How Strongmen Like Trump Get in Your Head

The columnist M. Gessen has spent most of their career reporting on and writing about authoritarianism in Russia. They now cover President Trump and the MAGA movement in the United States. In this conversation with Rachel Louise Snyder, a Times Opinion contributing writer and an expert on domestic violence, M. Gessen draws parallels between interpersonal violence and the way authoritarians coerce and control their subjects. The two discuss a question that domestic violence victims and those who live under authoritarianism often get: Why didn’t you just leave?

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