Houston asks, Albright answers: ‘An Evening with Madeline Albright’
Brazos Bookstore hosted “An Evening with Madeline Albright” Feb. 11 in the Ballroom at Bayou Place in Houston’s Theater District. This was Madeleine Albright’s first time in Texas since the night of the 2018 midterm elections in which she spoke about bipartisanship and foreign policy at the Bush Library in College Station. Albright, who served as the first female Secretary of State and second woman as U.S. United Nations Ambassador, Houston spoke in about her 2018 book “Fascism: A Warning.”
The evening started with Albright driving home what she hoped to be the main takeaways from the book – that fascism is not a political ideology but a process in gaining power and that we are susceptible to fascism in 2019. She checked off points that made a leader a fascist in her book such as being a bully/violent, disrespecting the judiciary branch, and believing that he or she is above the law.
“[When] there is division in society, a fascist leader will align with one group at the expense of a minority,” Albright said.
Albright went on to reveal that in writing her book, she found that, with few exceptions in places like Russia and China, all leaders that used fascism gain power legally. She then cited a Mussolini quote from her book that states “If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, people won’t notice.”
The book was published 14 months into the Trump Administration; many believed “Fascism: A Warning” to be a direct response to Trump taking office. Albright refuted this assumption saying, “I was going to write it no matter who won.” In previous interviews, she has expanded by saying though Trump checks off several of the boxes that make a fascist, he doesn’t quite make the cut.
Immigration
Albright also spoke at length about immigration and called herself a refugee. Her family fled Czechoslovakia, first from Hitler during World War II and then from the Communist Coup of 1948. Albright said the time she sought refuge in the United Kingdom from Hitler, the British aided them, were sympathetic and asked questions like, “when are you going home?” Soon after returning to Czechoslovakia, her father decided to defect to the United States from the coup; his family fled with him. The former secretary said her experience as a refugee in the U.S. was similar to her stay in the U.K., but a major difference was that Americans asked, “when are you becoming a citizen?”
Albright described one of her proudest moments as Secretary of State was handing new American citizens’ their naturalization papers July 4, 2000, at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia. Monticello was the home of the first secretary Thomas Jefferson and 2000 was the year marked as the 50th anniversary.
Being Secretary of State
Transitioning from immigration and its misconceptions, she spoke on what intelligence was like as Secretary of State. When the U.S. begin relations with North Korea in the 90s, “intelligence was so poor, all [she] knew was that Kim Jong-il was a pervert,” Albright stated. In regards to the newly formed Soviet Union, she described the systematic disinformation coming from Putin as concerning and that “he has played a bad hand well, and the U.S. a strong hand weak.”
Though Albright was there to speak on her new book, there were elements to the evening that were less serious like her relationship with television. Using tv shows like “Army Wives,” she educated herself in the effects at home when deployed soldiers went abroad. Albright shared intimate stories about her cameos on shows like “Gilmore Girls” and “Parks and Recs.” When speaking on her appearance and love for shows like “Madam Secretary,” a show that stemmed from a conversation she had with one of the creators, Albright appreciated its existence and that it coincided with her goal of making “foreign policy less foreign.”
Houston asks
The evening concluded with a few questions from the audience of over 200. The questions ranged from thoughts on Brexit to which she described as a complicated mess and hoped that U.K. citizens would get to vote on a 2nd referendum to what pin she was wearing that evening. To the accessory question, Albright stated she was wearing “Mercury the Messenger” and that when she got to the United Nations as the U.S. Ambassador in 1993 she wore different pins to set the tone of the day. Albright explained that flowers and the like would signal a good day and bugs or predatory animals would signal a trying day.
One of the last questions came from a woman who asked what she, as a mother, could do for her daughter so that she can gain similar worldly experiences and opportunities that shaped Albright.
“We now have the saying in the U.S., ‘see something, say something,’” Albright said. “And I’ve added to that ‘do something.’”
She then quoted Robert Frost by saying “the older I am the younger are my teachers” and stated that she was “deeply moved” by the actions of the Parkland kids. Albright said as a teacher she has seen her students are more informed of what is happening at the national and international stage.
Her final words to the mothers and young women in the room was to get involved, volunteer and study because “there is room for mediocre men,[but] there is none for mediocre women.”
