Frame it as a call to action or a presidential campaign announcement, the speech of Governor Gavin Newsom to the United States on Tuesday has taken advantage of our spirit of our spirit (German words feel strangely appropriate at this time) in a way that few others have.
“Democracy is under assault just before our eyes,” said Newsom during a live broadcast with a flag of California and the United States flag in the background. “The moment we fear has arrived.”
What time exactly do you mean?
President Trump has put Marines and national guards in the streets of Los Angeles, and was granted the power to put them anywhere. On Wednesday, a superior military leader said that these forces could “stop” the protesters, but not to arrest them directly, despite what you see in the right -wing media, most protesters have been peaceful.
But each possible authoritarian ultimately faces a decisive moment, when the fear they have generated must be applied with action to solidify power.
The danger of that moment for the aspiring king is that it is also the time when the rebellion is more likely and it is more likely to be effective. People wake up. When using force against their own citizens, the leader runs the risk of alienating supporters and activating resistance.
What happens later in Los Angeles between the army and the protesters, that the group is perceived as the aggressors, can probably determine what happens later in our democracy. If the army is the aggressor and the protesters continue to be peaceful, Trump runs the risk of losing support.
If protesters are violent, public perception could even more empower Trump.
The president's immigration advisor, Tom Homan, said in CNN that what happens next, “everything depends on the activities of these protesters, I mean, they make the decisions.”
Welcome to that tense moment, America.
Who would have thought that Newsom would lead so effectively?
“All who are not Trumpists in this society have been taken by surprise, and are still tied by the authoritarian offensive of the last five months,” said Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard University and author of “How Democracies.”
Levitsky told me that he helps to shake that shock to have national leaders, people to whom others can look and recover. Especially because fear pushes some in silence.
“You never know who that leader will be sometimes, and it can be Newsom,” said Levitsky. “Perhaps their political ambitions end up converging with the little D, the democratic opposition.”
Maybe. From its direction, and an offensive online and game A, the reach of Newsom has shot. Millions of people saw their direction, and hundreds of thousands have followed him in Tiktok and other social media platforms. Searches over it on Google increased 9,700%, according to CNN. I love his message or find him ridiculous, he had reached, partly because he was unattill and also unexpected.
“Trump and his loyal ones thrive in the division because it allows them to take more power and exercise even more control,” said Newsom.
I was on the ground with the protesters this week, and I can say at first -hand experience that there is a small number of agitators and a large number of peaceful protesters. But Trump has done an excellent job by creating crisis and fear of portraying events as outside the control of local and state authorities and, therefore, need their intervention.
Republicans “need that violence to corroborate their conversation points,” Mia Bloom told me. She is an expert in extremism and professor at Georgia State University.
Violence “as after George Floyd, when there were the riots, which was actually useful for Republicans,” he said.
Levitsky said authoritarians are looking for crisis.
“You need an emergency, both rhetoric and legally, to participate in authoritarian behavior,” he said.
Then Trump has put a trap with his immigration sweeps in a city of immigrants to create opportunities, and Newsom has described it.
And calling it, pointing out the danger that the protesters become violent and, nevertheless, ask for a peaceful protest, Newsom has put Trump in a precarious position that the president could not have been waiting.
“Suppressing the protest is a very risky company,” Levitsky said. “Often, not always, but often, it causes a setback.”
Levitsky points out that there is already some evidence that Trump may have extended and is losing support.
A new Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 76% of Americans oppose the military birthday parade that Trump plans to launch for himself in Washington, DC, this weekend. That includes the disapproval of more than half of Trump's supporters.
A separate survey from the University of Quinnipiac found that 54% of respondents disapprove how they handle immigration problems, and 56% disapprove of their deportations.
Bloom warns that there is a danger in generating too many alarms about authoritarianism at this time, because we still have some railings that work. She said that enviving too much fear could be counterproductive, for Newsom and for democracy.
“We are at a time when the country is very polarized and … these things are counted through two very different types of narratives, and at the time we give the other side, which was a very apocalyptic nihilist narrative, we give them fodder, we justify the worst policies,” he said.
The Iranian revolution of 1979 pointed out, when some protesters placed flowers in the barrels of the weapons of the soldiers, an act of peaceful protest that said that public perception changed. That, he said, is what is needed now.
Newsom was clear in his call to a peaceful protest. But also of course it was a call to action at a historical turning point. We cannot know at the time who or what story will remember, Levitsky said.
“It is really important that the most privileged among us stand up and fight,” he said. “If they don't, citizens are going to look around and say: 'Well, why should I?'”
Having leaders willing to be the goal, when many feel the danger of speaking, he has value, he said.
Because fear can spread like a virus, but courage is also contagious.
