It echoes analyses and arguments from other Trump books that probe more deeply into particular arenas, yet it is not redundant; this book does not repeat as much as it distills. The result is almost the Platonic ideal of the anti-Trump Trump book, as though manufactured in a lab to affirm every suspicion, stoke every fear and answer every question by those readers desperately seeking a 'recovery from Trumpism,' as Gessen writes. The book’s implied 'we,' though sometimes encompassing the nation in full, is usually limited to the horrified. And those who are horrified by Trump will find that Surviving Autocracy is a time capsule packed with all their anxieties, and all their certainties, too. It offers discomfort and reassurance at once ... One of Gessen’s strengths is her ability to capture what daily life feels and sounds like in the Trump era, and how abnormality remains so even when it is pervasive ... If this book offers no other imperative, it is to remember that the choice always remains.
When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen ... Gessen isn’t part of the typical #Resist crowd, fixated on the Mueller report ... Gessen’s writing style is methodical and direct, relying on pointed observations instead of baroque hyperbole ... Surviving Autocracy faces the problem that most anti-Trump books do: How to conclude in a way that strikes the right balance between realism and hope. Gessen ends with an excerpt from 'Let America Be America Again,' by Langston Hughes—an appropriately rousing choice, though it also happens to be the same poem with which Amy Chua chose to end her book Political Tribes, published two years ago. Still, to obsess over endings would be to miss the larger point of this trenchant book.
A relatively slim yet potent book, Surviving Autocracy is an essential read for anyone who says that all politicians are the same ... It’s a crucial book for our times. Staying abreast of the news is a daily challenge. It takes an even greater effort to telescope beyond the relentless news cycle to analyze the chaotic nature of civic and social life ... Gessen’s lucid explanation of the 'fog' we live in, the behavior of those who hope to perpetuate that condition, and humane reparations to which we should direct our energy, make this a book that one should send to friends and family ... Gessen unpacks the source of this political and social instability in their potent book.
During the past few years of Donald Trump’s deranged presidency, if there is one writer I turn to it is Masha Gessen, whose piercing clarity is gemlike and refusal to equivocate precious ... Instead of a weariness, what is present in the book is a stunning capacity to connect the dots in a way that few can ... one of the few analytical books to suggest plausible ways he might be stopped ... This is where Gessen is so brilliant, taking apart the way language works for Trump and how it is an essential element of autocracy ... There is no better guide than Gessen in thinking how we may begin.
Gessen's viewpoint may be head-spinning for many, especially those who believe today's maelstrom of disease, unemployment and racial violence represent failures by the incumbent president ... a unique blend of intellect and manifold passions ... The writer flashes the fierce attitude and language of the partisan activist one moment, returning to the cooler mien of a public intellectual the next. Gessen is particularly sensitive to issues of linguistics and the subtle shifts of wording that can mean so much ... One impression easily taken from Surviving Autocracy is that Trump has been visited on Americans by some mysterious force or personal magic. There is a lack of focus on the manner by which Trump, as opposed to Putin, came to office. Gessen's perceptions about Russia's people and politics are surely more valuable than those of Americans who have never been there (or only visited briefly). But by the same token, average Americans might well ask how much Gessen really knows about the interior states or the interior life of most Americans ... What if Gessen had spent more time in the country these people feel they have lost? ... It might help translate a deep empathy for the plight of ordinary Russians and relate it to the fears and frustrations of their American counterparts—the millions who voted for Trump and now accept his authoritarian tendencies as being in their own interest.
... a righteously furious account of the damage that Trump has inflicted on the country ... Surviving Autocracy rightly indicts Trump as an aspiring autocrat who has deeply weakened the institutions of the Republic. But the most valuable parts of the book consist of the crisp observations Gessen offers along the way ... Despite these important insights, the book suffers from a tendency to shoot in a very target-rich environment without bothering to take careful aim ... The same tendency to skew the narrative to fit a conclusion that would be wholly plausible without such misfires is also evident when Gessen turns toward more recent events ... At times, I found myself swayed by Gessen’s fear that everything is breaking his way, that even the things that appear to constrain his power—like his persistent incompetence—will somehow serve to deepen his hold on the American Republic and the American mind. But at other times, I felt a growing sense of hope that American voters could (as they so often have in the past) soon sour on the demagogue who once beguiled them.
Gessen’s credentials as an observer of autocracy are impeccable ... Surviving Autocracy contains much that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the news over the last few years, but there is something about seeing all this in the aggregate that sharpens an edge of disgust lately blunted by relentless use. The book is a snapshot of how far American public life has been degraded ... Gessen also warns against conspiratorial thinking, including an overreliance on the narrative of a corrupting Russian influence on an otherwise untainted American political scene ... As a journalist, Gessen is inevitably preoccupied with the corruption of public discourse and particularly the rapid deterioration of the media’s ability to hold American power to account.
... a polemic take rather than a work of balanced reportage – and that is part of the point. For even to attempt to report on or analyse Trump as if he were a conventional president is make a category error. Reporters or news organisations attempting to give the US president a fair wind by not calling his incessant lies lies are not being balanced – they are contributing to further imbalance by allowing the failed property developer to further disorient the public without proper checks. And of course Trump won’t be grateful for their attempts at impartiality: he wants adulation, not balance ... Gessen’s book is mostly polemical, and mostly not new. Nevertheless, the writer’s tone of outrage has value. It is an inventory of awfulness we already knew about, but stopped counting. The corollary of Trump’s cartoonishness and the sheer, unredeemed squalor and corruption of his administration is that it is easy, even tempting, to tune it all out ... This is one of the similarities between Trump and Putin, similarities which Gessen, a Russian-American journalist who has written about living in both men’s autocracies, understands more than most. American exceptionalism has allowed some to believe that the strength of institutions, or the eloquent words engraved in marble on Washington’s monuments, will save their republic. They haven’t yet. The US is in many demonstrable ways already an autocracy.
... a blistering appraisal ... as Gessen meticulously documents, Trump's most determined, and most frightening, campaign has been his war on the notion of objective truth, and upon the institutions that unearth and report it ... the manifest flaws in Trump's character and the danger his continued governance poses have been laid bare thanks to Gessen and other fearless journalists. Surviving Autocracy isn't merely important reading for anyone who plans to cast a vote in that election, it's essential ...
Gessen’s is a clarion voice in the darkness, offering a sobering but sharp-witted analysis of how American society has changed under Trump and how democratic values and practices might yet survive. With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon, Gessen’s rallying cry is a vital and pressing reminder of what is at stake.
... [a] brisk, trenchant account ... Gessen’s meticulous research and familiarity with the political and cultural history of post-Soviet Russia lend her arguments an authority lacking in other takedowns of Trump. Liberals looking to make sense of what they’re up against in the 2020 elections should consider this a must-read.
Many writers have chronicled the Trump administration’s missteps and crimes, but few as concisely as Gessen, and her book belongs on the shelf alongside Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny and Amy Siskind’s The List as a record of how far we have fallen. Gessen is a Suetonius for our time, documenting the death of the old America while holding out slim hope for its restoration.
