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      Eastern Europe Tests New Forms of Media Censorship

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      With new, less repressive tactics, countries like Serbia, Poland and Hungary are deploying highly effective tools to skew public opinion.BELGRADE, Serbia — When Covid-19 reached Eastern Europe in the spring of 2020, a Serbian journalist reported a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment. She was swiftly arrested, thrown in a windowless cell and charged with inciting panic.The journalist, Ana Lalic, was quickly released and even got a public apology from the government in what seemed like a small victory against old-style repression by Serbia’s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vucic.But Ms. Lalic was then vilified for weeks as a traitor by much of the country’s news media, which has come increasingly under the control of Mr. Vucic and his allies as Serbia adopts tactics favored by Hungary and other states now in retreat from democracy across Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe.“For the whole nation, I became a public enemy,” she recalled.Serbia no longer jails or kills critical journalists, as happened under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It now seeks to destroy their credibility and ensure few people see their reports.The muting of critical voices has greatly helped Mr. Vucic — and also the country’s most well-known athlete, the tennis star Novak Djokovic, whose visa travails in Australia have been portrayed as an intolerable affront to the Serb nation. The few remaining outlets of the independent news media mostly support him but take a more balanced approach.Ana Lalic, a Serbian journalist, last month in Belgrade. She was arrested in 2020 after reporting on a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment that could be used against the coronavirus.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesAcross the region, from Poland in the north to Serbia in the south, Eastern Europe has become a fertile ground for new forms of censorship that mostly eschew brute force but deploy gentler yet effective tools to constrict access to critical voices and tilt public opinion — and therefore elections — in favor of those in power.Television has become so biased in support of Mr. Vucic, according to Zoran Gavrilovic, the executive director of Birodi, an independent monitoring group, that Serbia has “become a big sociological experiment to see just how far media determines opinion and elections.”Serbia and Hungary — countries in the vanguard of what V-Dem Institute, a Swedish research group, described last year as a “global wave of autocratization” — both hold general elections in April, votes that will test whether media control works.A recent Birodi survey of news reports on Serbian television found that over a three-month period from September, Mr. Vucic was given more than 44 hours of coverage, 87 percent of it positive, compared with three hours for the main opposition party, 83 percent of which was negative.A billboard depicting President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia was displayed on a building in Nis in December, ahead of his visit to the city.Sasa Djordjevic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNearly all of the negative coverage of Mr. Vucic appeared on N1, an independent news channel that broadcast Ms. Lalic’s Covid-19 reports. But a bitter war for market share is playing out between the cable provider that hosts N1 — Serbian Broadband, or SBB — and the state-controlled telecommunications company, Telekom Srbija.Telekom Srbija recently made a move that many saw as an unfair effort to make SBB less attractive to consumers when it snagged from SBB the rights to broadcast English soccer by offering to pay 700 percent more for them.Telekom Srbija’s offer, nearly $700 million for six seasons, is an astronomical amount for a country with only seven million people — and nearly four times what a media company in Russia, a far bigger market, has agreed to pay the Premier League each season for broadcast rights.“It is very difficult to compete if you have a competitor that does not really care about profit,” SBB’s chief executive, Milija Zekovic, said in an interview. The offices of the N1 cable news channel in Belgrade. N1 and a smaller station, Nova S, are the only TV outlets in Serbia that give regular airtime to opposition politicians.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesTelekom Srbija declined to make its executives available for comment, but in public statements, the company has described its investments in English soccer and elsewhere as driven by commercial concerns, not politics.“Their goal is to kill SBB,” Dragan Solak, the chairman of SBB’s parent company, United Group, said in an interview in London. “In the Balkans,” he added, “you do not want to be a bleeding shark.”Eager to stay in the game, Mr. Solak announced this month that a private investment company he controls had bought Southampton FC, an English Premier League soccer team. Broadcast rights for the league will stay with his state-controlled rival, but part of the huge sum it agreed to pay for them will now pass to Mr. Solak.Government loyalists run Serbia’s five main free-to-air television channels, including the supposedly neutral public broadcaster, RTS. The only television outlets in Serbia that give airtime to the opposition and avoid hagiographic coverage of Mr. Vucic are Mr. Solak’s cable news channel N1, which is affiliated with CNN, and his TV Nova.Without them, Mr. Solak said, Serbia “will be heading into the dark ages like North Korea.”Telekom Srbija recently snagged from SBB the rights to broadcast English soccer by offering to pay 700 percent more than what SBB had previously paid.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesSpace for critical media has been shrinking across the region, with V-Dem Institute, the Swedish research group, now ranking Serbia, Poland and Hungary among its “top 10 autocratizing countries,” citing “assaults on the judiciary and restrictions on the media and civil society.” Freedom House now classifies Serbia as “partly free.”In each country, security forces — the primary tools for muzzling critical voices during the communist era — have been replaced in this role by state-controlled and state-dependent companies that exert often irresistible pressure on the news media.Poland’s governing party, Law and Justice, has turned the country’s public broadcaster, TVP, into a propaganda bullhorn, while a state-run oil company has taken over a string of regional newspapers, though some national print outlets still regularly assail the government.In December, Law and Justice pushed through legislation that would have squeezed out the only independent television news channel, the American-owned TVN24, but the Polish president, worried about alienating Washington, vetoed the bill.Hungary has gone further, gathering hundreds of news outlets into a holding company controlled by allies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Only one television station with national reach is critical of Mr. Orban and financially independent from his government.Mr. Orban’s previously divided political rivals have formed a united front to fight elections in April but have been unsuccessful in shaking his stranglehold on the news media.“It is very difficult to compete if you have a competitor that does not really care about profit,” said Milija Zekovic, the chief executive of SBB.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesIn Serbia, the media space for critical voices has shrunk so far, said Zoran Sekulic, the founder and editor of FoNet, an independent news agency, that “the level of control, direct and indirect, is like in the 1990s” under Mr. Milosevic, whom Mr. Vucic served as information minister.Journalists, Mr. Sekulic added, do not get killed anymore, but the system of control endures, only “upgraded and improved” to ensure fawning coverage without brute force.When United Group started a relatively opposition-friendly newspaper last year, it could not find a printer in Serbia willing to touch it. The newspaper is printed in neighboring Croatia and sent into Serbia.Dragan Djilas, the leader of Serbia’s main opposition party and formerly a media executive, complained that while Mr. Vucic could talk for hours without interruption on Serbia’s main television channels, opposition politicians appeared mostly only as targets for attack. “I am like an actor in a silent movie,” he said.N1, the only channel that sometimes lets him talk, is widely watched in Belgrade, the capital, but is blocked in many towns and cities where mayors are members of Mr. Vucic’s party. Even in Belgrade, the cable company that hosts the channel has faced trouble entering new housing projects built by property developers with close ties to the government. A huge new housing area under construction for security officials near Belgrade, for example, has refused to install SBB’s cable, the company said.Viewers of pro-government channels “live in a parallel universe,” said Zeljko Bodrozic, the president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia. Channels like TV Pink, the most popular national station, which features sexually explicit reality shows and long statements by Mr. Vucic, he said, “don’t just indoctrinate, but make people stupid.”A new housing area under construction for security officials near Belgrade has refused to install SBB’s cable, the company said.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesThe European Union and the United States have repeatedly rebuked Mr. Vucic over the lack of media pluralism, but, eager to keep Serbia from embracing Russia or stoking unrest in neighboring Bosnia, have not pushed hard.This has given Mr. Vucic a largely free hand to expand the media control that Rasa Nedeljkov, the program director in Belgrade for the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, described as “the skeleton of his whole system.” In some ways, he added, Serbia’s space for critical media is now smaller than it was under Mr. Milosevic, who “didn’t really care about having total control” and left various regional outlets untouched.“Vucic is now learning from this mistake by Milosevic,” Mr. Nedeljkov said. Mr. Vucic and his allies, Mr. Nedeljkov added, “are not tolerating anything that is different.”Belgrade this month.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesOnce powerful independent voices have gradually been co-opted. The radio station B92, which regularly criticized Mr. Milosevic during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, for example, is now owned by a supporter of Mr. Vucic and mostly parrots the government line.Journalists and others who upset Mr. Vucic face venomous attacks by tabloid newspapers loyal to the authorities. Mr. Solak, the United Group chairman, for example, has been denounced as “Serbia’s biggest scammer,” a crook gnawing at the country “like scabies” and a traitor working for Serbia’s foreign foes.Mr. Solak, who lives outside Serbia because of safety concerns, said he had become such a regular target for abuse that when he does not get attacked, “my friends call me and ask: What happened? Are you OK?” More

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      Éric Zemmour, French Far-Right Candidate, Convicted for Inciting Racial Hatred

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      Éric Zemmour, a pundit whose presidential run has upended French politics, had called unaccompanied migrant children “assassins” and “rapists” on television.PARIS — Éric Zemmour, the anti-immigrant far-right pundit who is running in France’s presidential elections, was convicted on Monday on charges of inciting racial hatred after saying on television in 2020 that unaccompanied child migrants were “thieves,” “rapists,” and “assassins.”Mr. Zemmour, who had stood by his comments and said courts should not police political speech, was fined 10,000 euros, or $11,400, by a criminal court in Paris.The verdict represented the third conviction and fine for Mr. Zemmour, who has a long history of incendiary comments, mostly about immigration, over the past decade, though he has been acquitted on other occasions.Mr. Zemmour has repeatedly run afoul of French laws that punish defamation or acts provoking hatred or violence on the basis of race, religion and other factors over the past decade, and he still faces several trials on similar charges.In a statement announcing that he would appeal Thursday’s conviction, Mr. Zemmour said that the court had issued an “ideological and stupid” ruling against a “free spirit.”“We want the end of this system that tightens the noose around freedom of expression and democratic debate a bit more each day,” he added.Mr. Zemmour surged in the polls before even announcing his presidential bid in November, and he has scrambled mainstream French politics with his fiery nationalist rhetoric and apocalyptic tone, but his campaign has lost momentum in recent weeks.With the elections about three months away, Mr. Zemmour has struggled to get the official backing of at least 500 elected representatives — a requirement to appear on the ballot in the presidential election. He now stands at about 13 percent in the polls, in fourth place, while President Emmanuel Macron, who was elected in 2017 and is widely expected to run to stay in office, is polling first.Mr. Zemmour has explicitly fashioned himself as a French-style Donald J. Trump, with inflammatory comments and attacks against the news media and French elites that have repeatedly drawn outrage and have fueled his rise to prominence.The case was rooted in comments that Mr. Zemmour made in September 2020. Appearing on CNews — a Fox-style television network that has grown by giving airtime to right-wing pundits to rail on issues like crime, immigration, climate and Covid — Mr. Zemmour was asked about minors who immigrate to France from Africa or the Middle East without parents or guardians and often end up isolated as they face the hardships of city streets or squalid camps.“They don’t belong here, they are thieves, they are assassins, they are rapists, that’s all they are,” Mr. Zemmour said. “They should be sent back, they shouldn’t even come.”Politicians and antiracism groups quickly condemned the comments, and prosecutors opened an investigation based on the laws that prohibit defamation and provocation.Mr. Zemmour’s lawyer had moved to dismiss the charges, arguing during the trial, held in November, that unaccompanied children migrants were not an ethnic or racial group.Arié Alimi, a lawyer for the French Human Rights League, a plaintiff in the case, told reporters at the courthouse that Mr. Zemmour’s politics were based on “hatred” and the stigmatizing of people “because of their origins, their religion or their race.”“It’s an important ruling, because he has to understand that we won’t let it stand,” Mr. Alimi said.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      What Will Marianne Williamson Do Next?

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      Marianne Williamson was invoking Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy and Thoreau, barefoot in a brownstone in Brooklyn. “If everything you’re doing is making everybody happy, you’re not doing the right stuff yet,” she said to a room of about 30 people.That September day, Ms. Williamson, the author, spiritual teacher and erstwhile presidential candidate, was wearing dramatic draping sleeves like a wizard’s. The attendees were mostly writers, including the playwright Leah Nanako Winkler and Derek Simonds, the showrunner of “The Sinner,” and were there by private invitation.What drew this crowd was the same thing that has pulled audiences toward Ms. Williamson for almost 40 years. It was the first time she had spoken at an in-person event since the pandemic began, a radical change for a person whose career is tied to public speaking. What Ms. Williamson ultimately advised, knowing her audience, was this: that each of us should sit down and pray, “Dear God, let me write one true sentence.”Ms. Williamson, 69, presents with the same fire that has fueled her career from the beginning, when she made a reputation for herself speaking around Los Angeles in the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis hit. (“In a very real way, gay men in Los Angeles gave me my career,” she said in an interview.)After ending her presidential campaign in January 2020, Ms. Williamson moved from New York to Washington, D.C. (by way of Iowa), where she has continued her speaking career on Zoom and churned out a virtual tsunami of content, including a daily newsletter, a morning meditation and a podcast with a political focus.But it was her presidential run that raised her profile, and earning potential, exponentially. Many Americans encountered her for the first time, via the persona — the parody version — that quickly enveloped her, that of a crystal-worshiping, anti-vaccine (this was pre-Covid vaccines), new-age weirdo who would dare talk about love in a political debate. Who would dare to make love the very center of her platform, in fact.Ms. Williamson announcing her presidential campaign at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Calif.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThinking BigI first met Ms. Williamson in Los Angeles, late in the fall of 2017, at a conference called Summit, hosted by four tech entrepreneurs. Ms. Williamson was scheduled to give a speech.Before it began, I was looking for a seat when a woman introduced herself to me as a friend of Ms. Williamson’s. Earlier that day, she said, Marianne had broken her toe, so she was likely to speak sitting down, rather than pace the stage as usual. Yet a few minutes later, there was Ms. Williamson, pacing back and forth in stunningly high heels. She stayed on her feet the whole time, as if nothing were the matter at all.Ms. Williamson became famous at 40, when she published her first book, “A Return to Love,” and Oprah Winfrey, pre-book club, had her on the show. The book was inspired by and based on “A Course in Miracles,” by Helen Schucman, which Ms. Williamson credits with saving her from a rootless youth of cabaret singing and “bad boys and good dope,” as she writes in the book. (No more than what others of her age were doing, she is quick to clarify now.)But though she began by writing about miracles and is now preparing to write a book about Jesus — “for people who do not necessarily relate to the dogma or the doctrine of the Christian religion” — she is very direct about one point. “I’m a Jew,” she said. “You’re born a Jew, you die a Jew.” Her spirituality is intended as ecumenical, and she has been building and refining it for decades. She sees her effort to branch out into politics — running for a California congressional seat in 2014, then for president in 2020 — as a natural extension of her earlier work.“Spirituality isn’t some lane off to the side somewhere,” she said. “It’s an understanding of the dynamics that underlie everything. This isn’t a matter of ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if America decided to change?’ It’s a matter of ‘We must change, or we will lose it all.’”Diagnosis: ‘Kooky’One of Ms. Williamson’s top Google hits to this day is from The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts humor column, in which she is fictionally quoted as saying, “I’d like to reallocate the government money that we’re spending on vaccinating children to something useful, like taking mediums underwater to ask eldritch spirits, ‘Who are we? Why are we all here?’”Ms. Williamson has never been easy to categorize, and she believes there are deeper reasons for her ridicule. “Those who were invested in calling me kooky didn’t do it because they thought what I was saying was silly,” Ms. Williamson said. “Making me appear ridiculous was the chosen way to marginalize my message.”It was one week after her Brooklyn salon, and we were in the dining room of the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. There was extra security in the lobby and temporary metal detectors — it was rumored the Israeli prime minister was in the hotel — but Ms. Williamson had entered casually, having shown her required proof of vaccination.On that subject, by the way, she said that her views on vaccination are an example of the ways in which she has been misrepresented. During her campaign, before the coronavirus had entered the picture, Ms. Williamson called mandatory vaccinations “draconian” and “Orwellian,” but then walked her position back on Twitter the next day: “I am sorry I made comments which sounded as though I question the validity of life-saving vaccines. That is not my feeling and I realize that I misspoke.”Now, she told me, “it was one of several areas where the truth of who I am was deeply mischaracterized.” She also acknowledges, however, that she has questioned the pharmaceutical industry in the past, including the safety of some vaccines. In 2012, as Andrew Kaczynski reported on CNN.com, “Williamson said she ‘agonized’ as a mother over the decision to vaccinate her children and that she could see ‘both sides’ of the issue.”More recently, Ms. Williamson alluded to this background when she said to me: “What big pharma does, if you make any statement questioning the safety of vaccines, they call you anti-vax.”And don’t get her started on the crystals. “In all of my books, and in thousands of my online lectures and seminars,” she said, “you will never find the word ‘crystal.’” (On this point, I’ll have to take her word for it, such is the volume of output.)The Outsider OnstageThroughout her presidential campaign, she was dogged by criticisms that went beyond crystals: that she had been controlling and temperamental at organizations she created in the 1990s to provide free services to AIDS patients; that in her spiritual teachings, she had made some of her followers feel they should have been able to will away their disease; that her book on weight loss was anti-fat. And, more generally, and perhaps more fatally, that with her lack of political experience and her emotion-based language, she simply did not belong on that stage.Nothing could have highlighted her outsider status more than the optics of the first Democratic debate, in Miami, in the summer of 2019. In contrast to the unbroken line of candidates in dark blues and blacks, she wore a sea foam green suit and stood on the very edge of the stage. She did not speak at all until minute 14 of the broadcast, when she could be heard saying, faintly, “I’m sorry,” in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the discourse about student loan debt.Ms. Williamson at the first Democratic presidential debate in Miami in 2019, with fellow candidates John Hickenlooper and Andrew Yang.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut it wasn’t until Minute 27, well after a cringe-worthy intervention by Kirsten Gillibrand on Ms. Williamson’s behalf, that Ms. Williamson was finally granted the floor. This was when she was able to make her larger point: that the Democrats weren’t going to beat Donald Trump with a “shallow” health care plan. “Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t have a health care system in the United States,” she said. “We have a sickness care system in the United States.” Her first answer of the night earned rousing applause.Many of Ms. Williamson’s admirers are drawn to her progressive positions and the refreshing and unapologetic way in which she expresses them. She is against the “military industrial complex.” She has called for reparations for Black Americans since 1998 when her book “Healing the Soul of America” was published.“I do not believe the average American is racist, but I believe the average American does not truly realize how tilted our public resources are away from American black citizens and in the direction of America’s richer white citizens,” she writes in that book. “We do not have in America today a consensus that there is even a debt to be paid. What is this in our national temperament? Why is it that we resist the recognition of the tremendous moral debt we owe to a people brought here against their will and enslaved for centuries?”She was asked about reparations in the second Democratic debate. “It’s not $500 billion in ‘financial assistance,’” she said, echoing the moderator’s phrasing. “It’s 200 to 500 billion dollars of payment of a debt that is owed.” Around the time of the debate, she told me, she had been acutely aware that “race in America was about to blow.”Sipping an Arnold Palmer at the Regency, Ms. Williamson recalled that running for president was both inspiring and scorching. She was exhilarated by the primary state voters and their commitment to their role in American politics, but at the same time, “it is such a brutal and brutalizing experience to run, and in my case even more so,” she said.“I was the most Googled person in 49 states after the second debate, and clearly someone very high up said get that woman off the stage. If I had been in the third debate, I think I might have been an inconvenience to a few people.” Along with other candidates, she didn’t qualify because her campaign did not meet certain finance requirements.Ms. Williamson ended her candidacy on Jan. 10, 2020. By then, rumors of an infectious new virus were growing more insistent every day. She had run out of money, and most of the infrastructure of her campaign was gone.But Ms. Williamson now says she regrets stepping down when she did. At the very end, when she was deciding whether to quit, she noticed that it was her female friends who urged her to be done with it already and her male friends who urged her to keep going, often with sports analogies, like “you still have time on the clock.” Which amused her, because she knows next to nothing about sports. “I didn’t enter the race with the a tough enough skin,” she told me.“When people lie about you and create false narratives about you and misrepresent you, is that bruising? Yes. However, what is that compared to the fact that the Taliban has announced they are going to start public executions and cutting peoples’ hands off again? I have perspective.”And yet. “It took me a year to forgive myself and others,” she said.Molly Matalon for The New York Times‘Car Mechanics’ of WashingtonThe next time I saw Ms. Williamson, she seemed more guarded, more vulnerable, and a touch more exasperated than she had in New York. We met in her home in Washington, a modern glass-walled apartment less than a mile from the White House. She moved into it soon after ending her candidacy, she said, so she could “keep an ear to the ground.”To her, Washington is still essentially business as usual. “D.C. has a lot of good political car mechanics,” she said. “That’s not the problem. The problem is that the car is on the wrong road. The car is heading towards a cliff.”The week before, the Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel had tweeted a photo of Ms. Williamson and Andrew Yang, onstage at an event for Mr. Yang’s new book. Mr. Weigel quoted Ms. Williamson saying, “We don’t want to be Jill Steins, but in any other country, any other advanced democracy, they have multiple political parties.” The tweet predictably triggered speculation about what, exactly, Ms. Williamson intends to do next.She may not want to be Jill Stein — the Green Party candidate whose presidential run is often cited as a reason Mr. Trump won — but she also doesn’t want to dismiss Jill Stein. After all, Ms. Williamson said, “we need a viable other. I support any third-party effort that makes a thoughtful, articulate critique of the fundamental flaws in contemporary capitalism and its effects on people and the planet” When she ran for Congress in California, in 2014, it was as an independent.Ms. Williamson sees the two-party system of today as blighted and controlled by corporate interests. “Republican policies represent a nosedive for our democracy,” she said. “And Democratic policies represent a managed decline.” And yet she also believes that this is the year it will change. “The status quo is unsustainable,” she said. “There is too much human despair out there.”She is not willing to say whether she’ll run again, and dodged the question over the course of our many conversations. About two weeks ago, when Politico published an article suggesting that President Biden would face a primary challenge from a progressive candidate, “such as former Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner, 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson or millionaire and $18-an-hour minimum wage advocate Joe Sanberg,” Ms. Williamson declined to comment.James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist, is skeptical. “She ran before and she didn’t get a lot of votes,” he said. “She’s kind of an interesting person to say the least, but I don’t think politics is her calling. She always struck me as a new age Bernie Bro.”In some ways, Ms. Williamson is like a Rorschach test: Many thrill to her message, while others doubt her sincerity and believe she is feeding into the speculation about a second presidential run only in order to linger on the stage.Ms. Williamson campaigning in New Hampshire in 2019. She is not willing to say whether she’ll run again.Elizabeth Frantz for The New York TimesThe night Mr. Trump was elected, Ms. Williamson was speaking at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York, as she did every Tuesday. A childhood friend, Geri Roper, was in the audience. Afterward, “sad and shocked,” the two women drank Lillet and Perrier cocktails at the bar at the NoMad Hotel, Ms. Roper recalled. “You should run for president,” Ms. Roper told her friend.There are a lot of things, big and small, that Ms. Williamson does not want in the public discourse. She is particularly private on the subject of her daughter. A single mother, Ms. Williamson has never revealed who her daughter’s father is, and is in fact a bit touchy on the subject — on the grounds of, this is 2022, why should she or any woman have to explain?Her daughter, India Williamson, 31, is newly married and is working toward a Ph.D. in history in London. She watched her mother’s campaign closely, and the two were in constant contact. She called the characterization of her mother as a woo woo new-age type in some of the media coverage of her as “so off the mark that it was humorous.”“She’s not crystal fuzzy,” she said, describing her mother as a fearless businesswoman. “The thought of her as the crystal lady is just not the woman I’ve known since the day I was born.”Though Marianne is guarded about her personal life, an accidental “we” slipped out when I asked her where she was on Jan. 6, as in “we watched it on TV like everyone else.” She may not reveal much about her intimate life, but she lights up when she talks about her father, the late Houston immigration lawyer Sam Williamson, whose politics still reverberate throughout her own.A favorite story of Ms. Williamson’s is from 1965, when American involvement in the Vietnam War was rapidly expanding. “I came home from school in the seventh grade, and I told my parents that my social studies teacher had said that if we didn’t fight on the shores of Vietnam, we would be fighting on the shores of Hawaii,” she said. “And I proceeded to explain to them the domino theory. My father’s face turned so white and he stood up, and said to my mother, ‘Dammit Sophie Ann, get them visas, we’re going to Saigon.’”The family flew to Vietnam, where Ms. Williamson remembered that her father “explained to us that the war was wrong. And he explained to us about the military industrial complex. And he explained to us about American imperialism.” Afterward, her mother said: “Sam, now that the children are adequately informed about the military industrial complex, can we please stop in Paris on the way home?”Ms. Williamson’s childhood friend Carrie Shoemake wasn’t particularly surprised when Marianne’s father took his family to Vietnam to witness the war. “The spirit of right and wrong moved more strongly in their family than in any other family I’d ever hung out with,” Ms. Shoemake said.Molly Matalon for The New York TimesThe ‘Horse Race’Ms. Williamson was resistant to providing a lot of details about how her campaign had affected her, perhaps because she didn’t want to sound self-pitying.Only after several repeated questions did she tell a story about the day when she was in her hotel room in Los Angeles and she turned on the news and there, Joe Lockhart, a former presidential press secretary, was saying she was “dangerous and crazy.”“I just sat there with my jaw dropped open,” she said. Later, she DM’d him. He replied, Ms. Williamson, said: “The difference between you and me is that my politics are based on logic and yours are based on feelings.”“I thought: This man knows nothing about my politics.” Ms. Williamson paused. “But that’s just part of politics.” More important to her, she said, were experiences on the other end of the spectrum. Like the woman who sent $10 to support her campaign and wrote, “When I get paid next week, I’ll send another ten.”In New York, Ms. Williamson had told me: “I’m not at an age where I can take any more five- or 10-year detours. I’m at an age where, whatever the last chapter is, it has to be deliberate, intentional and well done.”Asked again, this week, if she was ready to announce that she intends to run for president, she just laughed and declined to answer. Later she sent a text. “The media is always interested in the horse race, but to me that’s not what matters most,” it read. “What matters most is not just the who but the what. The ‘what’ is that we have someone, both as a candidate and as a president, who stands for a fundamental course correction.”So, that means … what, exactly? The text ended with this: “Whatever role I can best play in that is the role I’d like to play.” More

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      Marine Le Pen, Kicking Off Her Campaign, Tries to Embody Credibility

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      Ms. Le Pen has bet that sanitizing her far-right party’s image will finally bear fruit in the run-up to France’s presidential election in April.PARIS — Marine Le Pen has long used fiery rhetoric and hard-hitting proposals to fight her way to power in France. But for her third presidential bid, she has struck an unusual tone: serenity.On Saturday, Ms. Le Pen, a far-right leader, used social media to kick off the final stretch of her campaign with a 3.5-minute video speech intended to portray her as a credible and composed stateswoman. A large white scarf tied around her neck, she is pictured in the video strolling around the Louvre’s glass pyramid and speaking in a reassuring tone, her words accompanied by soft piano music.“Faced with the dangers that await us and the challenges that lie ahead,” Ms. Le Pen said, “I call on you to follow the path of reason and of the heart.”Her speech’s peaceful overtones were a direct response to the violent messaging put forth by Éric Zemmour, another far-right candidate, whose campaign launch video was riddled with clips of crumbling churches, burning cars and violent clashes with the police that projected an image of a chaotic France.Mr. Zemmour has said he is running for president to “save” his country, which he portrays as assailed by Islam, immigration and leftist identity politics. By contrast, Ms. Le Pen’s video showed her surrounded by smiling people as she toured France, visiting businesses and port cities.The stakes are high for Ms. Le Pen less than 100 days before the presidential election. After finishing in third place in the 2012 campaign and being defeated in the 2017 runoff by Emmanuel Macron, she hopes her third bid will be the winning one. To try to make that happen, she has bet on dropping the populist messaging that once characterized her, and has instead redoubled efforts to “un-demonize” her party, the National Rally, which has often been associated with flashes of antisemitism and xenophobia.But fierce competition among right-wing candidates has eroded Ms. Le Pen’s early lead in the polls and has led many to wonder if she will always remain a long shot.Ms. Le Pen’s video — set at the world-renowned Louvre museum, which was once the main residence of France’s kings — was also a way for her to revive a confrontation with Mr. Macron, who is widely expected to seek another term. In 2017, when he was president-elect, Mr. Macron delivered his victory speech in front of the same glass pyramid at the Louvre.“Macron is the opponent,” said Philippe Olivier, a close aide to Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament. “That’s what the symbolic act of being at the Louvre is about.”Until a few months ago, Ms. Le Pen was expected to be Mr. Macron’s main challenger, in a rematch of the 2017 vote. She has spent the past four years trying to foster her credibility and has worked to rebrand the National Rally’s extremist ideas as respectable.Éric Zemmour, at his first campaign rally, last month in Villepinte, near Paris.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockEven as she has hewed to her party’s harsh nationalist, anti-immigrant vision, Ms. Le Pen has softened her longtime populist economic agenda by dropping a proposal to exit the eurozone and advocating more orthodox debt policies. She has also broadened her platform to include more day-to-day issues like energy prices, the theme of her campaign stop on Friday in Saint-Malo, in western France.But two dark-horse candidates have emerged and have made the prospect of reaching a runoff with Mr. Macron more uncertain: Mr. Zemmour, a polarizing far-right polemicist who has seen a meteoric rise in the polls, and Valérie Pécresse, a center-right politician whose hard-line messaging on national security and immigration issues step on some of Ms. Le Pen’s own favorite campaign themes.Recent polls show Ms. Le Pen and Ms. Pécresse running neck and neck in the first round of April’s election, with each expected to get about 17 percent of the vote. But that still puts them about 10 points behind the incumbent, Mr. Macron.The biggest threat to Ms. Le Pen’s ambitions is Mr. Zemmour. Studies have shown that his full-throated promotion of reactionary ideas has cost her many potential voters, and some have said that the two far-right candidates could sabotage each other’s chances.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      Biden-Cheney 2024?

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      As I’ve noted before, one reason I pay very close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian arena is that a lot of trends get perfected there first and then go global — airline hijacking, suicide bombing, building a wall, the challenges of pluralism and lots more. It’s Off Broadway to Broadway, so what’s playing there these days that might be a harbinger for politics in the U.S.?Answer: It’s the most diverse national unity government in Israel’s history, one that stretches from Jewish settlers on the right all the way to an Israeli-Arab Islamist party and super-liberals on the left. Most important, it’s holding together, getting stuff done and muting the hyperpolarization that was making Israel ungovernable.Is that what America needs in 2024 — a ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney? Or Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or Stacey Abrams and Liz Cheney, or Amy Klobuchar and Liz Cheney? Or any other such combination. Before you leap into the comments section, hear me out.In June, after an utterly wild period in which Israel held four national elections over two years and kept failing to produce a stable governing majority, the lambs there actually lay down with the lions.Key Israeli politicians swallowed their pride, softened policy edges and came together for a four-year national unity government — led by rightist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and left-of-center Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. (They are to switch places after two years.) And for the first time, an Israeli Arab party, the Islamist organization Raam played a vital role in cementing an Israeli coalition.What forced everyone’s hand? A broad agreement that Israeli politics was being held hostage by then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who resisted putting together any government that he would not lead, apparently because, if he didn’t lead, he could lose his chance at some kind of immunity from prosecution on multiple corruption charges that could lead to prison.Sound familiar?Netanyahu was just a smarter Donald Trump, constantly delegitimizing the mainstream media and the Israeli justice system and vigorously exploiting social/religious/ethnic fault lines to divide and rule. He eventually stressed out the system so much that several of his former allies broke away to forge a unity coalition with Israeli center, left and Arab parties.As Hebrew University of Jerusalem religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal put it to me: “What happened here is that there is still enough civic responsibility — not everywhere, but enough — that the political class felt that the continued breakdown of the rule of law and more elections, which was leading nowhere, was an indulgence that Israel simply could not afford, given its highly diverse population and dangerous neighborhood.”This new Israeli government will neither annex the West Bank nor make final peace with the Palestinians, Halbertal noted, but it is one “that will attempt to renew the relationship with the Palestinian Authority rather than weakening it. It is one that prevented a racist anti-Arab party allied to Netanyahu from entering the cabinet.” And it is one that is counterbalancing Bibi’s strong embrace of the less-than-democratic, ultranationalist states in Europe and evangelical Christians and Trump Republicans in America “by rebuilding ties with the Democrats, liberal American Jews and liberal parties in Europe.”As Israeli leaders treat each other — and Israeli and Palestinians leaders treat each other — with a little more respect, and a little less contempt, because they are out of Facebook and into face-to-face relations again, stuff is getting done. Unity has not meant paralysis. This coalition in November passed Israel’s first national budget since 2018! So far, every attempt to topple it has failed.Mansour Abbas, the Islamist party’s leader, even recently stunned many Israeli Arabs and Jews when he publicly declared, “Israel was born a Jewish state, that was the decision of the people.” He continued: “It was born this way and it will remain this way. The question is, what is the status of the Arab citizen in the Jewish State of Israel?’’Could this play come to Broadway? I asked Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” after he presented some similar ideas last week to my colleague David Leonhardt.America is facing an existential moment, Levitsky told me, noting that the Republican Party has shown that it isn’t committed any longer to playing by democratic rules, leaving the United States uniquely threatened among Western democracies.That all means two things, he continued. First, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. must never be able to retake the White House. Since Trump has made embracing the Big Lie — that the 2020 election was a fraud — a prerequisite for being in the Trump G.O.P., his entire cabinet most likely would be people who denied, or worked to overturn, Biden’s election victory. There is no reason to believe they would cede power the next time.“In a democracy,” Levitsky said, “parties lose popularity and they lose elections. That is normal. But a democracy cannot afford for this Republican Party to win again because they have demonstrated a ton of evidence that they are no longer committed to the democratic rules of the game.”So Biden-Cheney is not such a crazy idea? I asked.“Not at all,” said Levitsky. “We should be ready to talk about Liz Cheney as part of a blow-your-mind Israeli-style fusion coalition with Democrats. It is a coalition that says: ‘There is only one overriding goal right now — that is saving our democratic system.’”That brings us to the second point. Saving a democratic system requires huge political sacrifice, added Levitsky. “It means A.O.C. campaigning for Liz Cheney” and it means Liz Cheney “putting on the shelf” many policy goals she and other Republicans cherish. “But that is what it takes, and if you don’t do it, just look back and see why democracy collapsed in countries like Germany, Spain and Chile. The democratic forces there should have done it, but they didn’t.”To put it differently, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. is trying to gain power through an election, but it’s trying to increase its odds of winning by gaming the system in battleground states. America’s small-d democrats need to counter those moves and increase their odds of winning. The best way to do that is by creating a broad national unity vehicle that enables more Republicans to leave the Trump cult — without having to just become big-D Democrats. We all have to be small-d democrats now, or we won’t have a system to be big-D or big-R anythings.That is what civic-minded Israeli elites did when they created a broad national unity coalition whose main mission was to make the basic functions of government work again and safeguard the integrity of Israel’s democracy.Such a vehicle in America, said Levitsky, should “be able to shave a small but decisive fraction of Republican votes away from Trump.” In a tight race, it would take only 5 or 10 percent of Republicans leaving Trump to assure victory. And that is what matters.This is the democratic way of defeating a threat to democracy. Not doing it is how democracies die. I am quite aware that it is highly unlikely; America does not have the flexibility of a parliamentary, proportional-representation system, like Israel’s, and there is no modern precedent for such a cross-party ticket. And yet, I still think it is worth raising. There is no precedent for how close we’re coming to an unraveling of our democracy, either.As Levitsky put it: “If we treat this as a normal election, our democracy stands a coin flip’s chance of survival. Those are odds that I don’t want to run. We need to communicate to the public and the establishment that this is not a normal donkeys-versus-elephants election. This is democracy versus authoritarians.”This is not for the long term, noted Levitsky: “I want to get back as quickly as possible to where I can disagree with Liz Cheney on every policy issue” — and that is the most we have to worry about — “but not until our democracy is safe.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Democrats Aren't Attacking Ron Johnson for His Outlandish Comments

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      Ron Johnson has a history of making outlandish comments. But Democrats aren’t focusing on those for now.If you don’t live in Wisconsin, you probably know Ron Johnson as the senator who has suggested gargling with mouthwash to ward off the coronavirus. Or, you might know him as the guy who has said Jan. 6 didn’t “seem like an armed insurrection.” Up until this weekend, he was also the Republican dragging his feet on whether to run for a third Senate term.On Sunday, Johnson finally jumped in. And Democrats responded immediately with a television ad that provided an early glimpse of their 2022 messaging.Noticeably absent from the ad, which was sponsored by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, are Johnson’s stances on two of the biggest issues that the country is facing: the pandemic and political violence. It doesn’t mention that he’s questioned the efficacy of vaccines, or has used his perch on the Homeland Security Committee to amplify Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen election. In fact, it doesn’t mention any of the incendiary comments that have landed him in the national spotlight.Instead, the ad begins: “Has Ron Johnson been looking out for himself, or you?” It cites an AP headline, “​​Report: Johnson pushed for tax break benefitting megadonors.”Cut-and-paste attacksIn Washington, Democrats bash Trump and his allies for elevating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and for sowing misinformation about the coronavirus. But if Wisconsin is an indicator of what’s to come, Democrats seem to be gravitating toward conventional candidate attack lines that have little to do with the political outrage of the moment.For the 2022 midterms, Democrats may be betting that the generic conventions that have worked in countless campaigns — attacking candidates’ voting records, elevating so-called “kitchen-table” issues — are more likely to move the voters they need to reach than righteous condemnation over fringe ideas. It’s a return to the plutocrat-bashing that was so successful for Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election against Mitt Romney, and a rejection of Terry McAuliffe’s more recent efforts to anchor Glenn Youngkin to Trump in the Virginia governor’s race.They might be hoping to reach the surprisingly large group of Wisconsin voters who haven’t formed an opinion of Johnson — just over 20 percent, according to polling data from the Marquette Law School.Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, put it this way: “It’s what affects people more than what offends people.”Top targetWisconsin is one of the country’s most fiercely contested political battlegrounds. Since Trump won the state in 2016, shattering Hillary Clinton’s “blue wall,” Democrats have crawled their way back. In 2018, Tony Evers was elected governor and Senator Tammy Baldwin won re-election, both Democrats. In 2020, Biden won the state, by barely more than 20,000 votes.That makes Johnson a top target for Democrats, who are hoping that defeating him will help them hang onto their Senate majority. Republican primaries are still sorting themselves out in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona — which means that Johnson will be the Democratic Party’s chief villain for the next few months, too.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans are already poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s race will be at the center of the political universe this year, but there are several important contests across the country.Key Issues: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.Multiple Democrats are vying to take on Johnson, though they all entered the race before they knew he was running again. Among them are Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, along with Alex Lasry, an executive with the Milwaukee Bucks, and Tom Nelson, a county executive.Did Trump change the game?Johnson isn’t the only candidate who has repeated misinformation on the pandemic. In Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor who has advocated for using unproven drugs to treat Covid-19, could become the Senate nominee for Republicans. Will Democrats attack him for that, or would they go after him as a wealthy carpetbagger who has been living for years in New Jersey?In the pre-Trump world, Democrats actively rooted for opponents known for making outlandish or false statements, because they made for easier targets. Take Todd Akin, a Missouri Senate candidate who was ostracized from the Republican Party in 2012 for saying: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Claire McCaskill, the Democrat who defeated Akin, later confessed to shotgunning a beer when Akin won the G.O.P. primary.Now, however, many Democrats doubt that comments like Akin’s would register with voters in the same way.“The difference would be that as soon as it happened, there would just be a chorus on the right that would just say, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s true. A woman’s body can just shut that down,’” said Jason Kander, a Democrat who fell short in the 2016 Missouri Senate race.Candidates, taking their cues from Trump, have also learned to recast their gaffes as bold truth-telling. As Johnson wrote in his announcement in The Wall Street Journal, “Countless people have encouraged me to run, saying they rely on me to be their voice, to speak plain and obvious truths other elected leaders shirk from expressing — truths the elite in government, mainstream media and Big Tech don’t want you to hear.”Partisanship has also deepened since the pre-Trump era. Even if some voters find certain rhetoric to be unsavory, they would rather not vote for someone who would build the opposing party’s majority. They’re voting against not just the candidate on the ballot in front of them, but also Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell.And then there’s the simple magnitude of the challenge: If Democrats are going to mention the things that they find to be the most outlandish, they then have to spend time explaining why it’s outlandish.“Democrats are going to have to come up with some new messaging, because everything they’re talking about now is old,” said Brandon Scholz, a Republican and former strategist based in Wisconsin. “They have covered everything he’s said.”It might just be easier to discredit the messenger, rather than the message. As Wikler, the Democratic state chairman, explained it, the allegations about Johnson’s self-dealing are more likely to break through to ordinary Wisconsinites than his comments about the coronavirus or the Capitol riot.“For voters that aren’t paying attention closely to politics from day to day,” he said, “that’s the stuff that feels most extreme and disappointing.”What to read tonightA New York Times analysis of climate data by Krishna Karra and Tim Wallace found that temperatures in the United States last year “set more all-time heat and cold records than any other year since 1994.”The Justice Department is forming a unit to combat domestic terrorism, Katie Benner reports.“Harry Reid lived for the Senate floor. He also lived on it,” writes Carl Hulse in a remembrance of the late Senate majority leader, who will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday.BRIEFING BOOKIn his speech, President Biden pressed the Senate to alter the filibuster.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe New York Times covered every angle of Tuesday’s appearance by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta, where they delivered forceful, back-to-back addresses demanding the Senate act on federal voting rights legislation.“We’re here today to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle,” Biden said, connecting those imposing new restrictions on voter access to the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “The right to vote and have that vote counted is democracy’s threshold liberty.”Reacting to the speech, Spencer Overton, head of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the author of a book on voter suppression, told us: “Biden was not silent today. He drew clear lines that you’re either for democracy or you’re against democracy.”Here are some highlights of our coverage:Biden is pressing the Senate to alter the filibuster, an institutional rule that effectively requires a 60-vote threshold for most legislation, including two voting rights bills Republicans uniformly oppose.That’s leading to an angry pushback from Senate Republicans, Carl Hulse reports. “Republicans are going to be furious over those references putting them on the side of Southern racists like George Wallace and Bull Connor,” he predicts.In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who stood up to Trump’s false claims of election fraud, accused Democrats of pushing for a “federal elections takeover.”Georgia has become the crucible for the national struggle over voting rights, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Astead W. Herndon write.Nick Corasaniti explains what the battle over voter rights and elections is fundamentally about.One more thing…At a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Anthony Fauci was caught on a hot mic muttering under his breath after an exchange with Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas.Marshall had been pressing Fauci to share his personal financial disclosure forms, insinuating that the National Institutes of Health’s top infectious disease expert might be benefiting improperly from inside information.“Wouldn’t you agree with me that you see things before members of Congress would see them, so that there’s an air of appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on?” Marshall said. His staff had been unable to find the forms, he added.Fauci replied that Marshall was “totally incorrect” and that his records were publicly available.“What a moron,” Fauci could be heard whispering afterward. “Jesus Christ.”Asked about the encounter, an NIH spokesperson replied, “Dr. Fauci’s public financial disclosure reports are releasable through the Ethics in Government Act.” She added: “Anyone can obtain them by submitting OGE Form 201 request, as described on the NIH FOIA portal website.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      En la carrera hacia el futuro, la historia sufre un nuevo asedio

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      Una ola de revisionismo engañoso se ha convertido en una epidemia tanto en las autocracias como en las democracias. Ha sido notablemente efectiva… y contagiosa.En Rusia, una organización dedicada a recordar los abusos de la era soviética se enfrenta a la liquidación ordenada por el Estado mientras el Kremlin impone en su lugar una historia nacional aséptica.En Hungría, el gobierno expulsó o asumió el control de las instituciones educativas y culturales y las utiliza para fabricar un patrimonio nacional xenófobo alineado con su política etnonacionalista.En China, el Partido Comunista en el poder usa abiertamente los libros de texto, las películas, los programas de televisión y las redes sociales para escribir una nueva versión de la historia china que se adapte mejor a las necesidades del partido.Y en Estados Unidos, Donald Trump y sus aliados siguenpromoviendo una falsa versión de las elecciones de 2020, en la que aseguran que los demócratas manipularon los votos y afirman que el ataque del 6 de enero para interrumpir la certificación del presidente Joe Biden fue en su mayoría un acto pacífico o escenificado por los opositores de Trump.Unos revoltosos se enfrentaron a las fuerzas del orden del Capitolio de EE. UU. el 6 de enero de 2021.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLa historia se reescribe todo el tiempo, ya sea por los académicos que actualizan sus supuestos, los activistas que reformulan el registro o los políticos que manipulan la memoria colectiva para sus propios fines.Pero una oleada de revisiones históricas falsas o engañosas de manera flagrante, tanto por parte de gobiernos democráticos como autoritarios, puede estar amenazando el ya debilitado sentido de un relato compartido y aceptado sobre el mundo.Los académicos creen que esta tendencia refleja algunas de las fuerzas que definen el siglo. Sociedades polarizadas y receptivas a las falsedades que afirman la identidad. El colapso de la fe en las instituciones centrales o en los árbitros de la verdad. El auge del nacionalismo. Tiranos cada vez más astutos. Líderes elegidos que giran cada vez más hacia el antiliberalismo.Como resultado, “deberíamos ser más propensos a ver el tipo de revisionismo histórico” impulsado por estos líderes, señaló Erica Frantz, politóloga de la Universidad Estatal de Michigan.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?En algunos lugares, los objetivos son ambiciosos: rediseñar una sociedad, empezando por su comprensión más básica de su patrimonio colectivo. Para subrayar la importancia de este proceso, el líder de China, Xi Jinping, repite la frase de un erudito confuciano del siglo XIX: “Para destruir un país, primero hay que erradicar su historia”.Victoria Park en Hong Kong el 4 de junio de 2020Lam Yik Fei para The New York TimesEl lugar estaba vacío el 4 de junio de 2021Lam Yik Fei para The New York TimesPero, a menudo y al parecer, el objetivo es más a corto plazo: provocar la rabia o el orgullo de manera que los ciudadanos se unan a la agenda del líder.Las mentiras electorales de Trump parecen ser un ejemplo de éxito. Han escindido el sentido compartido de la realidad de los estadounidenses de manera que podrían fortalecer a los aliados de Trump y justificar los esfuerzos para controlar la maquinaria de futuras elecciones. Si las tendencias globales que permiten tales tácticas continúan, puede que vengan más casos parecidos.Integrantes del Ejército Juvenil de Rusia practicaban el montaje de rifles, técnicas de primeros auxilios y artes marciales el mes pasado en Noginsk, cerca de Moscú.Sergey Ponomarev para The New York TimesUn mundo cambianteLa manera en que los gobiernos tienden a gobernar es uno de los cambios más importantes de esta tendencia.Un reciente artículo académico afirma que el autoritarismo “está sufriendo una transformación”, con lo que resume la opinión cada vez más extendida entre los académicos.Desde la Primavera Árabe y los levantamientos de la “revolución de colores” de hace una década, los dictadores han dejado de hacer hincapié en la represión por la fuerza bruta (aunque esto también sigue ocurriendo) y han adoptado técnicas más sutiles, como la manipulación de la información o la generación de divisiones, con el objetivo de prevenir la disidencia en lugar de suprimirla.Entre otros cambios, se sustituye la estruendosa prensa estatal por una serie de llamativos medios de comunicación alineados con el Estado y bots en las redes sociales, lo que crea la falsa sensación de que la narrativa oficial no se impone desde lo alto, sino que surge de forma orgánica.La propaganda más sofisticada, cuyo objetivo es la persuasión en lugar de la coerción, se manifiesta a menudo como un tipo particular de reescritura histórica. En lugar de limitarse a eliminar a los funcionarios desfavorecidos o los errores del gobierno, cultiva el orgullo nacional y el agravio colectivo con el fin de congregar a los ciudadanos.Por ejemplo, el Kremlin ha manipulado los recuerdos de la Unión Soviética y de su caída para convertirlos en una memoria de grandeza y asedio de la herencia rusa, justificando la necesidad de un líder más fuerte como Vladimir Putin y alentando a los rusos a apoyarlo con gratitud.Esto también se manifiesta en pequeñas formas. Putin ha insistido, falsamente, en que la OTAN prometió nunca extenderse al este de Alemania, justificando así la reciente agresión a Ucrania como una necesidad defensiva.Las democracias cambian también de modos dramáticos y los líderes se vuelven cada vez menos liberales y emplean más mano dura.Las crecientes divisiones sociales, junto con la creciente desconfianza popular hacia los expertos y las instituciones, a menudo contribuyen a encumbrar a esos líderes en primer lugar.Esto puede ser una fuente de apoyo para un líder dispuesto a desechar la historia oficial y sustituirla por algo más cercano a lo que sus partidarios quieren oír. Y da a esos líderes otro incentivo: justificar la toma de poder como algo esencial para derrotar a los enemigos externos o internos.Por ejemplo, Viktor Orbán, el primer ministro húngaro, hizo una revisión de la historia de Hungría para convertirla en una víctima inocente de los nazis y los comunistas, que logró salvarse gracias a su guía patriótica. De este modo, defiende el escepticismo hacia la inmigración como la continuación de una gran batalla nacional, que también le exige suprimir a los rivales, a los críticos y a las instituciones independientes.El presidente Donald J. Trump dijo en 2020 que promovería un nuevo plan de estudios escolar “pro estadounidense”.Oliver Contreras para The New York TimesPor qué funciona el revisionismo históricoSegún las investigaciones, la propaganda más eficaz de cualquier tipo, suele centrarse en una apelación a la identidad de algún grupo, como la raza o la religión.Hay un experimento famoso: a la gente se le da un examen, se le dice su puntuación y luego se le pide que califique la objetividad del examen. Las personas a las que se les dice que han obtenido una buena puntuación tienden a calificar la prueba de justa y rigurosa. Las personas a las que se les dice que han obtenido una mala puntuación son más propensas a considerar que el examen es tendencioso o inexacto.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      How Biden and Boris Johnson Reached the Same Place on Virus Policy

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      Two different leaders with differing approaches landed on a policy of coexisting with the virus. Analysts say they had little choice.LONDON — On the evening of Dec. 21, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared from 10 Downing Street to tell anxious Britons they could “go ahead with their Christmas plans,” despite a surge in new coronavirus cases. At nearly the same moment, President Biden took to a White House podium to give Americans a similar greenlight.It was a striking, if unintended, display of synchronicity from two leaders who began with very different approaches to the pandemic, to say nothing of politics. Their convergence in how to handle the Omicron variant says a lot about how countries are confronting the virus, more than two years after it first threatened the world.For Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden, analysts said, the politics and science of Covid have nudged them toward a policy of trying to live with the virus rather than putting their countries back on war footing. It is a highly risky strategy: Hospitals across Britain and parts of the United States are already close to overrun with patients. But for now, it is better than the alternative: Shutting down their economies again.“A Conservative prime minister trying to deal in a responsible way with Covid is very different than a Democratic president trying to deal responsibly with Covid,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster in Washington. And yet, he said, their options are no longer all that different.“From both a medical perspective and a political perspective,” Mr. Garin said, “there’s not as strong an imperative for people to hunker down in the way they were hunkering down a year ago.”President Biden, taking office, promised to pay greater heed to scientific advice and embraced measures like “expanded masking, testing and social distancing.”Al Drago for The New York TimesSome analysts say the two leaders had little choice. Both are dealing with lockdown-weary populations. Both have made headway in vaccinating their citizens, though Britain remains ahead of the United States. And both have seen their popularity erode as their early promises to vanquish the virus wilted.Several of Mr. Biden’s former scientific advisers this week publicly urged him to overhaul his strategy to shift the focus from banishing the virus to a “new normal” of coexisting with it. That echoes Mr. Johnson’s words when he lifted restrictions last July. “We must ask ourselves,” he said, “‘When will we be able to return to normal?’”Devi Sridhar, an American scientist who heads the global health program at the University of Edinburgh, said, “The scientific community has broad consensus now that we have to use the tools we have to stay open and avoid the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. But it’s not easy at all, as we are seeing.”The alignment of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden is significant because Britain has often served as a Covid test case for the United States — a few weeks ahead in seeing the effects of a new wave and a model, for good or ill, in how to respond to it.Miami this week. Several of Mr. Biden’s former scientific advisers have publicly urged him to shift the focus from banishing the virus to a “new normal” of coexisting with it.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIt was the first country to approve a vaccine and the fastest major economy to roll it out. Its frightening projections, from Imperial College London, about how many people could die in an uncontrolled pandemic helped push a reluctant Mr. Johnson and an equally reluctant President Donald J. Trump to call for social distancing restrictions in their countries.That Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump initially resisted such measures was hardly a surprise, given their ideological kinship as populist politicians. When Mr. Johnson locked down Britain, several days after his European neighbors, he promised to “send the virus packing” in 12 weeks. Mr. Trump likewise vowed that Covid, “like a miracle,” would soon disappear. Both later suffered through bouts with the disease.Mr. Biden, taking office, promised a different approach, one that paid greater heed to scientific advice and embraced difficult measures like “expanded masking, testing and social distancing.” Though Mr. Johnson never flouted scientific advice like Mr. Trump, he was sunnier than Mr. Biden, continuing to promise that the crisis would soon pass.For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the major obstacle is not defiant regional leaders or the opposition but members of his own Conservative Party.Pool photo by Jack HillBut both he and Mr. Biden have languished politically as new variants have made Covid far more stubborn than they had hoped. Last July 4, with new cases dropping and vaccination rates rising, Mr. Biden claimed the United States had gained “the upper hand” on the virus. Weeks later, the Delta variant was sweeping through the country.In England, with nearly 70 percent of adults having had two doses of a vaccine, Mr. Johnson lifted virtually all social-distancing rules on July 19, a bold — some said reckless — move that the London tabloids nicknamed “Freedom Day.” After a midsummer lull in cases that appeared to vindicate Mr. Johnson’s gamble, the Omicron variant has now driven new cases in Britain to more than 150,000 a day.Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson have different powers in dealing with the pandemic. As prime minister, Mr. Johnson can order lockdowns in England, a step he has taken twice since his first lockdown in March 2020. In the United States, those restrictions are in the hands of governors, a few of whom, like the Florida Republican Ron DeSantis, have become vocal critics of Mr. Biden’s approach.For Mr. Johnson, the major obstacle is not defiant regional leaders or the opposition but members of his own Conservative Party, who fiercely oppose further lockdowns and have rebelled against even modest moves in that direction.Riders in the London tube last month. The Omicron variant has now driven new cases in Britain to more than 150,000 a day.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThe prime minister has kept open the possibility of further restrictions. But analysts say that given his eroding popularity, he no longer has the political capital to persuade his party to go along with an economically damaging lockdown, even if scientists recommended it.Mr. Johnson is “essentially now a prisoner of his more hawkish cabinet colleagues and the 100 or so MPs who seem to be allergic to any kind of public health restrictions,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. They “just feel that the state has grown too big in trying to combat Covid and that they really don’t want the government to grow any bigger,” Mr. Bale said.Some British analysts draw a comparison between red-state governors like Mr. DeSantis and Conservative lawmakers from the “red wall,” former Labour strongholds in the Midlands and the north of England that Mr. Johnson’s Tories swept in the 2019 election with his promise to “Get Brexit done.”Las Vegas Boulevard during a lockdown in May 2020. Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThese are not low-tax, small-government conservatives in the tradition of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, but right-leaning populists who model themselves on Mr. Trump and the Mr. Johnson who championed the Brexit vote — voters the prime minister would need to win re-election.Some critics argue that Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson are both out of step with their countries. Britons have proven far more tolerant of lockdowns than the lawmakers in the prime minister’s party. In parts of the United States, by contrast, popular resistance to lockdowns is widespread and deeply entrenched.“Biden suffers from seeming to do too much and Boris suffers from seeming to do too little,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University. “Biden would have done a better job if he had led Britain, and Boris would have done a better job if he led the U.S.”Ice skaters in London last month.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Biden, unlike Mr. Johnson, does not face an internal party rebellion on his Covid policy. But the continued grip of the pandemic has sapped the president’s poll ratings, stoking fears of a Republican landslide in the midterm elections. The calls for change from members of Mr. Biden’s former scientific brain-trust, some said, reflected concerns that his Covid messaging was lagging reality.Others pointed out that the president’s determination to keep schools and businesses open, despite the soaring number of cases, signaled that a change in thinking was underway in the White House — if a few months later than that in Downing Street.“When Biden says we ought to be concerned but not panicked, he’s meeting Americans where they are,” Mr. Garin, the Democratic pollster, said. “He’s also meeting the science where it is.”Stephen Castle contributed reporting. More