How to Respond to Repression

On Solidarity and Rights Defense

We are entering the chapter of this story where individuals and institutions are beginning to experience direct repression from the Trump administration. The repression is targeted—not widespread just yet— but it has the sort of “trial balloon” feature we’ve seen from Trump and many other proto autocrats like him around the world. He is setting a tone, and a precedent, that could beget further repression down the line.

Fortunately, there is a right way to respond to all this that can help stop a repressive slide in its tracks. American society is ferocious, and that gives me a good deal of optimism right now.

How Repression Works

Repression is the act of restricting protected political expression through the coercive apparatus of the state. In fully authoritarian systems, we know repression when we see it— illegal detentions, torture, threats, and other forms of intimidation. In actively eroding democracies— where we are right now in the U.S.— repression may be more subtle. In some instances, repression might be disguised, like when a political activist is targeted with a tax audit or framed for a sordid crime. In others, it might be justified on the grounds of national security. Lawsuits and defamation charges can also be part of the toolkit. When something bad happens to someone, it can be hard to tell whether they “deserved it” or whether it was politically motivated. Repressive governments thrive on ambiguity.

Repression works primarily through a chilling effect. Stories of repressive incidents reverberate through activist communities—what Rachel Stern and Jonathan Hassid call “control parables”— in turn creating dynamics of self-censorship and self-policing. Normal people learn to avoid politics entirely. The hallmark of an effective repressive system is not that everybody is being repressed all the time, but that a few people are actively targeted and everybody else learns to keep their mouth shut. That is how political freedoms erode, sometimes very quickly.

How to Respond

So… there are two ways to respond effectively to this. The first is to demonstrate solidarity with the targets of repression and label what has happened to them as such. Call it what it is. This might sound simple, but all too often we observe the opposite behavior, what social scientists call “distancing” or “victim blaming.” One of my all-time favorite Ph.D. students, Harry Doshay, wrote his dissertation about this. He documented how Chinese Christians in official registered churches would distance themselves from repressed Christians worshipping in unofficial house churches, effectively blaming other Christians for the repressive acts of the CCP. As Harry writes, this “hinder[s] solidarity and further empowers[s] the autocrat to divide and conquer potential opposition.”

When the Associated Press was banned from the White House press office for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America (sigh… what a sentence to be writing), we observed a degree of solidarity from other press units. Over 40 outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax, signed on calling for AP’s access to be restored. Here’s the statement from Newsmax to the NYT:

“We can understand President Trump’s frustration because the media has often been unfair to him, but Newsmax still supports the AP’s right, as a private organization, to use the language it wants to use in its reporting. We fear a future administration may not like something Newsmax writes and seek to ban us. This is why news organizations like Newsmax and Fox News are supporting the AP’s First Amendment rights though we may disagree with its editorial point of view from time to time.”

This is pretty good! Acts of solidarity can carry more weight from actors that are not politically aligned. AP continues to be excluded from the White House and other press events, but there is a lawsuit in court that may remedy the situation. If it doesn’t, I would hope other news outlets would go even further, like walking out from the White House press room completely until the AP is let back in.

Beyond solidarity, another effective response is to repeatedly register the right under attack. In an old piece for The Atlantic, I wrote about how universities should engage in “freedom of speech operations” (FOSOPs) in response to efforts by the Chinese government to impinge on academic freedom on our campuses. Frankly this idea never really took off, but I was trying to make the analogy to Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs), which the U.S. navy uses to show that it doesn’t honor China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The basic idea is that if a right is infringed upon, we should respond by registering our defense of the right through some form of symbolic action. Repression should be met with mobilization, not self-censorship.

On Columbia and Khalil

Trump is making clear moves to curb freedom of speech and association on college campuses. This is all being justified on the grounds of curbing antisemitism and protecting American national security. The latter is the sort of the catchall category that many governments—both democratic and authoritarian— use to infringe upon civil liberties. In China, one of the more common charges against dissidents is that of “endangering state security,” a crime which can be thrown at basically anyone engaging in troublemaking the state doesn’t like. We are seeing similar justifications rolled out now in the U.S., notably in the case of Columbia student Mahmoun Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident. Here’s a useful backgrounder on the case, and here’s political scientist Van Jackson with a helpful rant on all this:

“The egregiousness here is precisely that Khalil has broken no laws, and is not being charged with having broken any laws. Yet he is being disappeared all the same. If the Trump administration can do this to Khalil because Khalil says things the snow-flake White House doesn’t like, they can literally do this to anybody—the reasoning is so specious to the point of being flagrantly illegal. It’s not Khalil but rather the US security state operating on Trump’s orders that has broken the law here.”

Photo by Chenyu Guan on Unsplash

Trump wants to stamp out activism on Palestine by illegally detaining and deporting a few student leaders, hoping that the “chilling effect” takes hold, and students begin to self-censor, or worse, their campus administrators censor them to maintain access to the dwindling pool of federal grant money.

Columbia is already experiencing collective punishment for the activism on its campus. The Trump administration is attempting to (illegally) cancel $400 million in grants to the university. This is, again, a classic authoritarian strategy— punishing all for the acts of a few.

We are already seeing some important pushback and acts of solidarity from other institutions. Here’s AAU President Barbara Snyder:

“All universities carry an obligation to protect the rights of all students—regardless of their faith, racial identity, or ethnic background—to ensure that they are free to fully participate in their own education. And our universities, including Columbia, take these legal obligations seriously. Our universities are committed to fighting discrimination and harassment and ensuring the safety and well-being of all their students, faculty, and staff.

It is absolutely critical to root out antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. But that is not the issue here. This unprecedented decision to cut $400 million in federal funding does nothing to end discrimination. It will, however, succeed in harming the university’s 36,000 students, including nursing students, medical students, veterans getting their college degree, students who have transferred from community colleges, and patients seeking care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.”

And here’s Princeton President Chris Eisgruber:

Universities are being collectively targeted by the Trump administration for ideological and authoritarian reasons that really have nothing to do with antisemitism. They will need to stand together to protect their rights and the rights of their students.

I am not in the business of fomenting student protest—it should come organically from them when they feel so moved. But Khalil’s detention and the targeting of Columbia are the type of repressive acts that should warrant some form of collective response on campuses. Students need to register their rights. Ideally this would include acts of solidarity that cut across the Israel-Palestine divide that has polarized our communities. Even better, it would not be about Israel-Palestine at all, but the right to freedom of speech itself, and Trump’s assault on that right. At this point, this issue isn’t really about whether you agree with Mahmoun Khalil’s politics, or whether Columbia has handled the issue properly, or how you feel about Israel and Palestine. It’s much larger than that now.

Our Resilience to Repression

The worst response to repression is to keep quiet, to self-censor. I do not fault people living in highly repressive authoritarian systems, like China, for this type of behavior. It is an act of self-preservation. But the U.S. is not China, and the number of voices calling out Trump’s authoritarian behavior is in the millions. It is important to remember that. The opposition to Trump is really strong. These voices include leading members of both political parties, prominent media figures, celebrities, and everyday voters. I am inspired by that, and it’s a reminder of the resilience of our democratic system and culture. This is a country that has not yet experienced the “suffocating yoke of authoritarianism,” and we aren’t going to quietly accept it now.

Do not be afraid. Live in truth. Educate yourself on the issues. Speak your mind. If we all continue to do that, the chill of repression cannot take hold.

That’s all for today. Thank you as always for reading and sharing.

Rory