Very kind of you to say, Joel - thank you!

As the pieces I publish on Democracy Americana are very long, I am providing audio versions for free to make them more accessible (read by me, not some ghastly AI).

Paid members can also download the voiceovers in podcast form wherever you get your pods:

Here is a thread, outlining the key arguments:

What the Trumpists are encountering in Minnesota is a community exhibiting the kind of cohesion and solidarity across racial, cultural, and religious lines they claim is impossible.

Nothing could be more terrifying to the blood-and-soil nationalists.

The MAGA regime envisioned Minneapolis as a warning to the rest of the nation.

But as the resistance is holding, the occupation is turning into something else: A rejection of the white nationalist worldview and a reminder of democratic freedom and solidarity.

The Trumpists claim that multiracial pluralism is a dangerous lie, it is weak, it lacks cohesion, it stands no chance against the strength of the autocratic ethno-state.

But what they are encountering on the ground is a population mobilizing in defense of their non-white neighbors.

The necessary social cohesion for a nation to endure, the Trumpists want us to believe, can only be achieved in a racially, culturally, religiously, and ethnically homogeneous “Volk” – and only when that “Volk” is allowed to impose a strictly hierarchical order in its “homeland.”

This is the question that defines the political conflict of our time: Can society function as an egalitarian democracy under conditions of multiracial, multi-religious, multicultural pluralism? The fundamental claim of ethno-nationalist movements across the world is that it cannot.

The resistance on the ground matters not only because the regime’s ability to consolidate authoritarian rule is being put to the test here. It matters because it refutes the core premise of MAGA’s worldview: That a multiracial, pluralistic society cannot – it must not! – work.

Forget all the nonsense about Trump “pivoting” to moderation. This regime is ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of that. They will continue to escalate, hoping to intimidate people and institutions into compliance and submission.

But in Minneapolis, people are holding the line.

🙏 Please make sure you make use of all the benefits that come with a membership - especially the opportunity to download the audio versions wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you run into any kind of trouble. Thank you, Amy!

What the Trumpists are encountering is a community exhibiting exactly the kind of cohesion and solidarity across racial, cultural, and religious lines they claimed was impossible.

Nothing could be more terrifying to the blood-and-soil nationalists.

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The Trumpists claim that multiracial pluralism is a dangerous lie, it is weak, it lacks cohesion, it stands no chance against the strength of the autocratic ethno-state. But what they are encountering on the ground is a population mobilizing in defense of their non-white neighbors.

The necessary social cohesion for a nation to endure, the Trumpists want us to believe, can only be achieved in a racially, culturally, religiously, and ethnically homogeneous “Volk” – and only when that “Volk” is allowed to impose a strictly hierarchical order in its “homeland.”

The resistance on the ground matters not only because the regime’s ability to consolidate authoritarian rule is being put to the test here. It matters because it refutes the core premise of MAGA’s worldview: That a multiracial, pluralistic society cannot – it must not! – work.

The people in Minnesota are making a different choice, fueled and sustained by their belief in their own agency, the conviction that their resistance will not be in vain, that it is still in their power to avert autocracy’s triumph.

How we describe the conflict, how we conceptualize where America stands, matters: It shapes the way individuals and institutions act. An assumption of MAGA’s inevitability contributed to the pervasive tendency early on among elites and civic institutions to acquiesce and align with the regime.

A past pattern is not a guarantee that the regime won’t break through to consolidating authoritarian rule. But this dynamic at least stands in tension with the idea of Trumpism’s steady, irresistible march towards stable autocracy.