The Opposition Must Be Internal and External
If the current era of increasingly unalloyed fascism in the US and rising authoritarianism in too many places around the world is ever going to end and be replaced by an era of democratic and humanistic renewal, it will take years of work by everyone who wants to see a better world than the dystopia that the US and some other countries are becoming. There are seemingly passive ways in which a regime might "collapse due to its internal contradictions," as some have said of the Soviet Union, but unless there are people who are willing to exploit those contradictions when the opportunity arises, repressive regimes will not simply fall spontaneously. And even if that effort-free collapse were possible, the post-despotic renewal that everyone should desire can only become a reality through active engagement, not by sitting and hoping for the best.
In the first part of my Dorf on Law column on Tuesday of this week, I addressed the question of whether the people who flee a deteriorating country are failing their fellow citizens. I had directly addressed that question in a Verdict column shortly after I moved from the US to Canada in 2023, in which I believe I honestly confronted the moral ambiguity of such a move. I mentioned that discussion in this week's column because the "Should you really leave?" question arose again last month when The New York Times published a guest op-ed by three Yale scholars who recently announced that they have all accepted positions at the University of Toronto, which was soon followed by a Letter to the Editor that castigated the trio for supposedly abandoning the fight against Trumpism.
Although my main focus in the balance of that column was on the possibilities of large-scale academic expatriations -- short answer: cross-border academic moves will amount to little more than rounding error, mostly for boring, logistical reasons -- I did first scratch the itch of responding to the "staying here in solidarity" argument, because it is not only offensive (basically saying that the now-former Yalies are arrogant and should check their privilege) but pretends that the personal stakes are not enormously high. Moreover, that insulting claim completely misunderstands the nature of how opposition to totalitarians has to work.
Regarding the personal stakes, I rhetorically asked: "So apparently the people in Europe in the 1930's who saw horrible things on the horizon and were the lucky ones who got out alive were merely taking the lazy path by 'commenting from afar' and thus were 'not the solution'?" Because I am a White Presbyterian whose family (through all four grandparents) has been in the US for well over a century, my family's stories do not include the horrific events of the many Jewish families that were completely or in large part decimated by the Nazis and their collaborators. Would that my family's luck in that regard were universal. The history of the 1930's is thus not directly personal to me, but how could I not feel profound grief about the lives that were lost to a madman's death machine?
I am something of a movie buff, which means that a big part of the emotional power of the Holocaust has hit me through both documentaries and feature films. There are literally hundreds of such works that I could recommend, but I will mention only two here. "La Vita è Bella" ("Life is Beautiful") is an Oscar-winning story about a family of Italian Jews swept up in the insanity of fascism, and it is not only a great film in covering this difficult topic but is among my top-five favorite films of all time.
More to my immediate point, the lesser-known "Woman in Gold" was a 2015 movie starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds (the latter of whom was given the opportunity to show that he is not merely a comic/action star, and he delivered powerfully). In that film, a large part of the narrative involves the chaotic days when the crackdown on Jews in Vienna was being unleashed by Hitler's forces. This included a powerful scene in which two middle-aged brothers argued vehemently about whether they should gather their wives and children and all leave the country. The brother who wanted to stay said things like "but they like us" (that is, notwithstanding orders from Berlin, he was certain that the local community liked and valued their Jewish friends, neighbors, and business associates and would not allow them to be harmed), and he accused his brother of being an alarmist and a coward.
In the end, the second brother took his branch of the family and escaped, while the other remained with his branch of the family in Vienna. I cannot recall whether the film directly follows up on that conversation (I think it did), but the unmistakable point was that those who remained surely were killed. There is no "staying in solidarity" logic that could justify saying that those who left made an indefensible choice. None would have been spared.
Again, my only mention of all of that in my column earlier this week was the cryptic reference to "the lucky ones who got out alive." In response to the column, a colleague sent me a very useful email in which he testified to his own family's history during that time, saying that his cousins were "forced to climb into cattle cars" and that his great aunts and uncles were "machine gunned in their village square." That email brought tears to my eyes, of course, but my colleague's larger point was the complementary argument that "those of us who have no choice but to remain, must fight."
That is, he was most definitely not saying that people should not leave if they have the opportunity to do so (even if their opportunity exists because of privilege, as it obviously must), but the US currently is still at a stage where all hope is not lost. As long as there is hope -- and if hope should soon be in even shorter supply than it is today -- the only thing to do is to fight.
Who should join in the fight? Again, everyone, including those who have left the country for their own complicated sets of reasons. Or, in the words of the title of this column, people both internal and external must engage as well as they possibly can. In my column two days ago, I added suggestively: "Moreover, who is to say whether any of us might be able to do more from abroad than at home?" This was mainly in response to that letter writer's trolling comments about the professors who have left Yale: "Do they think that appearing in a video from The New York Times is sufficient? ... It is incumbent on all Americans to stay and resist fascism in any way they can. Fleeing to another country and commenting from afar is not the solution."
Seriously? How could it be true that all Americans must stay and fight internally? If the moral imperative is to "resist fascism in any way they can," then why should we not celebrate those who are leaving but who remain committed to doing what they can from abroad? Importantly, the three professors in question are experts on fascism. Obviously, none of them would never think that one video op-ed is "sufficient." But were the people who were stuck inside the Nazi-occupied countries not helped by people who were living abroad, lobbying governments and sending support in any way that they could? Would it have been better if everyone with any experience of life and death on the ground inside the Third Reich had remained inside? Jason Stanley, one of the Yale Three, has said in interview after interview that he will spend his time helping in every way he can from Canada.
Admittedly, I am directing my ire here at what amounts to some rando who mounted her high horse and managed to get a letter published in The Times. Of course, the letters editor did decide to publish that screed, so at least two people thought that it was worth putting out there, and in the sense that inane arguments are best dealt with by airing them and destroying them, I suppose that counts as a win for the broader debate.
But the overall point is that, no matter where one is located (or whether one relocates), resistance is the order of the day. I am not saying that one side or the other -- the internal resistance or the external resistance -- is more important. They are both essential, and they cannot work without each other.
What does internal resistance look like? Jon May is a Guest Columnist on Verdict, having written a baker's dozen of columns over the past two years. (I cited one of his columns last Fall in "Do Top-Tier Media Types Think They Will Be Spared in a Trump Crackdown? Theories of Media Complicity."). Beyond his online writing, May is an excellent example of a person who is using his skills to resist from within. He is the principal at Creative Criminal Defense Consultants in Florida, with a long career working in furtherance of the rule of law.
May has recently been spearheading a group that includes Scott Harshbarger, Norm Eisen, and Daniel N. Arshack, that is trying to get the Florida Bar to investigate US Attorney General Pamela Bondi (who was formerly the Florida state AG and is under the disciplinary supervision of that state's bar) for ethical violations. Their latest complaint detailing Bondi's "serious professional misconduct" can be found here.
This new iteration of the complaint was necessary because their previous efforts were met with a shrug from the Florida Bar, which claimed in a letter two weeks ago that it "does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office." As May and his colleagues note in response, that cavalier response "is unsupported by history or precedent," citing Leis v. Flynt, 439 U.S. 438, 442 (1979).
I was especially taken by this argument, from page 3 of the new complaint:
Through her “zealous advocacy” memorandum and its application in these three cases, Ms. Bondi has sent a message to all Justice Department lawyers that they must disregard the applicable Rules of Professional Conduct, fundamental ethical principles, and longstanding norms of the Department in order to zealously pursue the President’s political objectives—and, if they fail to do so, they will be disciplined or fired. However, as Ms. Bondi and her senior staff are fond of saying, no one is above the law, and this includes Ms. Bondi (footnote omitted).
This is the kind of aggressive, focused, and careful work that can best be done internally, fighting growing fascism in the US in a way that only a group like this can. Will it work? Perhaps. And if this particular complaint does work, will it mean that Trump will be run out of town on a rail? Of course not, but it is still worth doing. Resistance must cover everything, including explicit legal levers as well as keeping up a very public discussion about the lawlessness now on parade in Trump's government.
No one thinks that those of us who have left the US could on our own bring the rest of the world to move against Trump, and no one should think that those who do not or cannot leave would refuse to work with everyone who can help, including people who are located in another country. To return to that ridiculous letter to The Times, the statement that "[i]t is incumbent on all Americans to stay and resist fascism in any way they can" is off by two words, "stay and." It should say this: "It is incumbent on all Americans to resist fascism in any way they can," and I would add, "no matter where they happen to live."
- Neil H. Buchanan