Margaret Atwood Sounds the Alarm on Authoritarianism | Amanpour and Company

i’m honestly astounded by again the
prescience um that you wrote because
part of the crisis in handmaid’s tale
started with an attack on on congress
and and the the you know the fallout
from that i mean here all these decades
later in 2021
we had an attack on congress and there
are many who believe that the
fundamental democracy of the united
states is under threat so what does
totalitarianism look like in the u.s
or could
when when it arrives
uh well it’ll have a lot of god in it
um and a lot of things will be done in
the name of of said word
uh that if you actually uh believe in
some form of god and in the in the uh
latter part of that book uh you would
think that such a god would not
indulge in these practices i’m being
very circumlocations here
um yeah so it would have a lot of god
and it would have a lot of american
flags in it
and it would have a lot of let’s get
back to the old days in it
when were those old days and what was
going on in them
so you can’t separate anything that
happens in the united states from
uh its history of uh slavery
and um
so-called reconstruction and and jim
crow laws and segregation that’s all
very recent
so
i think the totalitarianisms of the left
lead through hope
so things are going to get much better
except we have to get rid of those
people
and those of the right to lead through
fear
unless you follow me and do what i say
terrible things will happen
and there’s a list of terrible things
which are specific to each
circumstance but i wouldn’t say that’s
how it goes
don’t you think well it’s fascinating
again i mean just really
just watching all of this unfold things
that i personally never dreamed could
happen uh an attack on american
democracy of all places rolling back
quote unquote the woman question um
which we see right now and again goes to
the very heart of the handmaid’s tale
and that of course i don’t need to tell
you the texas abortion law the
mississippi uh abortion
decisions that are about to come up the
idea that roe versus weighed may be
overturned either in whole or in part
how well i mean you obviously are
concerned did you ever imagine though
that when you wrote the handmaid’s tale
this amount of reality would shape up so
many decades later
okay i’ve never believed in
exceptionalism
i’ve never believed it can’t happen here
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