She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.
In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
No you don’t. You made them up right now.
Her fight is far more public than yours by an enormous factor.
She got her message across to millions by putting her money where her mouth is and leaving, whereas you’re just carping to a few hundred on lemmy calling her names for standing up in a very public way that got more headlines in one day than your carping on the internet will do in your lifetime. You’re just undermining her very important message about how bad things are and how much worse they’re gonna be.
Your bravado is as fake as your fantasy children are.
Your anti-intellectualism, your lack of empathy and your fake bravado all point to you being a rightwing troll just trying to lessen the impact of her crucial lessons from history by discrediting her for taking a stand.
It’s pretty funny that you think I don’t have kids just because you can’t imagine what it would be like to not be afraid all the time. If your fucked up view of things leads to the conclusion that leaving the country is “putting your money where your mouth is” in the context of fighting fascism then I hope to god you don’t live anywhere near me. That’s a hilariously bad take and you know it.