When Clarice Starling speaks, autocrats should listen. They won’t, but they should.
Jodie Foster has spent decades playing characters who stare into the abyss—whether hunting serial killers or confronting societal monsters. Now she’s turned that unflinching gaze toward the biggest threat to American democracy: the relentless war on truth being waged from the highest office in the land.
“History repeats itself,” Foster warns, and she’s not talking about fashion trends. She’s talking about the familiar authoritarian playbook: attack free expression, dismantle civil liberties, gaslight the population until they can’t distinguish fact from fiction. It’s a greatest hits compilation of tyranny, and Trump is playing it on repeat.
Foster’s call for unity “across political and racial lines” would be inspiring if it weren’t so desperately necessary. The fact that we need a Hollywood icon to remind us that democracy requires more than passive spectatorship is itself an indictment of how far we’ve fallen.
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“It’s our time to resist… to show up and demand answers.”
Not suggestions. Not requests. Demands. Because asking nicely hasn’t worked. Writing strongly-worded op-eds hasn’t worked. Hoping that norms and institutions would hold hasn’t worked. The only thing left is collective action—the kind that makes elected officials remember they work for us, not the other way around.
Foster emphasizes accountability “regardless of one’s background or political affiliation,” which is a polite way of saying: stop making excuses for authoritarianism just because it’s wearing your team’s jersey. Democracy doesn’t have a party affiliation. Neither does fascism.
Her message is a rallying cry for vigilance and active participation.
Translation: Wake up. Show up. Speak up. Before there’s nothing left to wake up to.
The woman who once played an FBI agent taking down a cannibal is now asking Americans to find the courage to take down a con artist. One would think that’s the easier task. One would be wrong.
Jodie Foster, Trump, democracy, free expression, resistance, truth, civil liberties, accountability
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