Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
Alexander Vindman is very, very familiar with authoritarianism.
In his childhood, he fled communist Ukraine as a refugee. As an adult, serving as the National Security Council’s Director for European Affairs, strongman regimes were his specialty. Now, in his first-ever interview with the press, Vindman is hoping to warn the American public that Trump’s distortion of truth takes its cue from leaders like Vladimir Putin — and democracy itself is on the line.
“Authoritarianism is able to take hold not because you have a strong set of leaders who are forcing their way,” Vindman told the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg. “It’s more about the fact that we can give away our democracy. In Hungary and Turkey today, in Nazi Germany, those folks gave away their democracy, by being complacent.”
In the interview, Vindman — who retired from the Army in July, citing a campaign to stop his advancement due to his testimony during the Trump impeachment inquiry — offered insight on the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.
“I just had a visceral reaction to what I was hearing,” Vindman said. “I suspected it was criminal, but I knew it was wrong.”
https://forward.com/fast-forward/454314/alexander-vindman-interview-trump-putin-authoritarianism/
In his childhood, he fled communist Ukraine as a refugee. As an adult, serving as the National Security Council’s Director for European Affairs, strongman regimes were his specialty. Now, in his first-ever interview with the press, Vindman is hoping to warn the American public that Trump’s distortion of truth takes its cue from leaders like Vladimir Putin — and democracy itself is on the line.
“Authoritarianism is able to take hold not because you have a strong set of leaders who are forcing their way,” Vindman told the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg. “It’s more about the fact that we can give away our democracy. In Hungary and Turkey today, in Nazi Germany, those folks gave away their democracy, by being complacent.”
In the interview, Vindman — who retired from the Army in July, citing a campaign to stop his advancement due to his testimony during the Trump impeachment inquiry — offered insight on the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.
“I just had a visceral reaction to what I was hearing,” Vindman said. “I suspected it was criminal, but I knew it was wrong.”
https://forward.com/fast-forward/454314/alexander-vindman-interview-trump-putin-authoritarianism/
