The Commonwealth August/September 2022

Also inside: MALCOLM NANCE • JONATHAN GREENBLATT • YASCHA MOUNK

Commonwealth The

THE MAGAZINE OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022

After Roe v.

Wade California and the Nation

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Explore Badwater Salt Flats and Ubehebe Crater. Marvel at the panoramic views of Telescope Peak.

Watch the sunrise at Zabriskie Point and walk between the multi-hued walls of Golden Canyon.

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MARCH 12-17, 2023

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The

Commonwealth

CONTENTS

August/September 2022 Volume 116, Number 4

FEATUR ES 12

Malcolm Nance

The security and counter-terrorism expert returns to the Club to discuss the intelligence war in Ukraine and the domestic terror threat here at home.

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California and America After Roe v. Wade

cover story: With its recent Dobbs decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its landmark 1973 ruling legalizing abortion nationally. For nearly 50 years, abortion was a constitutionally protected right, and the ruling has thrown the matter back into the hands of state governments.

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Jonathan Greenblatt

The ADL’s Greenblatt looks at the rise in racism and antisemitism.

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Yascha Mounk

The German-born American political scientist explores how diverse democracies can thrive—or fail.

DEPARTMENTS 4

Editor’s Desk

Spend Summer at the Club,

by John Zipperer 5

The Commons

“We already started seeing out-of-state patients after Texas’s SB 8 went into effect last September. We’ve already seen upwards of 80 patients, and we’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before from out-of-state patients. Most are from Texas, so we already kind of had the trial run of what this looks like.“ —GILDA GONZALES

talk of the club: Club founder Edward F. Adams remembered among the redwoods; Smithsonian remembers former President Shirley Temple Black for her international climate diplomacy.

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—MALCOLM NANCE

Program Listings

See programs coming up in August and September 2022.

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“They are individual little points of crazy.

They are an ideology manifesting itself through mass murder.“

Program Info

About attending Club events.

ON THE COVER: The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade upended American politics. ON THIS PAGE: Above: Abortionrights protest at the U.S. Supreme Court.

(Photo by Salud Carbajal.) Left: Malcolm Nance. (Photo by Sarah Gonzalez/Peopletography.)

The Commonwealth Club of California, established 1903

EDITOR’S DESK

JOHN ZIPPERER

Vice President of Media & Editorial

The

Commonwealth August/September 2022 Volume 116, Number 4

BUSINESS OFFICES

The Commonwealth, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105 feedback@commonwealthclub.org

VP, MEDIA & EDITORIAL John Zipperer

HEARST EDITORIAL FELLOW Corey Rose

PHOTOGRAPHERS: Ed Ritger.

ADVERTISING INFORMATION John Zipperer, Vice President of Media & Editorial, (415) 597-6715, jzipperer@ commonwealthclub.org

The Commonwealth Club of . . . Everywhere

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funny thing happened on the way through the pandemic. You all know the story— you lived through it with everyone else—but the COVID-19 pandemic echoed the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1917–1920. Businesses shut, massive numbers of sick, people isolated, and entire industries transformed by the experience.

In Mel Brooks’ great 1983 remake of the 1942 comedy To Be or Not to Be, the Polish stage actor Frederick Bronski boasts that his Hamlet performance is “world famous—in Poland.”

The Commonwealth Club has long been famous here in the Bay Area and California, and among certain audiences We began across the country. But when the pandemic forced us to go reaching audionline with all of our programming, live-streaming it over YouTube and sometimes Facebook, we began reaching auences around diences around the world, and not in insignificant numbers.

Of the 9.8 million people who viewed our videos on Youthe world, and Tube in the past year, about 40 percent came from outside of not in insignifi- the United States. (The top five other countries are Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Ireland. Just to keep the theme alive, 12,479 people watched our videos cant numbers. in the past year from Poland.)

Our podcasts also reach global audiences, assisted by its wide availability on every major podcast platform.

As we have ramped up our return to in-person programs over the past year, we also asked you for your feedback about how you like to watch programs. The responses were gratifying: You were eager to return to Club in-person programs at our waterfront building, but you also wanted us to continue live-streaming our events. So keep watching, keep attending, keep reading, and keep up your membership.

And you can be proud that the organization you support is world famous—all around the world.

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The Commonwealth (ISSN 0010-3349) is published bimonthly (6 times a year) by The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105. Periodicals postage paid at San Francisco, CA. Subscription rate $34 per year included in annual membership dues. Copyright © 2022 The Commonwealth Club of California.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 597-6700; feedback@commonwealthclub.org EDITORIAL TRANSCRIPT POLICY The Commonwealth magazine covers a range of programs in each issue. Program transcripts and question-and-answer sessions are routinely condensed due to space limitations. Hear full-length recordings online at commonwealthclub. org/watch-listen, or via our free podcasts on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or Spotify; watch videos at youtube.com/ commonwealthclub.

Published digitally via Issuu.com.

FOLLOW US ONLINE facebook.com/thecommonwealthclub twitter.com/cwclub youtube.com/commonwealthclub commonwealthclub.org instagram.com/cwclub

Left: The Edward F. Adams redwood tree. Right: The plaque honoring Adams.

EDWARD F. ADAMS

The Club’s Deep Roots in the Area

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early 120 years ago, in 1903, a small group of civic leaders joined forces to create what would become The Commonwealth Club of California. The group included notables from the world of academe, journalism, the law, and business. One of those was San Francisco Chronicle editorial writer Edward F. Adams, who now has been immortalized in a uniquely California way.

We recently heard from Donald A. Barr, the great-grandson of Edward Adams (the “A” in his name stands for “Adams”). He informed us that he and his family had recently donated to the state a 17-acre redwood grove that was part of a family ranch. “The plan is to construct a new public-access hiking trail from the redwood grove in the Summit Road area into the state forest, then connecting to the Nisene Marks State Park, allowing public access all the way down to Aptos, close to the ocean,” he wrote.

According to Barr, the ranch’s original owner was none other than Edward F. Adams, and in his honor, the state forest department has named a large, old-growth redwood tree “the Grandfather Tree” (see photos above). A plaque on the hillside below the tree commemorates Adams and his Commonwealth Club ties. Barr adds, “You might also be interested to know that, according to the biography of Edward F Adams, he invited several of his co-founders of the Club down to his ranch to discuss the founding of the Club. They met for a picnic lunch in the redwood grove that was donated to the state forest.”

The tree is located in the Soquel Demonstration State Forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains along the state’s central coast. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the 2,700-acre forest became state-owned in 1988 and is managed for sustainable timber production, research, education, recreation, and watershed protection.

In a fitting connection to Edward Adams and the Club, Cal Fire notes “Its proximity to the metropolitan centers of the San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay Area provides excellent

PHOTOS BY DONALD A. BARR

TALK OF THE CLUB

THE COMMONS: NEWS OF THE CLUB, SPEAKERS, MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS

opportunities for hands-on forestry education and outdoor recreation while demonstrating a working forest for the public.”

It was Adams who promulgated the critical mission of the Club as a place where intelligent people could discuss important issues of public concern. He saw the need for an organization with a diversity of people and viewpoints not as a liability to be overcome, but as a key part to fulfilling its mission—“their views, in fact, being as diverse as possible in order that no point of view may be missed.”

SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK

Her Second Career “The name ‘Shirley Temple’ still opens doors for me. But Shirley Temple Black has to perform, or the doors will close.”

—Shirley Temple Black

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hirley Temple Black had an extraordinary life and extraordinary career—or, more accurately, careers. She of course made her name as a child star—acting, singing and dancing her

commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

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THE COMMONS TALK OF THE CLUB to the difficult task of rallying nations to address environmental problems while she was a delegate to the Stockholm Conference in June 1972. Her challenges were not just scientific and political; she also had to overcome sexism from her own delegation’s vice chair.

“He had ignored me after the introductions, but finally turned and said with a patronizing smile, ‘And now, Madam Deputy, will you kindly take our requests for coffee? You can bring it from the machine down the hall,” she wrote in a never-before-seen memoir provided to Smithsonian by Black’s children, Charles Black and Susan Falaschi.

But she was not deterred, and she deftly navigated the political minefields of international tensions to help craft a compromise that resulted in the Stockholm Declaration.

The result was the first-ever set of global environmental principles, and the precedence was set for high-level global way through numerous films. From 1934 to economic summits that conIn fact, from 1934 to 1938, tinue to this day. she was the number-one box 1938, Shirley It’s a fitting legacy for the office draw in the country. indefatigable Black, as is the There have been many child Temple was the environmental work of the actors over the years, but few organization she once led, of them achieved as much number-one The Commonwealth Club. in their later careers as did more than a decade, box office draw For Shirley Temple Black. the Club’s Climate One has In the late 1960s, Black in the country. brought together scientists, turned her attention to public business people, activists, and service, running unsuccessgovernment officials to confully for a congressional seat tinue the work of addressing in California (losing to Pete McCloskey, who worldwide climate change. would go on to serve for a decade and a half).

She followed that up with a number of dip- NEWS lomatic roles, representing the United States at international conferences and serving as ambassador (to Ghana under President Gerald peaking of Shirley Temple Black, she was Ford and to Czechoslovakia under President not a fan of the mocktail called a Shirley George H.W. Bush). She also served as the United States chief of protocol for presidents Temple. She reportedly found the drink to be Ford and Carter, and from December 1974 to “too sweet” . . . The Club’s latest video to reach July 1976, she was president of The Common- 1 million online viewers is the Humanities Member-led Forum program “Collateral wealth Club of California.

This summer, Smithsonian magazine high- Damage: Connecting the Deaths of Marilyn lighted Black’s diplomatic career, where she Monroe, JFK and Dorthy Kilgallen” . . . On helped lay the foundation for international July 4, Commonwealth Club President and cooperation on climate change (“Shirley Tem- CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy and her husband, ple Black’s Remarkable Second Act as a Diplo- former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod mat,” Smithsonian, June 2022, see cover photo Diridon, were the honorary grand marshals above). She brought the fame and glamour for San José’s Rose, White and Blue parade, she had accumulated in her Hollywood days which honored a diverse group of civic leaders.

Briefly Noted

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THE COMMO N WE AL TH | August/September 2022

Leadership of The Commonwealth Club CLUB OFFICERS

Board Chair Martha C. Ryan Vice Chair John L. Boland Secretary Dr. Jaleh Daie

Treasurer John R. Farmer President & CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy

BOARD OF GOVERNORS

Robert E. Adams Willie Adams Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez Scott Anderson Dan Ashley Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman David Chun Charles M. Collins Mary B. Cranston Susie Cranston Claudine Cheng Dr. Kerry P. Curtis Dorian Daley Evelyn Dilsaver James Driscoll Joseph I. Epstein Jeffrey A. Farber Dr. Carol A. Fleming Leslie Saul Garvin Gerald Harris Peter Hill Mary Huss Michael Isip Nora James

Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick Lata Krishnan Alexis Krivkovich Dr. Mary Marcy Lenny Mendonca Michelle Meow Anna W.M. Mok DJ Patil Ken Petrilla Bruce Raabe Skip Rhodes Bill Ring George M. Scalise George D. Smith Jr. David Spencer James Strother Hon. Tad Taube Marcel TenBerge Charles Travers Don Wen Dr. Colleen B. Wilcox Brenda Wright Mark Zitter

PAST BOARD CHAIRS & PRESIDENTS

* Past Chair ** Past President

Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman* J. Dennis Bonney** Maryles Casto* Hon. Ming Chin** Mary B. Cranston* Evelyn Dilsaver* Joseph I. Epstein** John Farmer* Rose Guilbault*

Claude B. Hutchison Jr.** Anna W.M. Mok* Richard Otter** Joseph Perrelli** Toni Rembe** Victor J. Revenko** Skip Rhodes** Renée Rubin** Richard Rubin* Connie Shapiro** Nelson Weller** Judith Wilbur** Dennis Wu**

ADVISORY BOARD

Karin Helene Bauer Hon. William Bradley Dennise M. Carter Steven Falk Amy Gershoni Jacquelyn Hadley Heather Kitchen

Amy McCombs Don J. McGrath Hon. William J. Perry Hon. Barbara Pivnicka Hon. Richard Pivnicka Nancy Thompson

Distinguished Citizens Award

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SAVE THE DATE

OCTOBER 28, 2022 The Commonwealth Club dedicates its 2022 Distinguished Citizens Award Gala to four outstanding community advocates who, through incredible acts of service and longstanding leadership in their communities, embody the theme of STAND BY ME. With this theme, we recognize the leaders and humanitarians who stand shoulder to shoulder with those they serve. They tirelessly strive to remedy injustices, ensure basic needs are met with dignity, provide equitable access to healthcare and medicine, and demonstrate an abundance of benevolence and generosity of spirit.

For more information contact: plinares@commonwealthclub.org (415) 597-6737

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August & September 2022 UPCOMING PROGRAMS

YOUR GUIDE TO IN-PERSON & ONLINE EVENTS AT THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB

On the following pages is a preview of in-person and online programs scheduled for August and September 2022 at The Commonwealth Club of California. To see more, including event details and to buy tickets, visit commonwealthclub.org and/or subscribe to our weekly newsletter at commonwealthclub.org/mail Summer at the Club!

All summer, our in-person evening programs will feature a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink for attendees, plus members can bring a friend at 50 percent off! Book your tickets today at commonwealthclub.org/ events Safety Protocols for in-person attendance • We follow best practices laid out by the CDC and state and local guidelines.

• All guests, staff, and volunteers must be fully vaccinated. Guests must show proof of full vaccination with photo I.D. • Masks are encouraged while indoors (if you do not have one and would like one, inquire at our front desk for a complimentary mask).

• In-person capacity is limited.

Our LEED Gold-certified building is designed to cool with outside air, using digitally controlled moveable windows and large ceiling fans. We are deploying additional HEPA filters inside to scrub the air. This is all in addition to increased cleaning of surfaces throughout the building.

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commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

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UPCOMING PROGRAMS AUGUST & SEPTEMBER 2022

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PROGRAMS INFORMATION T

he Commonwealth Club organizes nearly 500 events every year on politics, the arts, media, literature, business and sports. Programs

are held online and throughout the Bay Area in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Marin County, and the East Bay. Standard programs are

RADIO, VIDEO, & PODCASTS

PROGRAM DIVISIONS In addition to its regular lineup of programming, the Club features a number of divisions that produce topic-focused programming.

CLIMATE ONE Climate scientists, policymakers, activists and citizens discussing energy, the economy and the environment.

COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/CLIMATE-ONE

CREATING CITIZENS The Club’s new education department.

COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/EDUCATION

INFORUM Inspiring talks with leaders in tech, culture, food, design, business and social issues targeted towards young adults.

COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/INFORUM

MEMBER-LED FORUMS Volunteer-driven programs that focus on particular fields.

COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/MLF

MICHELLE MEOW SHOW Talks with LGBTQ thought leaders from a wide range of fields of expertise.

COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/MMS

WEEK TO WEEK Political roundtable paired with a preprogram social.

COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/W2W

typically one hour long and frequently include interviews, panel discussions or speeches followed by a question and answer session.

Watch Club programs on KAXT, KTLN and KCAT TV every weekend, and monthly on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast. Select Commonwealth Club programs air on Marin TV’s Education Channel (Comcast Channel 30, U-Verse Channel 99), C-SPAN, and on CreaTV in San Jose (Channel 30).

View hundreds of streaming videos of Club programs at youtube.com/commonwealthclub

CreaTV

KAXT/KTLN TV

HARD OF HEARING? To request an assistive listening device, please e-mail Mark Kirchner seven working days before the event at mkirchner@commonwealthclub.org.

PODCASTS Subscribe to our free podcast service on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify to automatically receive new programs: commonwealthclub.org/podcast-subscribe

Hear Club programs on more than 230 public and commercial radio stations throughout the United States (commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen/radio). For the latest schedule, visit commonwealthclub.org/broadcast.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in to: KALW (91.7 FM) Inforum programs select Tuesdays at KQED (88.5 FM) 7 p.m.

Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 a.m.

KRCB Radio (91.1 FM in Rohnert Park) Thursdays at 7 p.m.

KSAN (107.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KNBR (680 and 1050 AM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KFOG (104.5 and 97.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

TuneIn.com Fridays at 4 p.m.

TICKETS Prepayment is required. Unless otherwise indicated, all events—including “Members Free” events—require tickets. In-person programs often sell out, so we strongly encourage you to purchase tickets in advance. Due to heavy call volume, we urge you to purchase tickets online at commonwealthclub.org; or call (415) 597-6705. Please note: All ticket sales are final. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to any program. Select events include premium seating, which refers to the first several rows of seating. Pricing is subject to change. commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

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FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

Malcolm Nance explains how conspiracy theories, racism and increasing hostility toward democracy have all contributed to the rise of what he calls a “Trump Insurgency in the U.S.” From the July 19, 2022, program “Malcolm Nance: Behind the Ideology of the Trump Insurgency.”

MALCOLM NANCE, Retired Intelligence Officer; Author, They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency In Conversation with PAT THURSTON, Host, “The Pat Thurston Show,” KGO-AM

MALCOLM NANCE PAT THURSTON: Malcolm Nance is a former senior chief petty officer specializing in naval cryptology. Most recently, he spent the last four months fighting in Ukraine as part of the International Legion. Malcolm, welcome back to The Commonwealth Club.

MALCOLM NANCE: Thank you very much.

THURSTON: Ukraine is something every one of us really cares about. You’ve been there. You’ve been on the ground. You’ve been helping them in all manner of things in Ukraine for the months that you spent there. You were there on the front lines.

A couple of questions. One is, at the beginning, when the Russians were amassing all this stuff and our intelligence services were telling us they’re preparing for an invasion—we knew what they were doing. We knew whether Ukrainians knew that they were planning an invasion. It always seemed as if the United States wanted to stop the invasion from happening, to truly help the Ukrainians, that would have been the place to do it. Could we have done that?

NANCE: Well, that depends on what you view the word stop as.

I mean, could we have gone and carried out airstrikes or could we have done something diplomatically or politically? Let me tell you something. In fact, I’ve been in Ukraine since the last week of January. So actually I’ve spent almost seven months in Ukraine. I came home for 10 days to get all my combat equipment at the end

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PHOTO BY SARAH GONZALEZ/PEOPLETOGRAPHY

INSURGENT IDEOLOGY

Malcolm Nance, seen here in his 2019 appearance at The Commonwealth Club.

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“It was clear this was ‘crown jewels intelligence’ from the United States.

The way that the White House handled this was brilliant.” of February, when the invasion started.

But I spent that month doing an analysis of the order of battle, where all the Russian forces were, how they were going to move.

We went down all the major highways in Ukraine to see how would they actually invade, what would it look like when they flowed into the country, what villages, what cross roads—most important, which gas stations had liquor in them, right? Which turns out to be true [laughter], because the SOCAR gas stations are Azerbaijani-run and they have a wall of liquor that they sell, including 12-year-old Azeri cognac, and displays of Jack Daniels and six packs of Coke. So we knew the Russians would take a long time at those. Whereas the WOG or the OKO gas stations didn’t have as much alcohol.

So that literally was part of our factoring.

We have video of the Russians looting a SOCAR, stealing the money, pulling down all of the alcohol off the wall, hundreds of bottles of alcohol. So all of these things go into the kind of intelligence analysis that I was doing. I was reporting this on MSNBC at the time, even though I was not part of MSNBC’s team on the ground in Ukraine.

I was there as an independent national security analyst. But one of the things that I learned very quickly was it was becoming very apparent by the beginning of February that the United States had a copy of the battle plan.

I was seeing things occur and things that the White House were saying that was very clear to me—[and to] anyone in the intelligence community—that we knew what they were doing, and this wasn’t like we just intercepted that communication that day, or just, you know, some spy came in that morning. This was something we knew, and the White House was selectively releasing. “We know you’re going to do this.

We know you have these troops here. We know you’re going to come across this axis,” and then we start seeing the Ukrainians do defensive activity in the precise lines of attack that we expected, like up near Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which is a radioactive wasteland. But the Ukrainians

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and the Americans knew they would come through it. Their vehicles could endure going through that radioactive area. And as we later found out, they didn’t quite know what radiation was. [Laughter.] I’m not joking. They had hundreds of people sickened by being in the hottest nuclear zone on the planet. So as we watched all of this unfolding, it became pretty clear to me that the White House had a copy of the plan and that, according to The New York Times reporting in February, they had had a copy of the plan since early October.

THURSTON: Where did they get it?

NANCE: Well, this is how intelligence works. Every once in a very great while—I mean, I did 20 years active duty, literally in some of the greatest secrets the United States has—and very rarely do you see what we call crown jewels intelligence. Just as soon as you look at it, you go, “Who did you buy?” I remember one activity that I saw, it just was very clear to me [that] someone took a forklift of gold bars and brought it into the room and went over to the back of their Mercedes and goes, “I’m going to put this palette of gold bars in your trunk and you’re going to hand that envelope over to me,” because that’s legit, right?

Whatever the White House had here, it was clear this was crown jewels intelligence from the United States.

THURSTON: It came from Russian intelligence?

NANCE: Somebody had brought an entire copy of the plan to us, or so it appeared. And the White House would later sort of confirm that they were dropping the intelligence that they knew. They went to the Chinese with a copy of the plan. They went to [Ukrainian President Volodymyr ] Zelenskyy. We also had Russian politicians that knew.

[Vladimir] Zhirinovsky, this loudmouth pro-Putin autocrat there who died [earlier] this year, he said in mid-December that they would invade the last week of February, somewhere around the 24th, and that was after all the delays were factored in, because it appeared that us releasing intelligence delayed the Russians. The Russians wanted some measure of surprise. They weren’t

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | August/September 2022

going to get it. But the way that the White House handled this was brilliant.

To those of us in the community, it was clear maybe two forklifts of gold bars were there [laughter], and we bought a tractor trailer for them to take it home with and gave them one of the forklifts. I mean, this was pure—it was just too good for them to have an outline. I had in the pre-war [time] gone to Donetsk and Luhansk with

the commander of the Ukrainian Joint Task Force, General [Oleksandr] Syrskyi, who was commanding right at the battle front that they’ve held since 2014. We were 70 meters—that’s 210 feet—away from the Russians. But the media was coming to them and asking crazy questions like, “Well, I know the Russians are right over there, but what if they attack from the south?” And this guy’s like, “I’ve been fighting these guys for three years. I’ll fight them when they come from the South.” “But what if they attack from the north?” “I’ll fight them if they come from the north.” And I’m like, wait, people do not understand what they’re doing here.

“Russia definitively, without any question, is going to lose this war. The only question is what day are we going to have the Victory Over Russia parade?”

They’re watching a general’s response.

I’m watching the general. I said this on MSNBC; I said these guys are going to fight.

I can tell by the look in this man’s eyes he is ready to kick Russian ass and enjoy it.

He’s a very short guy, a thick guy. And the other commander, the commander of land warfare was . . . about five foot five inches of I cannot be defeated. No, really. And as I looked at them, I was like, “Whoa, I think

there’s something happening here in media that is not being factored.”

I said this on one of the MSNBC shows about three or four days before the invasion, and they were like, “You know, the invasion will be quick.” Analysts were coming on [and saying] “The invasion will be quick, rather fast.”

And I said, “Let me tell you something . . .”

THURSTON: They were talking about the Ukrainians losing. They said he [Putin] would be in there within two weeks. It would all be over.

NANCE: Kyiv would be taken in 72 hours.

I kept thinking this is why intelligence field collectors are the smart ones to listen

to. We’re on the ground. And I’d been in the city of [Kyiv]; it’s the size of Chicago. It has a bigger population; it’s 5 million people.

[There are] these 20-story Soviet apartment blocks that are 20 buildings deep. I’m like, no one’s ever taking this city. There’s little old ladies right now who are woefully heartbroken that they didn’t get to throw their Molotov cocktails out their 18th-story windows on top of Russian tanks. If you go to the checkpoints in Kyiv right now, there are thousands upon thousands of Molotov cocktails and crates waiting for the reservists, because they expected to be fighting hand-and-fist with the Russians. The Russians never got anywhere near taking Kyiv, except one ambush that the Ukrainians let them into the city and slaughtered them wholesale.

I said the same thing, in the pre-war; I [said] they’re going to lose this war. They don’t have enough men to win this war.

THURSTON: The Russians.

NANCE: Yes. THURSTON: And you still believe that— that the Ukrainians are going to win.

NANCE: Sure. And I got to tell you, Russia definitively, without any question, is going to lose this war. [Applause.] The only question is what day are we going to have the Victory Over Russia parade? Are we going to have to get in clean uniforms?

I’m a member of the international legion.

I am with the forces that are fighting the Russians on the front line on the eastern front. And I can tell you right now, whatever combat power [the Russians] have left, it’s spent. They do not want to be carrying out any more operations.

THURSTON: You know, the big threat that [Putin] is always putting out there is that he’s going to launch a nuke. So it’s supposed to make everybody back off. How can Ukraine defeat Mother Russia without Putin, his ego—would it be able to handle it without him launching a nuke?

NANCE: That’s like saying you have fire insurance on your home, and you’re constantly worried about an arsonist coming to your house. I mean, that could happen.

THURSTON: Putin’s threatening it.

NANCE: Yeah, but I used to say this when I did counter terrorism, is “Is ISIS going to be my travel agent? Am I going to allow them to determine whether I fly to Milan or not?”

THURSTON: Exactly NANCE: The same thing with Vladimir Putin. I worked in a national nuclear command post for a short period of time.

I have watched the machination of how nuclear weapons are authorized and released, and watched how Russia does it.

We’re going to have a big, long chain of intelligence indicators right down to a guy who’s sleeping in, you know, Vladivostok, where they think they’re going to secret out one nuke? [As if] the United States isn’t watching; and there’s going to be a phone call at NSA. And that guy [in Russia] goes like, [sounding sleep] “What?”

He’s going to [be told], “You’re going to open up special locker number 7–3–5.” And he’s going to go, “What?!” And they’re going to go, “Yeah, you’re going to open up.” And then vehicles are going to move and our satellites are going to see it.

Before they ever open that locker, there’s going to be a critical report going to the commander in chief; we’re going to wake Joe Biden up at three in the morning and we’re going to say “Vladivostok nuclear weapons storage handling facility is taking out a 5-kiloton nuclear weapon and there is a special train which appears to be routed to the eastern part of the country.” And they’re got to say, what does that mean? It means they are taking out a 5-kiloton nuke to carry out a tactical nuclear strike.

[Russia] won’t even have that thing loaded before the United States is on the phone calling Vladimir Putin going, “Don’t do it.

We will be forced to destroy your air force.

We will be forced to intervene militarily with NATO. We will be forced to invade Belarus. We will be forced to change the entire balance of Eastern Europe. Don’t think about it.”

When you intervene like that, that’s where you’re going to get your factor of, Are we dealing with a madman or not?

Vladimir Putin may be thinking, “If I

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“Our [nuclear weapons] system in the United States is not designed to stop.

I have some news for you. The president . . . is a nuclear monarch.” nuke Kyiv, it will have all the fallout in the fallout pattern of Chernobyl. It’ll go through Belarus, it’ll go up through Kaliningrad and parts of Poland and then into Sweden.

And that’s not my problem.” But the level of madness that would require, even though they’re talking about it on Russian state television, and when you talk about it, then you’re viewing it as a viable way.

T H U R S T O N : But , Ma lc ol m, my understanding is that as many safeguards as we have here in the United States, Russia has safeguards, too.

So Putin’s a mad man. But could Putin independently launch? Wouldn’t he be stopped by his own security forces who are not all that loyal to him?

NANCE: Well, you would hope. I mean, our system in the United States is not designed to stop. I have some news for you. The president of the United States is a nuclear monarch. If he chooses a viable— THURSTON: Oh, don’t tell me that in the shadow of Donald Trump. [Laughter.] Oh, my God. Does he know?

NANCE: I was in an op ed by [Washington Post columnist] Jonathan Capehart two months before Trump took power, about the nuclear monarchy of Donald Trump and why it was so dangerous to allow him to have the keys to Pandora’s box. Fortunately, we’ve dodged that bullet—for now.

But I’m just saying that, if the president of the United States says “Vladivostok nuclear weapons storage facility 325 is taking out a nuclear weapon, is intending to carry out a viable nuclear strike, the United States will execute a 30-minute response,” which is, somebody will spool up a Minuteman III missile in Kansas, and in 32 minutes after getting launch authorization, it will vaporize that spot.

Now we are in a different world. Let’s just not even talk about this. The Russians, on the other hand, if they lose their army, let’s say the Ukrainians carry out a massive counteroffensive this fall, which is quite possible, using U.S. missiles and rockets and all the artillery, and they break the back of the Russian army, which is what I think is going to happen. And the Russian

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army collapses, and it’s a rout and they lose Kherson province, Luhansk province, Donetsk province—everything except Crimea. They blow the Crimea bridge.

Then you need to start thinking about what Vladimir Putin is going to do, because that’s a level of humiliation that I’m not sure he can live with. But if he goes and reaches for the phone to call that nuclear weapons storage facility and goes to his command post out near eastern Russia and he decides he’s going to launch something, a lot of chains have to go.

And you’ve got to think: Who is going to relieve Vladimir Putin of his command?

Because that’s all you can do. Otherwise, they’ll go through with it.

THURSTON: It’s scary. But I’ve got to tell you, you have a new book that’s scary, too.

It’s called They Want to Kill Americans, and it really does sound an alarm to the entire country. Not only about what Donald Trump almost did, but about what is going on. We’re talking about Russia and Ukraine—tell us about how dire the situation is in the United States of America right now.

NANCE: Over the last few months—I consider fighting in Ukraine as helping maintain the bulwark of democracy on the eastern front. Because if Ukraine collapses—Ukraine’s a democratic nation.

They’ve had nine presidents. They’ve had elected presidents who were pro-Moscow, but there were elections. This has nothing to do with them wanting to join NATO. It had to do with them wanting to be part of the European Union.

[Russia’s leaders] hated the idea of them losing the breadbasket of Europe, a country that held 25 percent of the world’s wheat. It’s just a resource they could not afford. And then becoming part of the West, further isolating Vladimir Putin in his expansionist neo-Soviet dreams.

I went to Vladimir Putin’s office . . . in Germany when he was in Dresden, when he was a KGB agent there. This is back when he was a baby spy. But even back then, he had these shark eyes, and his other KGB officers wanted to sit around and drink beer there

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | August/September 2022

in Germany. This guy liked flipping people.

He liked being a human intelligence officer.

He liked turning Westerners into traitors.

I met the woman who had renovated the office. She goes “Every door frame, every window frame in this building had hidden microphones in it,” and they actually had to pry them open and pull all the microphones up. Putin was one of those guys who liked that game. And he liked even more the East German Stasi model of an authoritarian, Nazi-style state with communist trappings.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, he didn’t fill his [car] up with luxury Western goods. He went to the Stasi headquarters and took out the book of spies, all the people that they had flipped, and he would use that in the future to manipulate people.

So why am I telling you that story? This is a man that loves his game. . . .

He created an autocratic state which is controlled by him, which is controlled by the money that he allows people to have who are oligarchs. Otherwise he seizes it or he makes you take a long walk out of a short window.

THURSTON: Or poisons you.

NANCE: So he helped create Donald Trump. There’s no doubt about that. Donald Trump was under Russian surveillance [for years]. . . . . Every phone call he made when he was married to Ivana Trump was recorded by Czech intelligence. This was the Soviet era. Donald Trump, and then when the kids were going over there, they were going into a Soviet world and thinking they could manipulate and be around people that were run by the KGB. So when Vladimir Putin heard Donald Trump wanted to become president, I know what he did. First thing he said was, “Hey, go to the archives, pull everything about Donald Trump.” And what he would probably be surprised about was that they brought in a wheelbarrow full of surveillance collection and all of these things and analysis about him.

Donald Trump is merely an avatar for the hatred that all of his followers have for diversity and equality and human rights and having to tolerate LGBT people and

“Many of them thought January 6 was ‘the day of the storm,’ which was Qanon belief that they were going to mass murder all liberals in America.” women with their uteruses.

Dona ld Trump as an avatar a lso understood that you have to motivate them. You have to keep them happy. And then from time to time, you have to unleash them, just as the Russians unleashed him by giving him assistance to take down Hillary Clinton. From that point on, it was autonomous, the Russians had nothing to do with it; it was all Americans who love the nasty, mean, hateful, spiteful things he had to say about other Americans. But the

that we’re not supporters of Donald Trump because we’re not one of them. So they hate us? They’re willing to kill us.

N A N CE : Wel l, some of t hem a re willing. Many of them are waiting for the opportunity when they get—this is where we talk about Qanon ideology, that crazy group that believes all liberals are evil, that Hillary Clinton and all the liberal leadership are kidnapping children and drinking their blood in order to get a chemical called adrenochrome, which

way he would say it was as if he was America and they [his followers] were Americans, and the other 65 percent of the country had nothing to do with their world. This is how they’ve created a false reality.

They’re very much like ISIS in this respect. The Islamic State. ISIS created a false narrative that they were the only legitimate Muslims in the world. And the other 1.6 billion Muslims could be executed at will. That will be with Donald Trump, that his followers were the only true Americans. This is what they say. They say it: “We are the patriots,” right?

THURSTON: And that’s why they hate us? They hate us just because we exist and

is only secreted when a child is terrified before death—which, by the way, is the actual theme of the movie Monsters Inc. Right? The monster scared a child, a child gets scared and then it powers the monster universe. Some moron worked all of this into this crazy ideology, but made Donald Trump the hero, where he’s saving all of the kidnapped children around the world from pedophiles that are liberals.

There are as many as 20 million Americans that believe this ideology.

Many of them are armed. Many of them thought January 6 was “the day of the storm,” which was Qanon belief that they were going to mass murder all liberals in

America. Now, to us, it sounds ludicrous.

There was a Qanon murder where a father went to Baja, California and murdered his two children. There was another one where a woman murdered her child. I remember in the run-up to the election, there was a woman who was interviewed, I think it was with Time magazine, and she said “The way that liberals are today, I would rather kill my children than allow them to live in a liberal America.”

This is a deranged pathology. This is a corruption of the mind where common decency, what they call political correctness, being kind to people, being sympathetic to people, showing empathy, being diverse, being equal is now a hated symbol to them.

THURSTON: But Malcolm, you talk about 20 million Americans— NANCE: That’s just Qanon. Don’t forget, 71 million Americans voted for Donald Trump.

THURSTON: But there are Republicans who don’t necessarily believe that all non-Trumpists are evil. They’re just Republicans, and so they feel like they have to pull the lever for the Republicans. They’re not dangerous, right? And why are they cooperating? Why are they empowering these people? Why aren’t they standing up and saying, “What the hell is going on around here? You’re killing my party.”

NANCE: I think the mistake that you’re making here is that you are attributing good intentions to these politicians. [Laughter.]

How about this? I’m going to give you an alternate analysis.

THURSTON: Okay. All right.

NANCE: How about: They’ve always believed those things, but common decency and civil discourse and comity did not allow them to say these things out loud. But now their base allows them to say these things.

THURSTON: But when people get out of the party, when they know that they’re being primaried, when they know this is happening, they do start speaking out against it. So isn’t it just for political expediency that they’re— NANCE: Wait, wait, wait. Who are those people speaking against it? Because I don’t

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Pat Thurston interviews Malcolm Nance on The Commonwealth Club stage.

hear them very much.

THURSTON: Adam Kinzinger.

NANCE: Okay. He’s not a Republican.

[Laughter.] He’s a good person. He is a Democrat—he is Republican-in-name-only.

THURSTON: He’s a RINO? NANCE: I used to be that kind of Republican, Colin Powell-type, national security strong, socially liberal.

THUR S TON: Supporter of Ronald Reagan.

NANCE: Sure. But that’s not where we are. If we had that X-Y axis, Colin Powell would have been just up into the right upper quadrant, just over the X and Y cross. Now he’s, God bless him in his last days, he’s way down in the lower left corner. Hard core liberal, communist.

THURSTON: So is Richard Nixon. I mean, it’s just gone so crazy.

NANCE: And Ronald Reagan. The party has transformed itself into the party of Trumpism. Trumpism is about unabashed, unapologetic indecency, it’s about getting in people’s face. It’s about telling people that “I hate you, because my version of America is the true one and yours is communist.”

Which I find fascinating from people [who support Trump], who loved an ex-KGB officer who was a lifelong communist, and who loves a North Korean dictator who is communist.

These people live in a state of perpetual victimhood. So when they hear their tribal leader—which is what Donald Trump is; he is not the leader of a political party, he’s the leader of a tribe, the white tribe that believes only they deserve America, only they should get the benefits of America and that everyone else is a moocher, a liar, a cheat, a dirty immigrant, a Black person who’s lazy, a Hispanic person who’s come across the border illegally— THURSTON: A person with a uterus.

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NANCE: Oh, well, a person with a uterus.

Right. You’re walking crime right there, contemplating crimes every time you have sex. [Laughter.]

So don’t laugh. Did everyone hear about North Carolina’s proposed bill [filed by Republican state Rep. Larry Pittman]? In which a person who was planning to have an abortion [and] the doctor can be murdered to prevent the abortion? [Audience gasps.]

I’m not joking. There’s another bill that’s proposed in Ohio today—no exceptions.

Rape, incest, you must carry the baby to term. So all you female criminals out there, we know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking, “Wow, I didn’t think The Handmaid’s Tale was a documentary.”

It is. And you’re now living in a country where those people feel empowered to make that movie documentary because [of what] Donald Trump has unleashed. Abraham Lincoln said that we have to look for our better angels. This man, it’s almost like he cut a deal with Satan to look for our worst demons. Remember when he’d say, “Knock him out. Back in the old days, we would beat him. Policemen, give him an extra hit when you put him in the car.”

This is the worst anybody in this country has done outside of putting on a white robe and setting fire to a cross. Right now they all have AR15s and they feel empowered to march and threaten you implicitly with their Second Amendment rights, which, by the way, their weapons have more rights than women. So you need to think about this in the context of them as a power organization that is seeking to dominate the other 65 percent of America.

Now you’re going, “Malcolm, this is crazy and outlandish. Why would you say all this?” Imagine I am an MI6 intelligence officer in England and I have to write up the Jerry Springer-like world that’s going on on

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | August/September 2022

the other side of the Atlantic for the queen.

It would come out exactly like I just said it.

And they would have all the examples that I just gave you there. And they would say, “Yeah, we have troubles in England. But we do not have as many as 70 million armed Americans, 20 million who are espousing that all liberals should be mass murdered in this country. We just want a decent cup of tea.” And trust me, that is the highest priority in England. [Laughter.]

So if that analysis is being done in London, it’s being done in Paris, it’s being done in Europe. And they look at what is happening to the United States, all these mass shootings [by] these young white men. Those are templates. Those all have the same characteristics of the anti-immigrant mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik in Norway, when he killed 68 people, as many as 60 children under the age of 16. When he said in his trial, why did you do it? He said, “They’ve corrupted us with immigrants here. They’ve spoiled the white purity. I wanted to eliminate the next generation of liberal children.” Next, the Christchurch shooter copies his manifesto, live streams his mass murders of Muslims. The shooter in Quebec, and the shooter in Uvalde.

The shooter in El Paso. The shooter in Pittsburgh. They all copy Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto. It’s not because they like Anders Behring Breivik.

What you’re looking at is part of the insurgency I predicted on November 6.

They are individual little points of crazy.

They are an ideology coming up and manifesting itself through mass murder.

Now, what happens when a governor or a state has an election and they’ve just decided progressives or Democrats will not take power and they occupy the statehouse?

And instead of calling out the National Guard, the governor sides with them?

Israel Ancient Sites & Modern-Day Startups February 20–March 3, 2023

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ITINERARY

Friday, February 24

Monday, February 20

Experience Yad Vashem, a powerful living memorial dedicated to the Holocaust. Visit the West Bank with our Palestinian guide, starting with Bethlehem to see the Christian holy sites, including the Church of the Nativity, said to mark the place of Jesus’ birth. Herbert Samuel Jerusalem (B,L,D)

U.S. / Tel Aviv, Israel

Depart on flights to Israel.

Tuesday, February 21 Tel Aviv / Jerusalem

Upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, transfer to Jerusalem and check into our centrally located hotel. As most flights arrive in the evening, there are no group activities this day. Herbert Samuel Jerusalem

Wednesday, February 22 Jerusalem

After a tour orientation, explore the Old City of Jerusalem and sites important to the three major monotheistic religions. Visit the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, one of the most important sites to Muslims. Walk portions of the Via Dolorosa and enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, said to be the site where Christ was crucified and buried.

Following lunch visit the Western Wall. Then enjoy free time to browse the alleys and shops.

Tonight gather for a welcome dinner.

Herbert Samuel Jerusalem (B,L,D)

Thursday, February 23 Ramallah / Jerusalem

We continue to Ramallah, provisional capital of the Palestinian Authority, where we hear from Palestinians about the issues they face and their hopes for a settlement in this long, unresolved issue. Return to Jerusalem in the late afternoon.

After a pre-dinner discussion, explore Mahane Yehuda, once a popular fruit and produce market, it’s now a hub of gourmet food stalls, restaurants and cafes.

Herbert Samuel Jerusalem (B,L)

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THE COMMO N WE AL TH | August/September 2022

Jerusalem / Bethlehem

Saturday, February 25 Masada / Dead Sea

We drive to Masada, the location of the mountaintop fortress where Jews sacrificed their lives rather than succumb to the Romans.

The importance of Masada remains in the psychological and political mindset of many Israelis. Continue to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the earth. Swim or float in the relaxing salt waters and experience the health benefits of its natural minerals. Return to Jerusalem in the early evening. Herbert Samuel Jerusalem (B,L)

Sunday, February 26 Safed / Galilee

Travel north stopping in Safed, a charming city known for being a center of art and religious mysticism. Continue to the more rural area of Upper Galilee. Learn about the important role of kibbutzim in the development of Israel in the 20th century.

Merom Golan (B,L,D)

Monday, February 27 Galilee / Golan Heights

Meet with an officer from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). Then hear from people in a Druze town in the Golan Heights area. Druze are an Arabic-speaking sect found primarily in the mountainous areas of northern Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Later visit a winery and learn about Israel’s growing wine industry.

Merom Golan (B,L,D)

Tuesday, February 28 Nazareth / Caesarea / Tel Aviv

Journey to Nazareth, the largest Arab town within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. See the Church of the Annunciation, believed to be where archangel Gabriel visited Mary. We also visit an Arab tech firm. Continue to the coast and explore the archaeological site and Roman city of Caesarea. Arrive in Tel Aviv in the early evening for dinner on your own.

The Hotel Carlton (B,L)

Wednesday, March 1 Tel Aviv / Jaffa

Visit Jaffa, also known as Yafo in Hebrew, a mixed Jewish-Arab town, just south of Tel Aviv.

Enjoy lunch on your own and time in the flea market with its wonderful mix art and antiques.

Then continue to the Rabin Center, named after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Enjoy dinner at one of Tel Aviv’s seaside restaurants.

The Hotel Carlton (B,D)

Thursday, March 2 Tel Aviv

Learn about Tel Aviv’s various neighborhoods and architectural styles. See Bauhaus architecture, Dizengoff Street, Neve Tzedek, and the Florentine district. Enjoy a free afternoon to visit galleries, the beach, or rent bikes to travel the coastal path around Tel Aviv.

Gather tonight for a special farewell dinner.

The Hotel Carlton (B,L,D)

Friday, March 3 Tel Aviv / U.S.

After breakfast at the hotel, transfer to the airport for flights home. (B)

DETAILS DATES: February 20–March 3, 2023 GROUP SIZE: Min 10, Max 24 COST: $7,995 per person, double occupancy $1,725 single room occupancy supplement

INCLUDED: All activities as specified;

TOUR LEADER

group airport transfers on designated dates & times; transportation throughout; accommodations as specified (or similar); meals (B=breakfast, L=lunch, D=dinner) per itinerary; bottled water on buses; special guest speakers; local guide; gratuities to local guide, driver, and for included group activities; predeparture materials; Commonwealth Club representative with 15 travelers.

JERRY SORKIN has been involved with

NOT INCLUDED: International air;

than six years in Tunisia. He has organized

meals not specified as included; optional outings and gratuities for those outings; alcoholic beverages beyond wine and beer at the welcome and farewell dinners; travel insurance (recommended, information will be sent upon registration); COVID-related expenses (vaccinations, testing); items of a purely personal nature.

WHAT TO EXPECT To enjoy this program, travelers must be in overall good health and able to walk 1–2 miles a day (on average) and be able to stand for several hours during touring. Participants should be comfortable walking on uneven surfaces such as dirt paths and cobblestone streets, and getting on and off tour buses without assistance.

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than three decades, having quietly brought together people from both sides of the issue.

Conversant in both Arabic and Hebrew, Jerry has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and North Africa, returning to the U.S. in 2016, after being based more and led many trips to Israel, all using his unique contacts to provide an exclusive and enlightening educational experience.

“Extremely well planned and thought out.

I particularly enjoyed the speakers, guides and meetings with the various groups and organizations offering varied perspectives.”

- J. Harrison, 2018

“This was one of the best trips we’ve ever taken, in or out of the Commonwealth Club. It embodied the values of nonpartisan civil discussion and debate. The quality of the guides, both Israeli and Palestinian, was excellent. The depth and breadth of the presenters was formidable.”

- R. Weiss, 2020

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Medical Information: Participation in this program reReservations: A $1,000 per person deposit, along with a quires that you be in good health. It is essential that persons completed and signed Reservation Form, will reserve a place with any medical problems and related dietary restrictions for participants on this program. The balance of the trip is make them known to us well before departure. COVID-19 due 90 days prior to departure and must be paid by check. vaccination is required.

Cancellation and Refund Policy: Notification of canItinerary Changes & Trip Delay: Itinerary is based on cellation must be received in writing. At the time we receive information available at the time of printing and is subject your written cancellation, the following penalties will apply: to change. We reserve the right to change a program’s dates, • 120 days or more prior to departure: $250 staff, itineraries, or accommodations as conditions warrant.

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be held liable for (A) any damage to, or loss of, property or injury to, or death of, persons occasioned directly or indirectly by an act or omission of any other provider, including but not limited to any defect in any aircraft, or vehicle operated or provided by such other provider, and (B) any loss or damage due to delay, cancellation, or disruption in any manner caused by the laws, regulations, acts or failures to act, demands, orders, or interpositions of any government or any subdivision or agent thereof, or by acts of God, strikes, fire, flood, war, rebellion, terrorism, insurrection, sickness, quarantine, epidemics, pandemics, theft, or any other cause(s) beyond their control. The participant waives any claim against CWC/IJW for any such loss, damage, injury, or death. By registering for the trip, the participant certifies that he/she does not have any mental, physical, or other condition or disability that would create a hazard for him/herself or other participants. CWC/IJW shall not be liable for any air carrier’s cancellation penalty incurred by the purchase of a nonrefundable ticket to or from the departure city. Baggage and personal effects are at all times the sole responsibility of the traveler. Reasonable changes in the itinerary may be made where deemed advisable for the comfort and well-being of the passengers.

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After Roe v. Wade California and the Nation

IMANI RUPERT-GORDON: In the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and held that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion. This is the first time that the court has reversed itself to take away rights as opposed to expanding individual rights, which is certainly concerning.

We’re here today to discuss the impact on us here in California, and what Californians can be doing in this both historic and troubling moment. So we’re going to jump right in. Gilda, what was your reaction to this decision?

GILDA GONZALES: A rolling thunder of different things. I think we are clear that as a result of the November 2016 presidential election, that this was the trajectory. One would say that we probably had four years to prepare ourselves. And then of course we had the leak [of the draft Dobbs decision] in May 2022, but nothing really prepares you for the actual moment.

There was some emotion. My husband gave me a hug and then I had to go to work. By

AFTER THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

struck down Roe v. Wade, a panel of experts discussed what’s next. From the June 28, 2022, program “The Future of Abortion Rights in California: A Gathering of Voices.” Produced in partnership with Women’s March San Francisco and funded by a grant from The California Wellness Foundation (Cal Wellness).

SYLVIA GHAZARIAN, Executive Director, Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project GILDA GONZALES, CEO, Planned Parenthood Northern California BUFFY WICKS, California State Assemblymember (District 15) IMANI RUPERT-GORDON, Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights—Moderator commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

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Left to right: Imani Rupert-Gordon, Sylvia Ghazarian and Buffy Wicks (on-screen), and Gilda Gonzales.

7:20 a.m., we were on the phone. We had a script, we had a run of show. We had a prepared messaging of bad case scenario and worst case scenario. And we executed the worst case scenario plan.

RUPERT-GORDON: I want to ask you if you could give us a brief overview about what this decision is going to mean for Planned Parenthood and the people that you serve in the Bay Area.

GONZALES: So Planned Parenthood Northern California covers 20 counties.

We’re based here in San Francisco, and we go all the way up to the Oregon border. We have 17 health centers throughout that footprint.

We provide medication abortions at all of our health centers and select sites that have the in-clinic abortion offerings. So for us, what this means is we keep our doors open and if anything, we swing them even wider because we’re prepared to not only serve northern Californians, but anybody coming to us.

We already started seeing out-of-state patients after Texas’s SB 8 went into effect last September. [See sidebar.] We’ve already seen upwards of 80 patients, and we’ve never seen those kinds of numbers ever before from out-of-state patients. Most of them are from Texas, so we already kind of had the trial run of what this looks like.

RUPERT-GORDON: What do you think

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the future holds for abortion rights here in California? I wanted to talk specifically about people from multiple underrepresented identities—people of color, low-income folks, LGBTQ folks, folks with disabilities.

How are you thinking about that?

GONZALES: I am so grateful for our sisters in the reproductive justice movement that started decades ago, who really called out the need for looking at reproductive freedom and rights in a holistic manner. The point of view of giving me the right to determine whether

I

or not I want to bear a child, but I also have to be concerned about having housing. Do I have access to fresh fruits and vegetables?

Do I have a sustainable living wage? That’s how we need to look at this movement—it’s multi-layered. For the patients that we serve, they have a lot of complexities going on.

What we see more than anything is behavioral health and mental health challenges, because we’ve all been through it and it’s been exacerbated. The strain and the stress of people, and specifically people with low incomes

What is Texas SB 8?

n September 2021, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions as soon as embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, usually six weeks after a person’s last menstrual period. Most people don’t know they’re pregnant by this stage, so the law effectively bans most abortions, with no exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape, sexual abuse, incest or for pregnancies involving a fetal defect incompatible with life after birth. The bill also threatens punishment for anyone who knowingly “aids or abets” a person’s access to the procedure, including parents, partners, and primary care providers.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the move a clear attack on the practice of medicine. They said in a statement condemning the law, “By allowing third-party lawsuits against clinicians, by virtually banning all abortions, and by curtailing the sharing of information and support related to access to vital women’s health care, Texas’s new law creates a coercive environment for patients and clinicians across the spectrum of care and from all corners of the state.”

—Corey Rose

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“We’ve also invested in providers offering the abortion pill by mail, and we pay for the pills, the provider, as well as shipping of those pills. We will continue to offer services as we can in terms of funding.”

—SYLVIA GHAZARIAN

“When I had a miscarriage, I had the procedure within 12 hours. But if I lived in a state like Texas, am I going to get on an airplane when I was doubled over in pain and bleeding profusely? Am I going to drive 12 hours?”

—BUFFY WICKS

and people who already face disparities due to the economic and health-care disparities and the system that we’re all born into.

RUPERT-GORDON: [There are] folks from other states where abortion is no longer legal and will be severely limited. How do you see this impacting your work? And what will it take for you to be able to welcome with open arms all the women and people that will need to come to California?

GONZALES: The Planned Parenthood network is made up of 49 different affiliates across the country. We are very tight network.

We have regular communication. I have seen firsthand one CEO’s look in the camera as we were all on Zoom, and it was unbelievable, the pain. The CEO could hardly talk about what was happening and turning patients away that morning and talking about how his staff worked until 11:59 and got in the last abortion until midnight. Our mission is to serve, and when we can’t do our mission it is painful, because we know people’s lives depend on us fulfilling our mission.

It’s bad and we’re seeing the real impact from other states and we’re leaning into our allyship and our strong federation and how we’re going to serve patients is with the assistance of abortion funds and other people stepping up and helping us care for these people who are coming to us and fleeing

their home states to get care.

RUPERT-GORDON: Assemblymember, we are going to turn to you. What was your reaction to that decision? Who were you immediately concerned for and why?

BUFFY WICKS: I come to this as a [California State] Assemblymember. But more important, I come to this issue as a woman and as a mom of two young girls. That was my immediate gut reaction. I had an abortion when I was 25. I spoke about this yesterday on the floor of the Assembly, that I walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Francisco and they welcomed me with open arms, information, respect, and love.

And they helped me make a very important decision in my life. And it’s because of that decision that led me to the path that I’m on now, with two beautiful girls who are my everything with my husband. And I’m now a legislator, and it’s because I got to make that decision on my own on my own terms.

That’s what this is really about, our ability for body autonomy and the ability to make that decision. So I thought about the fact that that decision for between 33 to 36 million women and birthing people is now going to be robbed from them in this country.

I thought about the fact that in September, I had a miscarriage and I needed an emergency C-procedure which would legally be

allowed in many states, but in actuality there is a significant chilling effect on providers and others.

RUPERT-GORDON: What do you think the future holds for abortion rights in California and how do you see a path forward?

WICKS: We are fortunate to have the leadership of people like Gavin Newsom, our Senate pro-tem, our speaker, our legislature here in California, where we are making it very clear to the world that abortion is safe and legal in California, period, full stop.

And we are putting a ballot measure on the ballot this year that every citizen can vote on and to say essentially the same thing.

We’re fortunate that we have that ability.

But for many people, they’re not going to have that. I think about the fact that when I had a miscarriage, I got care and had the procedure within 12 hours. But if I lived in a state like Texas or somewhere else, am I going to get on an airplane when I was doubled over in pain and bleeding profusely? Am I going to drive 12 hours?

We have the ability here to send a message to the rest of the world, and we’re doing a number of things legislatively and constitutionally to ensure that our rights are protected here.

RUPERT-GORDON: What can California government do to protect abortion rights

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in California? How do you think we can provide an example and show some leadership that could work nationally? What are those specific policy and legislative solutions that you’re thinking [about]?

WICKS: Last year, the Future of Abortion Council, which is a group of about I think 40 organizations or so [were] going out together and said, “OK, this thing’s coming. We have to expect Roe v. Wade to get overturned. What are we doing as a state to ensure that we are the reproductive freedom state for all?”

They issued a series of recommendations to lawmakers, and we distilled that into about 15 different bills that are currently going through the legislature as we speak. We expect all of them to pass and we expect all of them to be signed by the governor. There’s a bucket of legal protections, and I’m doing a bill, for instance, to ensure that pregnancy loss of any kind cannot be criminalized in California, whether you’re from here or you’re from another state.

Legal protections are important. There’s another bill that’s being run by one of my colleagues to ensure that privacy is protected if you’re coming from another state. So whether it’s a state authority or law enforcement, that privacy is protected here.

We have to prepare for data that says around 1.4 million people may be coming here to seek abortion care. Right now we do about 46,000 abortions in California, so we’re potentially going to have a 3,000 percent increase in folks seeking that care. And it not just impacts folks here in the states who need access to abortion care, but also those who need basic reproductive care as well.

So there’s a number of things we’re doing as a state. And fortunately, we have strong leadership here in Sacramento to really put our money where our mouth is and really stand for these values here in California.

RUPERT-GORDON: California is a sanctuary state for abortion. Can you share what that means for those that don’t know? And then also because we’re a sanctuary state, what is California supposed to do in this particular moment?

WICKS: I think we can be a model to the rest of the country. I know other states are following some of the work that we’re doing here.

I think Vermont is doing a similar constitutional amendment that would go on the ballot. I know other legislatures across the country are considering other bills. And so while we have a group of states that have already banned abortion—12 to date, I believe, and I think we expect about 26—there’s a group of

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other states like ours who are saying, “If you need care, we are here for you.”

The role of your state legislature has never been more important than it is today.

Especially ladies, if you’re ready to run for office, now is the time, because these state legislatures are the ones that are determining your life. That’s a message that needs to get out there in places like Ohio and Oklahoma and Texas, in a lot of these places. We need a revolution in these state legislatures, and we need it now.

RUPERT-GORDON: What legislation is a top priority to pass right now? And why?

WICKS: Most important is the constitutional amendment. We passed it off the floor of the Assembly yesterday with two thirds of the vote. It’s going to go to the ballot in November. You all have the opportunity to speak your values. I would encourage you to get involved in that effort to support and vote for that amendment when it hits the ballot in November.

It’s the strongest thing we can do to really enshrine this in the Constitution, and it [addresses] both access to safe and legal abortion and also access to contraception. I am very concerned [that] this is just the beginning for these right wing justices. This is just the beginning for the right wing in this country. We have to protect contraception and a whole bevy of other rights that are critical.

SYLVIA GHAZARIAN: We continue to have deep concern for the communities and individuals affected by this concern about clinics, staff and doctors, as well as just anger, tears, sadness and disappointment.

Immediately, when the decision was read, the founder and president of WRRAP [Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project], Joyce Schorr, and myself were on the phone and we shed tears, because we had to at that time and it’s still pretty emotional, because the impact that we know this is having on so many. However, this decision has not stopped us and we always channel our energy to be sure we are taking care of those who need us most.

As reproductive justice leaders, we constantly adapt to devastating situations, and we always are making sure patients are safely navigated and funded through the clinics, hospitals and doctors that WRRAP works with. We are amplifying our work by continuing to engage communities, as well as with legislators in our ongoing fight for reproductive freedom.

RUPERT-GORDON: Can you talk more about what your organization does, and how

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you think your work is going to be impacted by this Supreme Court decision?

GHAZARIAN: The Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project is the largest national independent abortion fund, and we’ve been around for 31 years. Funny enough, we used to be able to say we were able to provide funding in all 50 states and DC. Well, obviously that has now changed.

Our model is different from other abortion funds since we work directly with clinics, doctors and hospitals almost daily through our hotline to secure funding for the patients that they have at their clinics.

We have an amazing group of volunteers, and we return calls from clinics on a daily basis so that no patient ever has to wait to find out if they are going to be funded. We have a robust network of over 700-plus clinics, doctors and hospitals, including funding for Planned Parenthood, which I’m delighted is here on this panel today.

Our mission has always been to provide abortion funding and emergency contraception. I guess the biggest impact the Supreme Court decision will have, which continues to weigh heavily on us, is funding. We fundraise every day since we continue to prepare for the increased need to fund at higher amounts. And when I say that, you know, abortions that may have cost $500 could now cost $1,000 or $1,500.

With the current legislation that’s now out there with the fall of Roe, a lot of these individuals will be forced to have their pregnancy continue because of how this legislation has been written. We’re lucky that as an abortion fund we can work collectively with other abortion funds together to be sure that we take care of the immediate needs of patients through our outreach within our network so that no patient is left behind in terms of funding.

RUPERT-GORDON: There’s going to be a need, obviously, for people to travel to California now for abortion services, and it has just increased exponentially. Will your fund cover travel costs needed for folks to travel to states when they’re coming from places that are now having restricted access to abortion?

And then what can people do that need resources, that live in states where abortion is no longer possible?

GHAZARIAN: WRRAP only provides funding for abortions and emergency contraceptives. However, we work with organizations within our network that provide that practical support for travel, gas, money, childcare, etc. So by working with the clin-

ics, we take care of that abortion funding, but also know that the clinic is reaching out to those individuals that may need to travel and have those expenses paid for.

Already this year, WRRAP has had to double its total funding for those seeking abortions to meet the needs, because the recipient’s costs, as I mentioned, have increased so much due to extra travel. We were up 24 percent last year in travel after SB 8 and were close to 35 to 40 percent now going through May. And that travel increase and the delays in accessing abortion all across the board increases the cost.

Since COVID first started, we started investing in funding patients through virtual clinics, for example, because the whole

clinics, meaning you can look up crisis pregnancy centers, which are fake clinics, and know that you are not going to a legitimate clinic that will provide you with the abortion care that you’re looking for. So we have helped in that process as well.

We look at people who don’t have Internet service or who can’t access through the computer or other means and know that since we started 31 years ago, we are in every community all the time.

We work with clinics and doctors and advocates, and we divvy out information on our abortion funding in all sorts of ways to reach as many people as possible, because we want them to know that we are here and we are here to fund, and we won’t stop doing

equal access to safe abortion, affordable contraceptives, and comprehensive sex education, as well as freedom from sexual violence.

Specific to reproductive oppression, we see that criminalization of people who use drugs while pregnant, stillbirths, or even taking the abortion pill.

RUPERT-GORDON: We’re starting to think about a national strategy. Why do you think that we are here in this moment? What did it take for us to get here? And what’s it going to take to get us out of it?

GHAZARIAN: I gave all the credit to Ms. magazine, [which] yesterday put out an excellent article that really articulates why we are in this moment and five actions that people can take.

“What this means is we keep our doors open and if anything, we swing them even wider, because we’re prepared to not only serve northern Californians, but anybody coming to us.”

—GILDA GONZALEZ

country was on lockdown, and that’s an aspect of things that I want to highlight. We’re not going away. We’re going to continue funding and we’re going to find ways to do it. And we’ve also invested in providers offering the abortion pill by mail, and we pay for the pills, the provider, as well as shipping of those pills. We will continue to offer services as we can in terms of funding.

Our website is a great tool for those who have access to the Internet. It’s great also because people can communicate directly with us in the language they choose, and we can provide information back in that language.

I’ll give you an example. Recently, in the last couple of weeks, we have had some patients reach out to us via email on our website asking us to help them and their funding at a specific clinic; and when our volunteers and I were looking at those clinics, we were saying to ourselves, I’ve never heard of this clinic, who is this?

And so on our website, too, we list fake

what we’re doing.

RUPERT-GORDON: In the [Dobbs] decision, Justice Thomas offered a concurring opinion where he explicitly expressed that the court had a duty to correct some errors established in previous precedents. Specifically, he was talking about Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell, and that is the right to contraception, the right to private, intimate relationships and marriage equality. I want to ask you, why do you believe that the fight for reproductive justice has to be an inclusive and intersectional one?

GHAZARIAN: Reproductive justice is deeply intersectional and heavily multi-issued with the ongoing issues of contraception, gun control, gender violence, marriage equality, immigrant and race issues. And I can go on and on and we could be here for hours. These issues are all intertwined, with oppression based on race, class and gender.

We all must keep in mind that the core components of reproductive justice include

So the first one is declare a public health emergency, since abortion access is a public health emergency. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate, more than any other developed country. No one should be forced or controlled to carry an unwanted or nonviable pregnancy that has detrimental effects not only on that person’s physical and mental health, but the huge repercussions economically that this individual will have to deal with.

The second thing they talked about was to combat disinformation and the stigma around abortion care, taking actions to provide accurate information about medical and surgical abortions. This is something that we in this movement have always talked about.

We need to say the word abortion. We need to talk about abortions. We need to talk about our experiences, and we need to continue to share accurate information out there.

The third is ensuring that coverage of abortion care under Medicaid and private insur-

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“Justice Thomas . . . explicitly expressed that the court had a duty to correct some errors established in previous precedents. Specifically, he was talking about Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell, and that is the right to contraception, the right to private, intimate relationships and marriage equality.”

—IMANI RUPERT-GORDON

ance is done to the fullest extent allowed; and the fourth thing is to ensure that Medicaid is not further marginalizing abortion care and providers by restricting federal funds.

The final thing that they talk about—and each of these they’ve talked about in detail that I think that people can read on their own—but the final was providing resources to individuals seeking care as well as the provider and others. As pregnant people are forced to travel longer distances and funding allocations are needed to support these individuals’ abortion care funds, providers and others will be handling this influx in budget. So this is critical for us to continue on.

WICKS: My hope coming out of this is this is going to be a big awakening for this nation and an awakening for people all across this country to say enough is enough, and body autonomy is important to us.

The silver lining will be people running for office all across the country with strong progressive values around protecting body autonomy and a progressive agenda across this country on a number of different issues.

I do believe we can change this country.

As Gilda said, it’s going to take one foot in front of the other.

RUPERT-GORDON: Is there a plan to expand the number of Planned Parenthood clinics in Northern California? How do you anticipate the banning of abortions in some states? How do you anticipate the impact that’s going to have on young women under 18 years old?

GONZALES: We were very fortunate to have launched a local campaign to build a new health center here in San Francisco, and we just opened that new health center

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last year in March 2022. It doubled our size and it will triple our capacity to see patients.

It is a true investment that we have made for this moment, and we are expanding a footprint also in Napa, and we’re prepared to expand ours in some of our other locations here in the Inner Bay area.

RUPERT-GORDON: Any thoughts about how this might affect young women and folks that are pregnant that are under 18?

WICKS: I don’t know if you listened to “The Daily” [podcast] today, but they interviewed folks at four different clinics in different states [that] had already put forth a ban. They asked a woman who was a receptionist at one of the clinics to recount the most compelling story that you heard today, because she had to call 60 different patients to tell them they couldn’t perform abortions.

She said one call was of a grandmother who had a 14-year-old granddaughter who had been raped and they had to cancel her abortion. And when you think about the horror of that for younger people in particular and what this means and some of the situations that they find themselves in and the fact that in many parts of this country, they don’t have access to care that they so desperately need. At such a young age, it is truly infuriating. It’s absolutely infuriating.

It makes the work that we’re doing here all the more important.

Many young people will be impacted severely, and also young people of color in particular, who will disproportionately be impacted. If you’re in one of these states, if you’re white, chances are you make more money because of the inequities in our economic system that we have in this country and you can get on an airplane. Dispropor-

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tionately, people of color are going to have a more challenging time there. So the racial inequities, I think, are severe with this, as well as the fact that for a lot of these young people, it’s going to be very difficult.

RUPERT-GORDON: We have just a few minutes left, and I wanted to make sure that we get a chance for you all to share a final word.

GONZALES: Abortionfinder.org.

WICKS: I think it’s a crime. Get mad and then fight like hell. Our nation depends on it. And women and birthing people across this country depend on our action.

GHAZARIAN: I’d like to sort of end with testimonials that we have recently received from an individual, a patient from a clinic that kind of encompasses everything that we’ve talked about today. And this individual said: I have been extremely sick beyond morning sickness. I have not been able to hold down food or water. I have been sick day and night through all that I have been going through.

I have no choice but to work. I told my employer about my situation. Instead of them being understanding, they treated me as if I was lazy and terminated me. I have no support in any shape or form. Well, until now, thank you so much. I was absolutely completely blown away by your donation.

And this is somebody who had no financial means. Eighty-three percent of those individuals that we fund, their partner has abandoned them, and 74 percent have one or two children already. We were grateful enough to have the funding donations that we needed to support this person in full.

How can you give support and have an impact?

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JONATHAN GREENBLATT Fighting Hate Now WITH A SIGNIFICANT

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO, Anti-Defamation League; Author, It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It ROGER MCNAMEE, Silicon Valley Investor, Author, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe—Moderator

ROGER MCNAMEE: One of the reasons I have become so passionate to reform technology is that social media has become quite honestly a cesspool of hate, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and more.

These companies have allowed hateful content to permeate the mainstream in a way that those of us who are involved could

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PHOTO COURTESY JONATHAN GREENBLATT

increase in hate crimes, America finds itself on a terrifying path. AntiDefamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s current mission is making sure that what has happened in our lifetimes in Europe, the Middle East and Asia does not happen here.

never have imagined in the early years. It’s our guest Jonathan Greenblatt’s job to fight this hatred from his position as the head of the ADL. This is what he does every day.

Jonathan, welcome to The Commonwealth Club for today’s conversation.

Your book [It Could Happen Here] has the most provocative title. Tell me what you’re talking about and how we got here.

JONATHAN GREENBLATT: Over the past six years we’ve seen kind of not just a decay, but a rapid deterioration in civic society. [The Anti-Defamation League] is the oldest anti-hate group in America. We’ve been fighting these battles against bigotry

for well over 100 years, but my colleagues at ADL have really never quite seen a moment like this. We’re at a precarious point, and we ignore it at our own peril. Based on what I’ve seen in the last six years, that prompted me to write the book.

The book’s also very personal. I’m the grandson of a Holocaust survivor from Germany. He and his Jewish family—Germany was the only country they had ever known.

My great grandfather fought in World War I for Germany. And he never could have imagined when he was a young man that his homeland would literally turn on him, regard him as an enemy of the state, destroy

everything that he ever loved, and slaughter almost his entire family and friends.

I also come to this work as the husband of a woman who came to the United States as a political refugee from Iran. My wife— also Jewish—and her family trace their lineage back, they would tell you thousands of years to the Babylonian exile, and when my wife was a young person, she never would have imagined that the only country she had ever known would one day turn on her, regard her as an enemy of the state, destroy everything that she ever loved and force her and her family to flee.

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in 1938-39, my wife came to this country in 1988-89, so there’s 50 years between them, and they both face the reality where pluralistic, sophisticated westernized countries that believed in science, that respected democratic traditions, both unraveled. one because of the rise of the third Reich. one because of the advent of the Islamic Revolution [in Iran].

The cultural and socio-political circumstances were different, but the end result was the same: the unraveling of society as they knew it. The total unmooring of that country from the norms that had governed it for so long.

America has always been an imperfect country. Hate didn’t start with Donald Trump. It’s a country that was founded in many ways by the extermination of the Indigenous people who once occupied this land. And the enslavement of African people, a painful legacy of racism that remains today.

MCNAMEE: Part of what makes the current U.S. situation so difficult is that so many people, so many groups are being targeted at the same time. Tell us about that.

GREENBLATT: Today in America, we’ve seen the process of otherization happen to different communities. I mean, it’s interesting, Roger. For me, the timing when I started at ADL in the summer of 2015 was the same week that Donald Trump announced his candidacy.

He descended down that gilded escalator at Trump Tower in Manhattan and immediately started talking about Muslims and Mexicans. The Mexicans coming across the border were rapists and murderers or criminals, whatever lunatic thing that he said.

What Donald Trump did really shouldn’t surprise us. He had spent years not only finding his place in the public eye around the celebrity of The Apprentice and faux real estate success, but also around his embrace of this idea that President Barack Obama was a Muslim person originally born in Kenya. Obviously, not a shred of truth to it whatsoever.

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“We need to get involved. That doesn’t mean you need to run for Congress.

But at the local level, everybody has a part to play.”

—JONATHAN GREENBLATT But Donald Trump used that and preyed upon people’s uncertainty and really used the megaphone of his own celebrity to magnify that dramatically. So he used that otherization around Barack Obama to suggest again that we should be afraid of foreigners and Muslims.

He took that to the next level as a candidate. And then he made it law as president with his effort to enshrine the Muslim ban into a literal [law], he did that through executive order or his effort to build a wall at the border.

It’s racist at the core, and it’s evocative of the white supremacist tenet of the great replacement theory. This is fundamental to understanding the white nationalism that seems to be exploding across the United States, which is founded in large part on this idea that somehow the white race, as if that were such a thing, is being undermined with intention by some plot, put together by the Jews, to flood the country with non-whites, particularly Mexicans and Muslims, let alone other people who they consider subhuman. So this is this really dangerous idea that had been pinging around white supremacist circles for a long time, and we’re all still dealing with the consequences of that today. So as I think about the rise of extremism, this dangerous force, there’s no question that it was welcomed and given the kind of license by President Trump it didn’t have before.

There are other forces that concern me as well. There’s a kind of illiberalism from the far left. But it has been far less militant, far less murderous.

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MCNAMEE: One of the things that I found absolutely fantastic about the book is the way you take the 100-plus year history of the ADL and the timeline of the struggle to provide security and rights to everyone. Can you walk our audience through the timeline of the current predicament?

GREENBLATT: So ADL is indeed the oldest anti-hate group in America, and was founded in 1913 after a Jewish man was lynched outside of Atlanta, the Leo Frank case. And at the time, there was systemic discrimination facing Jews in this country.

There was widespread defamation of Jews in the media. So in this environment, Leo Frank went down to Georgia to manage the family business. A young girl was found sexually assaulted and strangled to death at the pencil factory that he managed, and immediately they blamed the Jew. Even though there was exculpatory evidence [that] he had not committed the crime, he was wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death. The governor intervened and commuted his sentence from execution to life imprisonment, because he hadn’t had due process.

The mob was so enraged by that act of leniency, they tore Leo Frank from his jail cell and they hung him from a tree. And while his body was still swinging from the rope, they barbecued underneath the tree.

The whole town came together and did a big public event. They took photographs of the corpse and turned those into postcards to give them out as souvenirs. It was an ugly, ugly moment in American history.

And yet, while many, unfortunately, Black boys and men were murdered this way over the years, it was the first time a Jewish person had been publicly executed in this manner. It prompted a set of Jewish individuals to say we need to do something about this.

So they came together and created this organization, the Anti-Defamation League, and they wrote a charter for their new organization. We would probably call it a manifesto in today’s vernacular; and in it are the words that we still use 100-plus

“One of the strategies is to demonize not just Black people, but the government itself, calling into question the legitimacy of all their decisions.”

—JONATHAN GREENBLATT

years later as our mission statement.

The ADL fought for the Civil Rights Movement, fought to open up America’s doors to immigrants, was part of marching in Selma and fighting for Black equality, to fight for LGBTQ equality, and the list goes on. We’ve been tracking anti-Semitic incidents in America since 1970, before there were even hate crime laws. The ADL helped to write the hate crimes laws, get them passed in these United States. We were on a decline of anti-Semitic incidents from 2001 to 2015.

After a 15-year decline, it went up 34 percent in 2016. In 2017, the number spiked 57 percent. That’s the highest increase we’ve seen year over year. In 2018, the number dipped slightly 5 percent.

But that was the year of the massacre in Pittsburgh, the most violent anti-Semitic attack in American history.

In 2019, the number leapt up again 12 percent. That was the highest total we’ve ever recorded. And then in 2020, the year when everything closed because of COVID, when businesses were shuttered and people were socially distancing, the number dipped just 4 percent. It was still the third-highest total we’ve ever seen.

We’re still tabulating the 2021 numbers.

But the increase in antisemitism, it’s the indicator of a problem.

Then if you say, “Well, why is it going up?” I think there are a couple factors that are really driving it.

First, I think, is the weaponization of hate as a political tool. We’ve seen law after

law try to chip away at the effort to provide civil and voting rights, and I think one of the strategies that’s been used very effectively is to demonize not just Black people, but the government itself that bestowed upon them rights, calling into question the legitimacy of all their decisions.

Number two has been the normalization of extremism. Now again, the John Birch Society, the KKK—these pro-white militia types have always been out there, but they gained even greater legitimacy after the return of veterans from the Vietnam War and then the first Gulf War. Number three, you’ve had a hardening of the haves-and-have-nots gap that has really calcified. Many have written about the effect of globalization, expanding the gap between the 1 percent and the rest of the population, and the sense that those jobs are going away and the federal government and other elected officials weren’t really listening to the needs of so many.

That created a fertile ground for the kind of scapegoating that people like Alex Jones and others capitalized on.

And then finally, the rise of social media. With the advent of Facebook, and the subsequent availability of the iPhone, the extremists capitalized on this dramatically and they exploited the loopholes in the system created by bad laws like Section 230 to literally go at the jugular of our society and infect the public conversation with the poison of their prejudice.

MCNAMEE: One of your four points is that we’ve now entered a period where

it has become politically possible to take rights away from people. And that, to me, is in some ways the most astonishing and frightening aspect of what’s going on.

GREENBLATT: This country has been struggling with how to create a more perfect union since its inception. But fundamental to that view was the notion that we would continue to provide more access to the most valuable resource of all, some would say, which is engagement in our democratic process.

It’s giving women [and] African Americans the right to vote, making it easier for immigrants to become citizens.

Neither side of the political spectrum is exempt from ignorance or intolerance.

You saw it in 2020 with [an attempt] to reduce the access to the polls by reducing the hours, or the availability of mail-in ballots, or even the availability of drop off points for ballots. We saw that in places like Texas. The ADL, along with the NAACP, sued Governor Abbott in Texas multiple times because of his very public efforts to restrict the vote. But what’s really disturbing is that we didn’t see a broad groundswell of popular discontent with these decisions on his part.

I make the point because, again, Governor Abbott happens to be a Republican, but 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, it was Democrats doing things like that. So I don’t think this is about politics, Roger.

I think this is about principles. And that’s why it’s so damning when people line up in lockstep against what seem like basic

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human principles of accepting your fellow man as they are and people who claim to be Christian or Jewish, forgetting some of the most basic tenets of the Old and New Testaments, which is about loving your fellow man.

It’s disturbing that the administration hasn’t done more to prioritize some of these policies. I think we’ve got to see efforts to make a renewal of the Voting Rights Act— that should be a number one priority for this administration. I’m not trying to say they don’t think it’s important, but fundamental to so much of the change we need is simply ensuring that certain parties don’t restrict the ability of people to vote because of the way they might identify.

Making it harder for people to vote has a demonstrable impact on their ability to turn out, and the ability for our elections to actually fairly represent all segments of the populace.

MCNAMEE: Talk a little bit about how violence has become mainstreamed in American politics and the role that internet platforms have played, both in doing that and in effect also providing cover to the politicians who advocate for extreme positions.

GREENBLATT: There is so much to talk about with regards to the role of the platforms in perpetuating not just this kind of bigotry and intolerance, but normalizing both rhetorical violence and real world violence.

The reality is that Americans today, particularly young people, they’re not getting their news from cable television, let alone The New York Times. They’re getting it from Twitter and TikTok. I mean, that should frighten all of us. The reality is that Facebook is intravenously plugged into the veins of scores of millions of Americans.

So [Facebook’s] unwillingness to challenge the fictions that flow on their network, and the lack of any liability for what they do, has put us in this really precarious position today.

At the ADL, we track all this stuff. We do an annual survey of online hate and harassment, and the data is damning. In

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“We need to get involved. That doesn’t mean you need to run for Congress.

But at the local level, everybody has a part to play.”

—JONATHAN GREENBLATT our last survey in 2021, 41 percent of users of social media platforms report being victims of harassment at least once over the past twelve months, having a serious experience with hate and harassment; 28 percent self-reported experiencing serious sustained harassment on these platforms.

If we knew that one in four people on the subway were being harassed in public every time they got on public transportation, or if one in four people crossing the street in midtown Manhattan were being screamed at and harassed by their fellow pedestrians, you better believe there would be an outcry.

Seventy-seven percent of Facebook users report receiving hate and harassment on that platform versus something like 27 percent on Twitter, which was the platform where the second-most number of people said they were having issues. That isn’t because Facebook is just the largest platform, it’s because it is the wild, wild, west in the worst possible way.

The only sector of our economy that is entirely shielded from the repercussions of their actions are these social media giants.

And I think it is long overdue for the government finally to engage.

We should hold the platforms to a higher modicum of moral leadership. There should be no freedom of speech for algorithms. You should be liable if you’re going to promote it. If you’re going to use your technological capital to serve something up, then you better be ready to use your own financial capital if you are to defend yourself in court.

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Number two, I deeply believe we need to revisit these issues of anonymity. There’s no question that anonymity has done so much good for the alienated teen or the LGBTQ person who feels like they can’t come out. I believe in that, and I appreciate that, but the cloak of anonymity has shielded some of the worst possible actors, and that has got to go. So I believe in [Section] 230 in principle, but in practice, it doesn’t work.

Number three, we need to slow it down.

Where is the natural law that says that when I post something to my phone, it should be immediately broadcast for the whole world to see? Broadcast has a seven-second delay. Talk radio has a delay. The internet needs a delay as well. I should not be able to live stream while I’m walking to a mosque, gunning people down to their death.

These companies are now simply too big to fail, but they’re not too big to be regulated. And until we rein them in, we’re all going to be sorting through the wreckage that they leave behind.

We’ve seen this model with Big Tobacco. The companies offer a kind of moral hazard. They’re leaving so much wreckage in their wake, we should force them to pay for the public health damage they’re doing.

Imagine like the Big Tech fund, if Facebook and Google and these other companies gave 1 percent of their top line, that would make it easier to help the victims of harassment, that would fund public education campaigns.

MCNAMEE: So I want to take a question here from the audience, because I think this is a really core thing. What can each and every person who’s listening to you do now?

GREENBLATT: We’ve all got a call out hate when it happens. This is really important. I think for too long, we’ve thought, Ignore that crazy uncle; ignore that guy at the water cooler; ignore that person in the locker room.

The reality is that we have to interrupt intolerance when it happens and help the other side realize it’s not OK. And that may

seem small, but it actually looms large, especially when you’re an ally to others. So I think calling out hate when that happens, whether it’s flagging that post on Facebook or again interrupting someone when they’re making a kind of offensive joke or an offensive comment, I think that’s really important. All of us have the power to find a little bit of courage to call it out.

Number two: Accept people for who they are and understand their fallibility.

Number three, democracy is not something you can watch from the cheap seats in the bleachers with popcorn. Democracy is a contact sport, and you’ve got to get on the field and play. That might mean volunteering, that might mean voting, that might mean running for office.

This is so important. Civil society didn’t come together through spontaneous combustion. If we don’t participate, if we are so anesthetized by our Facebook feed that we fail to realize that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, then we risk all of this falling apart.

MCNAMEE: What is the role of government in all this?

GREENBLATT: I don’t think government is our savior. I don’t think government is our enemy. I think government falls in the middle.

But government, we should all remember, is us, right? It is We the People by the People, for the People. We are the government. So we need to get involved. That doesn’t mean you need to run for Congress, for goodness sakes. But at the local level, everybody has a part to play.

It’s these little things that come together that make us whole. So what’s the government’s role? You’re really asking, what’s our role? We’ve got to take an active role in shaping our own future.

MCNAMEE: So does that require each and every one of us to get more engaged in the political process? What are some of the possible paths? I think people need some options.

GREENBLATT: If you want to get involved with the GOP or the Democratic Party or your local Green Party, or what-

“We need more dynamism in our political system.

Today, Democrats may feel marginalized.

Down the road, it could be Republicans.”

—JONATHAN GREENBLATT not, get involved. Volunteer, show up, and register people to vote. Participate in local democracy. Civic society, it’s not all politics; it’s Girl Scouts, it’s Rotary clubs, and it’s groups like the ADL. Get involved and volunteer again. It’s these little interactions, these micro moments that taken together make up the stuff of our societies, and we should not lose sight of that.

If you don’t want to volunteer and you don’t want to show up, you can be involved other ways, too. You can donate to groups that you care about. You can make phone calls to your member of Congress, your local city council.

You can show up at meetings without having to volunteer and just be there and be present and protect your democracy that way. You can sign petitions. I don’t believe in slacktivism as an alternative to activism, but everybody needs to get involved and calibrate in a way that makes sense for them as an individual. Hopefully, democracy should be a gateway drug that will stimulate you to want to do more and more.

Bob Putnam wrote this really important book in the nineties called Bowling Alone, which is about how we were seeing civic life disintegrate. And I think in many ways, like the twin vectors of Amazon helping to accelerate Wal-Mart’s killing of local retail, plus Google and Facebook decimating local media have destroyed the kind of the local core that held our communities together, we are in this place where we do not have a sense of community, a sense of shared value.

MCNAMEE: As we come to our last few minutes here, I wonder if you could distill all of that in your own thoughts about what the path is for, because the stakes that you’re describing [have to deal with the fact that] people don’t seem to internalize how dangerous this is for all of us.

GREENBLATT: I think at the local level again, all of us have the power to participate, have an ability to engage, and you have to find the way that works for you.

Whether it’s stopping hate when it happens or showing up at that school board meeting, all of us need to get engaged.

Then at the macro level, I think we need reform as it relates to social media, which continues to pump this poison into our collective consciousness without any abatement.

We need voting reform. We need to think about filibuster reform. And you can even look at SCOTUS reform: term limits and maybe even expanding the number of justices, I think, to get to a more perfect union.

We need more dynamism and less status in our political system. Constructive dynamism. And I think it’s certainly possible. And again, today, Democrats may feel like they’re being marginalized. Down the road, it could be Republicans. All of us as citizens benefit from a system that is open and fair and decent.

MCNAMEE: We are in a pandemic that has killed more than 800,000 Americans.

By all historical precedent, that should have been an element that brought us together and gave us a shared enemy and a shared ambition and shared goal. And yet we have missed that. In the context of your book, I find that terrifying, because there’s only one other thing besides a pandemic that generally brings people together, and that’s war.

GREENBLATT: Roger, I don’t know how we get this right unless we tackle the threat of social media once and for all, we engage in some political reform, and every person accepts and recognizes their individual responsibility to do better.

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YASCHA MOUNK The Fate of Diverse Democracies YASCHA MOUNK ARGUES

that democracy has long struggled to embody both equality and diversity, and despite the challenges past and present facing democratic institutions, he believes that with ambition and vision, there is still reason to be hopeful. Excerpted from the May 3, 2022, program “Yascha Mounk: The Fate of Diverse Democracies.” Part of our Future of Democracy series, supported by Betsy and Roy Eisenhardt.

YASCHA MOUNK, Founder, Persuasion; Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University; Contributing Editor, The Atlantic; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; Author, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

PHOTO BY SARAH GONZALEZ/SMGFOTO

In Conversation with STEVEN SAUM, Editor, WorldView Magazine

STEVEN SAUM: You make the case for being an optimist in this book. Why? YASCHA MOUNK: A lot of people start with a naive optimism, which is understandable, but misguided. And that’s to say diversity is our strength and it shouldn’t be hard to deal with this ethnic and religious diversity. How hard could it be to be tolerant, not to be a bigot, not to be a racist? How hard can it be to like your neighbor, even if they’re a little bit different from you? If we’re doing so badly at this basic task, why should the future be any better? My movement in this book is the opposite. I lay out in great detail why it is very difficult to build these ethnically and religiously diverse democracies.

The first [reason] is that it turns out that human beings have deep instinct toward building groups and then favoring the members over outsiders.

I have a little game I play where I ask whether or not a hotdog is a sandwich. My students are an incredibly diverse bunch, but it turns out that the students who think of the hotdog as a sandwich start to discriminate immediately against the students who think that a hotdog is not a sandwich and vice versa. So this is one difficulty, right? This tendency to form groups and just say, “Hey, you’re part of my group and I’m going to be really altruistic towards you, but you over there, you’re in a different group and I’m gonna treat you badly.” That is just a deeply human thing that we can’t really escape.

That kind of group harshness, especially when it comes to ethnicity, religion, nationality, race, has often motivated some of the worst crimes of humanity. We know that diverse societies managed to sustain themselves relatively peacefully for decades or for centuries. And when something went wrong, suddenly people who were peaceful neighbors one day were at each other’s throats the next day. So this is the second difficult lesson from history.

A third difficulty is that as somebody who passionately believes in democracy, who made his name by warning about dangers to democracy, my instinct was to say perhaps democratic institutions can solve all of this.

When you understand democratic institutions in the right way, they can make a real contribution to solving these problems, but the basic democratic mechanism can also exacerbate them. When you look at some of the most celebrated democracies in the history of the world, from ancient Athens to the Roman Republic to the city states of medieval Italy, they often prided themselves on ethnic purity. And when you think of some of the places that are most celebrated for sustaining relatively diverse societies, from Baghdad in

the ninth century to Vietnam in the 19th century, they were often monarchies or empires. And that’s not a coincidence, actually, because in a monarchy or an empire, you don’t have any political power, and I don’t have any political power. So we both have to trust a monarch. So if you have more kids than I do or immigrants who come in look more like you than they look like me, I say, “Well, I still trust the monarchy; it doesn’t change anything.”

A democracy is always a search for a majority. If I used to be in the majority ethnic or cultural or religious group, and suddenly you have more kids than I do or there’s more immigrants coming in to your group than mine, this fear that I might now suddenly lose the next election, and that might completely change the sort of balance of political power, it’s kind of natural. And that helps to explain other forms of demographic fearmongering in many democracies today. You take those three difficulties together and you start to realize that the Great Experiment is a difficult undertaking, but it is hard to make these ethnically, religiously diverse democracies succeed.

SAUM: You touched on a couple of things that I think are especially interesting to talk about here in California, where we are already a majority-minority state. But when you unpack what ethnic identities are and political behaviors mean, you come to some very different conclusions than the conventional wisdom when it comes to majority-minority status for a country.

MOUNK: I arrived in SFO at 2 p.m. today, and I took an Uber into town to get to my hotel. When the very nice Uber driver arrived, he had a hat in the colors of the Brazilian flag and on it, it said “Bolsonaro 2022.”

He was a Brazilian gentleman who’s lived in United States for a long time. He goes back and forth a little bit. We had a nice, long conversation and he is a super fan of Jair Bolsonaro. And unsurprisingly, [I] said, “Oh, so

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what do you think about American politics?” Well, he’s a big fan of Donald Trump.

If you know something about Brazilian politics, he thinks of himself as a middle class Brazilian who actually identifies, I assume, as white, within Brazil; in the United States in the predominant discourse we’d simply say he’s a person of color. That’s not how he sees himself. That’s not what his political experience has been.

It’s a really simplified way of trying to understand the sociological reality of the United States today. If you’re assuming that because he’s a Hispanic who’s a person of color, etc., etc., he’s going to be voting for Democrats either 20 years from now or today, you’re mistaken. In the United States political discourse, we have this idea that America will be majority-minority, as the United States Census Bureau predicts. There’s this idea that this will really favor Democrats, because white voters tend to favor the Republican Party and nonwhite voters tend to favor the Democratic Party. I think this is the one thing that liberals and conservatives, that Democrats and Republicans, can still agree on in this country, and unfortunately, it’s absolutely wrong, and actually a very dangerous idea.

If you look at voting behavior in the 1960s, you would have said Irish American voters are a really solid voting bloc for the Democratic Party. So their growth or decline will help predict how the Democratic Party does. Well, today, Irish Americans are a really reliable voting bloc for Republicans. So this stuff tends to change over time. We’re seeing a change in real time at the moment in the 2020 election.

The main reason why Donald Trump was competitive was that he significantly increased the share of the vote among every nonwhite voter group, among African-Americans, among Asian-Americans, and especially among Latinos. And the only reason why Joe Biden ended up being the legitimately elected president is that he significantly increased the share of the white vote relative to Hillary Clinton in 2016. So it’s just very hard to predict what the voting patterns will be in 2044, 2048.

That is a good thing, right? It is a good thing for the electorate of United States to depolarize along racial lines. I don’t want to live in a country where I can look in the audience and I know exactly who you’re voting for by looking at the color of your skin. As somebody who worries about the stability of democracy, it’s not surprising that I prefer the Democratic Party at this point to the

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Republican Party. But the idea that this is somehow a politically positive vision, if in 2048, you know, Democrats narrowly win every election, but, there’s still 47 percent of a population that feels really excluded and has a lot of guns, that’s not the makings of a stable society.

The very idea that America will be, or that California today in a meaningful sense is majority-minority depends on accepting the one-drop rule with its roots in the enslavement of millions of people and then generalizing it beyond the African American population to every other group. And that’s not how people tend to think of themselves.

We have a very rapidly growing, mixed-race population that doesn’t think of itself as just people of color, but that actually, depending on the exact nature of the parents and heritage, has a much more complicated identity. We have many Hispanics, like my Uber driver today, who don’t think of themselves as people of color in any meaningful kind of way.

So this entire way of talking, it’s just odd.

Why should we think that an American who has, let’s say, French aristocratic family on their father’s side, and Indian Brahmin family on their mother’s side, being at the top of their respective societies for a very long time and then coming to the United States and being born here. And I’m sure they might have some experiences of racism, and there’s certain ways in which they face discrimination. But to think that this person is naturally part of this coherent bloc of people of color, that falls in the same category as an American who has ancestors who were brought here in chains and enslaved, is just a very bizarre way of thinking about reality.

So I think not only should political parties cease thinking in terms of this inevitably rising Democratic majority, but all of us should cease thinking of these two categories as naturally given.

SAUM: So here’s one of the questions from the audience. Do you believe we’re in the midst of a period of political realignment?

MOUNK: Do I believe that we are? Yes, I think we probably are. Moments of political realignment are very confusing. But that does seem to be the case in at least two dimensions.

The first is that, today, more social and cultural questions tend to be at the beating heart of politics today. [They] tend to decide whether you’re going to vote Democrat or Republican. So that’s an interesting moment of realignment. But then there’s a broader sort of set of alignments, including the eth-

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | August/September 2022

nic coalitions of different political parties— which I think can be an opportunity—and of course in the socioeconomic base of political parties.

It used to be that more affluent, more educated Americans tended to vote for the Republican Party, and working class Americans tended to vote for the Democratic Party.

Now the Democratic Party, and as [French economist] Thomas Piketty shows, left wing parties in many countries around the world have become the party of highly educated elites, and right-wing parties have become working class parties.

That’s a very odd moment of realignment.

I think that they are having a vivid feeling about it, because the positive thing about this is that if a Republican Party really does become the party of a multiracial working class or in ethnic terms, that is an improvement, because it pushes us away from this ethnic polarization. Now, on the negative side, I think as somebody who’s always thought of myself as being on the left and so on, but [there’s] something really historically perverse if the main left-wing parties just become the parties of relatively educated, affluent people leading comfortable lives in the big cities.

California, of course, has changed how it votes more than people expect. People always think that electoral maps in the United States are sort of cast in stone. You know what? Like they know which states are sort of safe for Democrats or Republicans, and which are the battleground states. But it’s really interesting to just look through map after map from presidential elections, one after the other. And you see how much it shifts over time. And I think that’s going to continue to shift in the United States. It’s not at all clear to me that states which now seem solidly Democrat, are going to be solidly Democrat in 15 years and vice versa.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: How does religious fanaticism drive conflict?

MOUNK: One of the things that religion does also give people is a set of moral standards, a community to which they’re connected, a stable theology, which helps to structure how they behave. And I think the United States, one of the really pernicious things in the last decades has been the form of a secularization of society has taken [place], which in many cases has meant that people have lost touch with the community.

So that’s one way of answering the question. But another thing I want to say is that I have a part of a book where I talk about something that Francis Fukuyama speaks

“This is the one thing that liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can still agree on in this country, and unfortunately, it’s absolutely wrong, and actually a very dangerous idea.”

PHOTO BY STEFFEN JAENICKE

—YASCHA MOUNK

about very, very well. A basic justification of philosophical liberalism as the right basis of our society. So the fundamental question is how do we mediate between the level of a state, group and the individual? One part of this is important but obvious; it is to say, we need to protect people from the oppressive power of a state which has gone so horribly wrong in history so many times, and from the tyranny of majority, which is particularly scary if you’re part of a minority ethnic or religious group.

So I need to know that I’m able to criticize the president, but also that I’m able to engage in forms of worship that might be really unpopular without having to fear either the state locking me up or a majority of my neighbors coming and saying, “How dare you do this! We’re going to beat you up,” or whatever horrible thing might happen.

But there’s also a second kind of freedom we need and that is a freedom from what Daron Acemoglu and James Robertson have called the cage of norms. Because actually, in history, many times, the people who really made you unfree were not members of a different group or members of a state or agents of a state. It was your own group.

It was your own parents, your own auntie and uncle, your own religious authorities, your own priest, your own rabbi. So it’s a second kind of liberty that we really need to preserve. Is liberty from oppression by your own group. And the only philosophy that can do that is the philosophy of liberalism, because what it says is that we recognize the importance of religion and we recognize the importance of groups. That is why we give you individual rights, like the freedom to worship, like the freedom to assembly, which protects your ability to be a member of those groups. But we also recognize that it’s individuals rather than groups that are the fundamental building block of our society, because if you want to leave your group, or if your group coerces you in some kind of way, then it becomes the obligation of the state to step in and to ensure that you can live in a self-determined way.

So I think if we have that in place, that can help to regulate religious conflict, because it means that this huge variety of religious groups can say, “Hey, I might not like what you’re doing and what worship you engage in, but you know what? I get to live as I want.” And that’s important. We’re making sure that no group ends up being so oppressive towards its own members that citizens are subject to its coercion.

Having those two things in place can help

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Steven Saum (left) interviews political scientist Yascha Mounk at The Commonwealth Club.

“When that leads to an unwillingness to recognize that we’ve made progress, then we don’t have a positive vision of a future to offer. And that’s when it becomes easy for the far right to win.”

—YASCHA MOUNK

to manage conflict between religions, and help to make sure that citizens are truly free, even as religious groups flourish.

SAUM: So at least in passing, you mentioned Robert Putnam and social capital, a bridging social capital as being particularly important. Can you talk about that? Why the bridging?

MOUNK: So it turns out that one way to reduce prejudice is to have a contact with members of a group against which you might have prejudices. In the 1950s in housing projects in Boston, white Bostonians who had Black neighbors ended up having much more positive views about African Americans than white Bostonians who were assigned to segregated housing units.

But there’s really important conditions on when this works, which are also important to keep in mind. You have to have equality within the group in that context, you have to have a common purpose, you have to have encouragement to see each other as allies rather than as enemies. You have to have all of those kind of basic conditions in place. And that, I think, is an important

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thing for pedagogy. So a lot of allied private schools around the country now take kids at the age of 10 or 8 or sometimes 6 and put them in with different sort of affinity groups. So teachers coming in and saying, “You’re Asian American, you’re African American, you’re Latino—you’re going to be in separate groups to discuss challenges you experience and to give you a political self-understanding.”

Now, I understand where that comes from, because many of these kids do experience real forms of discrimination and racism and so on. But I worry that this completely misapplies what we know about human psychology. It precisely encourages these kids to say, “This is my group and I’m going to treat members of it better and discriminate against members of the outgroup.”

If kids do that along the lines of whether they believe a hot dog is a sandwich or not, but definitely going to do that if you take kids—and indeed private schools—and say, “This is a white group and we’re going to talk to you as a white group,” the idea might be to turn them into anti-racists, but I think

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it’s more likely to have them [become] racist for them to [become] anti-racists.

What’s much better, if you trust the research, which is a very deep research program and intergroup quantum theory is something much more classic: putting a sports team together. So you have common interests. You identify together as members of an arbitrary group of a sports team that’s competing against the other sports team.

But within that, you’re equal. And we’re encouraging you to see each other as peers to compete together for this goal. And that is much more likely, I think, to lead to real conversations, real mutual understanding, and then hopefully to better political outcomes.

A mission for America, for example, is not to say, How do we overcome groups entirely? How do we have a melting pot where we just think of each other as individuals but are sort of equal to each other? That’s not going to work. We should think of this: How do we have a multiplicity of group identities? How do we have group identities that don’t drive us into deep conflict?

SAUM: Someone online wants to know how the left can project a more optimistic, inclusive message that reflects American tradition?

MOUNK: There can be a kind of addiction to just talking about the negative sides.

And I understand that, because you want to have open eyes about the injustices we see in our country today. But when that leads to an unwillingness to recognize that we’ve made progress, then we don’t have a positive vision of a future to offer. And that’s when it becomes easy for the far right to win.

When you start with a recognition of how cruel American history has been, how cruel the history of so many other diverse societies has been—if you recognize the fact that 30 years ago, a majority of Americans thought that interracial marriage was immoral, when you can also see that we’ve made tremendous progress in the last decades, you can see that America today is a much better place than it was 50 or 25 years ago. You can celebrate the fact that now the number of Americans who think that interracial marriage is immoral is down to a single digits.

And so, the way to have a more effective political message on the left is to be true to our universalist values, to be forthright in our condemnation of injustices that exist but also forthright in our celebration of a progress we’ve made and to embrace a vision of the future that most people would actually be excited to live in.

Distinguished Citizens Award

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SAVE THE DATE

OCTOBER 28, 2022 The Commonwealth Club dedicates its 2022 Distinguished Citizens Award Gala to four outstanding community advocates who, through incredible acts of service and longstanding leadership in their communities, embody the theme of STAND BY ME. With this theme, we recognize the leaders and humanitarians who stand shoulder to shoulder with those they serve. They tirelessly strive to remedy injustices, ensure basic needs are met with dignity, provide equitable access to healthcare and medicine, and demonstrate an abundance of benevolence and generosity of spirit.

For more information contact: plinares@commonwealthclub.org (415) 597-6737

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THE

MAYA With Archaeologist William Saturno DECEMBER 4-12, 2022

Explore the UNESCO world heritage site of Palenque. Marvel at more remote sites such as Yaxchilan and Tonina to see remarkably well-preserved murals.

Venture to the heart of the Lacandón jungle, with scarlet macaws and howler monkeys. Enjoy San Cristobal de la Casas, a stunning colonial city nestled in mountainous central highlands.

Brochure at commonwealthclub.org/travel

| 415.597.6720

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travel@commonwealthclub.org CST: 2096889-40