Anne Applebaum (Live) on Resisting Authoritarianism Here and Abroad

Authoritarianism is on the march, not just here in the US but across the globe. It hardly bears repeating that we live in perilous and troubled times, as a potent and fundamentally destructive combination of nihilism and right-wing populism challenges the very foundations of the post-war liberal democratic order. 

That’s why we were thrilled that the latest episode of BCB is a live taping with historian, celebrated journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic. Applebaum is perhaps the foremost chronicler of the rise of global authoritarianism, including the serious threats to democratic traditions posed by Trump and his administration, and our taping drew a near capacity crowd to Town Hall Seattle (total audience including live streaming of around 1000). Seattle, it turns out, is an Anne Applebaum kind of town where people were ready to hear her speak about "Resisting Authoritarianism Here and Abroad." 

In our conversation, made possible by friend of the pod Haeryung Shin, and co-sponsored by Town Hall and the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Policy and Office of Public Lectures, we dig in with Applebaum about the nature and dimensions of the authoritarian threat both here and abroad, and how to combat it. We begin by asking Anne to dissect the essential nature of Trump 2.0, touching on the ways the administration threatens our existing democratic institutions. We talk about the current situation in Minneapolis, as well as Trump’s ominous call to an assemblage of generals last September to fight “the war from within” as he suggested the American military should use the streets of blue cities as training grounds. Are the guardrails in place to protect our democracy?  

In the second part of our conversation, we delve into the global nature of the rising authoritarian threat. We discuss whether Trumpism is just the symptom of a much larger global disease, and ask Applebaum about her call in her 2024 book, Autocracy Inc., for the world’s democracies to cooperate more closely in countering the increasingly unified – and serious – threat posed by autocratic regimes like Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela. Applebaum also offers her views on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent speech at Davos and what it might mean for the United States. 

Our editor is Quinn Waller. This episode was produced by Jennie Cecil Moore and edited by Robert Scaramuccia.  

About Blue City Blues: 

Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.  
 America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party.
But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming. 
Blue City Blues aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urb

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