Can America Survive Republican Trumpism?

October 2021: Georgetown Professor Thomas Zimmer joins us to talk about polarization and extremism, and what insights American and world history provide as to whether (and how) the US can survive Trumpism and its anti-democratic impulses. Thomas is great, this is a really interesting interview, IMHO.

**transcript generated by third-party transcription software, please excuse any typos**

welcome back everybody john irvos here with uh cliff schechter and thomas zimmer thomas is a professor at georgetown school of foreign service my alma mater as well and his expertise is american history recent american history since the 1960s but as i like to say his expertise is also um i would say extremism we had a very long talk over lunch and i think he's got an amazing background in sort of extremism worldwide uh when i say extremism i mean sort of governments and and governments moving towards fascism things like this back and forth um american history as well you know he schooled me on the reconstruction after the civil war um so i assume he and cliff will just kind of talk about history and turn into butter um that's right we're going to have fun in johnson it'll be like john will get lost and uh exactly i'd like to start by asking you what would make you interested in authoritarianism when you come from a country that has never had any in the past sorry i couldn't help myself let's go so thomas is german and cliff is making a german joke yes i can't help it yes i mean there are many germans who um who like to think that our actual proper history started in 1945 so you know they would they would maybe agree with your take there but no i mean look um to be honest i get that question quite a lot like what's is it a specifically german interest or a specifically german sort of you know uh sensibility for not anymore yeah i mean that's american too but is it it's sort of your the question i get a lot is why you went into it yes is your interest in american democracy right and in the current american political situation is has that to do with your being german and right sort of germany's germany's uh let's say experience with anti-democratic uh uh um forces and movements and and my answer to that is maybe um maybe there's certain i guess there are certain you could say uh sort of pro-democratic sensibilities that um the german the german educational system and the german political culture is is very sort of um blatantly and actively pro-democratic right there is a certain sense in which some of the discussions over here over like you know how to deal with anti-democratic uh forces anti-democratic political movements right um and and so what level to what level of leeway to give them right sounds a little weird to a german in the sense that german democracy after 1945 was explicitly built on the idea that democracy has to be um there was the idea of militant they called it militant democracy right which means democracy has to be strong enough to defend itself against those who want to get rid of it um and that means um sort of setting certain boundaries and if you cross those boundaries we're no longer gonna accept you we're no longer going to accept your right to whatever like free speech or or whatever right so i think that's a that's a distinct difference between sort of the german political system i have to say something here john just because as john knows you know this has been sort of close to a white whale obsession of mine and i talk about this on the show a lot which is you know and again i'd love to hear more from you because you know so much more i'm sure about germany and various european systems but like we can free speech ourselves to death and i talk about that a lot which is oh everybody has the right to say anything and do anything and it was one thing when it was a guy standing on a street corner screaming and yelling now we're talking about people that have access to millions billions via facebook and and so that's my criticism here fox news i mean let's get to the point which is the other day ted cruz defended somebody's right to give a nazi salute at one of these school board meetings why don't you tell folks what would have happened in germany if somebody had done that and i'm going to pre-endorse i'm going to hold on i'm going to pre-endorse what germany would have done because to me we are not protecting we're allowing free speech to overwhelm mr and hate speech in this country i'll kick it to you right so um like it's it's just downright illegal right so the the display the open this is the public display of non-interesting nazi insignia is is illegal right so even doing the salute oh yeah yeah absolutely yeah oh wow the swastika the nazi salute it's illegal you will get and it's enforced so we will get into legal trouble right what kind of trouble would you get is it just a fine what is it yes yes so initially you would get fined right but if you keep doing it there you might you might go