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I'm Manoush Zomorodi. We

0:58

start today on Broadway, where

1:00

I recently went with an old friend to

1:03

see a musical called Here Lies

1:05

Love. It already feels like a party

1:07

just stood in the lobby. Would you agree? Yes, absolutely.

1:11

The show tells the story of the rise

1:13

and fall of Ferdinand Marcos, the

1:16

corrupt dictator who was married to

1:18

a former beauty queen, Imelda Marcos,

1:21

who later became famous for her extensive

1:24

designer shoe collection. Do

1:26

you think that we're going to watch a

1:28

show about the demise of democracy? Because

1:30

that's what it is. Is that what

1:32

we're going to see? I had no idea.

1:36

Marcos was democratically elected,

1:39

but over the course of 20 years, he

1:41

had thousands killed to maintain his

1:43

grip on power.

1:45

Sometimes we need

1:47

a strong man. Weirdly,

1:48

the story is told through disco,

1:51

written by David Byrne and Fatboy

1:54

Slim. And much of the audience don't

1:56

have seats. So we were on the

1:58

dance floor, boogieing.

1:59

away with the dictators.

2:05

Which felt really fun. But

2:07

at times also very wrong.

2:10

It is uncomfortable. This is producer

2:12

Jose Antonio Vargas.

2:15

He says Ferdinand and Amélda's ability

2:17

to seduce theater goers night after

2:20

night, that's the point. We're back,

2:22

back.

2:23

The music is so good, right?

2:25

And

2:25

it's a metaphor. You know, we

2:27

all get lost. They're

2:31

like, OK, there's Amélda. You know, she's

2:33

charming. But then they can't

2:35

help it, right?

2:39

The Marcos's were eventually ousted in 1986 by

2:43

massive, peaceful protests called

2:45

the People Power Revolution. It's

2:48

Jose's favorite act of the show.

2:50

And all you hear is the human voice and the guitar.

2:53

And he says. That

2:59

democracy belongs to the people. Everybody

3:03

is here. And

3:06

that's the moment when I'm like, OK, the

3:08

People Power Revolution or the Philippines in the

3:10

mid 80s, I was there. My auntie Aida brought

3:13

me. I was five. That was a peaceful

3:15

four-day revolution. Take my, take

3:17

my, take my. And

3:20

given everything that's happening right now in the world

3:22

and in our own country, I think that

3:25

concept of democracy belonging

3:27

to the people. And what are we going to do with

3:29

it? Our democracy

3:31

will only stay alive if we actually fight

3:33

for it.

3:36

The history of the Philippines, a democracy

3:39

sliding into a dictatorship, and

3:41

the country's struggle

3:43

to wrestle it back. It

3:45

echoes what's happening in many countries,

3:47

from

3:48

Poland to Turkey, and

3:50

now maybe even in the US,

3:53

as our multicultural democracy

3:55

is tested. So before

3:57

the curtains rise on a big election

3:59

year. Today on the show,

4:02

what topples

4:03

democracies, ideas

4:05

and stories about what keeps

4:08

people united and what drives

4:10

them apart? Which

4:13

brings us back to Jose Antonio

4:15

Vargas. A recent text

4:17

from a friend reminded him of

4:20

the personal significance of

4:22

putting Here Lies Love on Broadway.

4:25

And she texted me and she said, Jose,

4:28

you can't go to the Philippines, so now

4:30

you help bring the Philippines here.

4:34

And I remember I looked at the text and

4:37

I actually, I have to tell you, I was

4:39

in the subway, I actually

4:41

like started just tearing up because she's

4:43

right. I didn't think of it that way. That's

4:45

what I was trying to do, helping to do. You

4:48

know, I haven't been able to go back home for 30 years.

4:51

31 years next summer.

4:54

Foretelling the saga of the Marcos's,

4:56

Jose experienced his own saga growing

4:59

up. When he was 12 years old, he was

5:01

living with his mother in the Philippines and

5:03

then left to join his grandparents

5:05

in California.

5:07

There was always this expectation that

5:09

America was inevitable. And

5:11

so growing up, I knew that my grandparents were

5:13

here and it was only a matter of time that I was going to

5:15

come.

5:16

They hoped, as most immigrants do,

5:18

that he would get a better education,

5:20

a better life. And Jose did.

5:22

So age 16,

5:24

when like many

5:26

American teens, he went to get his

5:28

driver's permit

5:30

and got a shock instead. Yeah.

5:34

And then I went to the booth and

5:36

this woman with curly hair, glasses,

5:39

I said I was here for the permit.

5:42

I gave her my green card. I gave her my Mountain

5:44

View high school ID. And

5:46

she flipped my green card around twice

5:50

and she told me that it was fake. And

5:53

then she said, don't come back here again.

5:59

mind? Well, the first thing was,

6:02

she's lying. I was thinking to myself,

6:05

she's just confused, you know, like, I didn't believe

6:07

I didn't believe her. And my grandfather

6:10

was a security guard. So he worked, he

6:12

worked the graveyard shift. So he was always home during the

6:14

day. So I bite a

6:17

home. And I

6:20

got to I got to the house. And

6:22

I told her what the woman had said. And I,

6:26

I assume my grandfather was going to say, Oh, she's

6:28

lying. That's not right. But then my grandfather

6:31

says, what are you doing showing

6:33

that the green card to people?

6:36

You're not supposed to be here.

6:38

Jose's grandparents were naturalized

6:40

citizens. But Jose didn't

6:42

know that he was undocumented

6:45

in the US

6:46

illegally. And then I think that's

6:48

when my journalism career started. Because

6:51

I was like, Wait, what?

6:52

Yeah, because you must have had a lot of questions.

6:55

That's fake, then what

6:57

else is fake? I mean, that's why I never thought

6:59

about me not being here in

7:01

any other way than legal,

7:04

because my grandparents, they were both

7:06

here with papers. So if they had papers,

7:08

why didn't

7:09

I? And what did they tell you?

7:10

You know, that's when kind

7:12

of the unraveling started. So

7:15

then I from my Dwey, my grandfather explained

7:18

it, they couldn't petition me here,

7:20

because grandparents can't petition grandkids.

7:23

And then that's when I I remembered when

7:25

I left the Philippines, I was introduced

7:27

to this guy that was my uncle. And that

7:29

was the first time I had met him. And but

7:32

again, I'm Filipino, everybody's an uncle. So

7:34

I just assumed that he was really my uncle. Right.

7:37

And then that's how I found out he was the smuggler

7:39

that was paid money to

7:41

smuggle me here. And

7:44

then the plan was I was

7:46

supposed to go through high school at least.

7:49

And then after high school, I would

7:51

work under the table, which is what a lot

7:53

of undocumented people do at the flea

7:55

market where my grandfather's brother

7:58

was a janitor.

7:59

So that was again his plan,

8:01

right? And then this idea of like, you

8:04

know, marry a woman who's a US citizen.

8:07

And then that's when I was like,

8:09

but I'm not attracted to women, like,

8:11

I'm gay. You

8:14

know, which is not the kind of thing that you want to tell your grandfather,

8:16

who's, you know, very

8:19

much a Catholic. So in many ways, coming

8:21

out as gay, when I was finding out that

8:23

I was undocumented was my way of claiming,

8:25

I'm not going to surrender to

8:28

your narrative to what you want me to do.

8:30

So at 16, Jose

8:32

decides to find ways to fit in

8:34

so no one will ever doubt

8:36

his nationality again.

8:38

The first thing was like, I can't

8:41

I have to make sure that people know that I'm that

8:43

I'm supposed to be here. The first thing was

8:46

the way I spoke. And thank God for

8:48

PBS and like hip hop and R&B. Like,

8:50

that's how I learned it. Right?

8:52

I figured if I can sound like Charlie Rose and

8:54

Dr. Dre, I'll be okay. So

8:57

that was the first thing. And then the second thing

8:59

was really kind of

9:01

getting lost in America, you know, and I

9:04

was really lucky that I was in high school when the New

9:06

York Times website went online for

9:08

free. And thank God I

9:10

could read all these articles. And

9:12

mind you, I wasn't like a straight A student,

9:15

I think I was like, I'd be barely a 3.0

9:17

student, but I did everything

9:20

I edited the school paper, I was in the speech

9:22

and debate club, I was I was,

9:24

I was in theater, I was in choir. I

9:26

did everything.

9:28

A couple teachers noticed Jose's enthusiasm.

9:31

And they wanted to make sure that he got a chance to

9:33

go to college.

9:34

All I could tell them was that I don't, you

9:37

know, clearly, I can't apply for financial aid

9:39

and I can't afford college. So how am

9:41

I gonna get to college? And it just so

9:43

happened that they there was a

9:45

venture capitalist whose kids attended the school

9:47

district and he wanted to start a scholarship fund.

9:50

And Rich Fisher, the superintendent convinced

9:52

them, yeah, if you're gonna start this,

9:54

like, can we just make sure that it doesn't have

9:56

immigration

9:58

status as a requirement?

9:59

So you were lucky you had adults

10:02

who didn't give a crap

10:04

about what your status was.

10:06

No, because I did. It was

10:08

always foremost in my mind, but they didn't.

10:11

Jose went to college. He

10:13

became a journalist. He got a job

10:15

at the San Francisco Chronicle. Then the

10:17

Washington Post, where he was part of a team

10:20

that won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage

10:22

of the Virginia Tech shootings. He

10:25

paid taxes, using a doctored

10:27

Social Security card. All

10:29

the while fearful that someone

10:32

would find out his

10:33

secret.

10:34

I lied on an employment form

10:37

saying that I'm a U.S. citizen.

10:39

To get those jobs,

10:42

to get to the San Francisco Chronicle, to get to the

10:44

Washington Post, I lied. I

10:47

checked the box. I checked U.S. citizen.

10:50

Keeping up the charade

10:52

was exhausting.

10:54

Finally, at the age of 30, it became

10:57

too much. The lying is, I'm

10:59

done lying. I'm here. In 2011,

11:03

Jose decided to write an article that

11:05

he thought might be

11:06

his last. The first person's

11:08

story appeared in the New York Times

11:10

magazine with the headline, My

11:13

Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.

11:16

His face, in black and white, filled

11:18

the cover.

11:18

I knew that making myself the story

11:21

was a big choice. There

11:23

was no coming back from that.

11:25

Then the

11:27

thing that I had to really grapple with was

11:29

understanding the legal ramifications

11:33

of putting in paper,

11:35

in black ink, in the New

11:37

York Times that I had

11:40

broken the immigration law and that I claimed

11:42

U.S. citizenship that I didn't have. I

11:44

didn't know until I spoke to a bunch of immigration lawyers

11:47

that actually claiming false

11:49

citizenship, claiming that you're an American

11:51

citizen if you're not, is the highest

11:54

offense you could make.

11:56

The moment you do that, you can't apply for

11:58

an E.B. extraordinary

11:59

ability visa, right?

12:02

The EB visa is for people

12:04

who can show that they can contribute

12:06

special things to the United States so that

12:08

they can get citizenship. But you

12:11

had committed a crime, which meant you

12:13

couldn't even try to get the one kind of

12:15

visa that you probably would have

12:17

qualified for. Most things you

12:19

actually put off the table.

12:22

So I had to understand that. And

12:24

to be honest, 12 years into

12:26

this work now, someone is going

12:28

to ask me, hey, why can't

12:30

you just go fix this thing?

12:32

Can you just ask President Biden for a pardon?

12:35

Somebody actually asked me that. You know, like you're producing

12:37

a Broadway show, like, you know, you're

12:39

doing all of these things. Like, can't

12:41

they just make an exception?

12:44

No,

12:45

that's not the point here. The point is to say there

12:48

are 11 million of us and mind you, I think there's more

12:50

than 11 million and we

12:52

are in legal immigration

12:55

purgatory. In

12:58

a minute, more from Jose Antonio

13:00

Vargas and his hopes for

13:02

other undocumented immigrants. On

13:05

the show today, what topples democracies?

13:08

I'm Manoush Zamarodi and you're listening to

13:10

the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

13:12

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It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush

16:46

Zomorodi. We were just talking to

16:49

journalist and Broadway producer, Jose

16:51

Antonio Vargas, about his 2011

16:54

public announcement that he was

16:57

living in the U.S. illegally,

16:59

that he was undocumented. You

17:02

lie, you pass, you hide. So

17:04

that he could draw more attention to the

17:06

legal immigration purgatory that

17:09

many undocumented people here in the U.S.

17:11

are in, Jose made a documentary

17:14

about his experience. So

17:16

I'm launching a whole campaign about what it means to be

17:18

an American and the fact that I am an American. He

17:20

started a media company called Define

17:23

American, gave his first TED Talk,

17:25

and wrote a book called Dear America.

17:28

There are tens of thousands of students across

17:31

America who were here without papers. And

17:33

I would hate to think that they're sitting in their classrooms

17:35

listening to us talk about them

17:37

and internalizing the word illegal.

17:40

He changed his entire focus

17:42

from reporting on Americans to reporting

17:45

on people who consider themselves American.

17:48

They pay taxes, contribute to society,

17:51

but are told that they need to leave or

17:53

hide.

17:54

Actions are illegal.

17:57

Never people.

17:58

But when Donald Trump was elected

18:00

in 2016 and anti-immigration

18:02

sentiment was on the rise, Jose

18:05

started questioning his decision to stay

18:07

in a country with laws that essentially

18:10

told him he didn't belong.

18:13

I started getting messages from all the undocumented people,

18:15

right, like who have decided to leave, actually.

18:18

So I was thinking, go back to the Philippines, where I have to go

18:20

back to, because that's what I'm a citizen of. And

18:22

then I was thinking either, you know, the UK

18:24

or Canada, they'd have me, and

18:27

then the whole world would be available, right, just

18:29

not America. So

18:31

that was my plan.

18:32

Then something delightful happened

18:35

that made him feel wanted here in a way

18:37

he never expected. Yeah,

18:40

so the school district that

18:42

I attended as a sixth grader decided

18:44

to rename an elementary school.

18:46

And then to my surprise, the

18:49

trustees voted, and

18:51

it's Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary School. Wow.

18:55

My first question was, wait a second, can

18:56

they legally do that? Can you legally name

18:58

a school after someone was here illegally? Like, is

19:00

that allowed? And so then

19:03

I was thinking to myself,

19:06

what do I say to these kids

19:08

when they asked their parents, who is this guy? Oh,

19:10

he left, he got too hard. I

19:14

know that sounds crazy. But

19:17

school for me, like, I don't know where

19:19

I'd be if I wasn't a graduate of Crittenden

19:21

Middle School, Mountain View High School in San Francisco State

19:23

University, all public schools. I

19:26

don't know where I would be.

19:29

So explain the significance of that. Because

19:31

on the one hand, just as you're feeling

19:33

like you're unwanted in the US,

19:36

you find out that you are recognized

19:38

and had a big influence on the place

19:41

where you grew up in California. So

19:44

how has your thinking evolved? And how have

19:46

you seen the country's

19:46

attitudes towards

19:49

immigrants evolve? Yeah,

19:52

there was a moment actually, when I came out as

19:54

undocumented 12 years ago, that there was a whole movement

19:56

called, you know, undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic.

19:59

people coming out as undocumented. Now,

20:02

because of how anti-immigrant the

20:05

rhetoric, especially during the Trump era, a lot

20:08

of young people are going back to the closet about this. And

20:11

a young woman reached out to me recently and she

20:13

was asking me why keep going. And

20:16

the thing that I had to tell her to think about

20:19

is look, if freedom can't

20:21

come from the government, then

20:23

freedom has to come from people that actually

20:26

are gonna make you feel free.

20:29

There may be teachers, there may be co-workers,

20:31

there may be whatever, who

20:34

are

20:34

the ones saying, you know what, you belong here.

20:37

Go find those people.

20:39

You know,

20:40

mind you, when my principal and my superintendent,

20:43

my mentor, my journalism mentor, I don't

20:45

think they ever used the word allies, but

20:47

that's what they were, right?

20:51

I would argue that they were practicing citizenship.

20:53

In many ways, they defined American and didn't

20:56

see any reason why I wasn't one. Because

20:59

whether or not America considers me an

21:01

American, like, this is my country and

21:04

I have to be a part of it.

21:06

And I am a part of it.

21:09

That's Jose Antonio Vargas. He's

21:11

a journalist and Broadway producer. You

21:14

can see both of his TED Talks at

21:16

TED.com. On

21:20

the show today, how

21:21

nations thrive, endure,

21:25

or just fall apart.

21:27

Iraq had a civil war. Northern

21:29

Ireland had a civil war with Great Britain

21:32

for many years. Central America had a whole

21:34

series of civil wars in the 70s and

21:37

80s. The ones that

21:39

are experiencing civil war today

21:42

are Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Libya,

21:45

Mali, Myanmar, Yemen,

21:48

Sudan, South Sudan, Syria is

21:50

still going on.

21:51

This is Barbara Walter. I am

21:54

a professor of political science at

21:56

the University of California, San Diego.

21:59

As asked, Barbara is an expert in

22:02

civil wars. The most prevalent

22:04

form of violence in the

22:06

world is civil

22:07

war.

22:08

And not only that, but civil wars have been

22:10

increasing pretty much consistently

22:13

since

22:16

And we are now at a point in history

22:18

where there are more civil wars going on today than

22:20

at any previous time.

22:24

Barbara had been studying this for decades when

22:26

in 2017 she was invited

22:28

to join an unusual CIA

22:30

task force. The goal? Find

22:33

a way to predict which countries

22:36

are about to go to civil war.

22:39

Conflict experts like Barbara made

22:41

up half the task force, data

22:43

analysts made up the other half. The

22:45

data analysts asked the experts

22:48

to give them all the factors

22:50

that they thought could potentially matter

22:53

in this path towards war. And

22:56

we gave them 38 different factors. And

22:58

some of those factors seemed quite obvious, whether

23:00

a country was poor or whether

23:02

the government heavily discriminated against

23:05

one particular group, whether there was a

23:08

lot of income inequality, things

23:10

like that. And the data analysts

23:12

went away and they came back with

23:14

a model and they said it turns out that

23:17

only two factors

23:18

were highly predictive.

23:20

The two factors actually surprised

23:23

Barbara.

23:23

They were not the two factors that the experts

23:25

thought would be important.

23:27

The first was something that

23:30

political scientists called anocracy.

23:33

An anocracy is kind of like a partial

23:36

democracy, neither fully

23:38

democratic nor fully autocratic.

23:41

So think about Hungary today.

23:43

Hungary holds elections. Hungarians

23:46

gladly go to the polls. They like to vote.

23:50

But basically the outcome of that election

23:52

is preordained because Victor

23:54

Oban has essentially

23:57

made it extremely difficult for

23:59

any opposition.

23:59

party to campaign. So

24:02

he controls the media. He

24:04

jails opponents so that they can't campaign.

24:07

So it's a partial democracy. The

24:10

second factor was whether political

24:12

parties were mostly grouped around race,

24:14

ethnicity, or religion. So

24:17

instead of setting up

24:19

political parties based on whether you're a conservative

24:22

or a liberal, communist or

24:24

capitalist, you set up your political parties

24:26

based on whether you're Muslim

24:28

or Christian, black or white, Catholic

24:31

or Protestant. When you have

24:34

these two factors, the

24:37

task force considered it at high

24:39

risk of political instability and violence

24:41

and it put it on a watch

24:44

list. It was actually called the watch list. And

24:46

we sent that watch list to the White

24:48

House. As she identified

24:50

these traits in countries around the

24:52

world, Barbara realized one

24:55

country was missing from the conversation.

24:58

So here I was sitting in a hotel

25:00

conference room in suburban Virginia four

25:03

times a year with a room

25:05

full of really smart people. And we

25:08

talked about countries in Africa, the

25:10

Middle East, Central Asia, but

25:12

we never ever talked about the

25:14

United States.

25:16

Barbara Walter continues from

25:18

the TED stage. That's because

25:20

the CIA is legally not allowed

25:23

to monitor the United States or its citizens

25:25

and that's exactly the way it should be.

25:29

But I was a private citizen and

25:31

I had this information and

25:34

I could see that both of these factors

25:36

were emerging in my own country and

25:38

they were emerging at a surprisingly fast rate.

25:42

The

25:42

U.S.'s democracy has been downgraded

25:44

three times since 2016. 2016, it was downgraded

25:49

because international election monitors

25:53

had considered the 2016 election free but not entirely

25:57

fair.

25:59

own intelligence agencies had found

26:02

that the Russians had, in fact, meddled

26:04

in that election.

26:06

It was downgraded again in 2019

26:09

when the White House refused to comply

26:11

with requests by Congress

26:13

for information.

26:15

And it was downgraded a final time

26:17

at the end of 2020 when

26:19

President Trump refused to accept

26:21

his loss in the 2020 election and

26:24

actively attempted to overturn

26:26

the results. During

26:28

December of 2020 and early 2021, the United States was officially

26:31

classified as an

26:37

anocracy. If

26:39

the task force had been allowed

26:42

to monitor and study the United

26:44

States, it likely would

26:46

have considered it at high risk

26:48

of political instability and political violence

26:51

in December of 2020,

26:54

just a few weeks before the January 6

26:57

insurrection, and it likely

26:59

would have put the United States

27:01

on the watch list.

27:04

So January 6 happens

27:07

and, you know, I'm and

27:10

most people I know are completely

27:12

and utterly shocked.

27:14

But were you? No, not

27:16

at all.

27:17

If you're studying sort of

27:19

the signs and risks

27:22

of civil war, these tend

27:24

to grow slowly over time, which means

27:26

that you're seeing these underlying

27:29

changes before anybody else's.

27:32

And I've given a number of talks prior

27:34

to January 6 and people

27:37

thought I was hyperbolic. People thought

27:39

this was ridiculous. People thought I didn't know

27:41

what I was talking about. We couldn't

27:43

seem to get through to the American public that

27:45

cancer was growing, that unless

27:48

we paid attention, it was going

27:51

to get bigger and bigger to eventually take us down.

27:55

So why is this happening now? It's

27:58

happening now because of Democrats.

28:00

The United

28:02

States is in the midst of a major

28:04

transition from a country

28:07

whose population

28:07

is majority white to

28:10

a country whose population will

28:12

be majority non-whites. The

28:15

United States will be the first country

28:17

to go through this, but others are going

28:19

to follow. The people who

28:21

tend to start civil wars are

28:24

the groups that had once been politically

28:26

dominant but are in decline. If

28:30

you think back to the former Yugoslavia,

28:34

Serbs had enjoyed most of

28:37

the positions in government and the

28:39

military throughout the Cold War for

28:41

decades, but they were the

28:43

ones who stood to lose

28:45

the most as Yugoslavia democratized.

28:49

The Serbs started that war.

28:52

Iraq's Sunnis enjoyed

28:55

most of the key positions in

28:57

the military and in government under

28:59

Saddam Hussein,

29:01

but when the United States toppled

29:03

Saddam Hussein, they also threw

29:05

the Sunnis out of their positions.

29:09

It was the Sunnis who started that

29:11

war.

29:12

In the United States, the

29:15

rise of militias has

29:18

been driven primarily by white

29:20

men

29:21

who see America's identity

29:24

changing in ways that directly

29:26

threatens their status. They

29:29

were the ones who marched on the

29:31

Capitol on January 6th.

29:36

I mean, so where are

29:38

we now then, Barbara? Are we just waiting

29:40

for the other shoe to drop? We're

29:42

in a really precarious position

29:45

for a number of reasons. And

29:48

I think in the United States, if we did have a civil

29:52

war, it's not going to look like the

29:55

1860s version of a civil war. It's going to be more decentralized.

29:58

It's going to be...

29:59

violence targeted at civilians, at

30:02

opposition leaders.

30:04

How it usually starts is

30:06

every group has more

30:08

moderate members and more extreme members.

30:11

The extremists in any group are

30:14

usually marginalized and ignored,

30:16

and that's because they're usually a tiny

30:19

minority. And what happens

30:21

in situations like this, where

30:23

things are already tense,

30:26

where truth is increasingly

30:28

hard to discern, this is how

30:30

you often see the very

30:32

first stages of real sustained

30:35

violence. So how do we

30:37

fix things? Because this country has

30:39

had a civil war, and we did come back from

30:41

that. Is it possible to mend

30:44

these extremely frayed relationships?

30:47

I think probably the single easiest

30:49

thing that we could do to shore

30:51

up our democracy is

30:52

to regulate social media.

30:55

Our information environment

30:57

is increasingly toxic. It

31:00

increasingly pushes out the

31:02

most extreme material, increasing

31:05

distrust in democracy, perpetrating

31:08

misinformation and disinformation in

31:11

ways that have had really negative

31:13

societal effects. I also think

31:16

that help is gonna have to come from

31:18

the bottom up, and from us as

31:21

citizens, we have to participate

31:23

more in our democracy. We have

31:26

to get involved, we have to vote more.

31:28

If you look at Tennessee, for example, most people

31:30

think of Tennessee as a deep, deep red

31:33

state. But if you look at,

31:35

for example, primaries in Tennessee,

31:38

only about 20% of eligible

31:40

voters in Tennessee vote in

31:43

any given primary. And Tennessee is not unusual.

31:47

80% of eligible voters are standing

31:49

on the sidelines. And now imagine

31:52

state by state if all of those

31:54

people actually vote. The

31:57

outcome of those elections will be very, very

31:59

different. Full, healthy democracies

32:02

do not experience civil

32:03

war, period.

32:04

I want to ask you, you have done

32:06

so much research on this, including

32:09

visiting countries that were starting to

32:11

democratize when the other shoe

32:13

did drop and the country fell into

32:16

a civil war, including Bosnia.

32:19

You interviewed a woman named Berena

32:22

Kovac from Sarajevo

32:24

who had a chilling story.

32:27

Ah, gosh, I get teary

32:29

every time I think about it. So

32:31

Berena Kovac was a

32:34

woman who lived in Sarajevo

32:36

in the 1990s with her husband. They

32:39

were a young couple. They were both

32:41

professionals. I had a series of

32:43

interviews with her and I said, Berena, tell

32:46

me about the

32:47

months and weeks leading up to

32:49

the outbreak of war. Tell me when

32:52

you

32:52

knew something was happening. And

32:56

she said, we had no

32:58

idea. We were a young couple.

33:00

We were going to work. We were having

33:02

weekend getaways. We didn't think that anything

33:05

bad could happen here. And

33:07

then she started to see her friends

33:09

changing. And suddenly

33:11

at a wedding where they were

33:13

all together, one of her friends

33:16

told them to stop singing Muslim

33:18

songs.

33:20

And she's just like, nobody ever thought

33:22

of them as Muslim songs. They

33:24

were just wedding songs

33:26

that we would sing at these events. And

33:29

she's like, why, you could feel something shifting.

33:32

And she said then one

33:34

night,

33:35

it was in 1992, she was at home with her newborn son.

33:41

And suddenly the lights went off.

33:44

And she said, and then you started

33:46

to hear machine gun fire. And

33:49

that's how the siege of Sarajevo

33:52

started.

33:53

And the only thing I've talked to who's

33:56

lived through a civil war has said the same thing.

33:58

I didn't see it coming.

34:00

I didn't see it coming. And

34:02

that's because they didn't understand what

34:05

the big signs were.

34:08

And I think that's what really I'm

34:10

trying to do here is just to help

34:12

people see the early signs,

34:15

see the early steps that countries

34:18

take as they go down this terrible path,

34:21

and to tell them that if you know the early

34:23

signs, there's time to turn it around.

34:26

But you have to be willing, you have to be willing

34:29

to get involved and

34:32

basically demand change

34:34

because otherwise you will lose your

34:36

democracy.

34:38

And the only way to get it back after you lose

34:40

it is going to be to fight for it.

34:43

Barbara Walter is a professor of political

34:45

science at the University of California,

34:48

San Diego. She's the author

34:50

of How Civil Wars Start

34:53

and How to Stop Them. You

34:55

can see her full talk at TED.com.

34:58

On the show today, What Topples

35:01

Democracies?

35:01

I'm Manoush Zomorodi

35:04

and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from

35:06

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36:37

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

36:40

I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And on

36:42

the show today, what topples

36:44

democracies? For our final

36:46

guest, something a little different.

36:49

A conversation we recorded live at

36:52

TED's first democracy event

36:54

held in New York City this month.

36:57

I was joined on stage by political scientist

36:59

Yasha Monk to talk about the wave

37:02

of authoritarian leadership around the world and

37:05

how the ideals of democracy

37:07

that many of us have taken for granted are

37:10

changing in surprising ways. So just a

37:13

little bit about Yasha. He was

37:15

born in Germany to Jewish parents

37:17

who had immigrated from Poland. He's

37:20

a professor at Johns Hopkins. He

37:22

became a U.S. citizen in 2017

37:25

and has written five books about the

37:27

state of democracy.

37:29

Here we are on the TED stage. You

37:33

were one of the first to start alerting us

37:36

that liberal democracies had big problems when

37:38

you wrote in July 2016, the

37:41

citizens of wealthy established democracies

37:43

are less satisfied with their governments than

37:46

they have been at any time since opinion

37:48

polling

37:48

began. With

37:51

that as the backdrop, I actually want to start

37:53

somewhere positive.

37:54

Let's start with Poland. The

37:56

Democratic Opposition Party won recent elections there.

38:00

called a win for liberal democracies everywhere,

38:03

remind us about what happened and how

38:05

you see it.

38:06

Yeah, Poland is a wonderful microcosm of

38:09

both a threat to democracy in this moment

38:12

and the fact that we shouldn't need to despair.

38:16

You know, when I was in graduate school, my professors

38:18

taught me it's very hard to sustain democracies.

38:21

But once countries have had a number

38:23

of changes of government for free and fair elections,

38:26

once they reach a certain level

38:28

of wealth, you basically can take the

38:30

future of democracy for granted. And Poland

38:32

was one of those places. But then what

38:34

we saw is something that wasn't

38:37

supposed to happen. These political

38:39

candidates and parties come

38:41

into government that are very

38:43

extreme, that don't

38:46

respect the basic rules of a democratic

38:48

game, but try to concentrate power in

38:51

their own hands. We call them populists,

38:53

populists like Donald Trump in the United

38:56

States, like Hayab

39:08

they

39:17

had replaced many of the justices on

39:20

the country's courts. But what

39:22

we've also seen is that democratic

39:25

oppositions can be resilient, even

39:28

in the face of these challenges, even as the

39:31

ability to organize as an opposition

39:33

becomes more and more constrained. And about

39:36

a month ago in Poland, that democratic

39:39

opposition managed to remove

39:42

the government by democratic

39:44

means, they managed against the odds, against

39:47

all of those challenges, to win

39:49

a contested democratic election.

39:51

And it now looks as for Poland is back

39:54

on the path towards a more stable

39:57

democratic system.

39:58

And so, yes, you can

39:59

return to democracy, but it won't necessarily

40:02

be a smooth path?

40:04

Well, so

40:05

the problem is that once you have people

40:07

in the democratic system who really don't

40:10

play by the democratic rules, it

40:12

sets up all of those follow on

40:15

dilemmas. So

40:17

one of the things that the incoming government will now

40:19

have to decide to do is what

40:21

you do once the state broadcaster is full

40:24

of loyalists of the outgoing government

40:26

who really just spread the most extreme form

40:28

of propaganda. Well, I guess you

40:30

want to fire all of them, but if you fire all of them,

40:33

then you're just another step in the repoliticization

40:36

of this state broadcaster.

40:39

That's not going to be the way to actually turn it

40:41

into a neutral and trusted sort.

40:43

What do you do when a lot of the

40:45

justices

40:46

on the courts have been appointed

40:48

in an illegitimate manner?

40:50

But if you then go and fire all

40:52

of the justices, you're simply cementing a new norm,

40:55

but each time that somebody wins an election,

40:57

you're going to come in and sweep out the old people

41:00

and politicize the system. And that's not

41:02

the way to build stable institutions.

41:04

So I think we've been thinking

41:06

far too much in the last 10 years,

41:10

either full democracy or you're veering

41:12

towards full dictatorship. I think

41:14

the actual situation we're going to be facing

41:16

is, you know, decades

41:19

of struggle over those things in

41:21

which we might make a little bit of progress in one moment,

41:23

which more democratic forces might win an election

41:26

and trying to reestablish some of those basic

41:28

democratic rules, and in which

41:31

the populists win sometimes and start

41:33

to undermine those rules. And we're never going

41:35

to have a perfect democracy. Most

41:38

countries will never turn into straight up dictatorships

41:41

will be somewhere in that messy middle.

41:44

And so I think what we're facing is a very

41:46

long and protracted and complicated

41:48

fight. So

41:50

all the countries that you mentioned, the

41:53

threats to their democracies were different.

41:55

But for our purposes, you often

41:57

use the term liberal democracy.

41:59

Can we just define that, how you see

42:02

it? Yeah, so as a political scientist, I think

42:04

of our political system as having two fundamental

42:06

values. So I tend to use the term

42:08

liberal democracy, which is that one

42:10

value of our democracy is derived

42:13

from the literal meaning of the term. Democracy is

42:15

the rule of the people. It's the idea that we

42:17

collectively rule ourselves rather

42:20

than having a king or a military

42:23

general or a priest or a rabbi or

42:25

an imam or somebody else telling us what

42:27

to do. But that's not the only thing. Because

42:30

we also think that even the

42:32

majority should not be able to tell

42:34

us exactly how to live. But even

42:36

if the majority says, if we don't like what you say, they

42:39

shouldn't be allowed to shut us up. Even if the majority

42:41

says, we don't like the way you worship, they

42:43

shouldn't be allowed to force us to worship in

42:45

the way that they worship. And so

42:48

this is the second element, the liberal

42:50

element, the Republican element, the

42:52

element that maintains

42:55

our individual freedom. And

42:57

the danger with many of these, authoritarian

43:00

politicians, many of what you might call these populists,

43:03

is that they don't want to accept that. But they

43:06

say, I and I alone truly represent

43:09

the people. And if you disagree with

43:11

me, then you're illegitimate. And there's something wrong

43:13

with you. And so that becomes a threat

43:16

to the pluralism we

43:18

need in our political system to sustain

43:21

individual liberty.

43:22

Okay, so these two core components,

43:25

you've got the individual rights and the popular well,

43:28

when do you start to see those fracture?

43:31

Well, so I think there's two ways that that

43:33

can happen. One is that sometimes established

43:36

political parties and movements stop

43:38

being good at listening to what

43:40

people actually want, right? They often come

43:43

from a similar kind of social milieu, they have

43:45

their own kind of ideas and values, they're

43:47

often more affluent, they might have their own kinds of material

43:50

interests as well. And so often

43:52

they stop being very good at

43:54

translating the popular well into public

43:57

policy. But that then invites a... counter

44:00

reaction. That invites politicians who come in

44:02

and say, you shouldn't trust those elites, you

44:05

shouldn't trust the people in charge. They're

44:07

completely corrupt and self-interested. They don't

44:09

want to listen to you. They look down on you. And

44:11

so what we need is somebody who truly

44:13

speaks for the people. And that's me. I truly

44:16

am the voice of the people and all you need to do

44:18

is to allow me to go in government to

44:21

push aside all of these stupid norms

44:23

and procedures that constrain

44:26

what the people actually want and that way

44:28

we're going to make progress. And that

44:30

is the thing that all of these politicians

44:32

that otherwise look very dissimilar to each

44:35

other have in common. Why as political

44:37

scientists do we talk about authoritarian

44:39

populists like Donald Trump and Hugo

44:41

Chavez in Venezuela and Recep

44:44

Erdogan in Turkey and Viktor Arban

44:46

in Hungary and Narendra Modi

44:49

in India. These politicians

44:52

come from very different parts of the world, they come from

44:54

different parts of the world spectrum. Some of them are left wing,

44:56

many of them are right wing. They have different religions.

45:00

They hate different kinds of people. They all hate somebody,

45:02

they hate different kinds of people. So what

45:05

they have in common is this claim that they

45:08

truly represent the voice of a country

45:10

and that anybody who disagrees with them is

45:12

not just a political opponent but an enemy,

45:15

somebody who's illegitimate because

45:17

they disagree with them.

45:19

Okay, we're entering 2024 which

45:23

is a mega election year. My understanding

45:25

is 2 billion voters are expected

45:27

to go to the polls in 50 plus countries.

45:30

Broadly speaking,

45:32

is this next year a tipping point

45:34

or a key

45:35

moment for democracy that

45:38

you're watching?

45:39

Yes, there will be a number of very important

45:42

elections and one of the most important

45:44

ones will be in the United States. But

45:47

we got quite lucky in the first term

45:49

of Donald Trump because he did not have

45:51

a deep bent of loyalists who were competent

45:54

and who actually wanted to effectuate

45:56

his program because there was

45:58

real constraints on him from the within his own political

46:00

party. All of that is going to

46:02

be different the next time around.

46:05

He now is coming in with a

46:07

much more decided plan to push back

46:10

against any of the limits on his power.

46:12

He's in a much angrier mood. He has

46:15

many more loyalists who've actually spent four

46:17

years gaining experience

46:19

about how to wrangle a federal bureaucracy and

46:21

how to exercise believers of power. And

46:24

it looks like we're going to be in much

46:27

more existential international

46:29

crises as well. That alone makes 2024

46:33

a decisive year for democracy

46:35

in the United States and by implication around

46:37

the world.

46:38

So you just talked about how Donald Trump

46:40

has changed in the past four years,

46:42

but what about the electorate? One thing

46:44

you wrote was that knowing what ethnic

46:46

group a voter hails from tells you less

46:48

about who they are going to vote for today than

46:51

it did in 2016. Talk about

46:53

what's

46:53

changed for voters. Yeah, I've been worried

46:56

about the crisis of democracy since before it was

46:58

cool, but at some point

47:00

when people still in very

47:02

significant numbers seem to plan

47:04

to vote for him, we need to look in the

47:06

mirror a little bit. It's

47:09

not that Americans love

47:11

Donald Trump so much. According to most polls,

47:14

they actually don't. It's that they

47:16

also kind of hate the people on the other side.

47:18

And so I think those of us

47:21

who are really worried about Trump should think a

47:24

little bit about why we can't convince

47:27

people of the danger he poses. And

47:30

I think one of the key things that

47:32

many Americans have gotten wrong, especially

47:35

political consultants and politicians and so on,

47:38

is this idea of a rising demographic

47:41

majority for Democrats

47:43

or for the left. White voters tend

47:45

to prefer Republicans and non-white voters tend

47:47

to prefer the Democratic Party.

47:50

And so as the share of non-white voters

47:52

increases, there's going to be this natural majority

47:55

for Democrats.

47:56

In 2016, knowing what

47:59

raised somebody...

47:59

belongs to the United States, gave you

48:02

a lot of information about who

48:04

they were going to vote for. By 2020,

48:07

that was already the case

48:09

to a much lesser degree. And

48:11

when we're looking at the polls now, that

48:14

trend seems to have accelerated more.

48:17

So for example, among Hispanic

48:19

voters, Donald Trump is now

48:21

within single digits of

48:23

Joe Biden. There's a very, very close election

48:26

coming up, even if you just look at Hispanic

48:28

voters. And it turns out that many

48:31

Latino voters also have concerns

48:33

about immigration. It turns

48:35

out that many African

48:37

American voters, many Muslim voters have

48:40

concerns about what children are taught

48:42

in schools when it comes to sexual

48:45

education and gender questions and so on. The

48:47

other way to explain this is to look

48:49

at the Democratic Party. And the Democratic

48:52

Party has effectively become the

48:54

political party

48:55

of

48:56

educated elites, of

48:59

people who have college degrees. It

49:02

speaks like somebody who's just graduated

49:04

from one of the universities at which I teach. Most

49:07

people don't talk like that. Most voters

49:10

continue not to have a college degree.

49:13

And so if you turn yourself into the party

49:15

of a highly educated, you lose elections.

49:19

Well,

49:19

we're all sitting here together talking

49:21

the same way. As

49:23

a member of the press, I've

49:25

certainly heard just in the last few days

49:27

loud and clear, Margaret Sullivan

49:30

wrote an op-ed calling the press out

49:32

for writing in very sanitized

49:35

language about autocratic

49:38

plans that the would-be-again

49:40

president is making if he were to take office.

49:43

That was in fact very sanitized language that I just

49:46

used to describe that. And it makes me

49:48

wonder what the heck we should do.

49:50

media

50:01

with a deeply regional system of governance

50:04

with many tracks on political

50:06

power. Would the second Trump

50:08

term be an acute danger to

50:10

American democracy? Yes, absolutely. I

50:13

think January 6, 2021 demonstrates that very

50:16

clearly. Would that mean that the moment

50:18

he's elected, you know, we should give up on American

50:20

democracy? No, of course not. You

50:22

know, there's this idea in American politics

50:25

of what some people call the beer test. In

50:29

the 2004 presidential election campaign,

50:31

there was a poll which showed that many

50:33

more Americans would like to have a beer

50:35

with George W. Bush than with John Kerry. And

50:38

so when the media didn't understand why George W.

50:40

Bush won re-election, people

50:43

said, well, perhaps it's because people wanted to have a beer

50:45

with George W. Bush. I don't think that

50:47

makes sense, because most voters know

50:49

that they're never going to have a beer with the president. Why should

50:51

they care? But I think there's an inverse

50:54

beer test that makes a lot more sense. I think

50:56

a lot of voters ask themselves, you know,

50:58

if this political candidate showed up in my home today

51:00

and

51:01

they didn't have time to clean up,

51:03

right, I was going to talk to them the way I talk to

51:05

my friends and to my neighbors. Are they going to

51:07

like me? Are they going to respect me? Or

51:09

are they going to look down on me? I

51:12

think that's the test that pro-democratic

51:14

forces fail far too

51:16

often.

51:18

I do want to just finish by

51:20

asking you,

51:22

you wrote that this really struck

51:24

me what you wrote. There's nothing natural

51:26

about the idea of a nation.

51:27

And,

51:31

you know, I think this is what we're born into. And

51:33

sometimes we forget just how strange

51:35

and radical and even experimental

51:37

it is.

51:38

We all have subnational

51:41

identities, right? We have allegiances

51:44

to the cultural origin

51:46

of our parents, allegiances to the

51:48

religion we might practice, religions

51:51

to our ethnic groups.

51:52

And all of that is fine.

51:54

But in order to sustain that

51:56

incredible scheme of social cooperation,

51:59

we also... have to lean into some of the identities

52:01

that we share. We also have to recognize

52:04

that above and beyond those things, we

52:06

have things in common as residents of

52:08

the same city or as citizens of

52:11

the same country or the same nation. Now,

52:14

as a German Jew, it is true that patriotism

52:16

does not come naturally to me, right? But

52:19

I have over time come to embrace

52:22

the idea of patriotism.

52:25

Not in its ethnic variant, but

52:28

in the civic sense, part

52:32

of the healthy patriotism is an appreciation

52:34

and a love for the culture

52:36

of your country. It

52:39

is a love of the sights

52:41

and sounds and smells and cities

52:44

and landscapes and people that

52:46

animate the country today. And

52:50

that lift forward looking

52:52

culture of a country like the United States

52:55

bears the influence and the hallmarks

52:57

of people from very different backgrounds,

52:59

very different origins, very

53:01

different cultural and religious groups. And

53:04

I think having a healthy love for that is

53:06

one of the things that can connect us to each other and

53:09

allow us to have forbearance

53:12

for each other, to tolerate each other

53:14

when we get on each other's nerves and

53:16

hopefully to stand arm in arm

53:18

to build a better future.

53:21

That was Yasha Monk. He's a

53:23

professor of political science at Johns Hopkins

53:26

University. His latest book is

53:28

The Identity Trap, a story

53:30

of ideas and power

53:31

in our time.

53:34

Thank you so much for listening to our

53:36

show about democracy. This

53:38

episode was produced by Andrea Gutierrez,

53:41

Fiona Giren, Rachel Faulkner-White, Chloe

53:43

Weiner, and Harsha Nahada. It

53:45

was edited by Sanaz Meshkincore, James

53:47

Delahusi, and me. Our

53:50

production staff at NPR also includes

53:52

Katie Montelione and Matthew Cloutier.

53:55

Irene Noguchi is our executive producer.

53:58

Our audio engineers were Josh Newell,

54:01

Robert Rodriguez, and Gilly

54:03

Moon. Our theme music was

54:05

written by Romteen Arablui. Our

54:07

partners at TED are Chris Anderson,

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Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and

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