普利策奖历史学家：等你察觉，已经太晚了——Anne Applebaum

This was Trump's net worth when he went into office, $2.3 billion. Trump 上任时的净资产是23亿美元。 And this is his net worth now, just two years later. 而这是他现在的净资产，仅仅两年后。 $6.5 billion. 65亿美元。 So, we've never had a president running businesses while in office. 我们从来没有过一位总统在任期间经营生意。 And so, decisions are being made not based on what's good for Americans, but what's good for his company. 所以，政策的制定不是基于什么对美国人有利，而是基于什么对他的公司有利。 For example, why did the Saudi government invest $2 billion in Jared Kushner's fund? 比如，沙特政府为什么要向 Jared Kushner 的基金投资20亿美元？ It wasn't because they just like Jared Kushner. 不是因为他们喜欢 Jared Kushner。 It was because Kushner is Trump's son-in-law. 而是因为 Kushner 是 Trump 的女婿。 And so my biggest concern is the deterioration of American democracy. 我最担心的是美国民主的退化。 I mean, it's already happening. 我的意思是，这已经在发生了。 Most people think democracies end with tanks in the street or somebody shooting up the presidential palace, but actually in the modern world, they mostly end because someone who is legitimately elected begins to take apart the system. 大多数人以为民主的终结是坦克上街、有人冲击总统府，但实际上在现代世界，民主的终结大多是因为一个通过合法选举上台的人开始拆解这套制度。 Trump, he has never cared much one way or the other for American democracy. Trump，他从来不太在乎美国民主往哪个方向走。 He admires foreign leaders who have no constraints. 他羡慕那些不受任何约束的外国领导人。 And I have a goal that is to remind people of why democracy is important and to pay attention to the ways in which it's declining so that we can fight back. 我的目标是提醒人们民主为什么重要，让大家关注它衰退的方式，这样我们才能反击。 So we're just at the beginning of what could be quite a big change. 所以我们只是刚刚走到一场可能非常巨大变革的起点。 So there's five core tactics that autocratic leaders use to dismantle a democracy. 独裁领导人拆解民主有五大核心战术。 Could you walk me through the five tactics? 你能给我讲一下这五个战术吗？ So first of all, 首先， this is super interesting to me. 这对我来说真的很有意思。 My team given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. 我的团队给了我这份报告，让我看看你们当中有多少人订阅了这个节目。 And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. 根据这份报告，有些人告诉我们你们是从频道随机取消订阅的。 So favor to ask all of you please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. 所以拜托各位，请现在检查一下，如果你是这个节目的常规观众，如果你喜欢我们做的内容，请点一下订阅键。 We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. 我们正在接近这个节目订阅人数的一个重要里程碑。 So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. 如果有一件简单又免费的事情可以帮到我们、我的团队和这里的所有人，让这个节目保持免费、年复一年地持续改进，那就是点击订阅按钮，再确认一下你有没有点过。 Only thing I'll ever ask of you. 这是我唯一会向你们要求的事情。 Do we have a deal? 说好了吗？ If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. 如果你做到了，我告诉你我会怎么做。 I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. 我会确保每一周、每一个月，我们越来越努力、越来越努力地为你带来你想听的嘉宾和对话。 I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio, and I will not let you down. 从 Diary of a CEO 一开始，我就一直信守这个承诺，我不会让你们失望。 Please help us. 请帮帮我们。 Really appreciate it. 真的很感谢。 Let's get on with the show. 言归正传。 An Apple Bomb, what is it you spent the last couple of decades of your life doing, understanding, studying, and sharing with the world? Anne Applebaum，在过去几十年里，你一直在做什么，理解什么、研究什么、分享给世界什么？ I started out as somebody who was fascinated by the Soviet Union. 我一开始是一个对苏联着迷的人。 I went there when it still existed as a as a student. 我以学生身份去过那里，当时苏联还存在。 I was lucky enough to watch it fall apart. 我有幸亲眼目睹了它的瓦解。 I was a journalist based in Warsaw at the time the Warsaw pack came to an end. 华沙条约解体的时候，我是驻华沙的记者。 Then I spent some years writing history books trying to explain how control was maintained over such a large space uh by so few people. 然后我花了数年时间写历史书，试图解释少数人是如何在如此广阔的空间上维持控制的。 But all that time, I thought that what I was doing was writing stories about the distant past. 但在那整段时间里，我以为自己在写遥远过去的故事。 I was analyzing a system that didn't exist anymore. 我分析的是一个已经不存在的体制。 What's happened to me in the last decade is that I've discovered that a lot of what I thought was over and done and belonged to some other era uh has come back. 过去十年发生在我身上的事情，是我发现了很多我以为已经过去、属于另一个时代的东西又回来了。 Most people think democracies end with a coup d'eta or, you know, tanks in the street or somebody shooting up the presidential palace. 大多数人以为民主的终结是政变，或者坦克上街，或者有人冲击总统府。 that actually in the modern world they mostly end because someone who is legitimately elected begins to take apart the system and take away the things that ensure free elections can continue and I started watching that happen in multiple countries at the same time and I saw this authoritarian instinct started to come back and that's what I write about now 实际上在现代世界，民主的终结大多是因为一个通过合法选举上台的人开始拆解这套制度，剥夺那些保障自由选举得以延续的东西。我开始看到这件事在多个国家同时发生，我看到这种威权冲动开始卷土重来，这就是我现在写作的主题。 are these just election cycles or is there something bigger at play here because you know I spend a lot time reading articles from decades ago or hundreds of years ago and in all times in history it seems that there were problems but it seems that the I don't know the democratic system has a remarkable way every four years of clearing out what people weren't happy with and putting something new in is this time different to the past 这只是选举周期的波动，还是有什么更大的力量在起作用？因为我花了很多时间阅读几十年前、甚至几百年前的文章，在历史的每个时期似乎都有问题存在，但民主制度似乎有一种非凡的能力，每四年清除人们不满意的东西，换上新的。这次和过去有什么不同吗？ what feels different to me is for the first time in several established democracies most notably United States but not only you have political parties who come to power with the explicit idea that they will alter the system in order to make sure that they can stay in forever. 让我感觉不同的是，在多个成熟的民主国家里，首先是美国但不只是美国，第一次出现了这样的政党，它们上台的明确目的就是改变这套制度，以确保自己能永久执政。 The pioneer of this idea was Victor Orban in Hungary. 这个理念的先驱是匈牙利的 Victor Orban。 He was elected legitimately with a big margin and then what he did was slowly seek to capture the state. 他以巨大优势通过合法选举上台，然后他的做法是慢慢地谋取对国家的掌控。 So what a democracy needs in order to survive, in order to maintain its stability, it needs a few neutral institutions. 民主要生存、要维持稳定，需要一些中立的机构。 You know, it needs independent courts. 需要独立的法院。 It needs an independent electoral commission. 需要独立的选举委员会。 It needs independent media. 需要独立的媒体。 In the modern world, it needs a meritocratic bureaucracy. 在现代世界，还需要一个任人唯贤的官僚体制。 So, people are hired and fired to measure pollution or worry about traffic and road construction who aren't cousins of the ruling party. 负责检测污染、管理交通和道路建设的人，不应该是执政党的亲戚。 They aren't somebody's friend, but they're actual experts who understand how to do things. 不是某人的朋友，而是真正懂得如何做事的专家。 So you need those things to be in place in order to ensure that each time there's an electoral cycle, it's a fair election. 所以你需要这些机制都到位，才能确保每次选举周期都是公平的选举。 And you see people who are elected who who once they had power decided to take those institutions apart. 而你看到，一些被选上的人，一旦掌权就决定拆解这些机构。 You know, if you think about democracy, it's actually a very strange system, right? 你想想，民主其实是一个非常奇怪的制度，对吧？ So you win an election and in a democracy you have to preserve the rules so that four years from now your bitter enemies can contest you and maybe beat you again. 你赢了选举，在民主制度下，你必须维护这些规则，这样四年后你的死敌才能来挑战你，也许再次击败你。 You know you lose an election, you have to say okay we're allowing our rivals to stay in power uh but we trust that the system will remain fair so four years from now we can also contest them again. 你输了选举，你必须说，好吧，我们允许对手继续执政，但我们相信这套制度会保持公平，这样四年后我们也能再次挑战他们。 So it requires a certain level of agreement about the nature of the system and when that begins to break down then you begin to have imbalances and then you begin to have elections that seem unfair to people and then you begin to have a completely different kind of national conversation and we can see that has happened in several places and of course most notably in the United States and because the United States is the largest democracy because it's played the role of leader of the democratic world 所以民主需要对制度本身有一定程度的共识，当这种共识开始瓦解，你就开始出现失衡，然后选举开始显得不公平，然后整个国家的对话变成完全不同的东西。我们可以看到，这件事已经在好几个地方发生了，当然最显著的是在美国。而因为美国是最大的民主国家，因为它扮演着民主世界领导者的角色， the influence uence of America on other countries is pretty profound. 美国对其他国家的影响是相当深远的。 Uh and so this this idea that democracies can possibly break down is suddenly um both horrifying people but also interesting to other people who say all right if you can do it in America you can do it here. 所以，民主可能崩溃这个想法，突然间既让人感到恐惧，又让另一些人感到好奇，他们说，好，如果你能在美国做到，那你也能在这里做到。 There's a part of me that just thinks that could never happen in America. 我内心有一部分总觉得这件事不可能发生在美国。 And that's obviously a bias that I have being 33 years old and not knowing a ton about history. 这显然是我的偏见，因为我只有33岁，对历史知之甚少。 But there's I'm sure there's lots of people that think this is some sort of theoretical idea, but it would never happen in America because we would never allow America to not be a democracy. 但我确信有很多人认为这不过是一个理论上的想法，它不会发生在美国，因为我们绝不会允许美国不再是一个民主国家。 We wouldn't allow a a Russia situation where you've got Putin sitting in power for two decades or whatever. 我们不会允许出现像俄罗斯那样 Putin 执政二十年的局面。 Sure, but there are systems in between Russia and liberal democracy. 当然，但在俄罗斯和自由民主之间，还有中间地带。 You can have democracies that aren't fair. 民主可以存在，但并不公平。 And actually, I'm afraid to tell you that in the United States, there is a history of that. 实际上，遗憾地告诉你，美国有过这段历史。 So the in the American South before the civil rights movement, you very often had in effect in in the southern states, you had these one party states where, you know, the rules were pretty rigged. 在民权运动之前的美国南方，在南部各州，你经常看到实际上的一党制，规则被大幅操纵。 Everybody knew who was going to win. 所有人都知道谁会赢。 Not everybody was allowed to vote. 不是所有人都被允许投票。 So black people weren't allowed to vote or they were it was very heavily restricted. 黑人不被允许投票，或者被大幅限制。 It was hard for them to vote. 他们投票非常困难。 And that existed in the United States, you know, between the Civil War and the and the 1960s, you had very undemocratic parts of the United States. 这在美国确实存在，从南北战争到1960年代，美国有非常不民主的地区。 And I think some of the people who are in Washington right now in the Trump administration are working from that history and from that historical memory. 我认为现在在华盛顿的某些 Trump 政府中人，他们的行事逻辑就来自那段历史和那段历史记忆。 What is your biggest concern in this regard? 你在这方面最担心的是什么？ Well, I have two concerns. 我有两个担忧。 Uh, one is that inside the United States, the deterioration of American democracy, I mean, it's already happening, right? 一个是在美国内部，美国民主的退化，我的意思是，这已经在发生了，对吧？ So, it's already creating a class of people who no longer feel they have a stake in the political system and who won't vote, may never vote and fe and and will be outside of politics and outside of the national conversation. 它已经在制造一批人，他们不再觉得自己在政治体制里有任何利益，他们不会投票，也许永远不会投票，他们会游离在政治之外，游离在全国性对话之外。 That can lead in the direction of violence that can lead in in all kinds of negative directions. 这可能走向暴力，可能走向各种负面的方向。 We see the development of new kinds of um paramilitary in the United States that we never had before. 我们看到美国出现了以前从未有过的新型准军事组织。 the development of ICE. ICE 的发展就是一个例子。 We've never before had a single national police force wearing combat uniforms, wearing masks, not subject to the normal restrictions of local police forces. 我们以前从未有过一支单一的国家警察力量，穿着战斗服，戴着面罩，不受地方警察正常限制的约束。 We also have a rise in um high-end corruption. 我们还看到高层腐败的兴起。 The president, people around him, companies close to him seem to have access to ways to make money and are making money out of doing politics in a way that was also not possible at that scale in America before. 总统、他周围的人、与他关系密切的公司，似乎有渠道从政治中牟利，而且正在以一种以前在美国从未达到如此规模的方式牟利。 And that's sort of one whole set of concerns if you want to go down one of those roads. 如果你想沿着其中一条路走下去，这大概就是一整套担忧。 There's this map in front of us on the table. 我们面前的桌子上有这张地图。 I realize some people can't see because they're listening, but there's a map on the table in front of us. 我知道有些人看不到，因为他们在听音频，但我们面前桌子上有一张地图。 Could you just explain what this map shows and why it's significant? 你能解释一下这张地图展示了什么，以及为什么重要吗？ The map shows the level of of democracy around the world. 这张地图展示了全球各地的民主化程度。 And of course, the thing that's immediately notable to me is that those who made the map don't count the United States anymore as a liberal democracy. 当然，最让我立刻注意到的是，制图者不再将美国列为自由民主国家。 Mhm. 嗯。 So at a liberal democracy, meaning a state where, as I said, the electoral rules are clear, where the electoral system is set up not to favor one party or the next, and instead it's described as an electoral democracy, which is somewhat less free. 所谓自由民主，就是我说的那种，选举规则清晰、选举制度不偏向任何一党的国家。现在美国被描述为一个选举民主国家，自由度低一些。 You see similar systems in South America. 你会在南美洲看到类似的体制。 In Europe, you mostly still have liberal democracies. 在欧洲，大部分地方仍然是自由民主国家。 In Australia, Japan, South Korea, you still have liberal democracies. 在澳大利亚、日本、韩国，仍然是自由民主国家。 And then most of the rest of the world are some form of autocracy. 然后世界上大多数其他地方，都是某种形式的独裁。 Either very closed and very repressive like China or like Russia or they are in a democratic gray zone. 要么像中国或俄罗斯那样非常封闭、非常压制，要么处于民主的灰色地带。 So there are states that could really go in either direction. 有些国家真的可以向任何一个方向走。