Keeping democracy is a constant, high-stakes battle

My weekend movie was Saturday afternoon when I went to the Detroit Film Theater (and enjoyed some of the Detroit Institute of Arts) for the documentary Secret Mall Apartment. In the 1990s Providence, Rhode Island was getting rather run down. The mills that had provided its wealth had closed. So the city decided to build a shopping mall, Providence Place, at the edge of a good neighborhood where people on the other side saw it more as a barrier than a benefit. Many artists and musicians had taken over the old mill buildings not far from the new mall. They were quite annoyed that city planners saw their area as the next place to gentrify, and evicted them. One of those was the artist and art teacher Michael Townsend. As Townsend watched the mall being built, a place with unusual planes and angles, he saw a space that he identified as unusable. In 2003 he crawled through the in-between spaces of the building and found it. He and seven friends turned the space, about 750 square feet, into an apartment. They hauled furniture up there (through a route a bit more direct than crawl spaces, but still difficult) and turned it into a place to stay. They used a palm size camera to film their work and those films were an integral part of this movie. I think they had residences elsewhere, but that was never specifically said. They managed to live in the mall undetected for four years. This was an act of defiance against gentrification, their private clubhouse, and a place to plan their art. Townsend and his team were also working artists, and generous with their art. One of their big things is tape art – using rolls of blue and green painter’s tape to construct outlines of figures on walls. They were regular visitors to a children’s hospital, decorating rooms and hallways with whimsical figures and helping the little patients create their own ideas. These were intentionally temporary, easily pulled off the wall when no longer wanted. Here’s their tape art website. The main page of the site includes a photo of Townsend. Check out their murals page. The team also took their tape art to Oklahoma City for the tenth anniversary of the bombing there and to New York to commemorate those who lost their lives in 9/11. These people have their hearts in the right place. Townsend was the only one known to the public when their hideaway was discovered. The mall banned him for life for trespassing. When this documentary was premiered it was at the cinemas in – Providence Place. I’m sure Townsend was the guest of honor. I quite enjoyed this one. I read through the transcript of the June 10, 2025 episode of Gaslit Nation titled How a Christian School Kid in Indiana Saw the Fall of Democracies Coming. Gaslit Nation is hosted by Andrea Chalupa. Her guest in this episode is Chrissy Stroop. Chalupa introduces her this way at the top of the webpage:

Chrissy is a leading voice in exposing the Christian nationalist movement, the exvangelical uprising, and the growing marriage between the American and Russian far-right. She also happens to be a trans woman with a PhD in Russian history and a wild journey that took her from a fundamentalist Christian school in Indiana to teaching in Moscow.

And like this during the episode.

[She is] an analyst on global affairs as well as the American Ex-vangelical Movement, as well as Christian Nationalism and Russia. She's an advocate for religious deconstruction, LGBTQ+ rights and social justice.

The episode begins with the story of a woman who came to the US as a fetus. Chalupa reminds us that the media sees immigrants as a hostile invader rather than an individual human story of someone seeking a better life. Chalupa describes the bill the nasty guy just signed (still in process when this episode was recorded) as the “concentration camp” bill. It allocates “a staggering $160 billion to expand state terror and intensify their anti-immigrant crackdown.” The current ICE budget is $8 billion. The new bill keeps that funding and adds $15 for deportation and $45 billion for new camps. That increases ICE’s power by 20 times. This is how MAGA plans to stay in power. Stroop got her PhD in Russian History. After the Cold War there wasn’t much use for it, which is why she taught in Moscow for a while. She noticed that in Florida the big education push was to make sure everyone related to colleges and universities are on the same page. Not said so loud is that the same page is the state ideology. It’s what the Nazis did when they came to power. Now Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, is using the term. A goal of dismantling public education is so that students would be funneled into Christian education (which implies conservative Christian views). These same Christians are a big supplier of resources for homeschooling. Stroop discusses her own conservative Christian education. As a student she was constantly told liberals are evil because they kill babies (allow abortion). Gay people want special rights. If a country disobeys God it will be punished. If it follows God’s will it will flourish. To get God’s blessing abortion must be banned, the queers must be kept at bay, and the political system must align with God’s will. There is a world of Christian broadcasting and Fox News carries similar ideas. Stroop tells the story of recognizing she is trans. She had hints, but didn’t figure it out until she was living in Moscow at age 33. She stopped going to church and began to have a few queer friends. That journey is what helped her reject the teaching of her youth. Her time in Moscow also helped her see the similarities between Russia and far-right Americans. Chalupa said Putin’s 2013 anti-gay laws were pivotal in the global fascist war against democracy. Because of the law Madonna and other superstars began to boycott Russia. There was one notable exception – the nasty guy held his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. By his actions the nasty guy was telling Putin I’ve got your back and I know you have mine because my businesses depend on you and Russia. Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and the nasty guy was elected in 2016. Christopher Steele (of the Steele dossier) noted something must have happened to the nasty guy during that pageant. Stroop reminds us that the nasty guy is currently targeting immigrants. But they won’t do that forever. You say the wrong thing, such as praise the Palestinians and condemn Israel, and they arrest you. They’re trying to Christian Nationalize the universities as well as the K-12 education system. They may not be able to get rid of all public schools, but they’ll try to Christianize what’s left. Since they think public education should not exist that remnant will be as bad as they can make it. Conservative Christian schools and conservative homeschool programs resist government standards because the parents have certain things they don’t want their children to learn, such as evolution and comprehensive sex ed. And human rights. They say that’s a secular concept. Human rights aren’t to be used for things that don’t contribute to human flourishing. Human dignity means one is not gay and not trans. If one is those things one is doing dignity wrong. Yeah, that very much depends on ones definition of “flourishing.” The gay and trans people I know flourish when they are allowed to be gay and trans. As a child getting a Christian education, Stroop felt out of sync a lot of time. One thing that guided her out was a subscription to Ranger Rick Magazine given to her by her moderate grandmother. That magazine is pro environment. At the end of the episode, starting at minute 45, Chalupa discusses the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which has its own page.

Donald Trump is not the cause of America's fascism crisis. He's a symptom. Trump reflects a deeper disease of corruption, institutional failure, and widespread indifference. We can no longer afford to look away. We're in a moment that calls not just for outrage, but for action.

So study the action guide. The June 24 episode of Gaslit Nation has guest Anne Applebaum. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Red Famine, Twilight of Democracy, and Autocracy Inc. Host Andrea Chalupa’s grandfather, a Holodomor survivor, is cited in Red Famine. In 2023 Poland ousted the far right Law and Justice party. By razor-thin margins they retook power this year, only 18 months later. “Democracy isn’t a destination. It’s a constant, high-stakes battle.” We will all be in this struggle for the next few decades. Neither side will achieve a definitive victory. Applebaum commented on the nasty guy’s attack on Iran. The regime in Iran is waging two wars. One is against the US and Israel and has been going on for four decades. The other is against its own people. About the same time the bombs fell there was a crackdown on the opposition. Even though the bombs cause death and destruction and the crackdown causes more, the opposition is delighted with the mess. The nasty guy did not have Congressional approval for his attack. He did not explain why he did it nor convince the public for its need. There is no groundswell of opinion (well, there is... against him). He didn’t say whether uranium had been moved before he struck or what the bombs really accomplished. He hasn’t defined any strategy for Iran, the Middle East, or the world. That’s all a red flag. Perhaps he engaged in war because it is war. Perhaps because he likes the Fox News reporting. Perhaps he thinks he’ll look strong. Chalupa asked how the strike in Iran might affect Russia. As part of her reply Applebaum said:

Putin thinks a lot about other autocracies, and he's concerned about the survival of other autocracies because he thinks of himself as being part of a global war of ideas against liberal ideas, against democratic ideas, but also against the rule of law, against accountability and a win for the other side. In other words, the fall of a sister regime would be interpreted in Moscow is bad for them.

Maybe propping up the Iran regime is in Russia’s interest. But Syria fell because both Iran and Russia have been weakened. And Russia would not be taken seriously if it tried to be a broker in the Iran-Israel war. Even so, Russia maintains ties with and offers help to autocrats in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba in addition to Iran, China, and North Korea. Turning to the situation in the US, Applebaum said we can’t ever be completely lost into autocracy. One dictatorial family ruled Syria for 50 years, then it collapsed. Nothing is irreversible. What happens tomorrow depends on what we decide today. The US has has autocratic periods in the past, such as the rise of the Klan and Huey Long ruling Louisiana in the 1930s as an autocrat. An autocrat at the federal level at this scale is new. One type of corruption is financial. The only purpose of the nasty guy’s cryptocurrency is being a pathway to bribe him. He can’t do anything else with it. The other type of corruption is taking over government institutions and making them loyal to himself and not the Constitution. Right now American politics isn’t about discussing policy it’s about the nasty guy’s taking over institutions, the nature of the state. It’s about do we and the candidate believe in democracy or not? Is government to help or harm? We have to think differently to organize to stop that. In 1945 in Europe most Communist parties tried to take over with minimal violence. In Hungary this was known as salami tactics. Make a little change. Let the opposition adjust. Make another little change. Do it until the opposition is squeezed out. Many people won’t notice the individual steps. Orbán, Hungary’s current dictator, is doing the same thing. This is the most common way democracies fall. That’s not the method the nasty guy, with the help of DOGE, has been using in the US. His method makes progressives feel overwhelmed. The Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe was also all at once. Their takeover focused on education and culture, in hijacking the way people think. When they captured Berlin in May 1945 their first step was to take over the radio station, moving in German communists. Another early step was replacing kindergarten teachers. The nasty guy isn’t particularly interested in this. But the people around him are. American science is admired around the world. So why attack scientific institutions? It’s to hijack the way people think, to mold culture in their own image. That didn’t work in the Soviet Union, nor in Poland and Hungary. They didn’t win people’s minds. People assumed what the government said was a lie. They got their information from other places. Destroying institutions is easy. Getting people to change their thinking to conform to government ideas is quite hard. They can do a great deal of damage, but they won’t win. Those in the government will completely believe their ideology. When it doesn’t work they’ll blame spies and traitors. In the Soviet Union there were waves of harsh repressions. Those didn’t work either. So they would liberalize a little bit and that would prompt a popular uprising. Somebody began to see the value of obeying the law, of following the regime, wasn’t worth the low returns. Protests would be organized. The fall of communism in Poland was negotiated. There were already people who could take over the functions of government. In each of those countries by the 1980s few people believed the ideology or accepted the government, which had little legitimacy. Orbán faces his strongest opponent in the next election. He has massaged the system rather than smashing it. Has he made enough changes to the Constitution that he can’t be defeated electorally? Will he allow himself to lose? How far would he go to prevent a loss? What happens to the companies, the dominant ones in Hungary, connected to himself and his family and friends? Once Orbán is gone all the government institutions will have to be examined to see how to make them neutral again, how to make them belong to the nation rather than the party.