M. Gusen: I am M. Gusen, an opinion columnist at the New York Times. I often write about autocracy and what it's like to live under a totalitarian government. I spent my childhood in Russia and later went back as an adult and reported from the country through the rise of Vladimir Putin. Now in the United States, I often write about what's happening during the Trump presidency. So I've been writing about autocrats and aspiring autocrats for most of my professional life. I often find myself thinking about a lecture I happened to listen to several years ago. It was a talk by a psychologist about a completely different subject, domestic violence. As she talked about the way abusers control their victims, I kept noticing how much overlap there is between that experience and what happens to people under autocratic governments. And then as I looked into the subject more, I realized that this was not a coincidence. For one thing, the study of trauma suffered by totalitarian subjects has informed the study of trauma in victims of domestic violence. I wanted to talk about it with a friend and a colleague of mine, Rachel Louise Snyder. Rachel is a contributing writer at Times Opinion who often covers domestic violence and she's helped me think through this connection between violence against women and autotocracy. Thanks for being here Rachel.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Thanks for having me.

M. Gusen: Before we get to the meat of the conversation, can you talk to me about how you got into your area of expertise?

Rachel Louise Snyder: I can. You know, it's a funny, it's sort of a funny answer. I had been sort of a baby journalist and I lived overseas. I lived in London for a couple of years. I lived in Cambodia for a long time, six years. And I had traveled to like 60, 65 countries. And I did stories of gender-based violence in all those countries, stories of, you know, child marriage, trafficking, all this sort of darkness. And domestic violence was in all of those stories. But I was so, I was so young and naive that I would be like, "But that's not my story, so I'm not going to ask this young, you know, 12-year-old married Roma girl about the violence in her house." Um, and it wasn't until I moved back to America in 2009. I was standing on the driveway of a friend of mine, my dear friend, the writer Andre Deuse, whose sister Suzan works for a domestic violence agency. And she drove up. He introduced us. I did that very American thing like, "Oh, what do you do?" You know, and she said, "Oh, I, I work for a domestic violence agency." So, I thought, "Oh, like you have a shelter." And she was like, "Well, we do, but that's not primarily what we do. What we actually do is um we have looked at the research to determine the highest risk indicators of domestic violence homicide in order to prevent it. So we basically predict domestic violence homicide." And I was like, you, you do what now? Like this is a crime that happens behind closed doors. This is a crime that I as a journalist with all of the privileges that came, you know, I'm a white journalist. I'm traveling the world. I have education. I was blind to it. And in some ways, my career ever since that day has been an attempt to pull off my own blinders to say, "Wow, this is something we need to talk about. We need to study." And so that's what I've done ever since that that day.

M. Gusen: So, let's try to unpack some things. And I want to start by talking about control and mechanisms of control. And I was just going to go through a list, right, of things that stood out to me when I first started thinking about the overlap.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Mhm.

M. Gusen: And I want to get your reaction. So, um, growing up in the Soviet Union, I was used to seemingly every aspect of our lives being controlled. The state decided who could live in which city, which building, which apartment, where you would work after university, whether you could travel, even inside the country. How does that relate to what happens in domestic abuse?

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah. I mean that's one of the primary questions really. Abusers will start slowly. They'll talk about clothing. They'll talk about makeup. They'll say things like, you know, I see the way men look at you when you wear that short skirt and so I don't think you should wear that. Right? So it's a sort of couched in this uh protectionism and they'll they'll chip away at attachments to meaningful things or people. Um, and eventually you'll see somebody control money and work and how much a victim interacts with friends or family. And you'll see uh the threat of violence as sometimes more effective and certainly more ubiquitous than actual physical violence.

M. Gusen: Yeah. The threat of violence as we get more into talking about the Trump administration, right? that just the amount of violence that we are witnessing now uh given that this was a very violent society and has been for a long time right but the spectacle of violence ICE and political violence taken together like I think it has transported us into a different space where the threat of violence feels much more sort of palpable to many more people

Rachel Louise Snyder: yet also So it is in the in the language that people in this administration are using, right? It is in Trump sort of saying, well, Iran, you know, they better do the right thing. So there's an implicit threat there of violence, but there's also, you know, to connect it to domestic violence, it's also absolutely victim blaming and gaslighting,

M. Gusen: right? It's the look what you made me do.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Totally. I mean, look what you made me do is essentially what all scholarship up until second wave feminism looked at when it came to domestic violence, right? Like, you know, well, he, he wouldn't hurt her if she didn't bring it on herself, right? If she could just act a certain way, be obedient a certain way and we'll save this for another day, but it's also part of the tradife conversations that are happening today. But, you know, we'll put I'll put a pin in that one.

M. Gusen: All right. Okay. Um, pens in place. Uh let's go to number two in my list. A special relationship. Right? So the domestic abuser convinces his victim that no one can understand the special love bond between them. And don't you think an autocratic leader does something similar? I'm turning the tables on you here. Right.

Rachel Louise Snyder: You are. You are. I'm like, well, do autocratic leaders give intermittent rewards? I bet they do.

M. Gusen: Yeah, they do. They do. Absolutely. Um

Rachel Louise Snyder: Do you see what I did? I turned the tables right back on you right there. Well, thank well well done, Rachel. Thank you. Thank you. No, I think that's at least from a domestic violence perspective and trafficking is the same way. You know, sex trafficking or even labor trafficking actually the the what undergurs all of them is how complicated these relationships become because victims will get these intermittent rewards. You know, they'll get gifts. they'll they'll sometimes get the gift of attention or time and then of course they have a violent episode and the cycle continues. So you're destabilizing the relationship, but you're also forcing that person into a state of dependency and often gratitude, right? Like, oh my gosh, this person is has fed me today, right? Withholding food or withholding sleep is common. I'm interested actually I want to ask you how that works in an okay we're going to get back to your list but how does that work in an autocratic society

M. Gusen: so one thing and I think this is a key similarity actually between gender-based violence and particularly human trafficking and totalitarian societies is totalitarian leaders often set unrealistic goals for the people right so for example In the Soviet Union, there were these labor quotas and they were completely insane. And especially in the early 20th century, they would set these quotas and then there would be like one factory worker somewhere in the country who was able to meet those quotas. But then it would turn out like that the whole factory was working to falsify this person being able to meet the quota, right? So, you don't meet the unrealistic quota. Most people can't. And they don't know whether they're going to be penalized for not meeting it or spared or rewarded for their factory performing better than the other factory, right? And so, you're always working with something where you can't fulfill the expectation, right? you're at the mercy of the regime or its representatives, you know, who are the factory directors or whoever they are, right? So, they can if they paid you, it's like you're grateful, right? If they didn't report you for not filling your quota, you're grateful, but you may also be penalized for not fulfilling your quota, right? So that actually gets me to unpredictability and instability, which is key in a totalitarian society because you're always in some way outside the law and so you're always punishable. Right.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Right. That's absolutely one of the key elements in domestic violence and sex trafficking is that destabilization. you're degrading, you know, I'll just be gender specific in this, although the acknowledgement that anybody can be a victim of violence, domestic violence, but you're degrading women over time. And I think, you know, I've interviewed at this point, I don't know, probably thousands of domestic violence victims. And they often use that phrase, that cliche, living on eggshells. And when you really live on eggshells, your own sense of your humanity collapses in on itself. by which I mean you don't see yourself in relation to others anymore. You're really isolated and so you check your own behavior. The abuser has taken up residence inside your own mind, right? And so, you know, you know, for example, that you've got to have dinner on the table at 6:00 and have the kids toys cleaned up. And then, you know, the abuser comes home and the goalposts are moved. It's no longer dinner at 6. that you made chicken and you were supposed to make steak, right? And so there is this constant sense of like what am I supposed to do? At the same time as you know you can read in somebody's body language their mood, somebody that you know really well. It's one of the things that actually makes domestic violence different from other crimes like stranger crimes.

M. Gusen: Right. And so the next thing on my list is isolation.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah. which you've already referenced, but when I was a kid, we lived behind the Iron Curtain, right? And like getting books from abroad or listening to foreign radio was illegal and we thought that there could be no alternative even we like I grew up in a dissident family and we thought that there was no alternative to the life as it was in the Soviet Union. But there were a lot of people who actually truly believed that they lived in the best country on earth.

M. Gusen: Wow. Yeah, that's so interesting. Isolation is really one of the first things you see in domestic violence victims situations. They get isolated from friends, from family. And I said earlier that the abuser takes up residence in their mind. It's why you can see somebody, you know, walking around running errands and still they are, as one advocate put it, passive hostages because they are convinced that all the systems that might be in place to help them, if they're even aware of those systems, are not going to be as powerful as that abuser. And so I think one way to think about it is to think of them as living in a kind of a state of solitary confinement except a lot of the time it's not solitary. Um and I'm mentioning that because because you use the word hostage, right? And actually that analysis was very helpful for me when I was writing about the the Soviet period and Russian history. There was a Russian sociologist named Yuri Levada who coined this term collective hostage taking and what he was describing was this mechanism of horizontal enforcement basically where let's say if somebody was arrested uh for supposed anti-siet activity everybody they socialized with their whole family their co-workers might be punished wouldn't necessarily be punished could be punished for not having been alert enough to this person becoming antis-siet. And so the threat of bringing punishment, bringing violence onto the people you care about, either because you work with them and because you live with them and you love them, was enough to keep most people in line, right? which makes me think of women who worry about bringing violence onto their children or onto the other people they love.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I was listening to you and I was thinking, well, this might be one of the ways that domestic violence is different, right? Because victims are really isolated. But you're right, they the threat of violence to a family and we see that all the time, bystanders being killed. If you think about famous mass shootings in this country like the Texas Tower shooting in the 60s, people forget that he started the night before by killing his mother and killing his wife or Sandy Hook, right? He started by killing his mother. So there is a danger to others. And one of the interesting things about domestic violence, actually I'm interested in how this works in in your research, if it does, if there's a parallel, you see victims being blamed for the violence against their children. So an abuser says, you know, you if you don't get home right away, I'm going to kill the kids, right? Kids are often used as leverage. And then if he actually does kill the kids, she is often slapped with failure to protect a homicide charge. Is there a parallel or is it what you were talking about with like the neighbors will get you know scooped up and blamed and

M. Gusen: Yeah. Um I think there is a parallel not not in terms of criminal punishment but in terms of societal understanding right which what in this country I think the criminal punishment expresses right that the mother didn't take good enough care if the kids were killed right um and the social understanding in a totalitarian country is very often yeah if they if this person got himself or herself jailed and brought punishment onto their coworker ers, then they were being irresponsible, right? Or if um I certainly heard it as a kid about dissident, right? How could this mother get herself arrested, doesn't she care about her children?

Rachel Louise Snyder: Oh my gosh. Really?

M. Gusen: You know? Yeah.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Wow.

M. Gusen: And it's like for somebody that we in this country now think of as as a hero for standing up against the regime, but that's that's not the social media. Um but I want to stay with this topic of collective hostage shaking for a second because I actually think that we in this country have witnessed a m milder form of it but we certainly have witnessed it right when we see say university presidents or even heads of law firms uh saying you know I I'm just trying to protect people's jobs right or I'm you know I'm trying to protect my students and our funding. and whatever university presidents are trying to protect. I take those statements with a huge giant grain of salt. Um except I think that that's probably an expression of something that the these people are feeling, right? They're feeling this huge burden of responsibility for other people and an enormous threat to being able to to stay responsible for these people's livelihood, right?

Rachel Louise Snyder: What do you take it with a grain of salt? Because um there's obviously, you know, some self-serving reasons for someone to fall into line, but like why do you take it with a grain of salt?

M. Gusen: That's a great question. I think I take it with a grain of salt because focusing on that value of protecting people's jobs uh say in a university setting Mhm. requires ignoring all these other values that a university administrator is supposed to uphold. Right. Like academic freedom.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Right. Right.

M. Gusen: Uh so that's why I take that sort of statement of motivation as Right. with with a grain of salt.

M. Gusen: So, getting back to my list, probably the most important thing that I think ties these kinds of control together is the psychological effect. And I've heard it described as low-level dread, which is distinct from a state of high anxiety. Right? In high anxiety, you're really unable to function. But somebody who lives in a state of low-level dread can go to work, can do the grocery shopping, can get, you know, prepare lunch for their kids. And at the same time, they always have that, you know, as you said, the the abuser has taken up residence in their brain or the totalitarian leader has the regime has taken up resonance in their brain. And there isn't room there in the state of low-level dread for acting creatively, right? For forming meaningful social connections.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah.

M. Gusen: And most important, I think for planning for the future.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yes. Absolutely. That is that so resonates with my experience of domestic violence victims when they are in that state of dread as you put it. they can't make meaningful decisions around for example you know breaking free in fact there's a organization in DC DC Safe that um told me years ago when I was researching my book that they realized in a moment of crisis like the say there's a you know a violent moment and the police are called and the police are there and they're getting a a you know a woman and her children to shelter her and that if they could just provide a go bag for that family that had like 24 hours of supplies in it that had like a grocery card for food that had some diapers that had maybe some baby formula just really basic things. They found that victims of domestic violence were able to make much better long-term decisions just by having all the things that can come from that moment of crisis taking care of that for them in that moment.

M. Gusen: So what's happening there? Is it that their basic needs are met met for a minute and they can think of something else or that they feel taken care of for a minute?

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah. You know, it actually makes me think I thought of this. I mean, I've thought of this really in every trial I've ever covered when it comes to domestic violence, but it makes me think of probably the most common question that I get asked as someone who covers domestic violence is why didn't they just leave? And it's really difficult to explain to a judge or police officer why you can't just leave, right? the bureaucratic hurdles, the financial hurdles, the manipulation, but I don't think we ever actually ask that of citizens of autocracy. I wonder if you see a parallel there.

M. Gusen: I think there's a parallel in the actual difficulty of leaving and maybe talking through it uh will be a little illuminating. Imagine what it's like to leave a country, right? The bureaucratic hurdles, the logistics of it, the expense of it. Right? Again, we've talked about the inability to plan for the future. If you're isolated in a totalitarian country, how do you even imagine what it will be like to live somewhere else to have your circumstances change?

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah.

M. Gusen: Right. It's not actually dissimilar, right, from the situation of somebody who has been isolated at home, who's been entirely focused on surviving in this situation. It's almost like having to learn a new language, right? And certainly it is like immigration like learning to live a new.

Rachel Louise Snyder: And I think people do understand that about the subjects of totalitarian countries. Like they understand how hard it is. And I think they also have more compassion just for how hard it is to leave your home. Like people hope to the last to be able to just stay at home in a place that maybe they once loved and are hoping to love again.

M. Gusen: Yeah. and certainly among people they love. But you know, it's interesting like what do people in a totalitarian country imagine about living somewhere else, especially if they're told it's the best country in the world?

Rachel Louise Snyder: Exactly. Well, you know, when my family was making plans to immigrate, a friend of my parents asked as a kind of joke, but maybe not exactly a joke, he said, "What evidence do we have of the existence of the West?" really.

M. Gusen: Yeah. And

Rachel Louise Snyder: like the very truth of the United States as a place or the Western Europe or

M. Gusen: There was no material evidence. We certainly didn't know anybody personally.

Rachel Louise Snyder: But didn't you have I thought Levis was like a big thing on the black market.

M. Gusen: Levis were a big thing, but how do we know that it comes from this magical place that is supposed to exist? Maybe they make it, you know, in Albania and

Rachel Louise Snyder: Oh, right. Right. Like we had we had material evidence of the existence of the of the Eastern block but not places far further away.

M. Gusen: Wow. So you can't even imagine there is a parallel there that I see with domestic violence victims like how do I raise my kids? What am I going to do? What does it look like over there? Yeah.

M. Gusen: So let's try to bring this home.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Okay.

M. Gusen: We've established the similarities and now let me point out something pretty obvious which is the autocratic ambition. right on the one hand and gender-based violence on the other hand have really come together in the Trump administration. There's the president himself accused of sexual violence by multiple women and found liable in one case. There's the defense secretary Pete Hex accused of sexual assault, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused of sexual assault. We can think back to the Kavanaaugh hearings during the first Trump administration, which to me were like the first real illustration of how this movement that Donald Trump leads treats gender- based violence.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah.

M. Gusen: What do you think the effect of that is on us as a society?

Rachel Louise Snyder: I knew we were going to get around to this. We can't forget uh um Caesar Chavez too most most recently.

M. Gusen: Yeah. I mean, I'm not I'm not trying to imply that gender-based violence is limited to the right uh or to the Trump administration. We obviously know that it's not. You know, Eric Swallwell, the Democrat from California, is the most recent example, right? But there's this concentration uh in this administration. And I would also say there's something else that's specific to this administration which is a shamelessness about it.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah. There's almost a pride about it. And you know what do I think it does to us? I mean that I mean at its most basic level it travels I think through through a society and it gives license to you know all kinds of uh I'll say bad actors in in normal society right and there is there is evidence that domestic violence is on the rise there are a number of states where domestic violence homicides are on the rise there's research around you know for a long time it was that there were three women a day killed in the us. Now it looks like it's closer to five. Um I do think it gives it it normalizes abuse. It normalized certainly it normalizes emotional abuse and coercive control. We haven't talked all that much about coercive control, but I think it's

M. Gusen: Can you define that?

Rachel Louise Snyder: You know, coercive control is is exactly what it sounds like. You are coercing somebody into doing things that they might not or probably would not otherwise do. And you're most often coercing them through threats of violence or through the destabilization of their reality. Right? We see this in the Trump administration. We see this, I think we all saw this in that famous meeting of Zalinsky in the Oval Office where JD Vance just belittles him and tells him, you know, you you're showing no gratitude. And I also think, and I don't know how this if this has a parallel to authoritarianism or not, but certainly in the States, we have this glorification of what I would call gendered violence, of male violence. you know, John, Senator John McCain's whole identity was based around his own experience as a victim of violence during the Vietnam War. And then you have on the other hand somebody like Senator Jodie Ernst who is I don't know how many years into being a senator before she talks about her own experience as a domestic violence survivor and sexual assault survivor, rape survivor. So I think male violence in this country is not something to be ashamed of, but domestic violence carries this real shame to it and this public failure to like hold or acknowledge those victims of violence. I mean, do you see any any connections there?

M. Gusen: I do, as a matter of fact. you know, and and obviously you pointed out that this isn't new, but I think it's it's kind of on steroids under this administration, this glorification of male violence and this violent posturing, you know, including like I even think of something like JD Vance saying that the Pope should be careful when talking about religion, you know, or or Pete Heg the other day saying to uh Congress members, be careful what you say or How dare you challenge me, the secretary of what they're now calling war, not defense. Right. That's right. That's right. Uh the sort of be careful what you say and directed as a at a totally inappropriate person, right? Is is a display of that, you know, bullying, violence, and totalitarian societies, which we're not yet one by any means, but but that's what they want to create, right? Totalitarian societies are mobilized societies. their societies united by having enemies and by being ready to act violently together. That's what you see in Russia where Putin mobilized the entire country against Ukraine and that's really when Russia became totalitarian, not just autocratic. And I think that that's the glorification of what you're calling main violence is exactly is serving that that purpose. Um, so let me bring this to what nobody listening expects, which is a somewhat hopeful conclusion.

Rachel Louise Snyder: It's so out of character for both.

M. Gusen: I know. I know. It's crazy. Um, but I actually think that the conversation we just had offers a little bit of a of a way to think about what we're living through in this country right now and maybe some recipes for action. So tell me what works in the domestic violence field.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah. It's so hard for me to be positive. That's not my natural state. I mean I do I do think conversations like this are so important because at the same time as our administration and our leaders might be normalizing violence, we can actually normalize conversations around caring and community uh outreach. I think, you know, one of the things I think about so often is in all of my interviews, and this is, you know, going 20 years now or something, uh, domestic violence victim interviews, I have never once done an interview where a victim of domestic violence hasn't said some version of, "I'm not your typical victim." To me, nobody sees themselves as, I don't even know what that means, a typical victim of domestic violence. And so one thing I think is to just talk about it, to talk about coercive control, financial control, emotional control, right? To allow people to recognize their own victimization. one of the people I consider one of my personal heroes, Judith Herman, the great intellectual thinker Judith Herman, who says, I'm sort of paraphrasing her here, but she says, "To speak about experiences in sexual or domestic life is to invite public humiliation, to invite ridicule and disbelief. The silence of women gives license to every form of sexual and domestic exploitation." Now that may not sound positive to you, but what it says to me is the recipe is very simple. We have to talk about it and we have to allow each other the space to recognize what it is.

M. Gusen: And I would add to this, and correct me if I'm wrong, that having connections outside of the abusive situation, having community support, having meaningful social connections is essential for somebody being able to get out from under the abuse, right?

Rachel Louise Snyder: Absolutely essential. Yeah.

M. Gusen: So, that makes me think of Minneapolis. Minneapolis is the best example we have so far of people actually being able to resist the Trump administration's actions and it was a resistance effort that changed things in the city and even changed policy it appears in the administration. So it is by far the most successful resistance effort effort

Rachel Louise Snyder: and what I would focus on in that effort is a language that city named what was happening. They called it an occupation, right? They weren't calling it ICE raids. They saw what was happening to them as a very specific thing that called forth a collective effort of resistance. And the other thing that was super important to that effort were the mutual aid networks that had existed since CO and since the George Floyd protests, right? So they had a long history. They were well established. There were bonds of trust that were well established. And so people were able to work together, help one another, and also use the language that helped them act.

M. Gusen: Yeah. Yeah. It and it seemed like it grew organically from those established communities. And you're right, it is powerful. And also, shout out to my fellow Midwesterners there cuz we are cornfed strong people. But yeah, Minneapolis, it makes me think of the, you know, the Gloria Steinum like awareness talks that she would hold in her living room throughout the, you know, 70s, 80s, and how we need to bring those back. Like, we need to bring back

Rachel Louise Snyder: consciousness raising.

M. Gusen: Consciousness raising. That's what it was called. You know, I'm so young that I didn't remember the

Rachel Louise Snyder: I know. I'm I'm here I'm here to tell you it was called consciousness raising.

M. Gusen: Exactly. Yes. Yes.

Rachel Louise Snyder: CR for short.

M. Gusen: Thank you. Thank you, my friend. Um, so yeah, here's the recipe. Talk to one another. Call things by their proper names.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Call them by their names. Yeah.

M. Gusen: Call them by their names. And um and help one another.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Yeah. Kind of like what you and I do for each other.

M. Gusen: Thank you, Rachel.

Rachel Louise Snyder: Thank you, Masha.