“Fascism Works If Everybody Is Afraid”: One Democratic Congressman’s Antidote to Trumpism

Illinois congressman Sean Casten has held upward of 80 town halls in his suburban Chicago district since he was elected in 2018. To the Democrat, they’re a basic part of a functioning democracy. People “deserve to have their voices heard,” he tells me. “They deserve to feel represented.”

Those voices can sometimes be angry or frustrated. Casten was one of several Democrats to face confrontational town hall crowds last month, but he calls the events a kind of remedy to the cynicism that has festered in the Trump era. “You come away with the sense that we have so much more in common than we have that divides us,” he says, “and that this is the way democracy works.”

In a conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length, Casten discusses Democrats’ recent public gatherings in Republican districts, the impact of Trump’s agenda on rural areas, and the need for political courage in an era of acquiescence. “If all of us who have something to lose see the risk of individual courage as being an incentive to sit down and do nothing,” he warns, “we’re going to lose our democracy.”

Vanity Fair: You’ve talked about how your first run was inspired in part because your representative—Peter Roskam at the time—was not holding town halls. Why was that such an important and animating factor for you?

Sean Casten: I had not been super politically engaged before I ran for Congress. But I had gone to meet with [Roskam] to advocate with some clean-energy folks for removing some of the barriers to entrepreneurs doing clean-energy things. And when I challenged him on some of his logic, he stood up and walked out of the room and said the meeting was over. I didn’t challenge him disrespectfully. And when I started talking to people who were more politically active than myself, they said, “Oh, that’s just his style.” And there’s something that just felt civically wrong to me. You’re an elected official, you’re a representative—I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I expect you to sort of understand the mood of folks and to be able to explain your convictions. If you’re not willing to do that, you shouldn’t be in this line of work. If you have the talents to do this job, almost by definition, you could make more money and spend more time with your family at lots of other jobs. The reason to do this is because you’re committed to making sure that democracy works, making sure that people vote, making sure that when people do vote, they are fully informed on all the issues. And if you’re not willing to do that, we need to get you out of this line of work.

And now you’ve held these town halls in red districts. What did you take away from that?

I think the coolest thing was how familiar they felt to town halls that I’ve done up here in DuPage and Cook [counties]. And to be clear, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more than 54% of the vote. This is not a super-blue district. Statistically, I don’t think I’ve ever done a town hall where everybody in the room agreed with me or voted for me. But what I’ve always found is that when you go into these rooms and engage seriously and respectfully with the issues of the day, you come away with the sense that we have so much more in common than we have that divides us, and that this is the way democracy works. And there was nothing fundamentally about doing the town hall in Dixon or down in Carterville. There were people in the room who didn’t agree with me. Some of them were in full MAGA regalia, making it clear visually that they didn’t agree with me. But there was the same sense. There was this very funny moment where one woman got up who was clearly politically aligned with me, and was lamenting the fact that when she went to Washington, [Republican congressman] Mike Bost refused to take a meeting with her, and what did I suggest she do? And I said, like, candidly, of the thousands of meeting requests I get, I only have time to take a dozen, so don’t take that personally. The next woman who got up had a MAGA hat and a MAGA shirt on, and she said, “Don’t take it the wrong way—he doesn’t meet with me either.” It was just this nice moment. I think we are primed as individuals to look at the outfit someone is wearing and make an assumption about their tribal loyalties. And the beauty of a town hall is the recognition that, no, we’re all just sacks of carbon walking around trying to do the best we can.

Beyond that, did you get a sense from these voters who supported Trump as to why they turned out to see a Democratic representative? What concerns did they share?

The stuff that really stuck with me was how much of what Trump is doing is hurting rural America, and how much rural America felt like they have been ignored for too long by both parties. You had folks who voted for Trump who were sitting there saying, “You know, I depend on Social Security, and we’re being told now that no one is going to be on the telephone, we have to go in person, but I don’t have the ability to do that. You know, I’m a farmer who depends on the fact that most of our soy crop goes to China, and these reciprocal tariffs are going to decimate a huge chunk of our business, and I don’t know what to do about that.” It’s one thing to talk about Medicaid cuts in Chicago, where you can walk any five miles and you can find a hospital. It’s something else to talk about those cuts in rural America, where there’s only one hospital in the county, and that hospital depends on Medicaid funding. And you just had this sense that there’s real pain that is going to be disproportionately borne by the less wealthy parts of our country and the more rural parts of our country, and they don’t have anybody to talk to about it because the Democrats don’t campaign there and Republicans are being told, “Don’t do town halls.” And those people are Americans. They deserve to have their voices heard. They deserve to feel represented.

Democrats are doing more of these town halls, especially during the recess. What do you hope to accomplish—both politically, and in terms of some of the broader themes we’re talking about here?

This is going to sound very Boy Scout-y. I think if you trust democracy, you have to be committed to making sure that everybody votes and everybody’s informed. You should not be committed to assuming that only people who agree with you should vote. Lately, whenever I go to speak to students, I remind them that if you read what our founders wrote before they wrote the Constitution, they spent a lot of time talking about the importance of virtue in society and how a government based on the rule of law doesn’t work unless you have virtuous people implementing those laws. That’s the bed of democracy. We have to work on the assumption that most people are virtuous and that they can be trusted to make the right decision when given complete information. The things that make me concerned about the Republican Party—yes, we have our policy differences, but ultimately it’s because the Republican Party is really keen on voter suppression and spreading misinformation, and that’s antithetical to what our founders knew democracy depended on.

This is a Boy Scout-y question, too, then, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about how cynical politics are right now. I mean, it’s romantic to act like there hasn’t always been cynicism in politics—politicians lie, that’s no surprise. But it does seem like there’s just an assumption now that there’s going to be rampant lying, that you can’t trust anything, and that power is really the only currency. And once you go down that road, it can be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It sounds like you’re talking about a kind of earnestness that you’re not really seeing a lot of in politics right now.

Since Trump came down that escalator, we’ve been in a moment where the loudest voice in politics has been someone saying, “You can’t trust anybody, it’s all a racket.” You know, “I’ll be greedy for you, and just trust me because I’ll look out for your interests.” And that spreads a certain cynicism in America. Prior to that, we had a pretty charismatic guy who said that there’s no red America, there’s no blue America, and campaigned on a message of hope, and was sufficiently persuasive that [Chief Justice] John Roberts said that we now live in a “post-racial society.” Roberts was not remotely correct. But I think he genuinely believed that, because [Barack Obama] told a story about America that made him feel better about being an American, because he wanted that to be true. I don’t think the arc of history has bent as far toward justice as we thought it had when Obama was president. But I don’t think it’s bent as far away from justice as it has when Donald Trump is the president. I think for us to believe in the promise of America and for us to be committed to preserving the promise of America, we need political figures to articulate that hopeful, inclusive vision. Because there will always be demagogues. There will always be populists. That’s been true since our founding. We’ve survived this long because we’ve also had the other.

One of the things about that arc-of-history line is that it implies there’s this inevitability to it. But the Trump era has made clear that progress or regression comes from choices, and right now, it seems the Republican Party is making a choice not to check Trump in any way. The courts have tried to exert that check, but he has shown himself willing to defy those decisions. What can be done to slow him down?

I would submit to you that the arc of history has only bent toward progress when huge numbers of Americans have jumped up and grabbed it and dragged it against its will to bend in that direction. That is not a natural curve. The fact that we are living in a country where the president of the United States is ignoring the Constitution, breaking the law, and is seeing broad acquiescence from not just one entire political party, but large numbers of Americans who seem apathetic—that’s only surprising to white people, right? Because our country really did pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and we really did, for all practical purposes, refuse to enforce them until Congress passed the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965. We still have a long way to go. But we didn’t pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because John F. Kennedy campaigned on it and promised he would. He and ultimately [Lyndon B.] Johnson were dragged to that by huge numbers of people on the ground who were bending that arc toward justice. As Condoleezza Rice says, the ultimate purpose of politics is to make the impossible seem to be inevitable. None of that is to take away from this moment. It’s just to say that you can look at our history and find plenty of moments like this one. You cannot look at our history and find moments like this one that turned on somebody in Washington giving a great speech that suddenly moved public will. Movements always come first. Trump was checked last time he was in office not by my great rhetoric—he was checked because a lot of women took to the streets, because a lot of Parkland students took to the streets. There was this movement.

What have you made of the public response so far? And not just to the Trump administration, but to Democrats—because we’ve seen a lot of frustration with Democrats at some of these town halls as well, including one you held in Downers Grove last month. What do you make of the public mood right now?

I think we’ve shifted as a society in 100 days from being exhausted by Trump and somewhat apathetic into fear and into anger and into action. And that’s all painful, but necessary. The thing that scares me right now—and Trump is playing on this—is that almost anybody who feels like they have something to lose if they speak out is choosing not to speak out. Whether that’s a university concerned it might get its research funding cut if it doesn’t reduce its commitment to diversity, or maybe it’s a law firm concerned that if it doesn’t pay a pro bono fee, it’s going to lose some of its managing partners to another law firm who will play that game, maybe it’s a politician who is nervous that the Proud Boys are going to be told their home address if they call out Trump. And if all of us who have something to lose see the risk of individual courage as being an incentive to sit down and do nothing, we’re going to lose our democracy. I think I will be optimistic about the future of our country when I see those people who are afraid of individual courage instead choosing collective courage, because that’s the other door you could pick. Fascism works if everybody is afraid of being a tall poppy. But we can all be tall poppies.