‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Author: While The US Isn’t Putting Reporters In Prison Yet, Trump’s Tactics Are ‘Dangerous’

“The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood said at the PEN Literary Gala on Tuesday that the authoritarian tactics of the Trump administration are “dangerous.”

“When democracy is in retreat, the first thing authoritarians do is silence those who are telling stories they dislike,” Atwood said. “While the United States isn’t putting reporters in prison yet, the tactics of the current administration are dangerous,” she continued.

Those tactics, she said, include “attacking and discrediting reporters by name, threatening to punish unfavorable coverage, and branding certain news organizations as the enemies of the American people.”

“‘Fake News’ is now an international knee-jerk response by strong men and dictators seeking to discredit accurate reporting,” the author said.

Atwood’s comments come after “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl revealed on Tuesday that Trump once told her that he attacks the press so no one will believe the negative stories written about him.

The Hill added:

The author of the popular, dystopian novel, said earlier this month that the U.S. is becoming more “Gilead-like” under Trump, referencing the post-cataclysmic America depicted in her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the hit TV show by the same name.

She has also compared Trump to the to the theocratic dictator who runs Gilead in her novel.

“When it [‘The Handmaid’s Tale’] first came out, it was viewed as being farfetched,” she said last year.

“However, when I wrote it, I was making sure I wasn’t putting anything into it that human beings had not already done somewhere at sometime.”

“You are seeing a bubbling up of it now,” she continued. “It’s back to 17th century puritan values of new England at that time in which women were pretty low on the hierarchy.”

“When I wrote #TheHandmaidsTale, I made sure that nothing went into it that had not come from somewhere in history… You hope your work will remind people that ‘it can’t happen here’ has simply never been true.” —@MargaretAtwood pic.twitter.com/Cd5Kqhwq8m

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) May 23, 2018