Sputnik News carried a live interview on Jan. 25 with Srdja Trifkovic on the social and political climate in the United States in the aftermath of President Joseph Biden’s inauguration. We bring you Dr. Trifkovic’s translation of some key segments of that interview.

Q:        [At 7 min. 55 sec.] How seriously should we take the warnings that America is on the brink of a civil war, that the country finds itself at a crucial moment?

ST:      Not too seriously. It is noteworthy that most such warnings, some of which you have quoted in your introduction, come from the liberal mainstream media such as The Atlantic magazine, or from Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. They are straining to create the false impression that “the right” is raising heavily armed paramilitary formations, that what we saw on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 was only the tip of the iceberg. They are advocating a host of openly totalitarian measures: not just the Post but also The New York Times and CNN, all of whom want to criminalize different opinions. Biden himself has said that a new equivalent of the USA Patriot Act will be rushed through Congress, where Democrats now have a majority in both houses. That act was hastily adopted after the attacks of 9/11. Today’s totalitarian left wants to exploit the events on Capitol Hill in exactly the same manner the Nazis exploited the Reichstag fire in February 1933 and forced the swift self-liquidation of the Weimar constitutional order.

Difficult days lie ahead for all those who do not subscribe to the views of the new regime—and in this situation the term “the Washingtonian regime” is perfectly apt. Not “the Administration,” but the Biden-Harris regime. Their victory was the result of a travesty of the democratic process. The objective was set in advance, and then the pretense of a “democratic process” was performed by hook or by crook to achieve that goal. It is sufficient to recall the brutal censorship of the story, which we now know was correct, about the investigation of Hunter Biden’s corruption case. All leading social networks were ruthlessly deleting and deplatforming anyone who dared to merely forward the New York Post link to that story. What we are looking at is a mature synthesis of fascism and bolshevism in a quasi-liberal guise. There is the openly stated intent to eliminate all other forms of understanding American identity, of America’s past and future. If they do not fit into the myth of “white privilege,” systemic racism, and all that nonsense, they will be directly criminalized. […]

Q:        [At 21 min. 50 sec.] Mr. Trifkovic, can you comment on the issue of social cohesion, or rather on the lack thereof in today’s United States? It seems to have gone way beyond simple political disagreements. Even if the media have an agenda to exaggerate the importance of armed groups, are we witnessing new social phenomena and processes under way?

ST:      I’ll dare make a forecast—bearing in mind Yogi Berra’s warning that “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”: we’ll very soon see the specific symptoms of creeping totalitarianism. Let me give you a specific example: the praise heaped by the mainstream media on children who inform on their parents to the authorities. That is absolutely horrendous, and reminiscent of the case of Pavlik Morozov, a Russian boy who reported his father to the NKVD for alleged corruption. The father was duly arrested and liquidated, and later the boy himself was killed by disgruntled family members. Pavlik was glorified in the symphonic cantatas, in compulsory textbooks for young pioneers, etc. Now that’s the spirit! Pavlik Morozov lives again in today’s America, where the media glorify those youths who “have the courage” to rat on their supposedly deviant-thinking parents.

Another specific illustration of what it’s like: Thanksgiving dinner used to be that one day when American families came together and set aside all their differences. Last November, though, not just because of the epidemic but also because of intense political antagonisms within many families, this did not happen. I know of some specific examples, cases of people who insist on raising contentious issues and then no longer talk to their close relatives with whom they disagree.

In the days of yore, the majority subscribed to the Anglo-Saxon notions of making a deal, agreeing to disagree, and give and take. That spirit has retreated in favor of implacable moral absolutism. That absolutism does not allow the possibility that a Trump voter may be just a little bit right, that his choice is at least somewhat legitimate, or that there can be anything good about Donald Trump. It no longer matters whether the trade deal with China is good for American workers, or if it reduces the trade deficit, because we have entered a time where people’s positions are no longer amenable to rational debate.

Talking of economics, we now have the first generation of younger Americans in history who are, on the whole, worse off than their parents. Ever since the first days of Virginia and New England’s settlement in the 17th century, each generation of Americans—including even the one which endured the Great Depression in the 1930s—ended up more prosperous and more optimistic than the one preceding it. This is no longer the case and it deeply affects the collective psyche: we are no longer able to generate ever-greater prosperity, and we have lost the spirit of optimistic faith in the future…

I think that growing dissatisfaction will be suppressed through the ever-growing militarization of the police apparatus, and the promotion of conformism which is already apparent among many Americans. However idiotic some COVID-related ordinances may be, specifically in California, Oregon, etc., on the whole they were observed while fathers playing with their children in the parks got arrested. In addition, what is happening with social media censorship, with people being deplatformed and silenced, is also worrying. We seem to have a new “silent majority” (to paraphrase Nixon) which is pliant. These people are willing to accept all restrictions and quietly mind their own business. They are loath to resist. To them taking up arms is unimaginable.

Let it be added that most American conservatives are instinctive legalists. In 1861, Southern states seceded because their people believed, with reason, that they had the constitutional right to do so. To them, secession was legal and Lincoln’s invention of the construct of a transcendent Union was illegal. Along the same lines, today there would need to be a legal and constitutional grounding for the notion of delegitimizing authority, which I do not expect to happen…

[49 min. 48 sec] Totalitarian screws will be tightened. In one area this process is unfortunately proceeding smoothly: in indoctrinating young Americans through the system of state education and higher education which has turned most colleges into bastions of insanity obsessed with microaggressions, racism, hurt feelings, exclusion, and other forms of paranoid weirdness.