1917 Centennial Series: Origins of Unfreedom. Timothy Snyder

good afternoon I'm Daniel Benjamin I'm the director of the Dickey Center I'm delighted to welcome you to this event on the origins of unfreedom with Professor Tim Snyder of Yale I will hand it over to my colleague professor OD Greenberg to do the do the the introduction of Professor Schneider himself but I did just want to note that this is our sixth and final event in this series on 1917 and I particularly want to begin by thanking everyone for being here today was of course great American novelist Herman Melville who said that whenever he found himself grim about the mouth and it was a damp and drizzly November in his soul he wanted to go to see I'm glad you came to to hear a lecture today here in Filene many of you may also have a damp and drizzly November in your soul as well as outside and I can't think of anything better to do given the current situation than coming to hear professor Snyder as I just wanted to review the the bidding here we did start this this series on the level of global history with Steven Kotkin and his lecture on war Revolution socialism and war we looked at the experience of one large and a very important group with Professor Chadd Williams presentation on torchbearers of democracy african-americans in World War one we looked at the experience of our own institution in World War one when professor Margaret Darrow looked at Dartmouth at war 1914-1918 professor Barbara will spoke about one man at war Ernest Hemingway and then in the fifth and penultimate event the scholars from the Russian department and film and Media Studies looked at the revolution in aesthetics and did a panel on that so it was we sort of looked at this one from a a lot of different ways and if you haven't by the way seeing the poster exhibition down at the black Family Center for the visual arts please do and also go to rauner's to where they have a wonderful exhibition as well on 1917 in closing I really just want to come back to where we began and thank Mary Dallman a long and devoted friend of the Dickey Center for underwriting this series and to thank the department's of history Russian government film and Media Studies the Leslie Center in Graziella parati in particular and the political economy project all of them were great collaborators and instigators in this effort so I want to thank them very much and with that I will turn it over to professor Gruber I thank you as then said my name is Judy Greenberg I'm a professor in the history department it is my great pleasure to introduce professor Timothy Snyder with the Richard Levine professor of history at Yale University professor Schneider is one of the most distinguished and most important historians of modern Europe especially or Central and Eastern Europe is the author of six books and the editor of two books which explore everything in modern European history from nationalism and culture to racism war and mass murder in central in Eastern Europe his most famous book out of those many books is probably bloodlines Europe between Hitler and Stalin which were published in I in 2010 and introduced a truly provocative a new interpretation of the era of mass violence in the place he took in central in Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s it will no less than 12 awards and prizes and has been translated to 33 languages and most importantly it's also assigned here at Dartmouth in classes on world war ii what perhaps distinguishes professor Schneider is his ability to reflect also systematically not only history of but also about what history can teach us about contemporary affairs in international and domestic politics his many writings on contemporary affairs have been published in the New York Review of Books in the New York Times in the nation and many other important venues most recently earlier this year these reflections appeared in a book short book called on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century this book became a number-one bestseller of the New York Times it has appeared in more than 40 languages from Iran to Turkey to Germany and Thailand these reflections will also be the topic of his talk to us today so please join me in warmly welcoming professor Schneider to Dartmouth okay okay thank you very much for the warm welcome since you are at the end of your series about 1917 what I would like to do is use this opportunity use the next hour or so to think about a hundred years on not as a reflection on 1917 but as an attempt to catch history on the wing in 2017 to ask ourselves if we are at the beginning of a new era what is that era what does it look like how does it feel like or perhaps better given that it looks and feels so strange what moorings can we find how can we brace ourselves what are some of the concepts and some of the categories we might use to steady ourselves and see what's going on the way I would propose to do this is a way that in a certain way would have been familiar to the Bolsheviks what I want to do is talk about time I want to talk about how time works how time feels because moving from one epoch to another isn't so much a matter of a lot of things happening moving from one epoch to another can be rather a question of a different experience of how history happens a different experience of what time actually is okay let me try to now be a little more specific I think that what is happening is that this thing called history which for me is the same thing as as freedom this thing called history is being caught between and crushed between two ideas of time one which we have taken for granted and which is now slipping away and another which is rising up and embracing us so fast that it's going to be over us before we even notice it unless we're careful the idea that I think we've taken for granted um the thing that we have been inside without recognizing we're inside it is what I would call the politics of inevitability okay what do I mean by the politics of inevitability by the politics of inevitability I mean an idea of time which says we know the future because we know the past and we know the rules which lead from the past to the future there's only really one thing that happens in history and that one thing is a motor that moves history forward towards some kind of progress now I can give an example and we'll all nod our heads and that example would be the example of Marxism Marxism at least understood in certain ways is an example the politics of inevitability a simple materialistic understanding of Marxism would say if there is a world that means there are resources if there are resources that means that there is technological change technological change brings about classes classes inevitably struggle that's the motor of history the class called the proletariat is going to inevitably create socialism and of course we will all nod our heads and say yes of course that's ridiculous it couldn't have happened that way that is one example of the politics of inevitability another example the politics of inevitability is the one in which we have raised our children for the last 25 years sadly which goes something like this if there is a world then there are resources if there are resources there's a competition for resources this healthy competition for resources we know is capitalism capitalism by some unspecified magic inevitably produces individual rights and democracy therefore everything is always going to be fine that is essentially the story that we told ourselves after 1989 it is no less witless and no more plausible than the other version it's simply closer to home or it is home we have been living in that we have been raising our children in that we now have a generation who were raised and precisely that bubble the user frequently used word now what's what's what's the problem with all of this well the the problem is that this kind of idea although it can seem right can't possibly describe reality it can't describe what happened in Russia after 1991 it can't describe what happened in Iraq after 2003 or moving closer to home if more capitalism meant more democracy then we shouldn't really have to worry about allowing unlimited amounts of money into political races in 2010 but boy is that a reason for worry and no one literally no one in the rest of the world I think it's fair to say the number of people in the rest the world who thinks that democracy is zero right I would say negative one if that were logically possible but I think zero or if more capitalism produce more democracy we shouldn't have to worry that the Supreme Court in 2013 decided that the states should no longer have to have electoral laws pre reviewed we shouldn't have to worry that after that decision 22 American States passed voter suppression laws we shouldn't have to worry because more capitalism is just going to bring more democracy so we shouldn't have to worry that voters in Cincinnati Columbus and Cleveland were disenfranchised we shouldn't have to worry that in the state of North Carolina which has a Democratic majority there's an unbreakable Republican hold of Congress because capitalism is eventually going to sort that out for us and somehow isn't it right so that is that is how we have gotten ourselves trapped that is the politics of inevitability now um when I say all this to European audiences they start laughing at a much earlier point than you do because it is always so easy to recognize the faults in someone else's way of reasoning or way of life but this talk is about America and Europe and Russia and I also I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how the Europeans are trapped in their own version of a politics of inevitability which is different which is different from ours and like ours they are so entrapped in it that they don't see it and thus they're confronted by it at which point they to their credit generally nod their heads and 15 seconds later say yes that's right professor Schneider it's a good so what is that politics of inevitability the politics of a navigability in the European version is something which I would call the fable of the wise nation the fable of the wise nation goes like this the fable of the wise nation says there were always European nations European nations learn from experience the most important experience in European history was the Second World War European nations learned from the Second World War that war was a bad thing therefore they began a process of European integration which led to the European Union because their wisdom accrued over time with experience no the only thing wrong with that story is everything there is not nothing in that view which is held by most educated Europeans in some version or other nothing in that view is correct starting starting from from one proposition it's just not true that Europeans learned from the Second World War that war is a bad thing if Europeans learn from the Second World War that war is a bad thing then Israel Belarus Ukraine and Russia would be the most peace-loving countries in the world because it's the Jews the ble Russians the Ukrainians and the Russians who suffered the most in the Second World War so if you learn from suffering that war is a bad thing then those would be peace-loving nations we can agree or disagree about the order of those four countries but I think it's fair to say that they're not the four most peace-loving countries in the world if people really did learn from the Second World War that war was a bad thing those are the people should have learned it right but they didn't the second proposition even more fundamental has to do with the nation itself the Europeans who think that there was a European nation state which then joined the European Union have it absolutely wrong that's what they all think but there is no such history there is no history of the European nation state that doesn't ever happen what happens in you know fairy tales and children's textbooks and other such places but there is no history of the European nation state there is no history of European nations States by in the Second World War they were empires or aspiring empires all of them right all the important ones the Germans the Italians the British the French the Dutch the Portuguese the Spanish the major players were all empires no one learned that war was a bad thing from the Second World War people learned that war was a bad thing by losing colonial wars and what distinguishes the Germans from everyone else is that the Germans were the first major European power to lose a colonial war which categorically irredeemably and that war was the war against the Soviet Union in 1941 right so the Germans lose a colonial war which we call the Second World War but which is mainly a German Soviet war for Eastern Europe the Germans lose a colonial war they're the first and therefore they are happy to go along with the French the Belgians Luke's in bourgeois the Italians the Dutch to form on the European Coal and Steel community to sign the treaty of rome 51:57 not because they've learned from the Second World War they haven't if you think Germans learned that lesson from the Second World War look at what the East Germans say about the Second World War right which is that it's a triumph for the proletariat Germans did not learn from the Second World War per se what West Germans learned was that colonial wars don't pay that's the important lesson and that's a lesson which was learned slowly over the course of the 50 60 70 s 80s by the French the Italians the British the Dutch and then later the Portuguese and the Spanish the British and as they lost their colonial wars then they landed in Europe Europe is the safe landing after Empire and then Europe allows you to tell yourself the story that we were always nations in Europe thereby marginalizing the bloody and eventually failed history of colonialism which is actually the main story of European history until the second half of the 20th century so Europe is a safe landing economically but also morally and spiritually because it allows you to tell yourself the fable of the wise nation which is entirely untrue the East European variant is a little bit different but it comes down in the same place well in Eastern Europe there was of course a nation-state from 1918 to 1938 or 39 there were a number of East European nation states that's the exception that proves the rule because they all fail they all are suffer to at least two of the following three fates between 1918 and 1945 they are completely destroyed estates they become Nazi satellites or they become Soviet satellites all of them suffer at least two of those three fates all of them in other words the experiment of the nation-state which takes place in the interwar period is a total and complete failure right the exception proves the rule and then after 89 when these countries come out of the Communist Empire what they all do is they immediately propose to move to the European Union in other words there is no moment where any of them say we want to be a sovereign nation-state they all emerge from Empire into the European Union which means that the European Union is a settlement for Empire for the former empires and also for the former subjects of communist Empire that is by the way in my opinion the most interesting thing about the European Union it's not a settlement of the Second World War so much as it's a settlement of the first world war because it's the place where the new European nation-states form the 1918 finally go where they can be durably sovereign now why is that more than just the undoing of everything that Europeans are taught in elementary school about their history it's very important these ideas become very important when the systems are under stress and the American and the European systems are now both under stress and the form that this stress takes is that these stories or this Timescape of inevitability starts to crumble or it starts to be pressed and it breaks and it becomes something different which I'm going to call the politics of eternity okay now I'm giving you these concepts because we need sometimes new strange sounding concepts so that we can see where we are so what do I mean by the politics of of alternative eternity by eternity I mean the idea that nothing new ever really happens the same thing happens over and and over again and that same thing that happens over and over and over and again is always that we the innocent people are attacked by the malevolent outsider no it doesn't actually have to be any more complicated than that and it is not in fact any more complicated than that that's a very appealing story the fact that they attack us means that we are innocent anything that we therefore do is defense and only confirms our innocence and it is justified because we are innocent that's a very appealing story to pretty much everyone and so the way that this works is that it tells a story which is which is different but-but-but-but related to the story of inevitability i neva debility says we don't need to improve the system because things are gonna sort themselves out there's a logic of history and progress is coming and things are going to get better whereas what Eternity says is no no no no no don't you talk to me about reform because the enemy is at the gate there is a constant threat from the outside so we can't possibly reform the system all we can all we can do is defend the system so what happens is that you shift from a politics of doing something or at least thinking about doing something to a politics of being the politics of eternity is government as being we're all government do it does is it reinforces an idea of who the innocent people are but it no longer pretends to actually carry out any sort of policy now inevitability leads to eternity one of this thing leads to this other thing I'll give you an anecdotal way to make fun of another Ivy League school and then I'll try to be more serious one of the first times I was talking about on tyranny was at Harvard and and mmin tell any Harvard jokes instead they supplied them to me with their baby so I was it was a nice crowd as a great discussion but about an hour into it some of the kids were looking at their watches and I said what's going on they said well Goldman is interviewing right and I said okay so that is the good part still company so then I said okay I'm now going to explain the shift from inevitability to Eternity in terms that you're gonna get and agree with and they said okay I said okay here's how it is until November of 2016 you guys thought everything was great and therefore you can go work on Wall Street now you think everything is awful and therefore you can go work on Wall Street and they were like yeah right that's what I'm talking about that's the shift that's how easy it is to go from one to the other which is the first point that I want to make in either case is there any sense of responsibility if everything is going to go well regardless of what you do or I do the politics of inevitability it's very easy to shift from that to we can't make anything better right everything is things are just going to be bad so therefore we don't have responsibility likewise with with knowledge twenty-five years of the politics of inevitability clears out knowledge of the past because if there are no alternatives which every time anyone ever said that it took a year off my life which is why I might die before this lecture is over if there are no alternatives then there's no reason to know anything about the past right there's no reason to know any details because the past is just a pattern of how people had bad ideas in the past but now we know that there's the market and everything's gonna be great so therefore you don't need to know those details about the past they can just be flushed away which they were and then that paves the way for the politics of eternity because the politic attorney says yeah nothing really happened in the past of any rich detail the only thing that ever happened was the remorseless relentless repetitive attacks on the innocent people by the outsider you don't need any detail for that either and if you don't have any detail in your head it's very difficult for you to resist a tempting and morally tempting scheme scheme like that there's a there's a very practical way also which which the politics of inevitability creates the conditions for the politics of eternity which is inequality so if you believe that there are no alternatives and you believe this stuff about the market krei in the democracy and so on then you might do things like carrying out an experiment you know in the United States of America where you just say hey what's going to happen if we allow levels of inequality in the u.s. to to reach levels of inequality of Anno Domini 1929 which we did in 2013 we've now crossed or to put a different way what happens in the u.s. if we allow levels of inequality United States to approach and match levels of economic inequality in Russia what will happen what will happen is what is happening which is that individual by individual family by family Appalachian Valley of Appalachian Valley people stopped believing in progress people quite rationally ceased to think that the future generation is going to be better than this generation people quite correctly think their children or going to do worse rather than better rather than better than they and the story of inevitability collapses into into a story of eternity there's so there's there's one final a very important transition it has to do with institutions if you believe in the politics of inevitability you were doubtful about institutions because you say the deep there's a deep logic of history so we don't really need you know the laws of the courts you know the bureaucracy bureaucracy becomes a bad word and the politics of inevitability bureaucracy is always a bad word the institution's they're not that important because really there's a deeper logic of history you know really it's the market that leads to the freedom and all this other stuff is kind of gunk that gets in the way of the story right and so you're doubtful in institutions that clears the way for the politics of eternity which says institutions are not evil we don't need them at all what we need instead is a leader right we need someone who talked who who'd rides the laws and the institutions and who claims to be the direct voice of the people which is a quotation from Adolf Hitler and also a quotation from Donald Trump I am your voice I directly represent you those institutions those laws and those bureaucracies they're not just things we make fun of there now in the politics of eternity they're things that are positively evil there are the elites that I'm going to save you from me directly saving you I represent you directly into the transition then between the politics of inevitability of politic eternity has to be made there can their background conditions for it but the to the actual transition will be made by a fictional character by someone who is willing to say that thing which I which I have just said and the importance of fiction is something to which will return okay so eternity what would the politics of eternity then look like like if you were in America let's say we're in America let's say it's 2016 what would the politics of eternity look like well one thing which would happen is that leaders would stop talking about the future and policies that might create a better future and they would start looping back to the Past right they would start looping back probably to the 1930s which are the era which is the arrow that's most in fashion so leaders might for example talk about America first they I'm just wait I mean just waiting for the subjunctive thing to like you and you have to screen out the subjunctive I'm not going to do it for you leaders might start talking about America first which was a movement and an idea which said that Nazis and Americans have more in common than they have that separates them that's what America first means and every time you hear America first that's what you should hear America first estoy sundubu alles translated into America in American English it is nothing else that is what it no it's not a joke it's actually what it is America first is Deutschland uber alles in the English language that's what it was meant to mean that is what it means so you would expect that your leaders would loop back to the 1930s you might expect that leaders would I would start to idealize Confederate monuments that were established in the 1920s and the 1930s monuments which have no organic connection to the Civil War but which celebrate the racial purification of American cities in the 1920s and 1930s you might expect that your leaders would start to celebrate those things or or call them beautiful so you might expect that the advisor to the president would say things that like that life will be as exciting as the 1930s so you'd expect you expect this loop you you would also you would also expect a a propagation of fiction as the main domestic policy so you would expect that the main thing that would happen from from the white house and in in in in the so-called media the main thing that would happen would be falsehood and debates about falsehood so because if what happens is that what we do is we talk about what's wrong or what's incorrect or what's a lie what's not happening is a discussion about policy and about the future you would also expect that in this discussion about fiction policy itself would become fictionalized okay how is that possible I mean you're thinking okay here we are at Dartmouth and people are studying public policy and you no doubt it seems like policy must be something which is unambiguously in the realm of nonfiction but it's not it's not policy can also be fictional I'll give you a couple of examples one is funny and one is not funny in fact the one that's funny is actually not that funny but so that here's the funny one make America great again is an excellent example of the politics of eternity because make America great again loops back to an unspecified point in the past when was America great I'm not actually asking you because my social science colleagues have you know in their wisdom and with their customary precision and and thoughtfulness have already done the surveys and we now know when Americans thought that America was great it turns out that Americans who are not teenagers this is important proviso Americans who are not teenagers believed that America was great in a year when they were teenagers which has important implications for government policy because although you know one can agree or disagree about the proper role of government in life one thing that I think we can all agree upon is the government cannot actually make you young again and it isn't that rather precise sense that make America great again is fictional policy its policy as fiction I can conjure up for you an idea of a rosy past and I can do it over and over and over again but what I cannot do is actually create a policy which will make you young again or which will return the world to 1955 or 65 or 75 okay here's the less funny example it seems that most whites are close to most whites in the United States believe that there's more racism against White's than against blacks however that may be a clear majority of Trump voters who were white a very clear majority believe that racism against White's is a bigger problem and racism against blacks now that is a that is a fictional problem right if that is what you believe government cannot solve that problem for you because government can't solve fictional problems what government can do is that government can reinforce in you the idea that that is the real problem and in that way government shifts from being government that does the government that is right the politics of eternity is the politics of being the government can tell you over and over again that the problem are the enemies at home whether that's by referring to African African American athletes as sons of [ __ ] whether that's by changing the main terrorist office and the executive branch to being an anti-terrorist office to an anti Islamic terrorist branch whether that's by initiating a denunciation office within Homeland Security by wit in which you're supposed to denounce your Mexican neighbors if you think that they've committed a crime rather than calling calling the police whatever whatever way it might be these are the ways that government can reinforce a new the idea that politics is not about actually doing anything but politics is about of us in them or as cards Karl Schmidt put it the smartest thinker on fascism or I should say the most intelligent of the fascists as Karl Schmidt put it the politics begins politics begins with the definition of the enemy my politics but that is politics it begins with the definition of the enemy now um it's so so you might be saying well there are actually pot non-fictional policies that have been proposed the the and and the interesting thing about the non-fictional policies is that they too in a way which i think is actually extremely intelligent reinforced that the job of government is not to do but to be what are the two major aside from fiction which i think is the number one after the propagation of fiction what are the two major initiatives in the last year from this administration they are tax regression and they are the removal of health care now these this is this is extremely intelligent because if these if these initiatives fail right if if if the government fails to change the balance of taxes or the rich pay less then that just shows the government can't do anything if the government fails to pull back health care from 23 million people that just shows that government can't do anything and if government succeeds in doing those things it's also a win because if if inequality grows greater and the state in the state of Americans health get gets worse that only creates more anxiety and more fear which can be channeled in the politics of eternity against the enemy at home it only creates more of a political resource which can then be channeled in the necessary direction which has already happened in the election of the current president the strongest predictor of of a trump vote is not actually uneducated white male the strongest predictor of a trump vote was do you live in a county where public health collapsed in the previous four years a very strong predictor of Trump votes was do you live in a county where there is an opioid crisis so in co2 County Ohio which about 80 miles from where I grew up which was Ground Zero the opioid crisis in the United States where tens of thousands of pills are being prescribed for individual per individual resident over the course of several years in that County Trump Trump beat Romney because Romney took it Trump beat Romney by 30 percentage points in every County in Pennsylvania another critical state where which flipped from Obama to Trump in every county in Pennsylvania where that happened there was a major opioid crisis in every county in Ohio which flipped there was a major opioid crisis except for one which is Hamilton County so there is a very strong connection however you want to think about it between suffering and and and votes and votes for Trump so if government doesn't do anything that's an argument the government can't do anything if government does something that just generates more anxiety and more fear which is precisely what you need for these manufactured emergency which by that this is the last thing I want to say about this if you were in 2017 in the United States of America and you were asking yourself what is this politics of eternity feel like day-to-day hour-to-hour news cycle to news cycle it feels like one manufactured emergency after another it feels like the North Korea or the shooting or whatever it might be over and over and over again relentlessly it feels like one outraged by the president or by someone else over and over and over again it feels like the news cycle is dominated by things which are outrageous in which you are outraged about but which you can't really do anything about and as this happens you adjust whether you like the president or not you adjust to a situation where internally spiritually you're not expecting that government's gonna do anything about any of this whether you're Republican or Democrat nobody is going to inspect expect the government do anything about a hurricane in Puerto Rico nobody expects that all we expect is the government is going to make us mad about it that's it that's what the politics of eternity is like that's what government as being is is is like so if you were in America in 2017 politics of eternity that's that's a sample of how it would be what about the European Union so what are the politics of eternity in the European Union why does the fable of the wise nation matters well let's say there was a referendum on British membership in the European Union in that referendum the whole premise of the leave campaign would be you can leave the European Union and go back to Great Britain but why would you think that there has never been a British nation-state ever there has never been a British nation-state there was an empire and then there was Britain as part of a European project but there was never a British nation so the whole premise that Britain chose to go in and therefore can choose to go out is completely flawed at the base how many people made that argument in Great Britain zero zero because everyone accepts the fable of of the wise nation the same is true for Maheen lepen who of course lost the presidential elections but she nevertheless gained a much higher percentage of voice votes than a far-right candidate in post-war French history the same she imagines that you can go back to a france where there were no muslims or where there were no immigrants but there is no such france the france before europe was an empire the france until very recently Frette Algeria was part of France there were more Muslims in France then than there are now by a lot there is no point that you can go back to in French history where France was a nation-state but that's the whole premise of her campaign or alternative of food which hland right the the off-day the party which which just got about 13% and the German elections thereby becoming the first extreme right party since the National Socialists which you've heard of to be present in a German parliament right after nearly a century now and if we're in a free election in Germany you have a serious representative representation of what is it in fact a fascist a party and they they to imagine some kind of Germany where there weren't other people present which of course you cannot have when Germany was fighting the Second World War there were more slobs in Germany than there are now because there were millions of forced laborers you cannot there is no moment in Germany where you can get back to that kind of purity Berlin was always the way Berlin is it's never been it's never in any other way there's never been a successful German nation-state it's never happened there has been one there's been a termination stay in that termination state then lost the first world war and then there was another German nation state and then it caused the Second World War that is not a history that you can sensibly go go back to Hungary in Poland glorify in the 1920s in the 1930s which I don't even I hope I don't have to pause and and suggest just how senseless that that sort of that sort of thing is and meanwhile Russia to which will return Russia Russia is is reviving interwar interwar ideologists who were fascists okay which brings me the question what is Russia have to do with this how does Russia matter for Europe and for the United States so this framework of inevitability and eternity I think helps a lot to understand why Russia is so important like why is it that President Obama for example can you know dismiss Russia as a regional power once he says or a second time it's a place which doesn't build anything that anybody wants to buy okay if that's true if that's true then why did they choose the president United States that's the problem that we that we have to that we have to actually be able to confront and this issue of in debt I mean know that they were forum before even Jeff Sessions I mean they were way out front um so in in in a not unrelated development they were before him before Jeff Sessions was okay so why what is this framework to to help us Russia gets to the politics of eternity first and they do it in two ways the first has to do with the 1970s so the men and they are all men the men who were in charge of Russia today grew up in the 1970s the 1970s had a particular way of processing the legacy of 1917 the legacy of 1917 was a legacy of progress the legacy of 1917 was a legacy of the politics of inevitability 1917 is a story about the few sure and how the future will inevitably be better than the past what happens in in the Soviet Union by the 1970s is that that myth is essentially abandoned in the 1970s under Brezhnev the dominant myth and the Soviet Union switches from being this myth about the future into a different myth a myth of the great fatherland war which is a myth about the past the myth of the great fatherland war doesn't say there's going to be a future that follows laws the myth of the great fatherland war says we were the homeland of virtue in 1941 and we were attacked by the forces of evil it's nostalgia for a war in which we were the center of world goodness the center of world virtue and it's understandable that this would work in the Soviet Union of course the Red Army suffered far far far more losses than any Western Army or all of them together put all them put together Soviet citizens suffered incomparably more incomparably more from occupation than the citizens of of central or western or southern European countries it's understandable why this work but the point is that this is this is a big shift you're shifting away from the Marxist idea of inevitability to a new idea of eternity which says we are at the center and the West is just evil the West didn't attack us because it's capitalist the West attacked us because it's decadent and as the Soviet Union moves to Russia it's very easy to keep that going okay Russia in the 1990s Russia in the 1990s is exposed to the capitalist version of the politics of inevitability our version I'm not saying it's America's fault that market reforms didn't work in Russia it's only a little bit America's fault but we did tell the story that institutions don't really matter the rule of law doesn't really matter what matters is that you privatize as fast as possible and then everything else will take care of itself they'll be there will be an invisible hand which will somehow write your constitution basically right that was the that was the idea that's what we told them and that was wrong they have gone so they have gone through so what you have in Russia is in 1990s is enormous inequality the impoverishment of most of the population and a very quick discrediting of both the market and democracy which are seen as the same thing so the Russians get there first the Russians get to where we're going 10 or 20 years before we do the people who run Russia have seen the politics of inevitability collapsed twice and therefore they are sure that the politics of eternity is the truth they think that anything else is just hypocrisy or in the best case in the best case naive tale so Russia gets to a point by let's say I don't know why I'm yelling when I have a microphone Russia gets to a point by by let's say 2012 where the leaders of the country have had developed the ideological means to defend the politics of attorney what do I mean by that well Russia as of 2012 has a couple of problems and again these are problems which we have to or we're approaching the first of these problems is oligarchical impotence oligarchical impotence means if the same people who run the state are the people who own most of the wealth it becomes logically impossible to create a rule of law state because if you have the state and the wealth the last thing you're going to do is create avenues for other people to either question how you got that wealth or to get wealth themselves right so a condition of oligarchy impotence the second problem that Russia has as of 2012 is the problem of political succession right there are lots of reasons to like democracy a democracy but the most important reason to like democracy is that it is a succession principle it's a way of knowing that the state will continue your vote now doesn't matter because that's your vote now your vote now matters because you know there's gonna be a vote later in 2011-2012 that was taken away from Russians the elections parliamentary and presidential were not only faked they were faked ostentatiously as a demonstration of power that is he who fakes the election is he who has power so as of 2012 Russia has these two pretty fundamental problems you can't redistribute wealth in a meaningful way you also can't you also can't know whether the state itself is going to survive so would you with that what you do with that is the politics of eternity you transmit your problems abroad you you instruct the population that the problems of Russia are not self created oligarchy and lack of a succession principle the problems of Russia are the decadence of the West and that Russia itself is the victim because Russia itself is the homeland is the homeland of virtue and therefore campaigns against the European Union in the United States which begins at around that time are to be understood entirely as defensive so um now the key thing about this for all of you international relations scholars or students out there the key thing about this is that it's a kind of strategic relativism usually when we teach about interests and States and all this stuff we imagine that states have interests they maximize those interests they behave rationally in yada-yada with with what Russia Russia is an interesting example of how that's not the case or doesn't have to be the case but what Russia shows is that if you reach a point where you know you can't make yourself stronger how do you then maximize your interest by making everyone else weaker that's what I mean by strategic relativism the economy of Russia is less than eighth of a size of the economy the European Union that's not going to change so long as there's a European Union but if there's not a European Union that problem is going to be solved due to the United States the economy of Russia is you know no more than about a seventh the size of the American economy that's if there's no United States that ceases to be a problem right so if what you do then is you you you don't try to make yourself stronger anymore you try to make other people weaker and you do it not with the traditional weapons of armies although you might use them against a country like Ukraine not with armies and economic power you do it with the weapons of the weak you do it with ideas you do it with propaganda you do it with cyber you do it by creating a fictional person who can become president of the United States so how does this look how does this look in in Europe in Europe since about 2012 the Russian Federation has been supporting the European far-right financially in propaganda terms Russia has been using cyber especially in Central Europe to discredit the ideas of the European Union and of the political center RT which is a major Russian television channel as President Putin says a Russian propaganda sender that's his definition not mine I mean it's also mine but only because I believe him in this particular case has been is used to support the far-right in the populace right in Russia in all the particular cases of integration versus disintegration Russia comes down on one side Russia supports the Scottish independence referendum when it fails in 2013 the Russian Electoral Commission announces that it was it was fraudulent Russia financially supports mahine lepen and the floor now so now in open transactions which everyone acknowledges Russia supports brexit openly and as it turns out and development which should be of interest to citizens united states here's a fun fact 90% of the BOP generated tweeter traffic I you still with me when I say bought generated tweeted rather cool 90% of it concerning brexit was generated beyond the boundaries of the United Kingdom how many British subjects knew that at the time none right might each perhaps changed the way you read things if you knew that what you were reading came from abroad right mmm the vast majority of what people were reading if they were reading at least automatic tweets during the brexit debate was designed by the by a foreign power to change the domestic politics of Great Britain perhaps with with with with success alternatiba for Deutschland the German neo-fascist party is actively supported not only aarti but by by Russian BOTS the narrative about miracle generated by the Russian media it's very similar to the narrative about about Hillary Clinton she's sick she's a traitor right down to lock her up which was also used against Angela against Angela Merkel so um these these familiar at least things which we're slowly becoming familiar with her also happen in other places and you know oh not to mention Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 which was not just a basic violation of the peace settlement that Europeans had come to come to take for granted it was also an introduction into some of these ways of thinking about the world so in Russia invaded Ukraine the rationale that was given to some people was we invaded Ukraine because they're all gay and then the the rationale which was given to other people was we innovated we invaded Ukraine because they're all fascists now that would seem like it might there might be a certain tension there but it's not it's not it's not a tension it's marketing to susceptibility which is of course the same thing which happened to us in 2016 you first know that this side is going to believe that they're all gay and you know that this side is going to believe that they're all fascist and you pitch the messages this way to this way and this way to this way and it doesn't matter that they contradict because people's pre-existing notions of how the world works are being confirmed and that leads them to do the things that you want to do this indifference to contradiction this exploitation of susceptibility was a very important test in 2014 2015 for what was going to happen to the United States of America which means mean to America and then we will there and then we will be done okay so what was what was the Russian campaign in 2016 I'm gonna try to phrase this in terms of American sovereignty which I think it's really fundamentally all all about so there's the superficial stuff right there's the superficial stuff involving human beings I will just mention the human beings I don't think the human beings are so important but I'm gonna mention them anyway because I've got a sort of moral preference for humans over other things so George papadopolis foreign policy adviser recruited by the Russian Secret Service's has pled guilty to buying the FBI Carter page employed by a Russian gas company recruited by the Russian Secret Service's had to resign Michael Flynn paid by the Russian propaganda sender arty named his national security adviser anyway had to resign Paul Manafort paid by Russian oligarch between o6 and oh nine to Sutphin up the United States for Russian influence then hired by a pro-russian Ukrainian leader who had to flee under a hail of bullets meymaneh fort found his way safely back to Trump Tower where he already had an apartment and understood his position as campaign manager to Donald Trump as a way to get out from under his debts to the major Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska Steve Bannon the next adviser an admirer of Putin and the protector of the American all right the Americans so called all right which is to say the American white supremacists are all all admirers of Putin and all part of a larger brown international which is supported by Moscow Spencer Richard Spencer you may have heard of him he might not know that his wife is the translator of the major Russian fascist into English it says it's as close as that heimbach David Duke all of them are major admirers of Putin we know that man afford that from jr. that Kushner and June 19 2016 met in Trump Tower to collude with the Russians we know that Kushner was silent about his contacts with the Russians we know that sessions perjured himself in his confirmation hearings which you would think as Attorney General will be the last thing that you would do about his contacts about the Russians and it goes on I mean Wilbur Ross who's the Secretary of Commerce was a director of a bank in Cyprus which was one of the major places that Russian oligarchs laundered money that would have been on his watch Rex Rex Tillerson husband it was award the order of friendship personally by mr. Putin mr. Trump himself had sought five months into his campaign signed a letter of agreement to build a hotel in Russia which would have been a hotel of building which would have been by the same model that mr. Trump had been using with the Russians for the previous 15 years which is that they give him money and he gets out of the way which is a nice gig if you can get it and it is by that is no that is how that is how Soho Tower was built that is what Bay rock is Bay Rock gives Trump money he gets a percentage of the profits he invests nothing himself he just gets out of the way which if you know about Trump's career as a businessman is a wise policy something is built the units and that something are used to launder money right that is the story of mr. Trump's return which is here's the important thing which is also the story of the emergence of a fictional character mr. Trump is a fictional character the idea that he's a successful businessman is fiction anyone in this room could be a successful businessman if being a successful businessman meant you were willing to take millions of dollars from the Russian mob and then have your name put on a building I wish I could offer Dartmouth graduates like that opportunity all of you I wish I could do that I wish I could make you happy but I you know but that's not the way the world works for most people and there there is a devil in those details which is that that kind of thing comes with a certain debt usually common sense common sense would say so he's a fictional character in the sense that he is not accessible businessmen I will happily eat these words if I can see his tax returns and they show me anything besides the story that has been told by Craig Unger and Frank for another investigative journalist but what we know what we know is that he was a failure who owed billions of dollars to 70 banks who was uncredited and who was rescued by ever less mysterious sources of Russian capital that is what we know until corrected so the idea that he's a successful businessman is a fiction which then becomes a double fiction when he becomes a character on television who portrays a successful businessman and who fires other people which is Celebrity Apprentice now mr. Trump cannot in fact fire other people because he's not in fact a success right but that is the that is the double fiction extreme example of this would be the 2013 visit to to Russia for the Miss Universe pageant how does mr. Trump run the Miss Universe pageant they pay him twenty million dollars and he gets out of the way which is the normal business model right and the people who actually ran it in Russia they said you know was interesting because it seemed very clear to us that mr. Trump needed the money right but then mr. Trump makes a music video with the son of the person who actually paid for Miss Universe and in that music video his name is Emma in case you're like a follower of you know Russian language pop mr. Trump makes a music video with the son of the person who actually ran it and in that music video he fires the son right he says you're fired and the son says you know that's funny like the whole thing is kind of funny because it was really my impression that mr. Trump needed this money right so the the the the the fiction goes all the way down is my point a fictional the idea that if a businessman was running for president United States was simply not the case but who really how many of us actually doubted that at the time right helmet - how many of us didn't occur to say this is not actually ok ok ok good good good all right camera pan to those people over there who were right we want this recorded but I think it's fair to say that most of us were so not not me either but most of us because I follow this from the Russian point of view and the rush of how the Russians see mr. Trump would be instructive for Americans no the Russians see mr. Trump as they want to be a third-rate Russian oligarch which I would say which I think is I mean I think like a lot of things they say about us it does have a certain pattern of plausibility so how do you bring a fictional character into life that's where the cyber war comes in if you the the the the the the the nuclear war of cyber is what's called cyber - physical where I use code to make a dam explode or I use code to bring down a power grid right that has now happened a bunch of times for example twice in Ukraine during the Russia Ukranian war that is what has happened to us mr. Trump is a he is the payload in a cyber to physical campaign that fictional character was delivered was delivered to us right it was delivered to us in multiple ways one of them is what I would call divided and fool which is which is the Facebook campaign where we're pitched over and over again both that amaryl Americans should have guns right and black lives matter where we're pitched simultaneously that we're all Patriots and that Texas should secede in this house both South should secede where we're pitched these ideas which are carefully targeted to our susceptor abilities to make things more divisive so that we think that politics is not about the country together having policy but that we think that the enemy is at home and we get used to going onto the internet even more than we already do and saying aha there's the enemy there's the enemy of outrage there's the enemy I'm outraged it so that's divided in full the second would be the bots right that the Russian bought campaign there's now research from this new seat USC and there's more coming out in the next few days the bots which much very much like in brexit a huge percentage of the political information transmitted massively by bots turns out not to originate in the United States of America it turns a tetra originated on the territory before in power which is executing its own foreign policy in the eyes and brains of Americans but of course much of what they transmit they don't make up themselves much of what they transmit are obscure right-wing American news sites or Fox and Breitbart so of course we're involved in this they're transmitting stuff very often that we're that we're making the the third the third level of this the third level of the hacking which was happened so long ago I mean I can almost forget it but see the actual hacking of of emails where emails are dumped on the eve of the Democratic National in times that are very convenient for mr. Trump on the eve of the Dimmick of the the convention of the the Democrats and Democratic National Commission right before it there's the first big email dump which leads to the leader of the Democratic Party happen to resign you know which you can think is a good thing or a bad thing but it's clear that that happened because of a foreign policy taken by someone else the second a second big dump happens 30 minutes after the access hollywood access hollywood tape is released so mr. Trump's words about how it's okay to grab [ __ ] or followed 30 minutes later 30 minutes later by the dump of of Panetta's emails right 30 minutes this is not a coincidence this is what it's like to have a major foreign intelligence agency be at your back when you're trying to run a political campaign right so these these things oh and they're also the little things which are so little we've like not even noticed them like the fact that the voting systems in North Carolina cities just went dead for a few hours on to it in Raleigh for example they just went dead North Carolina is a pretty important state pretty close state where the voters in the cities tend to be you know do little things like that oh and by the way the software company which made that which with the hardware company which made the hardware which is used in North Carolina was hacked and acknowledges that it was hacked and their machines went out on election day somehow only in the cities though which is kind of interesting know from there it's easy to say that it's all their fault right but it's not all their fault it worked why did it work and why did it work better than they thought it was going to work I do not think they thought it was going to work but they were confused just like mr. Trump was confused I think after he actually won and won one way - one way to notice this is the robots the robots who were bang bang bang bang bang bang bang for Trump after he won there were like 72 hours of robot confusion where they just didn't know what to say right and nobody had programmed them to say I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry the which is actually I mean to be that's so to get away from the joke which wasn't very funny you know what those BOTS those same BOTS then did those same BOTS then worked on the French and the German campaigns the same bought the same BOTS who were reproducing the pro-trump stuff the same BOTS the same addresses then went to work against knock hole and then went to work against Merkel the same the same BOTS so they actually weren't sorry it's just a joke but the I think they were discombobulated I think very few people thought he was actually one so how could he have one this is the last thing I'm gonna say he won because we are susceptibilities were so great I think it matters in a very big way that our levels of economic inequality now very closely match Russian levels of economic inequality it's intuitively I think pretty persuasive that a method of rule that was developed over the course of years with lots of practice by very smart people for conditions of economic inequality would also work here right because they're exporting something which was designed for levels of inequality there are specific ways of course in which in which this is true which I've mentioned before like the fact that it is the places were Trump won many more votes than ROM I mean Trump won because he was a Republican candidate he got all the Romney votes basically but he also got a lot of votes from people who voted for Obama and most of those votes come from places which are really hard hit by health crisis in general or by the opioid epidemic in particular but of course in this shift and by the way I mean being addicted to opioids is is a very strong example of how you live in a world which is a world of cycle when you literally cannot think about the future in two ways right all you think about is the next hit the next hit the next hit also being addicted to heroin or oxycontin is if you're an adolescent ruins the frontal lobe of your brain which makes it impossible if you to make decisions ie to think about the future so the connection is actually I think quite basic and quite literal but speaking of young people um in the generation the Millennials the gap between needing a BA and not needing a BA or the outcomes of happen to be or not are greater than in any previous generation on on record more Americans now are in student debt than than ever before and we're aware it's not just poverty but inequality which makes educational outcomes for children down to the level of four years old visibly different than other children in other words we're freezing time we have been freezing time for young people therefore making the politics of eternity more more plausible and then of course there is the partisanship now when so we think back 2016 I know is a long time ago and there been a lot of outrage of since then but think back 2016 and I'm not saying this as a Republican or Democrat I'm saying this as an advocate of the American Republic think about March of 2016 when mr. McConnell says that Obama doesn't get to nominate a Supreme Court justice breaking breaking with breaking with one of the most meaningful precedents in the history of the United States we look at that and we say well we're outraged I said break of precedent how do you think the Russians looked at that how do you think the Russians looked at that that was a matter of days before they had few days after that they started sending the phishing emails a few days after that June of 2016 mr. Ryan is in caucus with other Republican representatives and one of them mr. McCarthy says I think Trump is paid by Russia and mr. Ryan's responses don't talk about that we have to keep it in the family okay the family is more important than the sovereignty of the United States of America we might react to that in partisan ways one way or the other we might say well yes it is actually or whatever but um how do you think the Russians reacted to that that's right before the first big dumps of emails September of 2016 the the heads of the American intelligence agencies briefed Congress on the Russian interference in the American elections mr. McConnell says I'm not convinced by this and he says it in a way that becomes public very quickly it could just be a coincidence but it's precisely in September that the big Facebook campaign then begins any event how do you think the Russians read these things we read them as just being about Democrats Republicans may be about the Constitution but from the Russian point of view this is a major exploitable division in the American State this is one final way in which we were inviting what happened to happen with our own with our own partisanship and here's the thing when once you invite it to happen and it happens then you don't see it happening because you are it I will just give you the I'll give you the example of the Twitter account Tennessee GOP you know this story so Tennessee GOP was a Russian was a Russian account Tennessee GOP had I think three hundred twenty two thousand followers which is 10 times more than me just to keep things in perspective so or it had 10 times more than the actual Tennessee Republican Party okay Tennessee GOP was a fake fake account which purported to be for most of existent existence the Tennessee GOP account 10 times more followers in the actual Tennessee GOP account some of these followers are people like Kelly Anne Conway right who followed and retweeted a bunch of their stuff there were also there were also major local Republicans um I'm not gonna give the guy's name you can look up in the press if you want major local Republicans from Tennessee or the South who followed Tennessee GOP retweeted their propagate prop one of these guys then goes hehe so he supports Tennessee GOP he propagates it says it's great and then he records a whole video of himself talking about how the whole Russia story is a hoax there's no such thing as the Russia story it's never happened the Democrats are lying okay now you see why that's interesting right because then Russia because he is taking part he is at that point the Russia campaign when Tennessee GOP is revealed to be a Russian accountant goes down he protests because Tennessee GOP is part of his life it's what he thinks is real he that is for him more real than other things right so he protests he says why has this been taken down so the thing is once you become part of this you can't see it because it is you and that is that is how it works okay so if you're in America 2017 these are the kinds of things that you might be you might be noticing just the final note to close cuz I've been very long the Russian policy is one of strategic relativism okay we can't change ourselves very much but we can change you we can make you more like us we can make you weaker by fragmenting you this is a politics of a negative sum game Russia takes a hit for doing this Russia gets the sanctions Russia hurts but the idea is that everyone else hurts more than Russia and therefore relatively relatively Russia wins how does Russia win the final way that Russia wins are in the determining way that Russia wins is that if negative some politics are imported into the target country in other words if in the United States politics ceases to be about seeing what some kind of better future would be like and starts to be about people not minding being hurt because they think others will be hurt worse for example white people not minding losing their health insurance because they think it will hurt black people more right if American politics becomes something like that if it becomes a negative sum game then that's the end that's the shift of the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity what's the way out of this the way out of this is history the way out of this is to see these things for what they are which are ideas to recognize that life is not automatic progress or automatic doom and in seeing them to take responsibility for what one can do now I wrote a whole little pamphlet about just what that would mean but I want to close with this with that very simple idea that history is freedom accepting determinism whether it's determinism the line into progress of a cycle into doom is to accept unfreedom to see your place in history is is to have a chance at being free that's where I'm going to close Thanks [Applause] okay so we're taking questions or I'm taking questions if you wouldn't mind just saying your name because I don't have the pleasure of knowing all of you and formulating your question in the form of a question Jen okay I'm gonna start with this yeah please go ahead yeah you still haven't said your name though it's a mold yeah not for me it's for everybody yeah I'm wondering if like focusing on the fact that the Russians targeted our susceptibilities ignores our own ejective capacity in making those susceptibilities we saw this with obviously that you talked a little bit at the email the leak of DNC emails that doesn't really address the fact or what was actually in them you saw this with you know that Brits noted in Chelsea Manning cases of us doing things to ourselves to actually create the susceptibilities yeah don't we shouldn't you be effective of that in addition to acting in their own self-interest to take advantage of those yeah yeah yes with an asterisk about totalitarianism so yes I mean my whole point is that we should we should try to use the Russian intervention constructively because because since the Russians are trying to hurt us they are looking for those points of division or weakness they are incentivized to do so whereas we're incentivized to look away or not talk about them or call them an exception or to tell some story about them therefore the useful thing that we can do is I think is you're suggesting we can use you can use that we can use their perspective to see not that they tell the truth about us but like if you look at the Facebook accounts they create you can say huh yeah it does seem to be a sort of source of division in the US when you show when you show a picture of an african-american woman with a rifle okay why is that exactly right um so I think I completely agree that we have to start with us for one reason for another I mean there's a basic reason even just pragmatically you can't tell another country how to wage cyber you know I mean they're gonna this is I mean what we know is the beginning of what we're gonna know about us and this is this time stuff is going to continue what you can do is is is consider how you use the Internet right I mean a basic another another social experiment we had was to say hey what will happen if we allow most political news to shift to platforms which are totally unregulated oh this is what happens now we know now we have the outcome of that experiment and that's us right I mean the Russians didn't make us not you know the Russians didn't make us say Oh Google and Facebook are so amazing then you know wonderful that there's no reason to actually regulate them or you know they didn't say you have to listen to Zuckerberg when he says it's not a news platform even though most people under the age of 40 get their news from it right now my Astor so I completely agree with you and I think like it had he you have to understand what the Russians are doing right because that's a big part of what politics now looks like but it's if you're an American where you would start with would be that I think like the GRU causes that susceptibility which for me or inequality is the master cause and that's something in equality can be addressed with policy in a way that a lot of other things can't be know with the contents of the emails there I'm gonna put an asterisk which is to say that I I realize this is completely utopian and no one's gonna actually follow this rule but we should not be reading other people's emails we shouldn't be mean okay I should not be reading yours you shouldn't even I should not be mean Hillary Clinton's you cannot if politics cannot have a realm of private communication politics then becomes authoritarian because the only people who can survive in those conditions are the ones who either a have worse dirt on other people and/or be are totally shameless right and think about where we are so so it the idea that you should have access to everything that Clinton writes or everything you have to think okay what does that mean as a principle right that she has access to everything you write is one implication of it that the government has access to everything that you write so if you want to have democratic politics you have to accept that Democratic leaders are going to be flawed because if you don't accept the flaws and even outlooks and the crimes if you don't accept it like people are gonna write about those things in emails if you say I have to have total transparency then what you're doing is basically embracing a totalitarian principle because what that's that will lead you across the line where you say there's no difference between private and public I'm gonna wait for a perfect leader who doesn't have this stuff in her email account and that perfect leader is gonna be somebody who doesn't have an email account and is shameless and isn't authoritarian that's where that's where that logic leads right and so this is this is something we're thinking about and I don't cut so I don't read that stuff I don't think I don't think I should and if they break open Putin's non-existent e-mail account I won't read it either okay I a student student students you're a student what's your name hey Parker the first is you were talking about colonial wars from from the German war in Eastern Europe that's just to be clear that's the first colonial war that a major European power losses in a decisive and categorical way it's not the first colonial revolution all of those seem like they were lost pretty decisively and in ways that really hurt the colonial powers how is that how is that not kind of a prelude and fitting into that pattern earlier yeah okay great question so um yeah it's not that it's not that cool imperial powers win every engagement ever but I think what's special about the Wars of the 20th century is that empires lose them in ways which are which are system threatening I didn't have time to go into this it's like something I tried to develop in the book but there there are two stages in this the first stage would be the land empires so you know until 1950 14 whatever we take for granted the Ottoman the Habsburg the Russian the German empires are gonna be around for a long time it so happens that in different ways they managed to lose the first world war and those major land empires cease to exist so they they lose wars in a way which our system threatening and then for me the big coincidence to the 20th century the big coincidence because it just is that is that the winners of the Great War the winners of the first world war are the maritime empires so Britain the United States France maritime empires and so they win and their empires are not questioned and then one can see this in the logic of a logic of self-determination where we you know it seems natural that the Czechoslovakia vast eight but it doesn't seem natural that that principle would be applied around the world right because the maritime empires have won have won the war so it's I agree with you that of course they win and lose wars but I think the system threatening budget eating morale consuming long drawn-out Wars are the ones like Algeria and Indochina right so yeah you make it you make a really good point I think it's the 20th century when after 45 when they lose Wars they can't sustain I think that's it yeah just nation-states the examples like Norway Iceland and Ireland and you know I think certainly something like Norway maybe Switzerland as well in Iceland me like Western European countries outside the EU can have them like for an upside the Western European countries outside the EU would you consider those to be actual nation states and if not why not yeah no I mean what I'm again again again you're again I I agree with I agree with the empirical point but I but I think I think the the argument that the des sorry I mean you know I would add Finland to your list and Norway so yeah so those are I mean sweet Sweden is a former it's a former Empire but it's in Iceland test 300,000 people but I I will I will I mean it's a it's a it's a great cut and nowhere has a lot of natural gas I mean there are there are reasons why these places can make it but I mean the way I would understand your intervention would be to say let's flip the presumption because now what we're saying is that literally on the geographical margin of Europe there are some nation states yeah I will go with that but what what I won't what my point is that the mainstream of European history is the Empire to integration and if we can flip it around this way so that the mainstream is Empire dint aggression and the nation-states are kind of the exceptions which I don't think Switzerland's a nation-state by the way but yeah but if we but I'm happy to say like yeah there are some exceptions like Finland but but but that but the general rule is this like this is the general thrust of the story if I can go that far then I basically reverse what all Europeans think so yeah fair enough you're right okay you could be a student curses like short documentary on lrb like Peter Pomerance yes is on try the mic see okay and the kind of run and then I've also read to your New York review books things on Hitler and Ukraine and so the kind of running commentary at least among those more popular commentators seems to be like Russia as postmodern theatre and you seem to be writing a little bit against that at least in the Ukraine piece where you kind of emphasize the lack of rule of law as opposed to the sort of dislike postmodern like loss of any tangible meeting and just right so I guess my question is that you seem to be fighting against you know ideological frameworks whether those be you know neoliberalism or totalitarianism but you still have to have some sort of ideal that you're working towards what is that ideal for you and you know how can like the value of democracy in the 21st century not be co-opted and become just an ideology that gets exported by the American Empire or you know what I mean like how does that work okay so with with this with the circle and the paloma densive and the post-modernism it's your right like I I'm with I do think that Russia the Russian media as they did you know this there's Peter pomerantsev is a British well British Russian has now decided he's ukrainian journey be producers who spent six years working for russian television then we wrote a book published in 2014 called nothing is true and everything is possible and I think he's right that there was experimentation in Russia over the course of about a decade which led to a kind of model of domestic politics in which in which you continue you you have you have fake variety but real uniformity and in which you don't have this I mean and it's in a long list of similarities between the US and Russia because remember I look at the US from Russia not the other way around and so like the stuff I see here is like the opioid academic reminds me of Russia of 1994 with alcohol when the price of alcohol collapsed by a factor of five right but but regional news so Russia doesn't have local news we don't either right 2009 forty American journalists were laid off every day on average 2009 we could have bailed out the newspapers with a tiny fingernail clipping fraction of what we use to bail out the banks but we didn't right so we that's another way that we're like them and their lack of regional news is a big deal because when you clear away the regional news it opens the way to the fake news because if because when people have regional news or local news then they talk about reporters because those are actual people who they see at the city council meeting or on the street or at the bar those are people they may not agree with them they may think they're pointy-headed or whatever but they're people writing about stuff that they know as soon as you take away the local news then people start talking about the media where the media means everything that's on the Internet and it's all one big blur right because if it's not you and your locality it doesn't make any difference whether it's I'm exaggerating slightly but not much it doesn't make that much difference whether it's new true news about some faraway place or whether it's a conspiracy theory because it doesn't touch your life either way and the conspiracy theories probably more interesting right so you might lean towards the conspiracy theory so the end of local news is another thing which is which is similar to the US and Russia and that's a pretty simple simple policy prescription by the way like we could we could Jack the local news back up um if we wanted to okay but I'm trying to get you quite so I do think that something that happened in Russia but what I try to do I like I have so here like I'm against the term min' ism but like there's a basic true Marxist point to be made here which is that this the whole pole the mark with that where the postmodern theater serves is oligarchy right the idea that like the idea that nothing can change serves the people who control everything I mean it's a very simple Marxist point but I think it's true in this case the idea that you can't actually change the fundamental order and you have in that what you need instead is constant you know constant accelerated bread and circuses basically are really just circuses that that that idea serves the people who control both the media and the wealth and Russia is Russia is like a perfect confluence of that the same people control the state control the wealth control control the media right and so that I think but but so what I would at what I would add to the plumber I'd said before I think is very good is is the material part of it and then that's what makes me suspicious of the US as well like I think okay well isn't isn't it interesting that as we approach Russians you notice with a sort of 15-year delay as we approach Russian levels of inequality we also approach Russian style media culture we also start to get these fictional politicians maybe that's not just a coincidence right I'm going back to your point about about trying to be critical of us you know I mean try I think Trump won because the Russians but without the Russians he still would have done really well right or let's say someone like Trump because I don't actually Trump as a Trump as a fictional character created by Russia so we have to we'd have to be someone else but someone else like Trump could have done and might do very well okay so democracy yeah I think that's a great point like I don't I don't think democracy should be a slogan right we I mean we in America you think if you say democracy three times it's like getting divorced in Islam or the reverse I mean you you like like it makes it true right thank you for laughing at that I appreciate it but we think if you say freedom freedom freedom then you live in a free country which is not true I mean the fact if you say freedom a lodge probably is a bad sign right I mean we to be free you have to be uncomfortable just imagine towards an answer question I mean freedom means that you do stuff that other people aren't doing freedom means that you don't feel right because you're leaning now you're doing something which costs you a little bit that's what freedom is like freedom isn't doing what everybody else does it's not saying what freedom is and democracy means ruled by the people I mean we're not a democracy we're we're an aspirational Democratic Republic where you know we have we have the money in politics as 2010 we have the voter suppression accelerate since 2013 we have the gerrymandering what else do we have we have the electoral college we have the you know the disproportionate election of senators from small states what am I forgetting I always forget something but you know we are we are a long way from democracy we go you know we're maybe moving towards it somehow but we're not we're a long way from democracy I think democracy would be a good thing that is to say I think if we were more democratic than the policy preferences of Americans would be reflected in the policy prescriptions of Americans are actually closed it would help us with the inequality part because most Americans are actually much different than the current government on issues like health care and wealth redistribution so if we just had democracy as democracy like not as my ideal of it or not as my like not as my like hammer to beat Russia but if we actually had democracy I think that democracy itself would be would be a good thing and we should be trying to have it to have a democracy like for us and so I mean that's my answer your question that I don't want democracy to be some big story I I want I want democracy to be a series of a series of definable definable changes in a foreseeable future and and and we're like where this comes down to you guys is that you know we like this is like they see this is kind of the sin of my generation or laying the Boomers because we like to blame on the feature of my generation as we blame the boomers for everything so I'll do it but what we have done is we've sold these stories right this story of like the the inevitability but I'm calling the politics that's what we have done right I mean that's I can say that to be our sin we have we have tried to created we have tried to create a generation you people who believes that things are automatically going to be hunky-dory that seems to me that was a huge mistake are we gonna fix it unlikely I mean I'm trying right but we're not gonna fix it who's gonna fix it as you because you're the only people who can come up with plausible ideas about what a future look like that aren't big stories which is what we need like we need this sort of one year out five year out ten year out how's America gonna look like you know when you're thirty right that's that's what we need but that like that requires creativity and ingenuity and I can't it's not because life is not a big story I can't answer it in like one you know sort of a beautiful cascade okay okay all right all right you you've been patient oh you know it that's how the gentleman first so that he just because and then and then you just because the microphones waiting and then and then you please hi my name is Don is this working how do you think the government should regulate the how do you think the government should regulate the advertising and the posts on social media well I'm not so I'm not sure I would start with the government so I think a lot yeah I think well I think it's important for there to be a conversation which we're beginning to have now about about the responsibility of corporate entities so you know slapping Facebook and Google with with rules which I'm all in favor of is going to make more sense when Americans have a second's have an idea of what has happened so I think there has to be a conversation about responsibility so if we in it which is happening like if you look if you look four months ago to the position of Facebook to the vision of Facebook now it's changed basically because there's been a discussion right so I would like to see how far that could go I would I would like to see like what we can get them on record is saying because they've got they've gone from this made no difference - oops billions of hits in in a few months right and I think it's good to have that discussion um but a couple of things let's see if we're is that is he here I mean one of the things I think is very important is that is the relationship of free speech to a person so I believe that you have free speech and I have free speech as you and as I but I don't think that you have the I don't think free speech other things right but I don't think free speech gives you the right to pretend to be a Russian political activist and spew 30 million things on read the Russian internet which you can't do for various reasons it's actually very hard I mean with regression with the internet is like with guns the Russians are very in favor of Americans having guns but kid you have the right to bear arms in Russia the Internet's a bit like that I mean they're all very in favor of Internet craziness in the US but they've got it batten down pretty pretty pretty pretty firmly and in Russia itself so I would I would start with the the relations of the individual to the expression so I don't think we should be able to massively post things anonymously or pseudonymous lis I think that that would restore a great that would change things quite a bit and I don't I think that when you read something there should be a copyright page or like whatever the postmodern equivalent that is so if I read something which says you know Hillary running a pedophile ring whatever in pizza parlor I want to have a copyright page which says like where who transmitted this where it came from or who originated that and if that can't come with it then that thing shouldn't be there right why not okay thank you I'm Jean Ryan coming psychologist I was trained here in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth although I didn't practice here I'm with you up until the point where you get to Russia in 2016 and I think exactly what happened is that we've forgotten our own history before 2016 and what got us to this dreadful condition that we are in of inequality etc and loss of democracy because we've screwed it up I don't think it's because of the Russians I just don't buy that I don't I don't do social media I don't do most of television because I think it's mostly junk so I don't clutter up my mind with this junk good so I'm just not I'm not going with you about this whole conspiracy theory about how the Russians you know we get this is where we get the Russians are the enemy and so we are innocent and they did it to us and we are innocent man but man that's not what I said I mean it's not that's not what I said I was very clear that I think there's a reason why it worked now you may you may stay off the internet I've spent the last ten years engaging with Russian media including Internet ok ok I'm now going to answer the question so that I've spent the last ten years with Russian media the Russian internet Russian television it's fine to sit in America and say this stuff doesn't happen but if you were in Georgia during the war in 2008 or if you were in Estonia when their whole country was brought down in 2007 or you in Ukraine when your lectricity grid was brought down in 2014 and 2015 or if you were in France when Russia took over a French television channel and pretended to be Isis or if you were in Germany during the Lisa F affair you know that these things happen the idea that they can't happen in America that's the American exceptionalism you see and that's where we go wrong it happened to us just like it happened to other people because we're not any better which is my point and then there are the specific reasons why we're even more susceptible than we might have thought which I spent a lot of time on and those are the things that I think we can try to address with policy okay all right are we at six o'clock or should we okay does that mean we're I think okay I'll take one more question and then there's gonna be one more question and then you can all go so no I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry my name is Christine dike I work at dartmouth-hitchcock Medical Center plus I have a my education is also a matter Dean Minister about a month ago or so I sat here I said in one of these rooms and listen to a speaker who was libertarian it's and talked about that way said that we can't trust people that you know when you talked about that middle that really does you know vote in good interests of other people's he kept repeating that we really can't trust the other people in the nation there has to be a form of government that we really take away that and that I mean sitting in in New Hampshire sometimes and hearing libertarian thought a lot it that really scared me and how do we counter that that and how would you deal with that with that you we really can't trust each other that we can't make good decisions policy decisions and voting decisions and everything like that so if we if we I mean the logical would follows from that is that we can't do it therefore the oligarch should which is where libertarianism naturally leads so you know you can't do it but but somebody if you don't do it somebody else is gonna do it and if everyone believes that they can't do it it's unlike policy it's not going to get made and it's not like liberal I mean the thing that's called libertarianism which you know in the American version is totally logically incoherent I mean the free the free market there's no such thing as a free market the free market is a myth the free market depends on legislation and so the question is what legislation right it's as simple as that and then to have the distance so libertarianism is one it's one more way of short-circuiting the whole discussion by saying well you know we're gonna we're going to find a ideological story which gets rid of all the detail the ideological story is that there's this thing called the free market and we're just gonna conjure that into existence there has never historically been a free market without a state without property rights property rights do not come from God property Ramin I've checked property rights property no I asked him and proper property rights property rights come from a state and once you know that then the only question is what at what should the state be doing because even the notion of property rights is not it's it's not self of it in any way so you have to have a state to have a market and once you understand that and the question then the only question is what should the state reasonably do it be doing and to say that we are all atomized individuals who can't really communicate or talk or Trust is a way of trying to stop that conversation it's a way of asserting you know that that conversation can't take place now I'm going to enter this in the sociological way which is to say that in conditions of extreme inequality it is actually hard to have conversations because the more unequal people feel the harder it is for them to articulate themselves and represent their own interests and so if you can follow the libertarian story into a condition of extreme inequality it then becomes true as in Russia or as we're getting to ourselves it then becomes true that people have a hard time articulating their interests but that's not the state of nature that's a policy outcome right and and in my whole point is that these things aren't inevitable either way if you want to have a condition where people trust each other then there are some conditions one of them is that something like a plausible shot you know add a top er tunity something like a plausible not that everybody's gonna be equal financially but they have a plausible shot and the other is that the other is that you take for granted that there is something like truth this is this is I mean in in recent years this had become really clear it goes back to the question about sort of cool that not that like I can tell you what's true or you can tell me but that if we start from if we start from well you just have your opinion I have my opinion you know in my opinion is that elephants only uranium and your opinion is that they only need geraniums and I say well I respect your opinion you say your I respect your opinion if we were once we're once we're there right which is I mean that's look that's the gift of the left to the right that thing that I just said right once once we're there then then we can't you know once we accept that it's all about subjectivity and opinion and I mean it I was about to use up a lot of other funny words but I'm going to stop once we see once we accept it's just about subjectivity then there can't be trust I mean that's the thing like Trust isn't about at least not among adults Trust is not about feelings Trust is about accepting that there's some realm of factuality that we can all get to and then we're trying to get to it together that's that's really important but it's something that you have to fight for it doesn't like like everything else it doesn't come it doesn't come on its own okay my voices weren't out so I should probably call it a day [Applause]

Channel: Dartmouth

Views: 70,297

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Id: 6glynCBQtgk

Length: 98min 6sec (5886 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017