Venezuela, Renee Good and Trump’s ‘Assault on Hope’
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What does Masha Gessen say about living under autocracy?
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In the early 20th century, there was this anarchist idea about the propaganda of the deed. The propaganda of the deed was that there were these forms of direct action, and many of them violent. Assassinations, bombings. That when you did them, they were so spectacular. Everybody would hear about them. And when everybody heard about them... There would be copycats by making the impossible possible, by making clear that society did not work how you thought it worked, that the state did not have the power you thought it had. They could rupture society itself and create the possibility of a moment of revolutionary upheaval. I think there is a way in which you should and can understand the Trump administration as operating often
through propaganda of the deed. Now, they're not an anarchist collective. They're a state. They're a regime. But they operate not so often through the dull work of rules and laws and legislation and deliberation, but through spectacle and through the meaning of particular spectacles. Venezuela was a spectacle. They do not seem to have planned for the aftermath. They were decapitating the Maduro regime, but they left the regime otherwise completely in place. Nobody seems to know, even in the administration, what it means for America to be running Venezuela. But it was an example, an act that showed something. And even before the capture of Maduro, they had chosen not to fight the drug war, the fentanyl scourge, through laws and legislation on addiction and drugs, but instead do these very high-profile bombings of alleged drug boats that, even if they were drug boats, were probably carrying cocaine because fentanyl doesn't come here that way.
It was spectacular. It was a message. It was showing what they could do. It was a deed that everybody could see and would talk about. Liberation Day. You can keep going on and on and on like this. The Trump administration is an administration of spectacle. And I've heard it sometimes described as reality TV administration, but I don't think that's quite right. Because what reality TV wants is ratings. But these spectacles, this propaganda... is meant to carry messages. It is meant to make clear how the world now works. My guest today is Masha Gessen, who grew up in the Soviet Union, who's my colleague here at Times Opinion, has written remarkable books like The Future is History about living under Vladimir Putin, and who's been a clear and relentless and very perceptive voice
on what it means and what it is like to live in a country that is turning into a different kind of regime. And I wanted to talk to them about what propaganda is being spread through these deeds, what rupture with the way things were done, what revolutionary moment The Trump administration is trying to instantiate through all these moments of spectacle that we are living through one after another after another. As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.
Basha Gessen, welcome to the show. Great to be here. So on one level, the target of the recent operation in Venezuela was obviously President Nicolas Maduro. On another level, you've argued the target was the new world order of law, justice, and human rights that was heralded in the wake of World War II. Tell me about that.
So, you know, I always feel like I have to make a lot of caveats when I talk about the post-World War II order.
How does the Trump administration utilize spectacle in politics?
All these multilateral institutions were created, all these mechanisms, international courts, the UN, the Security Council, because it was in many ways an aspiration. An aspiration to creating an order that would, A, prevent a new global war, something at which it has been very successful, and B, prevent...
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What does Masha Gessen say about living under autocracy?
0:00–5:08
2
How does the Trump administration utilize spectacle in politics?
5:08–28:15
3
What is the significance of the Venezuelan regime's downfall?
28:15–29:47
4
How does Gessen relate Trump's actions to historical contexts?
29:47–46:23
5
What role does propaganda play in modern governance?
46:23–1:04:11
6
How does the concept of deliberation impact political power?
1:04:11–1:06:47