Ruth Ben-Ghiat

And religious institutions are also very, very important.

So you've got these pillars, and autocrats need to keep them happy.

And as resistors, what we try to do in history, what people have tried to do, is get those people to defect.

That's the word that political scientists use.

Elite defections, where they say, I've had enough.

I'm not supporting this regime anymore.

Well, the wildcard, in fact, I wrote down in my notes, wildcard GOP.

The GOP, as we all know, was completely domesticated by Trump.

Even by 2020, it lost any identity ideologically.

You know, it didn't even have a party platform for 2020 election.

The only platform was, we support Trump, like zombies.

And then we had January 6th, of course, and he sent a violent mob after Republicans as well as Democrats, and that broke them psychologically.

So what they do as things get worse in America is going to be really important.

So Marjorie Taylor Greene and Massey are, in a way, outliers.

Massey's very allied with Russia.

He's a special case.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene used to always parrot Kremlin talking points, actually.

It does matter.

for their constituencies who see them breaking.

So whatever is motivating them, let's put it this way, whatever's motivating them, there is an effect because they have constituencies who elected them and who like them.