed to make steak. Right. And so there is this constant sense of like, what am I supposed to do? At the same time as, you know, you can read in somebody's body language, their mood, somebody that you know really well. It's one of the things that actually makes domestic violence different from other crimes, like stranger crimes.
Masha Gessen
Right. And so the next thing on my list is isolation.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah.
Masha Gessen
Which you've already referenced. But when I was a kid, we lived behind the Iron Curtain and like, getting books from abroad or listening to foreign radio was illegal. And we thought that there could be no alternative. Even we, like I grew up in a dissident family, and we thought that there was no alternative to the life as it was in the Soviet Union. But there were a lot of people who actually truly believed that they lived in the best country on earth.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Wow. Yeah, that's so interesting. Isolation is really one of the first things you see in domestic violence victims situations. They get isolated from friends, from family. And I said earlier that the abuser takes up residence in their mind. It's why you can see somebody, you know, walking around running errands, and still they are, as one advocate put it, passive hostages because they are convinced that all the systems that might be in place to help them, if they're even aware of those systems, are not gonna be as powerful as that abuser. And so I think one way to think about it is to think of them as living in a kind of a state of solitary confinement, except a
Masha Gessen
lot of the time it's not solitary. And I'm mentioning that because you used the word hostage. And actually that analysis was very helpful for me. When I was writing about the Soviet period in Russian history, there was a Russian sociologist named Yuri Lyvada who coined this term collective hostage taking. And what he was describing was this mechanism of horizontal enforcement, basically, where let's say if somebody was arrested for supposed anti Soviet activity, everybody they socialized with, their whole family, their co workers might be punished, wouldn't necessarily be punished, but could be punished for not having been alert enough to this person becoming anti Soviet. And so the threat of bringing punishment, bringing violence onto the people you care about, either because you work with them and because you live with them and you love them, was enough to keep most people in line. Right. Which makes me think of women who Worry about bringing violence onto their children or onto the other people they love.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I was listening to you, and I was thinking, well, this might be one of the ways that domestic violence is different. Right. Because victims are really isolated. But you're right, they. The threat of violence to a family. And we see that all the time. Bystanders being killed. If you think about famous mass shootings in this country, like the Texas Tower shooting in the 60s, people forget that he started the night before by killing his mother and killing his wife or Sandy Hook. Right. He started by killing his mother. So there is a danger to others. And one of the interesting things about domestic violence, actually, I'm interested in how this works in your research. If it does, if there's a parallel, you see victims being blamed for the violence against their children. So an abuser says, you know, if you don't get home right away, I'm gonna kill the kids. Right. Kids are often used as leverage. And then if he actually does kill the kids, she is often slapped with failure to protect a homicide charge. Is there a parallel or is it what you were talking about with, like, the neighbors will get, you know, scooped up and blamed and.
Masha Gessen
Yeah, I think there is a peril, not in terms of criminal punishment, but in terms of societal understanding. Right. Which what in this country, I think the criminal punishment expresses. Right. That the mother didn't take good enough care if the kids were killed. Right. And the social understanding in a totalitarian country is very often, yeah, if this person got himself or herself jailed and brought punishment onto their co workers, then they were being irresponsible. Or if I certainly heard it as a kid about dissidents. Right. How could this mother get herself arrested? Doesn't she care about her children?
Rachel Louise Snyder
Oh, my gosh. Really?
Masha Gessen
You know?
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah. Wow.
Masha Gessen
And it's like for somebody that we in this country now think of as. As a hero for standing up against the regime, but that's. That's not the social milieu. But I want to stay with this topic of collective hostage taking for a second, because I actually think that we in this country have witnessed a milder form of it, but we certainly have witnessed it, right. When we see, say, university presidents or even heads of law firms saying, I'm just trying to protect people's jobs or, I'm trying to protect my students and our funding and whatever university presidents are trying to protect, I take those statements with a huge, giant grain of salt. Except I think that that's probably an expression of something these people are Feeling. Right. They're feeling this huge burden of responsibility for other people and an enormous threat to being able to stay responsible for these people's livelihood. Right.
Rachel Louise Snyder
What do you take it with a grain of salt? Because there's obviously some self serving reasons for someone to fall into line, but why do you take it with a grain of salt?
Masha Gessen
That's a great question. I think I take it with a grain of salt because focusing on that value of protecting people's jobs, say in a university setting, requires ignoring all these other values that a university administrator is supposed to uphold.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Right, right.
Masha Gessen
Like academic freedom.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Right, right.
Masha Gessen
So that's why I take that sort of statement of motivation as with a grain of salt. So getting back to my list, probably the most important thing that I think ties these kinds of control together is the psychological effect. And I've heard it described as low level dread, which is distinct from a state of high anxiety. Right. In high anxiety you're really unable to function. But somebody who lives in a state of low level dread can go to work, can do the grocery shopping, can prepare lunch for their kids, and at the same time they always have that, you know, as you said, the abuser has taken up residence in their brain or the totalitarian leader has. The regime has taken up resonance in their brain and there isn't room there in the state of low level dread for acting creatively, for forming meaningful social connections.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah.
Masha Gessen
And most important, I think for planning for the future.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yes, absolutely. That is. That so resonates with my experience of domestic violence victims. When they are in that state of dread, as you put it, they can't make meaningful decisions around, for example, you know, breaking free. In fact, there's a organization in dc, DC Safe that told me years ago when I was researching my book that they realized in a moment of crisis, like say there's a violent moment and the police are called and the police are there and they're getting a woman and her children to shelter, that if they could just provide a go bag for that family that had like 24 hours of supplies in it, that had like a grocery card for food, that had some diapers, that had maybe some baby formula, just really basic. They found that victims of domestic violence were able to make much better long term decisions just by having all the things that can come from that moment of crisis taking care of that for them in that moment.
Masha Gessen
So what's happening there? Is it that their basic needs are met for a minute and they can think of something else?
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah, yeah.
Masha Gessen
Or that they feel taken care of for a minute.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah. You know, it actually makes me think. And I thought of this. I mean, I've thought of this really, in every trial I've ever covered when it comes to domestic viol. But it makes me think of probably the most common question that I get asked as someone who covers domestic violence is why didn't they just leave? And it's really difficult to explain to a judge or police officer why you can't just leave. Right. The bureaucratic hurdles, the financial hurdles, the manipulation. But I don't think we ever actually ask that of citizens of autocracy. I wonder if you see a parallel there.
Masha Gessen
I think there's a peril in the actual difficulty of leaving. And maybe talking through it will be a little illuminating. Imagine what it's like to leave a country. Right. The bureaucratic hurdles, the logistics of it, the expense of it. Again, we've talked about the inability to plan for the future if you're isolated in a totalitarian country. How do you even imagine what it will be like to live somewhere else, to have your circumstances change?
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah.
Masha Gessen
Right. It's not actually dissimilar, Right. From the situation of somebody who has been isolated at home, who's been entirely focused on surviving in this situation. It's almost like having to learn a new language. Right. And certainly it is like immigration, like learning to live anew. And I think people do understand that about the subjects of totalitarian countries. Like, they understand how hard it is, and I think they also have more compassion just for how hard it is to leave your home. Like people hope to the last to be able to just stay at home in a place that maybe they once loved and are hoping to love again.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah. And certainly among people they love. But, you know, it's interesting, like, what do people in a totalitarian country imagine about living somewhere else? Especially if they're told it's the best country in the world.
Masha Gessen
Exactly. Well, you know, when my family was making plans to emigrate, a friend of my parents asked, as a kind of joke, but maybe not exactly a joke, he said, what evidence do we have of the existence of the West?
Instacart Narrator
Really?
Masha Gessen
Yeah.
Rachel Louise Snyder
And like, the very truth of the United States as a place or the Western Europe, or.
Masha Gessen
There was no material evidence. We certainly didn't know anybody personally.
Instacart Narrator
But didn't you have.
Rachel Louise Snyder
I thought Levi's was like a big thing on the black market.
Masha Gessen
Levi's were a big thing. But how do we know that it comes from this magical place that is supposed to exist? Maybe they make it, you know, in Albania And.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Oh, right, right.
Masha Gessen
Like we had material evidence of the existence of the Eastern Bloc, but not places farther away.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Wow. So you can't even imagine. There is a parallel there that I see with domestic violence victims. Like, how do I raise my kids? What am I gonna do? What does it look like over there? Yeah.
Masha Gessen
So let's try to bring this home.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Okay.
Masha Gessen
We've established the similarities, and now let me point out something pretty obvious, which is the autocratic ambition. Right. On the one hand, and gender based violence, on the other hand, have really come together in the Trump administration. There's the President himself accused of sexual violence by multiple women and found liable in one case. There's the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, accused of sexual assault. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Has been accused of sexual assault. We can think back to the Kavanaugh hearings during the first Trump administration, which to me were like the first real illustration of how this movement that Donald Trump leads treats gender based violence.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah.
Masha Gessen
What do you think the effect of that is on us as a society?
Rachel Louise Snyder
I knew we were gonna get around to this. We can't forget Cesar Chavez, too, most recently. Yeah.
Masha Gessen
I mean, I'm not trying to imply that gender based violence is limited to the right or to the Trump administration. We obviously know that it's not. You know, Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, is the most recent example.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Right.
Masha Gessen
But there's this concentration in this administration, and I would also say there's something else that's specific to this administration, which is a shamelessness about it.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah. There's almost a pride about it. And, you know, what do I think it does to us? I mean, at its most basic level, it travels, I think, through a society and it gives license to all kinds of, I'll say, bad actors in normal society. Right. And there is evidence that domestic violence is on the rise. There are a number of states where domestic violence homicides are on the rise. There's research around. You know, for a long time it was that there were three women a day killed in the U.S. now it looks like it's closer to five. I do think it gives. It normalizes abuse. It normalizes, certainly normalizes emotional abuse and coercive control. We haven't talked all that much about coercive control, but I think it's one of.
Masha Gessen
Can you define that?
Rachel Louise Snyder
You know, coercive control is exactly what it sounds like. You are coercing somebody into doing things that they might not or probably would not otherwise do. And you're most often coercing them through threats of violence or through the destabilization of their reality. Right. We see this in the Trump administration. We see this. I think we all saw this in that famous meeting of Zelenskyy in the oval office, where J.D. vance just belittles him and tells him, you know, you're showing no gratitude. And I also think, and I don't know how this. If this has a parallel to authoritarianism or not, but certainly in the states, we have this glorification of what I would call gendered violence, of male violence. You know, John, Senator John McCain's whole identity was based around his own experience as victim of violence during the Vietnam War. And then you have, on the other hand, somebody like Senator Jody Ernst, who is I don't know how many years into being a senator before she talks about her own experience as a domestic violence survivor and sexual assault survivor, rape survivor. So I think male violence in this country is not something to be ashamed of, but domestic violence carries this real shame to it, and this public failure to, like, hold or acknowledge those victims of violence. I mean, do you see any connections there?
Masha Gessen
I do, as a matter of fact. You know, and obviously you pointed out that this isn't new, but I think it's kind of on steroids under this administration, this glorification of male violence and this posturing, this violent posturing, including, like, I even think of something like JD Vance saying that the Pope should be careful when talking about religion, you know, or Pete Hegshead the other day saying to Congress members, be careful what you say, or how dare you challenge me, the secretary of what they're now calling war defense.
Rachel Louise Snyder
That's right. That's right.
Masha Gessen
The sort of be careful what you say and direct it at a totally inappropriate person is a display of that, you know, bullying, violence and totalitarian societies, which were not yet one by any means, but that's what they want to create. Right. Totalitarian societies are mobilized societies. They're societies united by having enemies and by being enemies, ready to act violently together. That's what you see in Russia, where Putin mobilized the entire country against Ukraine. And that's really when Russia became totalitarian, not just autocratic. And I think that that's the glorification of what you're calling male violence is serving that purpose. So let me bring this to what nobody listening expects, which is a somewhat hopeful conclusion.
Rachel Louise Snyder
It's so out of character for my life.
Masha Gessen
I know, I know it's crazy, but I actually think that the conversation we just had offers a little bit of a way to think about what we're living through in this country right now. And maybe some recipes for action. So tell me what works in the domestic violence field?
Rachel Louise Snyder
It's so hard for me to be positive. It's not my natural state. I mean, I do think conversations like this are so important because at the same time as our administration and our leaders might be normalizing violence, we can actually normalize conversations around caring and community outreach. I think one of the things I think about so often is in all of my interviews, and this is going 20 years now or something, domestic violence victim interviews. I have never once done an interview where a victim of domestic violence hasn't said some version of, I'm not your typical victim. To me, nobody sees themselves as. I don't even know what that means. A typical victim of domestic violence. And so one thing I think is to just talk about it. To talk about coercive control, financial control, emotional control. Right. To allow people to recognize their own victimization. One of the people I consider one of my personal heroes, Judith Herman, the great intellectual thinker Judith Herman, who says. I'm sort of paraphrasing her here, but she says to speak about experiences in sexual or domestic life is to invite public humiliation, to invite ridicule and disbelief. The silence of women gives license to every form of sexual and domestic exploitation. Exploitation. Now, that may not sound positive to you, but what it says to me is the recipe is very simple. We have to talk about it, and we have to allow each other the space to recognize what it is.
Masha Gessen
And I would add to this, and correct me if I'm wrong, that having connections outside of the abusive situation, having community support, having meaningful social connections is essential for somebody being able to get out from under the abuse. Right.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Absolutely essential. Yeah.
Masha Gessen
So that makes me think of Minneapolis. Minneapolis is the best example we have so far of people actually being able to resist the Trump administration's actions. And it was a resistance effort that changed things in the city and even changed policy, it appears in the administration. So it is by far the most successful resistance effort.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah, yeah.
Masha Gessen
And what I would focus on in that effort is a language that city named. What was happening. They called it an occupation. Right. They weren't calling it ICE raids. They saw what was happening to them as a very specific thing that called forth a collective effort of resistance. And the other thing that was super important to that effort were the mutual aid networks that had existed since COVID and since the George Floyd protests. Right. So they had a long history. They were well established. There were bonds of trust that were well established. And so people were able to work together, help one another, and also use the language that helped them act.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah, yeah. And it seemed like it grew organically from those established communities. And you're right, it is powerful. And also shout out to my fellow Midwesterners there. Cause we are corn fed, strong people. But yeah, Minneapolis. It makes me think of the, you know, the Gloria Steinem, like, awareness talks that she would hold in her living room throughout the, you know, 70s, 80s, and how we need to bring those back. Like we need to bring back consciousness raising. Consciousness raising. That's what it was called. You know, I'm so young that I didn't remember the.
Masha Gessen
I know. I'm here. I'm here to tell you. It was called consciousness raising.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Exactly. Yes, yes.
Masha Gessen
CR for short.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Thank you. Thank you, my friend.
Masha Gessen
So, yeah, here's the recipe. Talk to one another. Call things by their proper names.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Call them by their names. Yeah.
Masha Gessen
Call them by their names and. And help one another.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Yeah. Kind of like what you and I do for each other.
Masha Gessen
Thank you, Rachel.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Thank you, Masha.
Podcast Host
If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darba, Victoria Chamberlain and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Gillian Weinberger, Jasmine Romero and Kari Pitkin. Mixing by Carol Sabaro. Original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of Opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser.
Host: The New York Times Opinion
Date: May 14, 2026
Guests: Masha Gessen (NYT Opinion columnist), Rachel Louise Snyder (contributing writer, domestic violence expert)
This episode explores the parallels between autocratic regimes and abusive relationships. Masha Gessen and Rachel Louise Snyder discuss how mechanisms of control, psychological manipulation, isolation, and normalization of violence operate both in domestic violence situations and under autocratic governments. Drawing on personal experiences, historical examples, and contemporary U.S. politics—particularly the Trump administration—they offer insight into how power operates to silence, control, and traumatize individuals and societies. The episode ends on a hopeful note, suggesting collective resistance and dialogue as tools for change.
[02:14 – 04:16]
"In some ways my career ever since that day has been an attempt to pull off my own blinders, to say, wow, this is something we need to talk about, we need to study." – Rachel Louise Snyder [03:51]
[04:16 – 07:05]
"The threat of violence as sometimes more effective and certainly more ubiquitous than actual physical violence." – Rachel Louise Snyder [05:24]
"Look what you made me do is essentially what all scholarship up until second wave feminism looked at when it came to domestic violence." – Rachel Louise Snyder [06:39]
[07:05 – 11:53]
"Your own sense of your humanity collapses in on itself... the abuser has taken up residence inside your own mind." – Rachel Louise Snyder [11:31]
[11:53 – 17:55]
[18:33 – 22:09]
"Somebody who lives in a state of low-level dread can go to work... But you always have that, you know, as you said, the abuser has taken up residence in their brain." – Masha Gessen [19:23]
[21:01 – 24:04]
"It's almost like having to learn a new language. Right. And certainly it is like immigration, like learning to live anew." – Masha Gessen [22:32]
[24:06 – 29:48]
"It normalizes abuse. It normalizes, certainly normalizes, emotional abuse and coercive control." – Rachel Louise Snyder [25:44]
[29:48 – 34:22]
"The silence of women gives license to every form of sexual and domestic exploitation... The recipe is very simple. We have to talk about it, and we have to allow each other the space to recognize what it is." – Rachel Louise Snyder [31:21]
"Here's the recipe. Talk to one another. Call things by their proper names." – Masha Gessen [34:07]
Victim Blaming and Gaslighting:
"Look what you made me do is essentially what all scholarship up until second wave feminism looked at when it came to domestic violence." – Rachel Louise Snyder [06:39]
Living in Perpetual Instability:
"Your own sense of your humanity collapses in on itself... the abuser has taken up residence inside your own mind." – Rachel Louise Snyder [11:31]
Isolation as a Control Tactic:
"We thought that there could be no alternative... there was no alternative to the life as it was..." – Masha Gessen [12:14]
On the Difficulty of Leaving:
"It's almost like having to learn a new language. Right. And certainly it is like immigration, like learning to live anew." – Masha Gessen [22:32]
Normalization of Violence in Politics:
"There's almost a pride about it... it normalizes, certainly normalizes, emotional abuse and coercive control." – Rachel Louise Snyder [25:34]
Hopeful Strategy:
"Talk to one another. Call things by their proper names... and help one another." – Masha Gessen [34:13]
Summary by The Opinions, The New York Times Opinion