When I think back to my time growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s in a small authoritarian Eastern European state bordering Greece, Turkey, Romania and the Black Sea, one scene always springs to mind: arriving at my high school in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, early in the morning to find a queue of sleepy students dutifully waiting to be let in. The girls were in their regulation “prestilka" – a dark blue apron with round white collar, incomparably unflattering and now reminiscent of something from “The Handmaid’s Tale”. The queue had formed because the staff were conducting a spot check on our appearance. Joining the end of the queue, I felt an undercurrent of anxiety. Would I be reprimanded today? What for?

 Living in an authoritarian state is a performative juggling act, an act of camouflage, of deflection, of concealing your true preferences, opinions and thoughts. Blending in, rendering yourself invisible increases your odds of leading a functional life.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, watching from London where I now live, I find myself reminded of the self-censoring and isolationist culture of 1980s Bulgaria. Every time I ask friends in the U.S. how they are doing, I receive remarkably familiar, self-distancing responses. “I’m trying to steer clear of all the information,” says one. “I guess I’m going insular and trying to focus on my family and what I can control,” says another. “I can’t cope with the news”, says a third. “I know that sticking our heads in the sand is not helpful,” a fourth one tells me, “but I feel helpless and scared and I’m not sure what I can do. Call it self-preservation.”

And there it is. The antibiotic-resistant superbug I and everyone around me grew up with. I sense it. Smell it. Feel it. Fear.

At my school in Sofia, no one was spared from scrutiny. For girls, three conformity boxes had to be ticked: aprons not too short; nails not too long or painted; hairstyles deemed neat and, if you were particularly unlucky, unceremoniously, publicly checked to be certified free of nits. If the staff decided you had failed on any of these parameters, you were reprimanded. Too many of these and you would find yourself with a reduced mark for “behaviour” at the end of term. If you graduated from school with a less than “excellent” behaviour mark, you could not apply to university, even if you’d achieved the highest possible academic grades. A short apron, fancy nails, messy hair or a smart mouth could cost you your future.

I have always been one to talk back. An ambassador’s daughter who grew up in Bulgaria, Switzerland, Afghanistan and Ethiopia before being accepted into the only English-teaching selective high school in Sofia at the age of 14, I insisted on speaking my mind at every opportunity. It was a bad, even dangerous habit. Freedom of speech in any shape or form was not a concept anyone dared entertain. The periods of terror in the late 1940s and ‘50s had made sure of that, though at the time I knew nothing about them. The terror and multiple purges were a state secret, undiscussed in books and not a topic for even private conversations. Their legacy was an atmosphere of inherited fear and mute obedience.

In hindsight, I realize that what I struggled with most at school was the uniformity of thought and the unwillingness to question the status quo that the teachers demanded from us. The rules were understood, without being explicitly written down – “never talk politics, even with friends and extended family”; “never be heard criticising Todor Zhivkov,” Bulgaria’s leader from 1954 until his eventual removal from office in 1989. There was always a certain distance between people. What we said at home, mild as it was, could not be repeated outside, which meant always being guarded around others. And that is exactly how the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) wanted it.

With sorrow, I see now that my American friends, who grew up on the progressive side of the iron curtain, suddenly have much more in common with me than we ever imagined we would. It is hard to comprehend that the United States of America -- that most coveted destination for young Bulgarians who dreamed of basking in unrestrained freedom, self-made wealth and the coolest pop, rap and grunge music scenes of the 1990s – could be clamping down on self-expression in the 21st century. 

Like me, Americans now know what it is to feel an insidious fear of the state. To experience that ever-present fear of punishment and retribution, a fear that incessantly obstructs and eventually destroys social cohesion. A fear that is evidently penetrating deep within the ranks of even the Republican party. Lisa Murkowski, a longtime Republican senator from Alaska, recently made a startling public admission: “We are all afraid,” she confessed at a conference in Anchorage. A courageous statement that reflects the mood of the nation. A national poll from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School conducted among 2,096 18 to 29 year-olds between the 54th and 66th day of Trump’s second term revealed astonishing levels of fear among young Americans across gender and education status. Six in 10 of those surveyed, whether college-educated or not, admitted to being fearful for the future of America.

In Bulgaria, the trust in those around you, which is the social glue in every society, was stripped away, destroyed through the repeated post-1945 purges. Like Musk’s DOGE purges of the federal government across multiple sectors, these had eliminated or rendered destitute thousands of “bourgeois”, police and civil servants, military personnel, workers and anyone who opposed the ruling party. Informants were encouraged, not unlike Trump’s administration threatening government workers to either report DEI initiatives within their departments or face the “consequences”.

The news of immigrants being deported to El Salvador despite having no criminal records, as well as the recent disappearance of a Venezuelan legal immigrant who had been detained in Texas reminded me of Bulgaria’s Belene labor camp, an island on the Danube whose existence I only learned about long after the communist regime was gone. Thousands of people targeted by the regime were marooned there over the decades, sometimes disappearing altogether, never to be seen again.

Fear of the state affects everything, every relationship. I know, because in my adolescent years it even crept into my relationship with my late father. The son of ethnic Bulgarian refugees from Greece, who had settled in a small southern Bulgarian town in the early 1900s, my father finished his professional career as an ambassador, which placed our family within the small minority of privileged Bulgarians allowed to travel abroad.

Like all those in governmental or high-profile jobs, my father was a member of the BCP. But he was also a compassionate man who truly believed in the ideals of equality and social justice. Unlike many others, he did not use his status to profiteer, taking pride instead in the integrity reflected in our two-bedroom apartment, which I shared with my parents and sister. My parents had no holiday villas, no second flat, and none of the other substantive material possessions typically enjoyed by the nomenklatura.

Kind though he was by nature, my father could be uncharacteristically hard on me. He was particularly critical of my outspokenness and worked hard to tame it during my teens. For years, I took his harsh words at face value and felt somewhat deficient. At the turn of the century, I became one of the hundreds of thousands of young Bulgarians who left Bulgaria to move to the West – the land of freedom, democracy and self-expression. I transformed my deeply instilled feeling of deficiency into hard work and determination to succeed in the most libertarian city of all - London.  I explored unfamiliar ways in which humanity was celebrated in the U.K., including practicing critical and creative thinking, and attending gigs and personal growth courses to name a few. Following a ruptured marriage, I even embarked on personal therapy, which was and perhaps still is a somewhat foreign concept in Bulgaria.  

In therapy I frequently explored the wound that my father’s judgements had inflicted on me, along with my distorted relationship with power, control and visibility derived from the regime with which I grew up. For some time I blamed the patriarchy for my father’s harshness towards my younger self. After all, feisty girls and women have never been in fashion anywhere, at any time.

It was only recently that it dawned on me that this was far from being the whole story. My father wasn’t just conditioned by patriarchy but by authoritarianism too. What he had feared above all was that my desire to name things as they were, to say it as I saw it, would endanger my future in a country that demanded unquestioning loyalty, obedience and conformism. He had been trying to protect me. I was surprised I hadn’t made the connection earlier. As the authoritarian regime in Bulgaria fell at the end of 1989, so did my father’s harsh stance towards my way of expressing myself. He softened dramatically, encouraged me to study, to develop professionally, and travel, his natural kindness coming to the fore as he got older.

Since Trump returned to power in January, many journalists, columnists, political pundits and academics have been stunned by the speed and brutality with which he has grabbed American society by the scruff of the neck and is marching it head down towards what some call authoritarianism, others autocracy, competitive authoritarianism, oligarchy,  patrimonialism, kleptocracy or more pejoratively kakistocracy. Whatever the exact version of the oppressive regime Trump is thundering towards or will be allowed to settle on, the one thing he is already circulating is the currency of fear – the currency in which all authoritarian regimes trade.

To succeed, repression requires submission. What more efficient way to achieve it at national scale than by instilling widespread fear of loss of income, status and freedom, and personal reprisal? In the words of the prominent Bulgarian political commentator Ivan Krastev: “Make people fear the future and democratic institutions are paralysed.” Once fear sets in, the boundaries that protect us from the state’s all-encompassing control can completely crumble.

In authoritarian Bulgaria the state held sway over how you looked, what you learned, and how you behaved, all with a view to ensuring that you complied with the party’s need for a surrender of individual agency. My friends and I still lived our teenage lives, fell in love, slacked on homework and had fun, but we, and our parents, were always looking over our shoulders.

To avoid the danger of any form of organised resistance or independent thinking, extracurricular clubs, beyond the odd choir or orchestra, did not exist in our high schools. Art and music and critical thinking were not part of the curriculum. What was mandatory, however, was introductory military education (IME) in which students were taught how to handle a Kalashnikov.

Reading through the journals I kept between the ages of 16 and 18 has revealed many of the tensions I held deep inside. Amidst the predictable descriptions of my relationships’ peaks and troughs, I discovered much yearning for freedom and longing for resistance and courage. I also discovered fear, humiliation and disempowerment - the polar opposites of freedom and courage. The humiliation and disempowerment did not belong to my generation, but had been inherited, creeping into my worldview through the buried experiences of those before me. My 1989 journal was peppered with quotes from books I had read, alluding to freedom and courage or fear and cowardice:

 “If I am fear-struck and sensible enough

And yet I still die

Do not look for bullets in my skull.

Do not look for a knife in my belly.

Do not look for potassium cyanide in my blood.

Pay attention to my knees.

If you find scars from crawling –this was my death.”

[my translation]

I had copied this from the 1962 poem “The Real Death” by Stefan Tsanev. 

A Bulgarian saying warning against resistance also found its way into the pages of my journal: “Many ahead of their time have been forced to wait for it in very uncomfortable places.” Another Tsanev quote also warns of the cost of rebellion: “The murdered quietly lay under the pedestals, the murderers stood on the pedestals.” But I also copied down a Bulgarian saying condemning the meek acceptance of one’s fate: “Like a bomb hidden in your pocket, silence is dangerous.”

In recent years I have been pondering the damage that Bulgaria’s almost half-century of authoritarianism (preceded by centuries of enslavement under the Ottoman empire) has caused subsequent generations. The three greatest barriers to societal and individual flourishment I have identified are these: the inherited terror of visibility, passed down through the generations, that perpetuates self-repression; the severed trust in institutions and each other which makes democracy permanently volatile; and the underdeveloped ability to ask each other meaningful questions for fear of “prying”, which is a prerequisite for intimacy and social cohesion. Sometimes I close my eyes and fantasise about where Eastern European societies might be if they hadn’t inherited authoritarianism’s straitjacket.

And then I turn my gaze to the U.S. in the hope that this traditionally free society can avoid this crushing straitjacket, no matter how bad things seem now. Having grown up in a regime which institutionalised voicelessness, I find myself in imaginary dialogue with all Americans, and my friends in particular, pleading with all those who understandably feel fearful, worried and consequently apathetic not to mute their voices just yet.

Having lived through authoritarianism with its controlled planned economy, I remain optimistic that the US, the oldest democracy functioning within a free economy, is well placed to resist the Trump administration’s brisk march towards authoritarianism. This would require more individuals, whether CEOs, academics, lawyers, business owners, news journalists, ordinary Americans or any other civil society actors, to be brave and to choose to resist (overtly or covertly), despite feeling fear. In fact, robust research of over 300 violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 which resulted in government overthrow or territorial liberation shows that a successful campaign for political change requires a remarkably small proportion of the population: just 3.5 percent. In the US this would still amount to over 11 million people mobilising.

It’s been rewarding to witness the power of the free market economy and the voice of the consumer in action in the United States. They have already made a difference by punishing Elon Musk’s Tesla for his widely damaging leadership of DOGE. Market analysts have recently concluded that the 71% year-on-year drop in Tesla profits has been driven at least in part by Musk’s role in the White House, causing a branding crisis for Tesla. Consequently, he will be curtailing his role in DOGE which is exactly what those giving up their Teslas or Tesla orders wanted. This development could have never happened in any planned economy, like the one in Bulgaria during the second part of the 20th century. I hope this news serves as a strong impetus for ordinary Americans who deem themselves powerless to take a stand. For example, what better way to resist than supporting the free press by donating/subscribing to news outlets or to non-profit organisations like CPJ and ICFJ whose mission is to protect press freedom and the truth. In an act of defiance, Sheryl Crow not only publicly discarded her Tesla but also chose to donate to NPR who have been continuously attacked by Trump’s administration.

Under deep state surveillance, you learn not to ask questions or share much about yourself as a way of staying safe. Now I consider it a joyful expression of a free existence to ask questions.

In hindsight I realise that what helped my parents to not profiteer from the corrupt communist system was having moral clarity and actively choosing to act with integrity. In the current context this means choosing whether to be a Harvard or a Columbia University, a Murkowski or a silent Democrat or Republican senator. For remaining neutral is choosing a side, the enabler’s side. The anti-democratic assault Trump is inflicting on American society cannot survive without the apathy of every citizen who chooses to remain silent. To feel more resolute I remind myself of Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise words that “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  

One of the most efficient ways in which authoritarianism in Bulgaria managed to maintain obedience was through destroying the existence of small communities. Those who were afraid, worried, or anxious lacked not only town halls to turn to but also local communities where they could just speak to one another. We had no way of finding out what the true preferences of those around us were because we did not meet regularly in bigger groups. So to me, the single most defiant and joy-inducing action an American citizen could take would be to create or participate in activities that strengthen social cohesion at the local level. Whether it’s joining local community social events, choirs, sports activities, arts or other clubs, participation strengthens the social glue that keeps democracy alive at a grassroots level and has the potential to weaken false narratives and government control.

Whenever I went back to Bulgaria during my first decade of living abroad, I was often surprised by how few questions everyone asked each other. At times I felt frustrated and was judgemental, rolling my eyes every time I heard someone admitting to not having asked an important question for fear of being deemed nosy. I had mistaken this underdeveloped skill to ask questions for a lack of interest in those around them. Until one day I realised that this too had been a legacy of authoritarian times. Sharing or finding out the “wrong information” in an era of deep state surveillance could cost you your freedom. You therefore learned not to ask questions or share much about yourself as a way of keeping yourself and your family safe. This insight ignited my passion for deep conversations. Now I consider it a joyful expression of a free existence to ask profound questions. In times of a heightened threat of authoritarianism, asking deeper questions is a way of truly understanding yourself and connecting with those around you. Practicing the art of conversation is a defiance of authoritarianism.

Being creative, producing any form of art (and yes, everyone is intrinsically creative!) and supporting arts institutions is another powerful form of resistance against authoritarianism. To keep us subservient, my generation of Bulgarians were deprived of the opportunity to express themselves creatively throughout high-school education. This came at a high cost to us all, the cost of believing that being creative was the preserve of the lucky few.  By its very definition, creativity resists conformity and repression while neuroscience tells us that creativity is also an antidote to anxiety. Embracing our creativity is a way of maintaining a free spirit.

The lack of freedom of speech in authoritarian Bulgaria was reflected in the news media being reduced to a propaganda machine. Its sole role was to legitimise those in power every day and in every way. For this reason, I feel a twinge of sadness every time I hear my friends anywhere in the world voicing their temptation to completely switch off from the news. Knowing the truth is not a given, but a consequence of tenacious and hard-fought journalism operating in a functioning democracy. Turning away from the news is exactly what authoritarian leaders like Trump want us to do because it enables them to act without restraint. While I understand the need to limit the consumption of breaking news as a way of protecting our mental health, I know too well how profoundly discomfiting a world with no truthful news can be. Not switching off the news is perhaps the most subtle yet powerful way to defy authoritarianism.

Like many around me, I too sometimes find it challenging not to feel defeatist and to remain hopeful for the future of my children. When such moments descend on me I take solace in their transience and, more importantly, in history. I look back and remind myself that no dictator, tyrant or autocrat has ever irreversibly crushed the human spirit or won the long-term battle for a better world and greater justice.

The post How to find your voice when you are being silenced appeared first on Coda Story.

Victor Orbán wants to adopt a zebra. Reading about the Hungarian Prime Minister's bizarre request to become a “symbolic ‘adoptive parent’” of a zoo zebra, I had a feeling of déjà vu. Another oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who lives in a glass castle overlooking my hometown Tbilisi, is also obsessed with zebras. To be fair, he has a whole private menagerie. "Lemurs roamed free in my yard like cats," Ivanishvili once boasted to journalists. He's even taken selected reporters to meet his zebras. I never managed to get on that list.

These seemingly eccentric obsessions with exotic animals reveal a fundamental truth about how power itself works. The zebra collection isn't merely decorative – it's emblematic of a system where the arbitrary whims of the powerful become reality, where resources that could serve many are instead directed toward personal indulgence. Orbán admires Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream party, which has steered the country away from EU integration. Trump openly praises Orbán. These men create a web of mutual admiration, exchanging not just tactics but symbols and sometimes even PR consultants – as we learned when Israeli media revealed that Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisers had orchestrated a covert campaign to counter negative discourse around Qatar. Those same advisers were also tasked with cleaning up Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić's public image.

Years ago as a BBC correspondent in Central Asia, I remember staring with bemusement at a massive golden statue in Turkmenistan of the former president, Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-styled ‘Turkmenbashi’, the ‘father of all Turkmen’. The statue rotated to always face the sun. We journalists used to dismiss it as the eccentricity of a dictator in a little-known corner of the world. These weren't mere quirks, though, but  early warning signs of an authoritarian pattern that would spread globally.

Last weekend, we gathered voices who have witnessed authoritarianism's rise across continents for our event "The Playbook." Their unanimous observation: the patterns emerging in America mirror what they've already witnessed elsewhere.

Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, who has faced multiple criminal charges and arrest warrants in the Philippines for her journalism, described her own sense of déjà vu watching events unfold in the United States. Democracy dies not in one blow but through "death by a thousand cuts"—media capture, then academic institutions, then NGOs, until the entire society bleeds out, Ressa warned.

Bill Browder, the architect of the Magnitsky Act that holds Russian leaders to account for human rights violations – which he lobbied for after his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was murdered in Russian custody – mapped how Vladimir Putin perfected symbolic terrorization through selective targeting. He saw this pattern being repeated in the U.S.: "This attack on law firms, as an example, going after Covington & Burling, Perkins Coie, and Paul Weiss... what's the message to every law firm in America? Don't go after the government." He pointed to judges facing impeachment threats and green card holders being threatened with deportation as classic examples of the Putin playbook unfolding in America – striking fear into entire sectors through selective prosecution.

Many audience questions focused on resistance strategies, with particular frustration directed at the Democratic Party's seeming inability to mount an effective opposition. "Why are they so quiet about this?" Armando Iannucci asked, voicing a common concern about the lack of a coordinated response.

Yet Browder managed to see a bright side in America's chaotic, decentralized resistance: "The Putin model is to find the leader of the opposition and then destroy them," he noted. "But if you don't have a leader and resistance comes from everywhere, there's no way to stop it." He pointed to student-led protests in Serbia and Georgia, where grassroots movements without central leadership proved remarkably resilient.

Few know more about resistance than anti-apartheid era South African activist Kumi Naidoo, who served as head of both Greenpeace and Amnesty International. While he offered practical resistance strategies, Naidoo also emphasized something crucial: "We have demonized people who do not agree with us," he cautioned. "We cannot move forward in this moment where we find ourselves unless we consciously build bridges to the people that are not with us." This doesn't mean compromising on principles, but rather understanding the genuine concerns that drive people to support authoritarian figures.

"The worst disease in the world that we face,” Naidoo said, “is not HIV/AIDS or cancer or influenza—it's a disease we can call affluenza." This pathological obsession with wealth accumulation creates the perfect environment for would-be dictators, as ordinary people mistakenly see oligarchs not as threats to democracy but as aspirational figures. The zebra-collecting billionaire becomes someone to admire rather than fear.

Every speaker at our event expressed a haunting familiarity with America's unfolding crisis – they've all seen this movie before, even though no one, right now, can possibly predict how it ends. Iannucci, creator of “The Death of Stalin” and “Veep – so, someone who has, literally, written the script – said the current reality might put him out of the job. How do you parody something already so absurd? 

“Trump,” he said, “is a self-basting satirist in that he is his own entertainment." Still, Iannucci underscored why humor remains vital in dark times: "Dictators and autocrats hate jokes because laughter is spontaneous, and they hate the idea of a spontaneous reaction that they have no control over."

Far from mere entertainment, Iannucci argued that storytelling itself becomes essential resistance. He challenged us to move beyond speaking only to those who already agree with us: "We must tell authentic stories which are rooted in reality. And understand that to stand a chance to get through this moment we're in, we have to invest equally on the objective side as well as the subjective side."

As authoritarians build their global networks of mutual admiration, from private zoos to public policy, the countering networks of resistance become all the more crucial.

Maria Ressa's powerful assertion that "when it is a battle for facts, journalism becomes activism" particularly resonated with me. As a journalist, I've been trained in objectivity and balance. Yet we now face a moment where the foundations of free thought that my profession relies on are themselves under direct assault. This isn't about choosing political sides – it's about recognizing when factual reality itself is being deliberately undermined as a strategy of control.

I also found myself enthusiastically agreeing with Kumi Naidoo who emphasized that we must genuinely listen to those who support authoritarian figures, not to validate harmful policies but to understand the legitimate grievances that fuel support for them. From Manila to Moscow to Washington, the pattern is clear but not inevitable. The script is familiar, but we still have time to write a different ending – one where free thought and factual discourse prevail over manipulation and fear.

If you would like to become part of conversations like this one, we have news: we have just launched a brand new membership program connecting journalists, artists, thinkers and changemakers across borders. Join today to receive the recording of this event and access to future gatherings where we'll continue connecting dots others miss.

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In Russia, we learn early that power corrupts absolutely, strongmen wear their worst intentions like badges of honor , and atrocities spiral from seemingly minor threats. Where I grew up, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

Having spent most of my life watching Putin's Russia take shape, I recognize familiar patterns in American politics today. There is a theory, expressed only half in jest, among some who analyze Donald Trump—as he undermines traditional alliances and creates havoc within the federal government—that he must be a Russian asset. I understand what they mean. Trump consistently parrots Putin talking points, and Russian state media celebrates Trump with unusual enthusiasm. As American presidents, whether left or right, are rarely cheered in Russia, one might suspect some kind of collaboration.

But there is a simpler explanation: Trump and Putin are remarkably similar men who naturally understand each other. No conspiracy required—Trump would feel right at home in Moscow.

This isn't to suggest moral equivalence. Trump, after all, has not waged a genocidal war claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. He aspires to dictatorship but hasn't succeeded in achieving it—yet. He hasn't killed his political opponents or nationalized major companies to enrich his friends. Given America's robust institutions, he is unlikely to ever have the opportunity to do these things. In any case, he likely doesn't harbor such aims—he seems much more jovial than Putin.

Still, the parallels between them are unmistakable:

Both men emerged in the moral ambiguity that followed World War II's short-lived moral clarity. They share a worldview in which only large, feared countries deserve respect. Trump famously told Bob Woodward that “real power is… fear.” In both domestic and foreign affairs, neither operates appears to believe that promises matter or that empathy should guide decision-making. While many politicians behave similarly, few presidents so openly belittle neighboring countries and their leaders as Trump and Putin routinely do.

Both men consider loyalty—even feigned loyalty—to be the only true virtue. Trump's pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists demonstrates his adherence to this principle. Unlike in his first term, when staffers frequently defected or expressed dissatisfaction, Trump now trades competence for loyalty in those he employs, exactly as Putin does. 

Just observe JD Vance's transformation. During Trump's first term, he was a clean-shaven intellectual on a book tour who compared Trump to Hitler. Now, he resembles a Central Asian heir to the throne and his almost comically masculine posturing mimics his boss’s style. This shapeshifting ability shouldn't surprise anyone who read Vance's memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which he described his childhood talent for adapting to different father figures. "With Steve, a midlife-crisis sufferer with an earring to prove it,” Vance wrote, “I pretended earrings were cool... With Chip, an alcoholic police officer who saw my earring as a sign of 'girlieness,' I had thick skin and loved police cars." For men like Trump and Putin, loyalty isn't optional, it's existential, and Vance has mastered the art of becoming whatever his current patron requires.

Both Putin and Trump harbor a profound distrust of democratic institutions. Trump's fixation on the "stolen election" of 2020 mirrors Putin's trauma from his failed bid to manipulate the 2005 Ukrainian election to his advantage. For both men, personal political losses were transformational. In Putin’s case, every challenge to his authority has turned him into a different, usually worse, person. 

It may seem paradoxical that a man who never faces competitive elections changes with each successive term, but it's true – and each iteration is more dangerous than the last. Trump too has changed since his last term. He may still be erratic, may still be a lying, megalomaniacal, overconfident salesman. But those of us who have seen authoritarian evolution up close recognize a fundamental transformation. Trump’s rage at institutional betrayal has calcified into conviction, into a doctrine founded on distrust. The trauma of defeat in 2020 didn't just wound Trump's ego; it convinced him to view the entire democratic apparatus as illegitimate. This shift, this hardening of his position should not be underestimated.

Another thing Trump and Putin have in common is that both believe corruption is universal. I recognize in Trump a mindset common in Russia—indeed, it's fundamental to how power operates in Moscow. Trump doesn't just call opponents "crooked” as a joke, he seems to genuinely believe that graft, and graft alone, motivates everyone. For Trump, corruption is not merely personal enrichment but is the only effective means of governance, of exerting control. This approach makes dealing with Putin convenient—negotiations are simpler when you believe everyone has a price. But I’ve seen in my country how such transactionalism ultimately backfires, creating whole new avenues of institutional corruption that involve orders of far greater magnitude than simple personal enrichment ever could. 

Apart from an intrinsic understanding of corruption, both Trump and Putin also understand, crave and deliberately create chaos. Whether through war, nuclear threats, dismantled treaties, or bureaucratic upheaval, disorder provides leverage. When Elon Musk is tasked with destroying the civil service, the goal is to make government employees more pliable for whatever comes next. The damage, of course, will extend beyond Trump's tenure—after he leaves office, American civil servants will have lost their trust in the entire American system, the whole edifice of government, and it won’t be easy to restore that faith.

And now If Trump and his all-too-loyal allies seem detached from reality, then the joke is on reality.

Many American observers now hold out hope that constitutional guardrails and democratic institutions will do their job. These observers believe checks and balances will contain Trump's excesses until the midterms or the next presidential election bring relief. They're not entirely wrong—America is certainly better positioned to withstand authoritarian creep than Russia was in Putin's early years. 

America's independent judiciary, free press, federalized power structure, and long democratic tradition provide genuine protective layers that Russia lacked. But I've also seen how institutions crumble not through frontal assault but through slow erosion, as bureaucrats, judges, and legislators become complicit through fear, ambition, or simple exhaustion. 

When I read pundits like Ezra Klein argue we shouldn't believe Trump's threats because his power is more limited than he pretends, I recognize a familiar pattern of wishful thinking. Klein suggests that since Trump lacks congressional control and broad public support, his power exists mainly in our collective imagination of it. This analysis assumes Trump operates within the traditional boundaries of American politics. But that's precisely what authoritarians never do. Those who dismiss Trump's ability to transform America make a fundamental error of perspective. They judge his capabilities by the system's rules, while he succeeds by dismantling those very rules. 

Trump has few constitutional powers, true. But autocrats rarely acquire power through constitutional means—that's precisely why they want to become autocrats: to avoid this hassle. They find cracks in the system—a corrupt judge here, a sycophantic legislator there, a couple of overworked bureaucrats willing to look the other way.

Worse, those who can most effectively prevent state capture are least equipped to recognize it. Trump isn't trying to subdue coastal liberals and activists; he’s going after unelected civil servants, military officers, and corporate stakeholders. Whatever their qualifications, these aren't people prepared for civil disobedience—that's not in their job descriptions. They advance their careers by executing orders without overthinking them, not by questioning authority. Whatever resistance they might offer has been further diminished by Musk's crusade against the "deep state."

Meanwhile, the elected officials who can resist often voluntarily surrender. Many Republican congressmen, whatever their real feelings and opinions, have meekly knelt before Trump's throne. Autocratic systems actively select for the unprincipled and obedient. Compare Trump's second administration to his first—adverse selection is already evident.

And now If Trump and his all-too-loyal allies seem detached from reality, then the joke is on reality. 

So far, Trump has twice won the most competitive elections on the planet, and Musk is officially the world's richest man, having built businesses few thought possible. JD Vance, in addition to becoming VP by 40, wrote a bestseller at 31. They all have a history of making their ideas come true. If you think the world isn't crazy enough to follow them further into the abyss, you might want to reconsider your assumptions. In my part of the world, at least, it's always been just crazy enough.

Even though nearly every statement Trump makes is false, he remains deeply true to those falsehoods. His fictions, which share so much with those invented by Putin, have given both men control of their nations’ narratives – false or not. So, when evaluating Trump's threat, consider Pascal's wager: If we spend four years on high alert over dangers that never materialize, we've endured unnecessary stress. If we relax and let his worst ambitions come to fruition, we face a potential catastrophe. The first scenario is clearly preferable.

Americans often ask how ordinary Russians can support Putin's regime. Perhaps now you're getting a clearer picture. The path from democracy to autocracy isn't marked by tanks in the streets but by the slow erosion of norms, the replacement of competence with loyalty, and the methodical exploitation of institutional vulnerabilities.

Trump has given us plenty of advance warning. Authoritarians announce their crimes long before they commit them. Even the most unprincipled men hold deep convictions and manifest character traits that rarely change. That's not advanced political theory—it's Russian History 101. The question remains, though, now that we know – what are we going to do?

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Later this month, on February 23, Germany goes to the polls. Already it seems as if the wall that mainstream German parties had erected between their more sober, responsible politics and the provocations of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has crumbled. Thousands of Germans protested in cities across the country against the apparent willingness of the center-right Christian Democratic Union – the party most expect will win the election and provide the next German chancellor – to accept AfD backing for its bid to block undocumented migrants at the border.  

AfD has become a serious threat to Germany’s political establishment, with its leader Alice Weidel even leading the race  in one recent poll to become the country’s next chancellor. Weidel, a once obscure figure, enjoys the very loud and prominent support of Elon Musk, who interviewed her for over an hour on X last month and appeared at an AfD rally via video link last week to tell the crowd that there was “frankly too much of a focus on past guilt. “ He exhorted AfD supporters to “be proud of German culture and German values and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.” 

Many AfD members have in the past called for an end to Germany’s “cult of guilt” over the Holocaust. And Weidel herself, while endorsing that phrase, has said German politics should not be about its past but about “confidence and responsibility for the future.”

When Musk told thousands of Germans they need to "move beyond" Nazi guilt, I reached out to Erica Hellerstein, a brilliant reporter who has spent months investigating Germany's complex relationship with historical memory. In 2023, her story for Coda dived into  the little-understood opposition to Holocaust remembrance inside Germany. 

"What's interesting to me is seeing that view migrate from the fringe of German society to one of the most powerful shadow politicians in the US," Erica told me.

"Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents," Musk declared to cheering AfD supporters, just hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Musk’s own grandfather was reportedly a pro-apartheid, antisemitic conspiracy theorist in South Africa - another country that, like Germany, has been celebrated for its post-conflict reconciliation efforts.

To understand today's shifting power dynamics, you have to understand how leaders manipulate our view of the past. The battle over historical memory has become one of the most potent weapons of modern authoritarianism, though it often goes unnoticed in daily headlines. Whether in school textbooks, political speeches, or family stories, the rewriting of history isn't really about the past at all. It's about who gets to control the future. 

No one understands this better than Vladimir Putin, who has written the playbook that authoritarians around the world are now following: Close the archives. Rewrite textbooks. Silence historians. Transform perpetrators into heroes.

What makes this tactic so effective is how stealthily it works at first. The rewriting of history begins in intimate spaces - in family silences, in selective remembrance, in subtle shifts of narrative.

We sent Erica to Germany in the wake of America's racial justice protests because we wanted to understand what Europe's model for historical reconciliation could teach a nation grappling with its own buried past. What Erica uncovered was revealing: even as Germans publicly embraced their culture of remembrance, many maintained a studied silence about their own family histories during the Nazi era - much like the buried stories of racial violence she found reporting across the American South. It was in these intimate gaps between public commemoration and private amnesia that she found the seeds of today's shift.

"Silence distorts memory..." wrote Erica Hellerstein in Coda nearly three years ago. She had traveled to Germany to report on its lauded culture of remembrance. Now with Elon Musk telling Germans to move on from their guilt, Erica's prescient piece reminds us why we must interrogate the horrors of history so as not to repeat them in the future. READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

"I don't think it's particularly surprising that someone with Musk's particular brand of grievance politics would gravitate to the AfD's brand of grievance politics," Erica told me, "but it does make me wonder if it will give license to other authoritarian movements to more vocally reject movements to reconcile with the past."

It’s already happening: Argentina's new president Javier Milei is actively whitewashing the country’s brutal period of dictatorship in the late-1970s and early-1980s. And in Hungary, historical revisionism has been essential to Viktor Orbán maintaining his grip on power.  While, in the United States, conservative politicians continue to rail against the 1619 Project and any attempt to teach accurate history in schools.

In Russia, where 70% approve of Stalin's role in Russian history, nearly half of young people say they've never heard of the Great Terror. Years before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine we saw how the Putin regime began to implement its meticulous, systematic erasure of Soviet crimes: “cleansing” history books, culture, music, film, media.  By rewriting the past, Putin's regime cleared the way for future atrocities. When he finally declared Ukraine's statehood a historical fiction in 2022, the groundwork had been laid over decades of perpetuating carefully constructed historical myths. 

Now, as Musk amplifies a view that was once barely whispered in German living rooms, we're seeing  the results of the same erosion of historical memory burst into the mainstream. It’s evident in the support for extreme right wing groups across Europe,

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is how it weaponizes a very human impulse - the desire to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths about our past. As one Gulag survivor told us, of wrestling with this challenge in Russia: "How do you hold people accountable when there are millions of interrogators, millions of informants, millions of prison guards... These millions were also our people."

This selective amnesia creates exactly the kind of buried tension and grievance that authoritarians exploit. From Moscow to Buenos Aires, from Mississippi to Munich, we see how silence about the past can pave the way for power grabs in the present. When Musk aligns himself with Germany's far right, he's not just making an inflammatory speech - he's giving global legitimacy to a movement that understands what Putin has long known: controlling society’s memory is the key to controlling society.

Today, as we witness what Erica calls "the global ripple effect of this kind of embrace of a once-taboo interpretation of history," I'm struck by how the grand sweep of politics often begins in the quiet spaces of our homes. 

The stories we tell our children, the silences we maintain at family gatherings, the questions we dare or don't dare to ask about our ancestors - these intimate choices extend outward, shaping not just our personal narratives but our collective future. 

As Erica put it: “I think it’s so important to start with our family stories - because over time, memory gaps can mutate into memory wars.” And so, perhaps our most important task begins at our dinner tables: facing up to the stories we've been afraid to tell.

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