Rick Steves on Rejecting Fascism at Home and Fears of Trump Abroad

[Nevilledog]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/rick-steves-interview

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I don’t get star-struck easily. But I’ll admit that I was a little nervous when I got Rick Steves on the phone recently. Not only is the longtime PBS host and author America’s most beloved travel guide, he’s the avatar of a specific kind of travel—one that urges Americans to get off the beaten path, connect with the locals, and broaden their perspectives on their own culture by immersing themselves in another. Especially in a moment of rising nationalism and division and social media superficiality, this kind of travel can, indeed, be a “political act,” as he put it in one of his books.

Politics has been at the top of Steves’s mind lately. The longtime activist has been outspoken about Donald Trump’s coordinated campaign to consolidate power and undermine democracy since his return to office. He has warned of the parallels between our MAGA moment and repressive authoritarian regimes that rose across Europe a century ago, and gave a rousing speech last month at an anti-Trump rally in his hometown of Edmonds, Washington, where he lives the two-thirds of the year he’s not traveling. “When I come back to this country after a trip overseas, I am so thankful that I live here and nowhere else,” Steves told the crowd during a day of “Hands Off” rallies across the United States, lamenting Trump’s “dismantling” of American institutions. “It’s because of the fabric of our democracy, and that’s what we’re celebrating and defending.”

On television, Steves is reliably upbeat; his PBS program has been, for devoted “Rickniks” like myself, a reliable source of comfort, especially during the pandemic, when the only travel my wife and I could do was vicariously through his show. I hoped he might be able to give me some cause to be optimistic in this otherwise gloomy political moment. But Steves, it seems, is as worried as anyone: “You’ve got to be hopeful,” he told me. “But America has to wake up,” he said. “Right now, we’re going in the wrong direction.”

In an interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity and length, Steves talked about his activism, Trump’s threats to public media, and the lessons that history—and travel—offer Americans: “Do you really want to build walls and shut out the rest of the world,” Steves said, “or do you want to build bridges?”

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