“America’s Police State Has Arrived,” screamed a column in Sunday’s New York Times by Masha Gessen, who was a prominent gay rights activist in Vladimir Putin’s Russia before escaping to the United States and writing books on Putin’s Russia.
She’s using the byline “M. Gessen” now, and here’s how “they” are identified by the Times: “They won a George Polk award for opinion writing in 2024.”
Unfortunately, after less than three months into the second Trump Administration, Gessen is seeing Putinism inside every black car in America, judging by the hyperbolic tone of this piece. The online title: “Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.”
No one will ask Times “fact checker” Linda Qiu to get involved. Within three paragraphs we’re in Stasi territory.
Those of us who have lived in countries…
