Biden's Resiliency; Meta's Masochistic Trump Decision; Guardian Q&A With Me

Having trouble sharing Lucid on FB? Read on

Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers! The Guardian did a Q&A with me about the authoritarian playbook. You can read the interview here.

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Former president Donald Trump recently threatened to jail Meta head Mark Zuckerberg if he returns to office, and yet Meta has handed Trump a big gift: the company has removed restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts just in time for the run-up to the 2024 election, on grounds that neither of those accounts has violated company policies since their Jan. 2023 reinstatement.

This decision is not just masochistic, given Trump’s belligerent attitude to the company, but politically stupid. Yet again, Trump is being treated as a normal good-faith political actor.

This can be contrasted with the treatment given to Lucid and other pro-democracy accounts on Facebook. Many of you have told me that when you try and share Lucid posts they are classified as spam or as inappropriate.

Please send the following information to me at contact.ruthbenghiat@gmail.com so my contact at Meta can investigate further.

Are you sharing directly from Lucid, or copying the link onto FB? Please provide the link to your FB account - if that account has restrictions on it, that could be the problem. Finally, does this happen with multiple Lucid posts (I think so) or just some? Lucid posts with photographs of Hitler automatically cause a violation of Meta standards, so ignore those cases. Thanks so much!

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If you follow me on Twitter you know how horrified I have been by the continuing outpouring of aggression toward President Joe Biden, including by liberal pundits. I don’t agree with his actions on the Israel/Gaza front, nor do I underestimate the challenges posed by his age.

But imagine racking up so many domestic policy achievements, from the booming economy to large-scale reforms that address the insecurity and inequality that lead people to embrace authoritarians in the first place, and being treated with such a lack of consideration and respect. This is not the way to handle things.

I will be writing about this from the point of view of anti-authoritarian strategy next week. What does this whole turn of events tell us about the state of our democracy?

For my advance prep, I re-read the epilogue to the 2021 paperback edition of Strongmen, which contrasts Biden and Trump as two future directions for America: democracy or autocracy. I am excerpting the last pages of that epilogue as my weekend reading for you. We can think about how things have evolved in the three years since I wrote these words.

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Whether or not Trump runs for office in 2024, the time-tested methods of autocracy - electoral manipulation, voter suppression, the criminalization of protest, political violence, and disinformation designed to increase polarization - are now part of the way the GOP conducts its business as a far-right party.

After January 6, nothing is off the table: extremists might well view the failed coup as a trial run. "That's what we fucking need to have, 30,000 guns up here," said one rioter that day, frustrated that he was not entering the Capitol more rapidly. "Next trip," someone answered him.

What Trump thugs saw as they left the rally to assault the Capitol. Last frame of the propaganda film shown at the Ellipse, Jan. 6, 2021. John Minchillo/AP.

That's why Biden's assertive advocacy of democracy at home and abroad is so important. "Democracy requires consensus. I'm running as a proud Democrat, but I will govern as an American president," he had asserted on the campaign trail. As president he has passed sweeping measures intended to benefit Americans across the political spectrum, such as the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill.

With bipartisan governance in tatters in Congress, Biden has chosen to talk past GOP politicians directly to the American people, channeling "the spirit of being able to work together," just as Ekrem Imamoglu did when he beat Erdogan's candidate in the 2019 Istanbul mayoral race.

Biden's communication strategy subverts the strongman's mania for non-stop attention: he speaks sparingly, appears on television only when necessary, and tweets with restraint. His blunt denunciations of Putin as a "killer"; his emphasis on transparency and ethics in government, as embodied in his Accountability 2021 initiative; and his choice of a woman of color, Kamala Harris, as Vice President - all of this reverses the authoritarian playbook Trump followed faithfully.

“I predict to you, your children and grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral theses on the issue of who succeeded - autocracy or democracy?" said Biden at his first press conference in March 2021. "We've got to prove democracy works."

Authoritarian history shows that while democracies have often failed, so have autocracies, which fall victim to systemic dysfunction and the rapacious nature of those who govern them. The story of the strongman, rife with tragedy, also offers lessons in hope and resiliency. It urges us to invest in democracy protection rather than take our freedoms for granted. The costs of not doing so are far too great.