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Trumps America Is Us Democracy In Danger

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TITLE: Trump’s America - Is US democracy in danger? | DW Documentary CHANNEL: DW Documentary DATE: 2026-05-23 ---TRANSCRIPT--- The United States of America was once a promising dream for many. Now, for some, it’s turning into a nightmare. The golden age of America begins right now. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America First. It really is an authoritarian takeover. A nation once called a “shining beacon of democracy” is in turmoil. They’re saying: “You’re trying to take over the Republic.” These people are sick. President Trump fiercely attacks opponents — and parts of the media. Well, it’s fake news. You know, it’s just so… It’s so fake. That’s why the media has so little credibility. The playbook I know from my home is playing out in the United States. The erosion of institutions and state brutality destroyed democracy in Turkey and drove me into exile. Fascists gain power legally. They enter through the legal system and use it to destroy it. I’ve seen the collapse of the rule of law firsthand and where it leads. The ordinary people need a strong leader to direct them and guide them. Right now, the United States is a dictatorship. After 250 years of independence, is the torch of liberty fading? Or will it refuse to go dark? A single bullet deepened polarization in American society. In September 2025, Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA was fatally shot while speaking at an event. A leading voice in the “Make America Great Again” movement, Kirk was closely aligned with Donald Trump. Kirk’s killing sent shockwaves. In my home country, Turkey, assassinations are tools to crush dissent. US President Donald Trump wasted no time, naming a culprit before the perpetrator was even known. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. One month after Kirk’s killing, President Trump held a roundtable meeting on the anti-fascist movement, antifa, calling it a “domestic terror group.” The epidemic of left-wing violence and antifa-inspired terror has been escalating for nearly a decade. At universities, antifa has organized riotous mobs to attack campus speakers, I see it all the time. And these are agitators, anarchists. And they’re paid. And you’ll find that out, you’ll be finding it out very soon. You should see what we have on these people. These are bad people. These are people that want to destroy our country. We’re not going to let it happen. Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer, sounded the alarm at the White House meeting. Jack, please say a few words. Mr. President, I think the situation is getting worse. Antifa is real. We need to do something about this because I fear that the next one who could be killed could be sitting at this table right now. The left-wing movement, antifa, came more in the spotlight after Trump was first elected president. Associated activists played a leading role in protest marches against the far right especially, with some clashes turning violent. We need to cover our faces to protect our identity.

  • From them?
  • Yeah.
  • And from the police too?
  • From the police as well. Because anytime anything happens, it’s always us who are blamed. In 2016, shortly after Trump was elected president, Charlie Kirk set up a website called “Professor Watchlist.” The site, evoking McCarthy-era America, exposed the names, photos, and views of academics alleged to be “leftist.” Among them: a man named Mark Bray. It reminded me of the Turkish Interior Ministry’s wanted list of “terrorists.” Because of a news story I wrote that the government didn’t like, my name was also among them. Traveling abroad is now risky, especially to countries that might extradite me to Turkey. According to my lawyers, Trump’s America is now one of them. And I’m not the only one whose safety is in jeopardy. Rutgers University historian Mark Bray fled to Spain… Rutgers University historian Mark Bray fled to Spain… After he says Turning Point USA publicized his work on antifa… He’s received threats and calls for his firing after an online petition last week accused him of being “antifa-aligned.” I’m flying to Spain to meet Mark Bray, who wrote a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” in 2017, describing the rise of fascism and how to fight it. He hastily left his home country in October 2025, just like I had to leave my own 10 years ago. Bray was put into the spotlight 10 days after Trump labeled antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” and two students from Turning Point USA started a petition, urging the university to fire Bray. One accusation against the professor: being an “antifa financier” for donating to a fund that provides aid to anti-fascist activists. I must admit that I never expected that a high-profile academic would have to flee a country like the United States of America. So, “Antifa” is your first book?
  • Second book.
  • Second book, OK. I wrote a book about Occupy Wall Street and the role of anarchist politics in Occupy Wall Street that was published in 2014. And frankly, without that book, I don’t think that they would have asked me to write the anti-fascism book because, you know, first-time authors, there’s a lot of apprehension. But if you have a book under your belt, then they’re not as concerned. So, it’s more than a bookstore. Yeah, publisher and meeting space and cultural center. Yeah, they got a lot going on here, it’s really cool.
  • And here’s one, a familiar one.
  • Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s a popular subject nowadays…? There’s so much being published about the far right in the US and Europe and beyond. It’s on a lot of people’s minds. Why have you chosen antifa as a subject? Well, it really kind of came out of my activism in a sense that I went to protest Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, I ended up writing an article explaining anti-fascist politics because it was pertinent to what was going on, using my knowledge of the history of the left. And then basically, a publisher in the United States heard me speak about it on the radio and said: “Hey, can you turn that interview into a book?” Ah, OK — it all started like this? I was younger, more enthusiastic and ambitious. I said: “Yeah, sure, I’ll turn it into a book!” I do like this one.
  • So, it’s only in the…?
  • That’s only in the Spanish edition. Capitán Swing, the Spanish publisher, came up with that image. The debate is whether the swastika is poop… Or is the dog pooping on a swastika? That’s up for debate. I’m more close to the first version. So, because of your work, you’ve been getting a lot of threats and some death threats as well. What kind of threats were they? Well here, this is one of the more recent ones. “We will behead your kids.” “Commie hunting starts…” From an email address with a Nazi reference.
  • What is it?
  • Well, it has 1488. And so, the 14 next to 88… The eighth letter of the alphabet is H: 88. “HH” is “Heil Hitler,” so… “Commiekiller1488” is a pretty Nazi handle. But of course, you cannot ignore them. I mean, you cannot say: “Hey, it’s garbage.” That was my first inclination. But I have two small children, and we saw with Charlie Kirk, just some random guy shot him. You never know what can happen, especially in a country with so many guns. And then, this is the one that really changed it initially: “Your violent rhetoric is under investigation.” With my home address in New Jersey… And then, two days later, it was published on X. So, this was your turning point? This was my turning point, yes. In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore. Charlie Kirk understood one thing: We are at war. It’s a political war. A war demands warriors. In late 2025, around 30,000 people attended Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest. Charlie Kirk’s face is everywhere. Three months after his death, he’s celebrated like a martyr. Influencers like Jack Posobiec, who has spread conspiracies and amplified far-right content, carry on Turning Point’s mission. The worst thing we could do for Charlie’s legacy is to surrender, is to let the left win, the violent left. The violent left that took Charlie away from us. I’m not going to let them win. Are you going to let them win? No! Are you going to let the violence and the anger and the division win? No! Or are you going to stand together and be that coalition that Donald J. Trump and Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk joined together in 2024? Are you going to form the coalition? And are you going to continue the mission of Turning Point USA? It’s likely that figures like Posobiec were in touch with the leadership of Turning Point USA, had conversations around how do we advance this campaign of repression against our political enemies. And suddenly — the story we’ve been following takes center stage at AmericaFest. Waiting in the wings is one of the initiators of the petition to have Mark Bray removed from Rutgers University. Would you believe that there is a Turning Point USA chapter leader who actually chased her antifa professor who actually chased her antifa professor all the way out of the country for cheering antifa and supporting antifa? all the way out of the country for cheering antifa and supporting antifa? She exposed him, and he fled all the way to Spain to join the Spanish communists today. Ladies and gentlemen, her name is Ava Kwan. She’s right here from Rutgers University. Thank you for having me, Jack. Ava, what did it feel like when, all of a sudden, you started exposing this antifa professor — “Dr. Antifa” Mark Bray — and suddenly the entire world started coming after you? Well, it definitely took a lot of courage. I have a great chapter behind me, who was supporting us throughout the whole process. And when we first started speaking out, it felt like the world was against us. They wanted to shut us down, they wanted us to stay silent, but we just knew we had to speak out on it. We felt we were in danger. Ava Kwan, I got to ask you though: Are you planning to go over to Spain and see if you can find this guy again? Are you planning to go over to Spain and see if you can find this guy again? You know, Jack, I think I might have to. Oh, no. Oh, no. We got the Frontlines crew over here. You guys know Turning Point Frontlines? They go out into all the debate, all the riots, all the violence, all the rest of it. They’re out there literally on the frontlines. I don’t know, maybe a Communist Revolution Spain edition. We’ll have to do a special documentary, and we can make Dr. Mark Bray the star of the whole thing. That sounds perfect. I might have to join Frontlines in Spain. I might have to join Frontlines in Spain. I just missed that sense of normalcy. Being able to take a deep breath, feeling like I am not in the minds of people around the world. Mark Bray continues to work for Rutgers University, teaching classes online. As does his partner, Yesenia Barragan, who is also a professor. How do you feel here? It’s been hard. A lot of ups and downs. Over time, it’s been easier… Yeah, it’s… I’m sorry. I always end up crying a little when I think about… That’s OK, I don’t want to… But my wife is the same. She doesn’t want to live abroad really, so she’s missing a lot. Yeah, you know, I have family. Your parents? Yeah, my parents. Well, my father died a few years ago. But my mother… They all live in the United States. We usually spend Christmas with them, but we can’t do that. I was feeling very emotional around Thanksgiving, which was a few days ago. In the US, it’s a big holiday with family, and I was very sad. So, you remember the day you left home? That day? I do. It was awful. Feeling like you’re fleeing your country and that you’re not sure when or if you’re going to come back. And the feeling like your whole country is falling apart as you’re leaving, it’s just awful. With these immigration raids, these ICE raids. And I’m the child of immigrants. My mother’s from Colombia, and my father was from Ecuador. And when we told my mother, she was so upset because she said: I came to this country, to the United States, precisely running away from instability. She ran away from the civil war in Colombia, political violence. And so, she was horrified that her child had to run away from something similar. So, you were not expecting any problem leaving the country? I did not know. We went to the airport, we went through security — Yeah, I thought once we are through security, I thought, we’re all set. It’s all OK. And then? And then we got to… While they were boarding the plane and… There was an error. There was an error, and then there was another error, and then there was another error, and then it became clear that… They took us aside. The kids are starting to cry. We’re just standing there, hoping it works out, getting more and more anxious. And then, basically, they said something to the effect of: Someone had canceled our flight reservation at the last moment. I didn’t even know that was possible. Then you realize that it’s something… Well, I just stood there. This is the same day that Trump was meeting with the far-right influencers who were harassing me online. But you didn’t know that then. I did know that they were meeting that day, because this was a public meeting. I was watching. It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country. Radicals associated with the domestic terror group antifa — that you’ve heard a lot about lately, and I’ve heard a lot about them for 10 years — and other far-left extremists have been carrying out a campaign of violence against ICE agents and other officials charged with enforcing federal law. It felt like Donald Trump was, like, looking at me. Big Brother is watching? Exactly. It felt like a very kind of Big Brother, Orwellian, Kafkaesque moment. I wrote a message about how someone canceled our flight, and that’s when this story went from kind of a national story into an international story. And it just exploded as this kind of case study of Trumpist repression. And then we went to an airport hotel. I did media all day. I did an interview with CNN at 6:30 in the morning in the hallway of our hotel room, while everyone else is sleeping in the other room. Do you think of antifa as a movement? Or, as you heard the DHS secretary say, likening it to a gang? Oh my gosh, no. Antifa is a kind of politics or a movement. It’s short for “anti-fascist” in a number of languages. Its history goes back more than 100 years to opposing Hitler and Mussolini. I bring that research to bear in my book, and you can read about it. And the other morning? You went to the airport again? It was the afternoon, and a bunch of our Rutgers colleagues went with us just to make us feel like we had support. And they waited outside of security the whole time until we got on the plane. And so, we got through security, we got to the gate early. She called United Airlines just to make sure: “Is my flight still valid?” “Yes.” And then, a seemingly very friendly representative from United Airlines came out and said: “We’re here to help you.” “Oh, thank you.” “By the way, there’s someone who wants to speak to you.” “Oh, OK.” They bring me over, and it’s four federal agents from Customs and Border Control.
  • They took me into another room —
  • They took him to another room… And then, the kids, they didn’t know what was happening, but they knew that there were police there that were interrogating their father. And then they closed the door on Mark, and so they were asking, “Where’s daddy? Where’s daddy? Where are they taking him? Where’s he going?” And they started sobbing and crying and yelling. And so, I was just a mess. Every instance like this is a test of the degree to which the rule of law still means something in the US, as flawed as it is. In this moment, I guess it was strong enough, and we were allowed to go. I didn’t feel secure and safe until we actually were up in the air. Arizona. It’s a battleground state between the Democratic and Republican Parties. It was won by Donald Trump in 2024, with help from campaigning by Turning Point USA. Here in the capital Phoenix are Turning Point’s headquarters. The city also hosts the organization’s yearly event, AmericaFest. We spoke with Ava Kwan, one of the initiators of the petition to fire Mark Bray. Mark Bray was advocating for pre-emptive political violence against conservatives. And as conservative students on campus, I was worried, I was scared. So, we had decided to create a petition asking for Rutgers to cut their relationship with Mark Bray. So, for him to suddenly up and leave to Spain just because of a silly petition that a bunch of kids made, seemed a little suspicious to me. But, after word got out, everyone thought that we were the ones sending him threats, we started receiving threats ourselves. I got doxed myself. I would never want anyone to have to flee in fear of their life. So, I hope he’s safe, I hope his family is OK, I know he has children. These are students who have never met me and are trying to play a game of political football in the national arena. And I think in this social media environment, what undergrads who are involved in far-right organizations are looking for is they’re looking for their 15 minutes of fame, so they can parlay that into an influencer career or increasingly with how this Trump White House is functioning, so many people and so many positions have no qualifications other than the fact that they have a lot of followers on social media. Conservative and right-wing influencers on social media have become crucial to Trump’s success. They use their platforms to promote “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, values. On the campus of Rutgers University, people continue to debate the case of Mark Bray. Like many other universities in the country, it has become an epicenter of deep cultural and political conflicts between conservatives and liberals. As the debate intensifies, both sides are growing less tolerant of those who think differently. The United States is genuinely a safer place now that he’s not here. I mean, I feel very sorry for him and his family. I feel very sorry for the country that this is the point we’re at. But people like Mark Bray just have to go. Michael Joseph is the former president of Turning Point USA’s Rutgers chapter. How could someone like Mark Bray ever even get hired? It was publicly known that he was like a far-left militant. He’s not an academic. He is an activist. He’s promoted violence. You’re not allowed to call for criminal acts to be committed on people. That’s not a free speech issue. That’s just common sense. Their version of freedom of speech is for them and no one else. What I’m advocating is it’s for everyone, except those organizations that aim to dehumanize members of our community and promote white supremacist and fascist ideas, which ultimately, we can see leads to attacks on freedom of speech for everyone. Rebecca Givan is the president of the higher education union at Rutgers University. She thinks professors should be free to say things — even if they are controversial. Mark Bray is an accomplished historian and an accomplished teacher, and his area of research is legitimate. If we can’t have people who are experts, who are scholars, teaching about their areas of expertise, we really have no academic freedom. Now Mark Bray’s office and home in New Jersey are empty. But the debate set off by his departure seems here to stay. Where do the limits of freedom of expression begin and end in Trump’s America? We advocate free debate and civil discussion. That’s the difference. I mean, he’s only… Even if he did suffer any of that, which I hope he didn’t, which I don’t also believe he didn’t, then he’s merely a victim of the strategies and tactics that he promotes. He claims academic freedom as a cover for his beliefs. That’s because he’s too much of a coward to just admit who he really is. I think that academic freedom is under attack. Suggesting that students do or don’t have academic freedom based on claims of feeling threatened or triggered or unsafe is a manipulation. The target is any professor they think they can bring down. They can sort of do an ideological cleansing of universities. I think every time one of these attacks succeeds in some ways, they smell blood. Intellectuals are often among the first targets of autocrats. As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan consolidated his one-man rule in Turkey, he started a witch hunt against academics, marking the end of university autonomy. Around 400 academics were dismissed for signing a peace petition, many of whom have since scattered to universities around the world. Now some professors in the US are also wrestling with the decision to leave their home country. I’ve come to Canada to meet one such professor. But getting there was not easy for me. My political case followed me even to the Canadian border. Because of a ruling over a true story I had written, I was questioned for three hours. The authorities wanted to know what I’d been accused of, why I’d been imprisoned, and how I ended up in exile. I told them: I was convicted of espionage for exposing a document that the Turkish government regarded as a state secret. In the end, the Canadian authorities agreed I don’t meet their definition of a terrorist. Philosopher Jason Stanley is another scholar who has written extensively about fascism. After seeing Trump target universities, he accepted a job offer at the University of Toronto and left his home in the United States. I’m sorry about what happened at the Canadian border. Unfortunately, this is the kind of treatment, so we don’t have our own passports, and we don’t have the German passport and something in between. And then they Google you, of course they see it, you’re under “terrorism charges.” Jason Stanley is the descendant of Holocaust survivors. His field of expertise is deeply personal to him. I didn’t want my kids to grow up in a country where there were, like, militia officers, hunting immigrants and dissidents and their families had to hide in houses, which is exactly what’s happening in the United States right now. And Americans becoming ethically and morally complicit in this horror. And then a government sympathetic to these right-wing media attacks, which have been going on, by the way, for a decade and longer. The Turning Points USA started out with a “Professor Watchlist.” That’s where the real right-wing authoritarianism starts on campus. Your students in class are turning you in. So then, the next day, you appear on these websites as a left-wing, dangerous professor. That’s what happened to Mark Bray and his family. It’s very frightening. Universities are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. That’s why I wrote my book, “Erasing History,” because I knew they were going to target universities first. But it was one of the first things Trump did. Authoritarians target universities because universities are the place, other than the press, where you have free speech and dissidents. I think the US is not in a temporary crisis. It’s a structural breaking point. And whatever emerges from this will be something different. The US is over as a project. It’s over as a project. Then, what comes next? Will it be some kind of autocracy? Or will the defenders of democracy prevail? Make sure you do your research. We are at war. Inside the Phoenix Convention Center, the attendees are mostly young and mostly white. The atmosphere is energetic, and the message is clear: The US above all else. Although even some Trump supporters seem to be uncertain about what “America First” really means. Let’s get to our next question. Hi, guys. My name’s Liam. I’m all the way here from Florida. I come from a military family. My grandfather was in the Vietnam War as a Marine. My dad was in Operation Desert Storm as a Marine. So, sometimes I struggle with the thought of imperialism. And I think that sometimes we should be the world police, because a lot of people do really bad things. But then also sometimes I think that we should let others settle their disputes on their own and kind of save our tax money for domestic problems. I just want to know what your thoughts are on that and what your advice is for me. Yeah, when it benefits America, we need to be imperialistic. When it doesn’t benefit America, we need to get the heck out, right? So that’s kind of the simple solution… My answer on all of that is: America First. And the rocket’s red glare The bombs bursting in air Gave proof through the night That our flag was still there… AmericaFest attracts fervent nationalists, people committed to defending their idea of identity and the country’s borders against what they see as foreign. We’re bringing in people from third-world countries, from foreign and alien cultures that just don’t get democracy. They have no concept of it. Not all cultures are created equal. Some cultures are actually better for preparing people to operate in our current society, our technologically advanced Western society. And if we go down that path, and I see us going down that path, we will lose everything that makes us great and distinctive. Amy Wax has been a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania for over two decades. Wax was recently suspended from the university for one year with half pay. She was accused of making repeated discriminatory remarks, which targeted non-white people especially. Wax protested the decision with a lawsuit, but it was dismissed by a federal judge. That’s absurd that they’ve suspended me. A lot of what’s wrong with academia is they saw fit to do that. But there’s a reason they call it a “culture war.” In a war, people get hurt, right? There’s a lot at stake in this controversy, this fight between right and left that’s going on in our country right now. And people want to win. And the people who have the power are going to punish and penalize those who oppose them. I have a very pessimistic view of the universities and what is going on there. But I mean, in the country as a whole, I’m actually moderately optimistic. Philadelphia is called the birthplace of American democracy. Here, George Washington was honored as the leader who gave up power to preserve the republic — the opposite of kings and strongmen. But today’s America has new heroes. Is the country drifting back toward the idea of a king? I’m not here to defend Donald Trump. Although I’m a Trump voter, I see his flaws. Yes, of course, our founding was a rejection of monarchy. But once again, when you go back to the founders, they were very concerned about democracy. They established a republic. And a republic is a form of democracy. One of the structural features here was a president who had some fairly substantial powers. He’s not a monarch. But he’s a powerful leader and has a lot of discretion and prerogatives. But what if that power is abused, and institutions that could check it — such as the legislature, the judiciary, and even a free press and universities — have been weakened? Jason Stanley said he left his university in the US, partly to protect it. He feared his sharp criticism and uncompromising views of Trump and American society might make it a target. I say: US democracy is over, Trump is a fascist dictator, the majority of Americans voted for him, a huge number of Americans are racist and fascist. So, what we do have is xenophobia, we have “great replacement theory,” which is the foundation of Nazism, the idea that whites will be replaced by non-whites. We have the racial supremacy, the white racial supremacy. I mean, white supremacy is a buzz word. I believe that our culture, our country, the United States of America, should preserve and protect and defend its Eurocentric values, because that’s where we come from. I’m glad that Jason Stanley has left. I don’t think we need professors like that in the United States. He’s a hyper partisan person who despises our country, despites our culture, is completely incapable of making a fair assessment of our situation, and I don’t think it’s a loss for him to go to Canada, at all. These have become familiar scenes in Trump’s America. This guy has a gun, they’re firing guns. You made a crime scene! Operations by ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — sometimes turning deadly. Families being torn apart. I’m highly familiar with everything going on… Not everything, but a lot of what’s happening in Minneapolis. When you look at that footage showing ICE operations: They are raiding houses, etc. What does your family history tell you? Yeah, so, when I look at this, it’s a nightmare for me. Because my father, after “Kristallnacht,” after “Reichspogromnacht” in November 8th and 9th, 1938, his mother didn’t allow him on the streets until they left in July 1939. He told me a story that, until he was in his early 20s, he would set out his clothing some nights on his bed and set his alarm clock for 3 a.m. and when it rang, he would jump up, dress quickly, and then he felt OK and relaxed and could go to bed again. He told his mother this one day, and she said: “Yeah, I taught you to do that, in case the knock came on the door, and we had to move quickly. You can stop now.” These kids who are in hiding in Minneapolis and all across the United States, they’re going to be telling their children the stories that my parents told me. The terror of fascism in Europe made huge numbers of people flee their homes, cost the lives of millions, and destroyed families. Jason Stanley’s family did not escape unharmed. This is my mother and aunt and grandparents in Warsaw in 1946. They had survived the war in Stalin’s Gulag. When they came back, they found that all of their relatives had been killed. Eight of my mother’s uncles and aunts were killed and every single one of their children. My grandmother, she knew what was going on, but nobody else did. And so, in her memoir, her book is up there, she talks about how difficult it was to convince German Jews that it was time to leave. There’s a saying I heard recently: The pessimists in Germany have pools in Beverly Hills, and the optimists went to Auschwitz. Please stop at the corner of Fasanenstrasse and Kurfürstendamm, I told the driver. I paid him slowly, wondering whether it wouldn’t be wiser to go on. But then I left the cab. Fasanenstrasse was a quiet street and rather dark, much darker since. I did not look up until I stood right in front of the house. I was grateful that, in the darkness, I could hardly see its contours. I am going away, I said. Tomorrow morning, I am going away. I did not have the courage to come to you before, but I could not leave without saying goodbye to you. It is dark now, so I came. I cannot bear to see you sad. One day, I will come back and build you up again, the same way you looked before. Just as beautiful. Goodbye, my beloved house. I knew that wherever I might be, I should think of my house every day of my life. I left Germany the next morning. It was life, I mean, obviously. Then, look at this. The Statue of Liberty. Seeing the first…
  • First images of New York.
  • Yep. And then, the last picture… Wow. Amazing. That’s what New York means to my family. That’s why it was hard to leave New York and America. Because New York meant freedom. But now America doesn’t mean freedom anymore. It means unfreedom. The USA, often called a “nation of immigrants,” is now at a turning point. Here, the definition of what it means to be “American” is getting increasingly narrow. Americans are hungry for identity. We’re hungry for belonging. We’re hungry for a sense of our place in the world. According to MAGA’s major players, religion is central to American identity. Not any religion, but Christianity. You must become Catholics in public. And so, for me… Look, I’m going to carry this wherever I go because you need that spiritual defense, because we’re living through spiritual warfare. And don’t be afraid. And when people see you doing it, they will follow you. They will follow. I believe that President Trump — no, he’s not Catholic — but if you notice, he’s got Melania around him, he’s got JD Vance around him, I pop in from time to time. He’s got a lot of Catholics that are around him. And I think that they’re working on him, they’re praying on him. Using religion in the political sphere reminds me of my own country where Turkish President Erdoğan used Islam to legitimize his authoritarian power, suppressing freedoms, also in the name of God. The only thing that is truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation. This is… well, for many years it was known as Valle de Los Caídos, or the Valley of the Fallen, which is an enormous — and in my opinion, atrocious — monument to Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War, which he built in large part using prison labor from Republican political prisoners, some of whose bodies are buried here. It’s a monument to “franquismo,” to the era of Franco. You can see the eagles there, that was the symbol of Franco’s Spain. It was on the flag of Spain during his time. And the symbolism of the martyrdom of fascism and Catholicism dovetails here. He was buried here up until a few years ago. He and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was the founder of the Falange, the Spanish fascist party, they were both buried up here, but they both had their bodies moved because of democratic measures put forth by the socialist government to really push back against the veneration of the era of Franco. And so now they’re buried elsewhere. And unfortunately, far too many people in Spain today are either remembering that era fondly or sympathetic for an era that they actually misunderstand. Opinion polls show that an alarming number of Spaniards, including a significant number of young people, believe that things were better back when there was a dictatorship, which is horrible. In recent years, we’ve been witnessing the rise of authoritarian movements all over Europe. Can you summarize for us what went wrong? Sure. Well, I mean, part of it is obviously Europe is experiencing a reckoning with its colonial past, with the migration of people from colonial and post-colonial societies. And so, that creates an opportunity for white supremacists to say that these people are coming to take your jobs, that they’re bringing drugs, they’re criminals. The same conversation is happening in the US, particularly around people from Latin America. It’s also true that in a lot of cases, left-wing parties haven’t really solved a lot of grievances, that when there’s economic problems, it’s very easy for the far right to say: “Blame the immigrant” rather than the economic system. And there’s a cultural battle being waged in the US and Europe and elsewhere, where young men who are very angry are being told by the far right: “Blame women, blame immigrants.” So, these social media networks are owned by these right-wing millionaires. Their algorithms promote all the misogynist ideas. And so, in the US, we’re seeing the same thing. “Blame woke.” Don’t actually talk about structural racism against African Americans. It just involves all of us in our everyday lives, trying to create spaces where it’s just not OK to be racist. It’s not OK to be sexist or xenophobic. And that’s hard to do, but it takes all of us to push back against this. Otherwise, we’re going to live in a future where people who aren’t white Germans or white French people aren’t actually really French or German. What should be done to prevent it? Well, I think that we need to recognize that if you don’t want a repeat of the early 20th century, that we need to take action. That there are a lot of wannabe strong men who are looking to build monuments like this and that if we don’t take it upon ourselves to speak to our children when our neighbor is saying that “Oh, these immigrants are really causing problems,” say: “Hey, that’s actually not true.” “And actually, if you look at the evidence, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than people who are born here.” And trying to actually change things in our everyday lives, getting involved with political movements, go to a demonstration and really act like our future is on the line. Because it is, unless we do something about this. I haven’t told my young children about just how bad things have gotten. They know that I think Trump is bad. But when they grow up, it’s going to be on them. Berlin, my home in exile since 2016. Jason Stanley makes regular visits to the German capital. While he’s here, he stops by the places his relatives lived when the Nazis came into power in 1933. I’ve been coming to this house for decades, and I suspected I had some family documents that suggested this is where my great-grandparents, Jacob and Rachel Intrator, lived. But I never knew for sure that this is where they lived. And these “Stolpersteine” — “Memory Stones” — are fairly new, probably from a couple of years ago. And these are put into the sidewalk to commemorate Jewish people who lived in these places. So this shows that my great-grandparents did, in fact, live here. This is my great-grandfather, Jacob Intrator. And this is my great-grandmother, Rachel Intrator. I grew up with my father telling the following story: He would stand on one of these balconies — I’m not sure which — and watch parades on the Kurfürstendamm, watch Nazi parades on Kurfürstendamm. And he would beg his grandfather to let him join because he didn’t understand what the parades were, and they were so festive. And that was like one of the family stories that we most grew up with, that my father’s feeling of excitement and pride at seeing the Nazis march down, not understanding that they meant him. So there are some marches of neo-Nazis nowadays. Do you feel any kind of similarity? No, because those marches are not of people in uniform, cheered on by… It’s very different when some thugs march down, looking like thugs. And you have an official state march with the whole “Sturmabteilung” [Nazi paramilitary] dressed up. That’s a very different situation. No 5-year-old is going to stand on a grand balcony and feel like they want to join a neo-Nazi skinhead march. But what people have to realize is that we are at the time when fascists and dictators control states. These people are now wearing ties and suits. And so, if you’re focusing on the people who are skinheads and drunk, you’re looking at the wrong Nazis. The Holocaust memorial in Berlin pays tribute to the Jewish victims of fascism. I think about Jason Stanley’s own family history in this very city. What started here and what we have learned. Did we learn the right things? Or are we ignorant to history’s lessons? You can keep calling us whatever. You can keep calling us “fascist,” “Nazi” — I could care less. That word means absolutely nothing to an American. It means absolutely nothing to anyone in the right anymore. We’re hopeful that we can go back, look for a new home. But it’s going to change my sense of how I live my life. Would it be safe for me to walk to campus? Is it safe to take the bus? Will I need a campus police escort, which I really would prefer not to have? Is it safe for my kids to have friends, where the parents maybe are right-wing people? It’s just going to change my sense of returning. People love to criticize the United States as the new evil empire and responsible for everything bad that’s happened in the world. We have millions of people literally just dying to come here. What’s ironic is we’re standing here at a time where this flag helped defeat fascism over a place that shows so much about what fascism did. And right now my country, and that flag, are starting to mean something very different. Are you really worried that fascism can come back to Europe again? It would be irrational not to worry. The past is always just under the surface. The past is not even the past.