Welcome to The Detox. I’m Neil Abrams, a political scientist who has been researching Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for the past quarter-century. My essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Slate, and Foreign Policy, among other outlets.
When I began this newsletter, I was devoting most of my energy to debunking the lies told by apologists for Russia and its genocidal assault on Ukraine. After Hamas’s terrorist attack in October 2023, I found myself debunking the lies told by apologists for Israel and its genocidal assault on Gaza.
Following the 2024 U.S. election, my focus shifted again, this time to Trump’s authoritarian project and how it might be defeated. This is where most of my attention will remain until he and his entire movement have been routed and humiliated.
How It All Started
One question, more than any other, has driven my work since graduate school: How to thwart the insidious actors who are out to undermine democracy and the rule of law?
My PhD dissertation, which will eventually become a book, examined how reform-minded governments in certain post-communist countries sidelined oligarchs and corrupt officials to establish sound, legally-enforced property rights.
Much of my post-PhD work focused on what democrats around the world can do to vanquish the neofascist parties threatening rights and freedoms.
With Russia’s war on Ukraine, my attention turned to the professional contrarians seeking to shift the moral onus of the war away from Russia, where it properly belongs, and onto other actors, whether Ukraine or the West.
Now that authoritarianism has arrived on America's shores, I am drawing on the experiences of other countries to devise ways of stopping it.
In short, the political world is polluted. Let’s clean it up.
Welcome to The Detox.
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