How free do authors living in the United States feel during Donald Trump's second presidential term?

The question opened a discussion at Berlin's international literature festival: The talk, titled "The US Under Trump 2.0.," brought together three renowned authors — Jamaica Kincaid, Elizabeth Kolbert and William Hitchcock — who are among the 2025-26 Class of Fellows of the American Academy in Berlin.

"I should be the freest person in America — a 60-year-old white man with tenure at a university. Nobody can touch me," said historian William Hitchcock, ironically referring to his societal privilege. "But actually, that's not true anymore. So all of the things that we once knew and took for granted have been destabilized."

'Everyone is on edge'

The discussion was held a day after late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel was "indefinitely" suspended from his talk show following a joke related to Charlie Kirk's murderer — though the show was reinstated a few days later following a major public and political backlash. 

The censorship of Kimmel intensified concerns about the state of freedom of speech in the US.

"Now, words are being examined, and created, and evaluated, in a way I don't think I've ever experienced," said Hitchcock, whose podcast "Democracy in Danger" wasn't renewed in 2024, after four years of production.

"The university decided they didn't want to fund our podcast anymore, which gives you an idea of the way in which things slowly close around you," he explained.

If the program had continued, Hitchcock predicted that he would be more careful with his words: "Honestly, I'm not sure if I would feel as free to 'let it rip' on my podcast as I did a couple of years ago."

"All journalists, all news organizations are very worried," said Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert, who is also a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.

The Trump administration is filing a series of lawsuits against media companies. Among others, he's claiming $15 billion (€12.7 billion) from the New York Times and Penguin Random House, and $10 billion from the Wall Street Journal, for reports allegedly damaging his reputation. 

The companies have dismissed the lawsuits, saying they lack legitimacy. The New York Times said in a statement that the claims are merely attempts "to stifle and discourage independent reporting."

Trump's defamation lawsuit against the newspaper was struck down by a federal judge on Friday for being unnecessarily long. But the president's legal team still plans to file an amended version of the case.

As Kolbert pointed out: "It just costs a lot of money to defend yourself against a suit like that, so everyone is on edge, and everyone is trying to be super careful."

"The violations of laws, the violations of civil rights are very familiar to African Americans," noted Antiguan-American novelist Jamaica Kincaid, who is also professor emerita of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

"So this actually might be one of those transforming moments — a profound transforming moment in American life, where people who are not Black, but liberal, will become 'Black,'" she said at the Berlin event.

'Racism' underlies the 'Trump mystery'

The host of the discussion, Beatrice Fassbender, asked Elizabeth Kolbert, who specializes in environmental journalism, how a majority of US adults — around 70-72% according to recent polls — can believe that global warming is happening, and yet still vote for Trump, an avowed climate science denier.  

"It's one of the great mysteries of Donald Trump," said the author of the Pulitzer-prize winning non-fiction work, "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History."

The mystery applies to a number of issues, she added, citing for example how 63% of US adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Yet even if it was widely known that a second Trump term would llikely lead to more restrictions on reproductive rights, a majority still voted for him.

The three authors discussed the role of money in the campaign, and how, for Kolbert, the economy and immigration becamee the "hot button issues." 

But for Hitchcock, the constant talk about inflation and the price of eggs or gas during the campaign was "one of the biggest political shenanigans that's been pulled in a long time," as it was actually "masking a really profound ideology": racism.

"Racism is central to what's happening in America, and it's not new, but it has been accelerated in a way that is extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily dangerous," said Hitchcock.

"There's no other way to fundamentally explain how Donald Trump can have a different point of view than pretty much all of his supporters, and yet they still are loyal to him without the one constant threat that they all share — which is a fundamentally racist view of the world."

"This is the American burden. It's 400 years old. It's central to our our whole national experience. If you're not focusing on that, you're not really talking about American political life," said the historian.

Is Trump 2.0 actually fascism?

The host of the discussion asked Hitchcock if he agreed with his fellow historian, Timothy Snyder, who has stated that Trump is a fascist. Other experts, however, are more reluctant to use the label.

"Fascism is a perfectly good word," said Hitchcock at the Berlin literature festival. "[But] whether you want to call it fascism or not, it kind of doesn't matter." 

The key, he added, is rather to identify the indicators of an authoritarian ideology at work: Is there a mass political movement backing it? Does it emphasize a nation in jeopardy and nationalism as its core ideology? Is it led by a charismatic leader "who can do no wrong"? Is it co-opting the institutions of the state? Is it anti-science and anti-university? Is it seeking to transform a liberal democracy into a one party state by repressing voting? This all checks under Trump's second administration, said Hitchcock.

"So if it walks like a duck, you have to start asking yourself: Maybe it is."

Edited by: Stuart Braun