To stop Trump’s authoritarianism, his opponents must understand and wield power
Description
Episode Summary
In a generic sense, everyone knows that politics is about power. But when you look at how America’s two major parties use the power that they have, there’s no question whatsoever that Republicans understand power politics while Democrats have a much more passive attitude toward it.
This has been true since at least 1964 when a dedicated group of reactionaries took over the Republican party and installed their extremist candidate Barry Goldwater and proceeded to systematically cancel and remove anyone who stood in their way. Now during the second administration of Donald Trump, his extremist administration is pulling all the levers of power it can to cancel budgets, cancel people, and threaten anyone who stands in its way.
In response, congressional Democratic leaders have mostly resorted to writing strongly worded letters which obviously isn’t cutting it. But what can be done?
Karen Attiah, my guest on today’s episode has been thinking and writing a lot about power and why it’s necessary to protect freedom. And she has direct experience at what actual canceling looks like, having been fired from the Washington Post for accurately quoting the late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. This came after she had a course canceled by Columbia University following her speaking out against Israel's genocide in Gaza and in favor of racial equality.
Since the Columbia incident, Karen has started Resistance Summer School, a new effort to teach the history of democratic rights movements, the very class that Columbia was too afraid to continue.
And since being fired by the Post, Karen will be redoubling her writing efforts on Substack, so be sure to subscribe. This is the exactly correct response to authoritarianism. Dictatorship is not inevitable, but it wants you to think that it is. The American people did not stand for Disney’s suspension of its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, and after millions of people canceled their subscriptions, it had to reinstate him.
We have the power to do great things, but only if we use it.
Important Note: Our conversation was recorded September 10, 2025, before Kirk was shot at a public event in Utah and so we do not discuss her reaction to it.
The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.
Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!
Related Content
After centuries of intellectual dominance, liberalism has become uninterested in defending itself
Far-right media will attack the broader left for any reason, even completely fabricated ones
Trump beat Harris because Republicans have an ecosystem while Democrats have a coalition
JB Pritzker’s tough response to Trump’s authoritarian acts and his progressive policies are pointing a better way for Democrats
Americans want big ideas, even if they’re terrible ones
Republicans treat politics like viral marketing, Democrats don’t
History shows that right-wing activists never believed in free speech and that ‘cancel culture’ panic was only about seizing power
Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
10:30 — Universities' lost touch with the people is why many keep folding to authoritarianism
16:48 — The political right understands what power can do much better than the political left
22:01 — How living in Texas made Karen not suppose that reactionaries were serious about their ideas
31:01 — Liberals stopped explaining their ideas in an easy to understand way
39:18 — Democratic and other left leaders underestimate the power of religious community and knowing
47:09 — The personal, cult magnetism of Donald Trump
52:23 — There's little need to reach out to right-wing leaders, but some of their followers can be persuaded
59:56 — Fascism isn't inevitable, but to stop it, you mus have vision and a realization that power matters
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So you've got a number of interesting things you are doing lately, but one of them is you've got a class that was canceled by the actual cancel culture of Donald Trump from Columbia University that you are teaching independently now. So why don't we start off with you telling us about that.
KAREN ATTIAH: Sure. Yeah. It's been such a wild time on so many, in so many levels. Yeah, probably most people might know me as a journalist and a columnist and editor for, the Washington Post, but deep down inside have always wanted to teach. I've always wanted to be an academic. Actually, I ended up a journalist, but but yeah, most people might not know.
My background is actually in international affairs, so I went to Columbia as a graduate student and wanted to basically like work in the UN or World Bank or maybe, diplomatic service, that sort of thing. But that experience really made me question a lot about our systems, particularly our international affairs development systems.
And while I was a grad student at Columbia School [00:04:00 ] for International and Public Affairs, I definitely questioned like, wait a second. Why aren't we learning anything about how race intersects with development and how we see the world, how people relate to one another?
And I definitely was aware that what we were being taught was a very, very, very, not only Western centri
United States
