Host and "Movement Meteorologist" Ejeris Dixon welcome back Strategist Tarso Ramon for this special two-part episode!
In part one of this wide-ranging two-part episode, Ejeris Dixon welcomes Tarso Ramos back to The Fascism Barometer. Ramos, a seasoned researcher of fascist, authoritarian, and supremacist movements, shares how his family’s escape from Brazil’s military dictatorship shaped his lifelong fight against fascism. He draws chilling parallels between past regimes and today’s U.S. political landscape, breaking down the accelerating pace of authoritarian consolidation and the critical 12–18 month window to resist it. This episode is both a warning and a blueprint for action.
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Ejeris: [00:00:00] I'm very excited to welcome Tarso Ramos. Back to the Fascism Barometer. Tarso. Luis Ramos has been studying and challenging the US right wing for decades. He's a sought after speaker and movement advisor on authoritarianism and fascism. Brazilian born Ramos was raised in the US after his family was exiled by that country's military regime For 15 years, Ramos served as the Executive Director of Political Research Associates, a research and strategy center dedicated to defeating, authoritarian and supremacist movements.
Now, Tarso and I have been collaborating for over the past five years, and I have learned so much from our conversations. He has a genuine heart-centered passion around educating people on fascism and authoritarianism, and his deep partnership with social justice movements is invaluable.
In my opinion, Tarso makes us all smarter, including myself. Welcome to the Fascism Barometer Friend.
Tarso: Goodness friend, it's lovely to be with you. [00:01:00] Thank you for, for having me
Ejeris: Yes,
Tarso: guest. I, I adore the fascism Barometer and so it's, it's great to be back with you.
Ejeris: Thank you for coming and making time. So the last time you were on, you told us a little bit about kind of your life and your story and your family left Brazil due to the rise in authoritarianism and fascism. And now you've chosen to study these issues and educate others. And I would love to hear more about how your own personal experiences with these movements informs your political work.
Tarso: Well, I was born in Brazil. I was born there during the military dictatorship, um, to a white American mother and a dark skinned Brazilian father. Both were involved in anti dictatorship work, organizing students pastoring a church and preaching the social gospel.
When the regime sent plain clothed secret police to our home in the middle of the night to take our father in for questioning, he told them, sure thing. [00:02:00] He admitted to get some clothes on. He then escaped out the back while mom was stalling them and acting surprised when they finally searched the place and discovered that he was gone.
My brother and I were props in this affair. I was maybe a year old, my brother, a couple years old as she played the beleaguered housewife who didn't understand what was happening. It was a situation in which our father had to go on the ground for a while, um, while we eventually looked for our way to leave the country.
And as it happened, we got out just before the military regime took a even more hard lying turn. They, the fall of 1968, I was born in 67, the regime shut down Congress, uh, and began picking up and torturing its opponents in a pretty systematic way. Prior to that, torture was more episodic except for an early period where they really, um, went after.
communist and socialist farm worker organizing in the Northeast. So we did manage to get out. That's a whole, story. And my family landed in New York City in the fall of 1968, and [00:03:00] from there, continued to fight the regime. Pressuring the US government, which of course had backed the coup in 1964 to withdraw support.
like a lot of people who end up in the various national diasporas, we were displaced to the United States as a result of the United States military. support for, far regime. My family began organizing us citizens to fight the dictatorship in ways that, in some ways set the model for later fights against the Pinot Shade dictatorship in Chile, and the solidarity movements with people of Central America.
my mother translated the works of Paul Frei, a leading Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of Depress in English. My father worked with a collective that documented cases of torture of Brazilians and became the first coordinator of the Third World People's Coalition.
So I grew up in that kind of a household. I was a year old when we came to the US and by the time. It was allowable for us to return to Brazil to travel there. [00:04:00] I was about to start college, so the dictatorship lasted 21 years. so without telling my whole arc of, um, becoming politicized and how I ended up doing the work I do, I suppose it's not surprising that given that background, I was drawn to fighting the US far right and ended up leading a research and strategy organization dedicated to preventing fascism and authoritarianism here.
The stories I grew up with were very much about the fragility of, democracy, the fragility of, social justice movements and their ability to, achieve liberation for their people. and the possibility of foreign and fascist, conquest, uh, of governing power. I'm a dual US and Brazilian citizen.
Um, I've done some work with, uh, Brazilian social movements during the stretch where I lived in Brazil. Uh, what else? do wanna know? Jurors
Ejeris: I'm just captivated here. I'm captivated here because. As you know, on the [00:05:00] barometer we wanna talk about how we fight fascism, but we wanna talk about how we fight fascism from the communities who are most targeted Whether, you've been in the US for generations or not, or you're first generation, you know.
The parts of democracy that have not been true for you, and know, what it means to navigate oppression and extremism and, supremacies. And so, I just think that there is a special lived wisdom, That you bring also as it sounds like a multi-generational lineage of activists, right?
In your family. Uh, I'm wondering especially for, communities of color, low income folks, immigrants, trans and queer folks, all of these people who are most targeted. why do you think it's important for us to understand fascism?
Tarso: I think it's important to understand fascism because fascist movements were inspired by and sought to take to their ultimate [00:06:00] conclusion. The technologies of colonialism and genocide that were developed, in among other places in the United States, because the European fascist movements were inspired by Jim Crow and they were inspired by Indian removal.
and they were inspired by the legal justifications of those things. They're inspired by the idea that you could declare yourself a democracy and still commit genocide, right? I think it's important to understand fascism because we're living through the third global march of fascism and authoritarianism since the start of the last century.
We're in it now. It's not just a thing in the United States, it's happening globally. I think it's important to understand fascism because we're not immune from the kinds of ethnic cleansing and genocide that we're witnessing in Gaza, Myanmar, or the ger areas of China, other places in the world. I think it's important because the long history and intensity of white [00:07:00] supremacy and colonialism in the United States can actually make it hard to see the difference between same old, same old, and a more fundamental change in our living conditions.
The overall level of violence are chances for surviving and for thriving. I think here in this place in particular, the distinction between what is ongoing racial capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, You know, and what's a new phase? Can be harder to discern 'cause we're so many of us are in it all the time.
'cause authoritarianism is a continuing reality, has racial authoritarianism, has been a continuing reality in this country. formerly ended right with the end of Jim Crow for lots of people, but functionally. Ongoing and many incarnations, The prison industrial complex being maybe the most obvious, but certainly in the land tenure of this country, in the functional, [00:08:00] categories of citizenship, in the daily lived expression of access to resources, to food, to safety, differential access to longevity, to life, right?
Um, to health. The relative experience of violence and repression from everyday people in the street, from cops, from political policy. ' cause all of those things are so dense here. discerning what's turning up a couple degrees versus what is, uh, a fundamental shift, isn't so obvious for most people.
Uh, why should it be?
Ejeris: Yeah, I mean, I've been in a lot of those conversations where, well, it's never been a democracy or We've always had a hard time here. so why, why does it mean anything different? Or I have a sense that some people think they can wait this out, until there's a shift.
Um,
Tarso: in my,
in my very, small little corner of the work world, people think, [00:09:00] spend too much time thinking about the strategies and designs of those who would eliminate us, who would devour us. We have a saying, which is that the only useful, anti-fascist is a premature anti-fascist.
Um, and this is a response to this notion of waiting it out by the time that there's any kind of consensus, right? It's like common sense of what we're living under is fascism. It's but so bad that, um, resisting and surviving is really difficult. And the odds of doing that, are, are lower and lower. And so, it's really important to have the discernment about what time it is on the clock of authoritarianism and fascism if we're serious about surviving.
but we're in already and what's coming now?
Ejeris: yeah. I agree. As you know, I've had this. Obsession with what fascism is and what it means for a couple of years now. and what came with that was being called an alarmist. You know, [00:10:00] so here I am, the alarmist with the Alarmist podcast. but.
Tarso: I would say you, I, I would say you've been right on time, Jarris.
Ejeris: but it was things like that, this idea that it's not like that. It can be as simple as one day. the stakes of protesting the regime are fundamentally different, that one day you are no longer allowed freedom of movement, right? How do you know that it's that Monday when the Secret Police Show are going to show up at your house on that Tuesday?
There's not the, you know, there's this, deep desire that the barometer helps people gauge that. But there is, you know, there is not a leftist emergency warning system in the ways that we, we want there to be. What we have is our ability to resist. and so there are a lot of words for what. we're talking about is like authoritarian and fascist advances, But really, there's been a lot of conversation, and I know you've been a part of it, around the speed in [00:11:00] which, that things are shifting in this country. And by that I mean like the ways that authoritarians and fascists are manipulating. Politics eliminating, the supposed checks and balances, ignoring, court rulings, expanding policing, deploying, military domestically.
Tarso: That's right.
Ejeris: I know some people call it authoritarian consolidation. Fascist state, capture all of these pieces. Can you speak about what your understanding to be the stage that we're at with authoritarianism and fascism and what you're tracking and any concerns.
Tarso: You know, thinking about what I, I was sharing earlier about how it's hard to discern, you know, where we're at in the United States when there's already so much violence. There's al, there's already, so much practice, in authoritarian techniques where there's already such a history of fascist movements, in [00:12:00] fascist culture.
And an additional thing that I think makes this hard is. You know, when there's a sudden forceful seizure of governing power. As with the military takeover, there's a more clear before and after. Right? We were talking about my family's background. Uh, April 1st, 1964, group of generals took power in Brazil.
Tanks ruled to the streets of the Capitol and other major cities even fired into the building of the National Student Association. The democratically elected government was replaced. The president fled the country. There wasn't another president election for 21 years. Pretty clear cut. There was a before and after.
not notwithstanding the fact that the generals claimed that it was not aku, it was a revolution supported by the people. And in fact, of course, some of the people did support what the generals did. on the other hand. When fascists and authoritarians come to power through elections and today this is more common than military seizure of power, things can be a lot less clear cut.[00:13:00]
They almost always aggressively move to expand presidential or executive power and reduce the power of legislative and judicial branches. Congress in the courts, uh, in the case of the US. They go after media outlets that are critical of them. They try to get control of the military and police. They attack unions and community organizations and so on.
This can take longer than military coup and it can leave everyone arguing about when and whether the country's actually cross over into fascism for authoritarianism. 'cause it seems less clear cut. Right? So what time is it here? In just six months since taking office, the Trump government has done many of the things that authoritarians at fascists do win in power.
If I could just give you a few top lines of this. It's not anything like a comprehensive list. You asked me what I'm clocking, what I'm paying attention to. They are pulling up in unmarked cars and no uniforms and arresting people for saying things that they don't like. Such [00:14:00] as criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights.
You wrote an article, now you're in prison because you said something
Ejeris: Disappeared.
Tarso: disappeared into a car. Who are these people? Can I verify they, or even who? They say they, they are. Can I verify that they did that to a college student in New York City and another in Boston Town where you live? In the town where I live.
Right. This government has taken people who have every right to be in the United States and deported them to a miserable prison in El Salvador, a country that these people have no connection with.
Right. Bad enough that this country has been locking a black and brown people for say, smoking something to ease the pain of living in a country built on violent domination and economic exploitation of black and brown people. But now they're going to send our mothers and fathers, our siblings and children off to a hell hole in another country.
Ejeris: yes.
Tarso: Like, that's the move,
Ejeris: Well, they're gonna pay for this hellhole, send them to this hellhole and then say, oh, but we can't get them back.
Tarso: we can't get them back. 'cause that's the, those are the rules of some other [00:15:00] government that
Ejeris: their laws, their jurisdiction.
Tarso: This government of fascists and authoritarians, to be clear, has made up excuses, as you pointed out in your question, for the federal government to take over state National Guard troops, and they have put US Marines on the ground in Los Angeles to assist immigrate deportations, and to police demonstrations against the horrible things that their government is doing. The military is never supposed to be used against the people of this country or for domestic law enforcement. In other words, this government is already experimenting with using the military to control the people.
Ejeris: Yeah.
Tarso: Just today, this government announced that it will take over law enforcement in Washington dc Imagine if the first Trump government had controlled the Washington Metro Police when fastest and authoritarians attacked Congress on January 6th, 2001, at the instruction of Trump to try to keep that government in power.
After it lost the election, Metro police officers fought and some of them died, [00:16:00] trying to keep that mob from getting inside the capitol. What do you suppose this government has planned? That they want total control over law enforcement in Washington dc? Why would that be a strategic move for this government at this time?
Do we think this government intends to leave office
when it's constitutionally limited? Second term ends.
Ejeris: Exactly.
Tarso: This government is ignoring the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which we talk a lot about in terms of immigration and, and rightly so. This is the amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed citizenship to black people emancipated from slavery during the Civil War and to all their descendants by making birthright, citizenship, the law of the land born here.
You're a citizen. End of story,
not for this government. They did an executive order claiming the right to take away the citizenship of people born here if their parents were run elsewhere. A judge said, you can't do that, and the government appealed [00:17:00] to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court said, well, we're not gonna decide whether or not the executive order is constitutional, but we do declare that that judge who blocked the order didn't have the power to do that.
And in fact, they said, go on ahead with your unconstitutional thing. If you wanna take citizenship away from people, we will look the other way. Of course, some of these Supreme Court justices were handpicked by the current president, and so the capture of the court proceeded this move. This government is attacking universities and public schools for teaching honest history of this country and for creating opportunities for black and brown people to get college degrees.
This country is attacking powerful law firms that support civil rights or work for the other main political party. They made these firms pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the government to leave them alone.
It's like paying protection money to mobsters.
This government is trying to shut down public media outlets like National Public Radio, starving them up funding and suing them in court saying that they are not allowed to operate the way that they do and attacking its [00:18:00] media credits and charging them for being as, being traitors.
These are things that authoritarians in fascists do all of these things, and this is just part of the list, right? We're not gonna spend your whole, your whole, our whole conversation just
Ejeris: could, but we
Tarso: but we could, we could spend the whole time just giving the list. All of these things are crossing red lines that separate our jacked up system of government from full-blown authoritarianism and attempted fascism.
And I say attempted fascism because to institute fascism nationally requires even more totalitarian control than authoritarianism does. and all of this is happening at breakneck speed, maybe not as quickly as the military coup, but the people who study societies where authoritarians and fascists go from being elected to fully taking over the society and consolidating their power.
See, it's happening here right now faster than they've seen anywhere else in, modern history. [00:19:00] And so. It feels like it's happening really quickly. And that's, I imagine in part 'cause it's happening to us. It's happening here. We're not just observing, we're not observing this in some other country. We're experiencing these changes on the regular, but it's not only a feeling,
It is simply the case that it's happening faster than the United States, than it's happened in other places where a authoritarians and fascists have come to power through elections.
Ejeris: What you were saying reminded me, I think I was, I was listening to a podcast that was saying, I was talking about how JD Vance, you know, vice President recently gave a speech where he was talking about how the ideals of the Declaration of Independence were overly inclusive and, you know, I took, I took American History many years ago, but I do remember the part that said, all men were created equal, right?
And this piece around, um, you know, that people worked and fought to expand beyond men And, and trying to figure out where the over [00:20:00] inclusivity is, right? and where you can just start to see this ideology that there is a sense that there is a true people, That this country is designed for.
And I think that, that, that sense is what can also, allow people to get into the debate. A bit because it's not that every single person has the equal chance of being caught up by the most violent aspects of fascists at the same time.
Tarso: That's Right.
Ejeris: But they go after certain communities first and they go after the communities that they, that in their estimation are less likely to fight back or less, likely to
Tarso: To be defended by
Ejeris: or, yes.
Right. And so that's why, they've been going after immigrants and undocumented folks. It's why they've been going after, people who will criticize Israel and all these pieces.
Tarso: That's right. Going up there, trans people
Ejeris: yes, and,
Tarso: very [00:21:00] few people stand up to defend the trans community. That's right.
Ejeris: and so when we debate people can debate from the the current safety of their homes, not realizing that when people have a sense of who the, the true people of a society are. and as narrow as it seems to be, and you know, both me and you are outside of that definition,
that it's just, a matter of time, right?
That it's just a matter of time. And so, I know many of the researchers who study and who have remarked about the speed, in which, they have kind of remade. You know, I, I just was struck by when you were saying, um. All of the supposed to bes, right? Like the laws that are supposed to do certain things, all the rules, all the red lines you're not supposed to cross, but they do.
I know these researchers also talk about an 18 month window of opportunity, to push back on. Fascist and authoritarian [00:22:00] advances. And in the circles I've been in, people are like, did it start yet? Are we like now at 12? Or do we have more time? Do we have less time? And I know that some of that is because we want.
Certainty when it's so hard to have certainty, but it seems like what people are trying to talk about is this idea that you have more power and more time earlier and less power and less time later, and that, the amount of danger and violence that you have to risk to challenge fascist and authoritarians.
Rise, rise the longer that they have access to power. I would love for you to talk more about this kind of 18 month window. What is it if they are moving faster than in any authoritarian and fascist capture in history? how fast do we need to be moving?
Tarso: Those are great questions. Let me see if I can shed a little light on this question of the 12 to 18 months. Um, first of all, [00:23:00] it's not a law of physics,
Ejeris: We wish.
Tarso: but it is based on research and we should take it seriously. Uh, let me start here. There's a Hungarian political scientists, um, ball Naar who studies authoritarianism mostly in former Eastern Europe.
countries, former states of the Soviet Union now in Eastern Europe. Um. With a focus on Hungary and, and what's happening in in Russia as well. And this political scientist describes three phases of autocracy, right? Which is like strongman rule. Basically. The first is attempt, the second is breakthrough, and the third is consolidation.
Attempt is pretty straightforward. Trump's attempted coup, right? Which culminated in the attack on the capitol. We were just talking about a clear example of attempt. Breakthrough is where the autocrat or the authoritarian or fastest clique grabs enough power and does so much damage, like changes, conditions so significantly that [00:24:00] they can't easily be res reversed.
Let's say a court ruling says you can't do that, or there's an election of new Congress that tries to undo. What's been done, things have already changed so substantially you can't really do that. Like the illegal firing of thousands of government workers, which of course disproportionately affects black women and other women of color through Doge or the closing of federal agencies like U-S-A-I-D and other actions, these represent an autocratic breakthrough.
Institutions have been captured or dismantled. That toothpaste doesn't just go back in the tube.
You
Ejeris: or like the defunding of like the of NPR and PBS or like those types of things that are that kind of Okay.
Tarso: Right. If you permanently damage those institutions, there are layoffs. They can't function. If in two or three or five years that's overturned and funding is restored, that institution's been taken off the off the table. Right? Which is the point of it. So breakthrough is where you are really, you are moving, you are causing damage.
You can't just [00:25:00] say do over. Right. with another election, consolidation is where the authoritarians or fascists have gained so much power, whether legally, like with the permission of lawmakers in the courts or illegally, so much power that they can't easily be removed. There may still be elections in the us I think elections will continue.
but the system has been so badly rigged that they are rarely. Result in removing the autocrat or the fascists, and often this is referred to as an electoral autocracy or simply a decat ship,
right? You may go through the motions of election, you may be certain kinds of protests might be tolerated.
There might still be a certain level of dissent, but. True powerful dissent institutions that could challenge the power of the regime have been. They've had their wings clipped, they've had their people jailed, they've whatever's been done, they've been dismantled, they've been declared illegal. They're not able to operate the ways that could, are likely to challenge the, the power of the autocrat.
That's [00:26:00] consolidation. So back to the 12 to 18 months between breakthrough and consolidation. That estimate is based on studies of authoritarian power grabs in various countries from the 1930s to today. So basically over the past a hundred years, historian Timothy Snyder, who wrote a very influential book on tyranny speaks of 12 to 18 month timeframe, and at one point said, we have at best.
12 months to avoid a dissent into fascism. the Varieties of Democracy Institute, a very important global monitor of authoritarian in fascist advance finds that it takes on average two, a little over two years from when authoritarians begin to have systemic impact to what, when things hit bottom, when they have their maximum impact on a society.
Right, which is. Probably past the point of consolidation, right? Going from consolidation to utter right destruction and terror in some cases.
Once authoritarians, infas grab power, they move quickly to grab more, right? [00:27:00] And to close down channels to challenge their rule. And so to your point that you, there's more opportunity for maneuver.
We can have this conversation,
Ejeris: Yeah. Nobody
Tarso: have not been banned, you have not been taken out. We are not in exile.
Right? We have more capacity to do that in these earlier stages than just as we have more capacity to protest in the streets than if the military, if the Marines are policing our protests, we have more power.
An ability to resist a coup attempt in the nation's capital if the entire security infrastructure isn't controlled by the very regime that is trying to engineer the coup, right? So the more power they consolidate, the more difficult it is to mount an effective resistance. Although that can consolidation may drive more and more people to the realization that a power grab has happened.
So there may be more and more people prepared or wanting. To engage in resistance, but the ability to wield effective power is much more difficult. The ability to [00:28:00] organize, is much more difficult. It's much more difficult to organize underground than it is when you can organize in the open. It's much more difficult to organize if you're facing the risk of, uh, police repression, of vigilante violence, um, and those kinds of things.
And so I do think that the Trump administration. Is arguably setting the stage for electoral autocracy right now. Right. They're looking at the midterm elections. They're trying to change the electoral districts in Texas. Something that generally you only do after new census, right? Which happens at the start of each decade.
We're in the middle of that, like that already happened a few years ago. They're trying to do that now in order to to expand this government's control over Congress. They're doing that in advance. Of this next set of elections. So they, they're showing us what their intent is, they're showing us the intent to militarize the society.
They're showing us they [00:29:00] intend to create conditions in which even if a majority of the population rejects authoritarianism at the polls, that they may not get that result cause. They're gonna rig it even more that it's already been been rigged. so. I think that tells us something about what time it is.
We can't know with a scientific certainty. As I said, there's not a lot of physics in Jarris. but I think if we imagine a clock of about 12 to 18 months from the election Of this government. I think that's not an, an unreasonable timeframe. It could happen a little faster. It could take a little longer, if it happens at all.
Our job, of course, is to prevent that consolidation. And so the other point about saying this is not a law of physics, it's not just that there's a magical timeframe, it's that. Our job is to keep that consolidation from ever happening. So the point of understanding the potential timeframe is to take the necessary [00:30:00] actions robustly and strategically enough to prevent that from ever happening.
Ejeris: there are two things that I'm really noticing this piece around. What's happening in Texas around the redistricting? So when you say they're attempting an electoral autocracy, it's just that they're attempting to manipulate elections so that they actually don't have to stop elections because they always win, right?
the elections will always, oh, it's. Just happens to be, oh, Trump again. Right? And, and there are many electoral autocracies that exist in the world and they have elections, but their elections are meaningless. But when you combine that with also what's happening in, in dc so then if for some reason that that attempt doesn't work and they just decide not to leave anyway, well Then they also control. Policing and law enforcement in such a way, like more so than previously, where there was no one to remove them from power. And so what. [00:31:00] Strikes me about this 12 to 18 month window it doesn't seem to be just like, it's not a video game where all of a sudden you ascend into the next level, right?
Where maybe this whole level is the same, but it actually feels like as they increase their power, they also increase the. Violence and danger of opposing them. So it's not like, it's not like, uh, month one is the same. It, it, it like, you're as safe in month one as you are in month 17. Right? It's that, This is a guide around, how much time we have, but also that we will be losing rights, access, safety, throughout this process. Yeah.
Tarso: That's right. And every situation is different. But as an example, the military dictatorship in Brazil is, I was mentioning there was a coup in 1964 and it became very dangerous. Um, but it was still possible to organize [00:32:00] and sometimes they, they would lose at the polls and that you couldn't elect the president.
So they didn't lose that. But the opposition party, which was allowed to exist in order to maintain the appearance of a democracy, would win too many votes. And so they would scramble it and they would ban that party and they would create a new opposition party under a different set of rules. They would try that out for a while.
and so e even under authoritarianism or under a dictatorship, it is sometimes possible to surprise the autocrat and to create problems. Elections are often inflection points, and even when they can't remove a regime, they can challenge the regime and they can demonstrate. It's a stress test that can demonstrate to the greater population that you're not alone.
Actually legions of people want this to end. They want this out. They want a different set of possibilities for their lives, for their families, for their communities. So elections can remain [00:33:00] important. Um, in the case of Brazil, there was a slow build towards, towards greater protest against the regime that peaked in 68, and it's part of why there was then this hard turn.
Even further to the right where Congress was, uh, dismissed, shut down, sent home, and we, we had an even more iron fisted response. And so it can take time, really could take time. It took 21 years in the case of Brazil to remove a regime once it's consolidated power. That's not a law of physics. 21 years is not a magical number.
To say what's, there's consolidation, even if you then muster broad popular support, it is simply much more difficult to dislodge. although what can happen over time is that the excesses, the pain points of the regime touch more and more people and all kinds of people who led to believe that this was going to be a better [00:34:00] arrangement for them.
That they were gonna be better off, that they, they were gonna be safer. Discover that. Authoritarianism and fascism guarantees one thing, which is violence and instability and insecurity. You never know whether
you're safe. You never know whether you're safe.
Ejeris: and, and violence like, the fascists are violent to each other.
Tarso: To each other. That's right. One minute you're in, the next minute you're out. And you didn't lose a fashion contest. You are, in exile, you are in a gulag, you are in a prison, you are deported to a, a prison cell and Salvador, whatever. It's, whatever it's gonna be. so I think that's right. the conditions do grow more severe and they affect different populations differently.
So there, there remains kind of unevenness, uh, of, of access. Um, in Brazil, the lawyers weren't able to get their win their client's cases, torture, for instance. But they still had some privileges. Um, they were given access to the case files. [00:35:00] Of cases of torture, and so they were secretly able to capture and photocopy every single
case brought of torture in the country, smuggled that outta the country, produce a record, and then indict the regime and prove that there was systematic.
Torture.
So it's always possible to resist. It's always possible to organize even under the most severe conditions. Just the nature of that organizing becomes more dangerous. And what it means to be a, to be a lawyer, what it means to advance justice changes, right? Uh, your expectations of what you can accomplish change.
You have to figure out new ways to fight, and many of us will be doing that, finding new ways to fight.