OPPOSING TRUMP / PROJECT SYNDICATE

Opposing Trump

While Vladimir Putin needs a permanent state of war to keep the Russian people under his thumb, Donald Trump needs conflicts with the rest of the world to create a pretext for his own abuse of power. All those who oppose America's new authoritarian regime should take note, lest they fall into the traps it has laid.

Adam Michnik, Irena Grudzińska Gross

With Donald Trump’s second administration rapidly dismantling US alliance networks, domestic institutions, and global trade arrangements, historian Irena Grudzińska Gross recently asked former Polish dissident Adam Michnik how America’s own democratic opposition should be approaching the authoritarian regime that now confronts it.

Irena Grudzińska Gross: The Trump administration has wasted no time going after institutions that it associates with the opposition, such as by withholding federal funding from leading research universities, intimidating media outlets, and barring lawyers at major law firms from entering federal buildings. 

As a politician, historian, and former opposition activist, what advice would you offer to, say, a student at Columbia University?

Adam Michnik: It would never occur to me to give specific advice to Americans on how they should deal with the situation, because the situation must be diagnosed first. 

It is something new, and it has turned the world upside down. 

We must learn to think about geopolitics and America in a new way, asking whether we are dealing with something accidental, or whether it is a sign of the world’s evolution – whether the world is going in a different, new direction.

IGG: In that case, what is your preliminary diagnosis? 

Is America heading toward authoritarianism?

AM: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s regimes do have something in common, and it is not only their rhetoric. 

For both, foreign policy is a function of domestic policy. 

Putin needs a permanent state of war to keep the Russian people under his thumb; Trump needs to create conflict with the entire world to present his use of power as necessary for the defense of American identity, for America’s well-being.

From the point of view of an ordinary Russian, it is irrelevant whether the ruins of Donetsk belong to Ukraine or Russia. 

The most important thing is that there is a war, because during such occasions, people will rally around the flag. 

Putin first had to destroy civil society in Russia, which he has done consistently almost from the beginning of his rule. 

Trump has already intimidated major components of American civil society into submission in less than three months; normally it would take three years to inflict such large-scale social destruction.

Putinization

IGG: Of all the foreign leaders whom Trump could be compared to, why do you single out Putin?

AM: Because we are witnessing a thoroughgoing Putinization of the United States. 

Trump wants to create a Putin-like regime, but he must do so within the American system. 

It is a different society, with different traditions, different laws, and different institutions. 

So, Trump’s regime will not be a perfect copy. 

But the fact that Japan is different from Portugal does not mean that they are not both democracies; authoritarian regimes always have their historical and national specificities, but that does not mean they are not authoritarian.

What Putin is doing, as one of my Russian friends put it, is adapting an authoritarian system to a totalitarian one. 

Equally, what Trump is doing has been very accurately described by historians like Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder – and previously by figures like former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

If I were to give advice to my daughter’s peers who were studying at Columbia, I would tell them to read Snyder’s On Tyranny. 

It is a textbook that allows you to understand the world you live in and what dangers await you. 

It is no coincidence that he draws heavily on the experience of Eastern Europe at the time of the dying communist dictatorship.

IGG: That’s why your opinion is so important. 

You were a part of the opposition that successfully resisted the communist dictatorship.

AM: None of us knew back then that the dictatorship was dying; we all knew that it was weakening, that it was faltering, but no one expected it to end the way it did. 

Later, none of us expected the “revenge of memory” that we now see in Russia, as well as in Hungary, the US, Brazil, Argentina, and so forth.

Perfidious America

IGG: Walk us through what you mean.

AM: We are seeing a different face of America that we had lost sight of, though it was there all along. 

It is the face of racism, exclusion, cruelty, lynchings, and brutal imperial domination – an impulse that was fully on display during Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

As I watched that grotesque scene, I understood – viscerally – the anger that Latinos harbor toward “Yankees.” 

There was such impudence, such rudeness, from men who do not even pretend that there are any rules, laws, or norms. 

All that matters is who holds a position of strength. 

If you don’t obey, you’ll get a punch in the face. 

It was something none of us expected. 

It was a physical shock.

The revenge of memory is how I describe an America that has not adapted to the twenty-first century. 

This darker America defines its enemy by gender, by sexual orientation and identity, by immigration status; it is the revenge of that part of society that feels frustrated by the use of affirmative discrimination to correct entrenched discrimination from the past; it is an America the resents the construction of a tolerant society.

But I don’t want to suggest that there are only angels on the other side. 

There are obvious reasons for frustration, and we need to consider what elements of the public discourse lay behind the appeal of authoritarian rhetoric. 

What made people follow Trump’s movement? 

There are risks to the radicalism that we see on university campuses. 

We need to understand how we can defuse these minefields. 

It will not be easy.

Pick Your Battles

IGG: In practical terms, what does it mean to “defuse” the mines? 

Are you saying the opposition should not organize protests? 

Would you advise the Democrats not to defend the trans community?

AM: I would advise them not to let it be the focus of the conflict with Trump. 

They need to point out where Trump is hurting America; they need to identify the harms that are recognizable to everyone, including those who are repelled by trans and gender politics. 

Obviously, every human being must be defended, because everyone has the right to freedom and to live in dignity. 

But you are running a big risk if you let an issue like trans rights displace issues that affect the whole society.

For example, union members need to know that Trump’s tariff policy is not in their interest, that they will ultimately be hurt by it. 

“America First” means self-imposed isolation. 

If you act like an imperial tyrant, it will end badly for you.

This needs to be explained to Trump’s voters, so that is what I would advise. 

They have lent their support to a Putin-like attack on US institutions and soft power. 

As someone who has always been staunchly pro-American, this is terrifying to see. 

While there were always some things I did not like, I always thought that America would end up on the right side. 

But now, Trump has moved it to the wrong side, even parroting Putin’s language.

IGG: Focusing on the bigger picture does seem prudent. 

What should this look like in practice? 

What, if any, leverage is there for the opposition to Trump?

AM: The immediate goal, for anyone who cares about US democracy, is to ensure that the Republicans lose the House and Senate in the 2026 midterm elections. 

Again, the Democrats need to go to all the various social groups whose members may have supported Trump and explain how his administration is harming their interests.

Since Trump won without question in 2024, his opponents must ask people: What made you trust him? There is no escaping this question. 

The opposition has a duty to pose it, to analyze what they learn, and then to show Americans that Trump is making them less safe and less prosperous. 

Everything he is promising and doing is a scam. 

But the effects will not necessarily be felt overnight; it will take time.

IGG: Of course, some of the effects are already materializing, with markets swooning and many analysts warning of a recession.

AM: The pro-democracy opposition needs to preserve a space to talk about what worries us. 

Trump’s authoritarian administration is counting on chaos, on people losing their understanding of the world they live in. 

We need think tanks and other institutions that will document, diagnose, and forecast what is happening; and, of course, we all need to speak the truth. 

As my favorite Christian said, the truth shall set you free.

We must call attention to the fact that Trump’s diplomatic threats are primarily about destroying American democracy and civil society at home. 

For me, this is the key point of his menacing rhetoric about Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. 

And finally, there is Ukraine, which he will hand over to Putin. 

Such is the logic of Munich. 

We remember how Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich and said, “I bring you peace for our time.” 

That peace, of course, lasted less than a year.

As we look at Trump’s bid to reshape the world, let us remember that no victory is final, and no defeat definitive. 

We can fight back after defeat. 

We must fight back.

The View from Europe

IGG: And how should Europe respond to the threat?

AM: Europe is waking up, wondering how to build its own strength and agency. 

This will be difficult, of course. 

I don’t know if it will work; but we must try. 

Here, I am very proud of my own government – led by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski. 

They know how to talk to America with dignity, rather than obsequiousness. 

When Law and Justice (PiS) won in Poland, I was heavily criticized for saying, “You can’t give Poland to these shitheads.” 

Well, you can’t give the US to these shitheads. 

Elon Musk, who recently told Sikorski, “Be quiet, small man” is a shithead. 

You are a little shithead, Mr. Musk.

IGG: So, the Polish experience gives us all some hope.

AM: During the years of dictatorship in Poland, there was a saying: “The sugar has to melt.” 

By that, we just meant that these things take time. 

You cannot expect the way forward to open overnight. 

But authoritarian regimes are mortal, and this one will start to stumble over its own feet.

You can irresponsibly say that Canada should join the US, or that Greenland must be under US control, but in the long run, such bluster is a road to nowhere – as was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

In the short term, it may be effective, yes. 

We know from Polish history that there are moments when it seems as if all hope is lost. 

In such situations, you need to resort to survival instincts and tactics.

For example, it is instructive to revisit how universities in Poland behaved during martial law (1981-83), how they came under pressure but tried to save what they thought was salvageable. 

Right now, the Trump administration is wielding a powerful, destructive flame-thrower. 

When a house is on fire, it is difficult to extinguish it with ink. 

The American house is indeed on fire. 

But no fire burns forever.

Adam Michnik, a leader of Solidarity in 1989 and a participant in the round table talks that ended communist rule in Poland, is Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza.

Irena Grudzińska Gross is a professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a 2018 Fellow at the Guggenheim Foundation. Her books include Miłosz and the Long Shadow of War (Pogranicze, 2020), and Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets (Yale University Press, 2009).