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You Have No Idea How Soviet We Really Are
The historian Niall Ferguson launched his new column at the Free Press with a banger, “We’re All Soviets Now.” His comparison of the United States in 2024 to Russia in 1987 offended Jonah Goldberg and Noah Smith, among others, but their criticism of Ferguson gets it backwards. The only problem with his column is that it didn’t go far enough.
Ferguson’s points of similarity between modern America and late Soviet Russia are—to condense a column of substance to a bare list—gerontocratic leadership; bloated government; lack of trust in institutions; high death rates; and “a bizarre ideology that no one really believes in.”
Good points, all of them, yet in each case Ferguson soft-pedals his argument.
