What Autocrats Have in Common With Abusers
5/14/202635 min
The columnist M. Gessen has spent most of their career reporting on and writing about authoritarianism in Russia. They now cover President Trump and the MAGA movement in the United States. In this conversation with Rachel Louise Snyder, a Times Opinion contributing writer and an expert on domestic violence, M. Gessen draws parallels between interpersonal violence and the way authoritarians coerce and control their subjects. The two discuss a question that domestic violence victims and those who live under authoritarianism often get: Why didn’t you just leave?
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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
[intro music] 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.
M. Gessen· Host0:12
I'm 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 reported 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 subject, 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.