The Road to Unfreedom: Democracy, Neofascism, and the Importance of Language

good evening and welcome to the first event of the American Academy of 2019 I'm Terry McCarthy I run the Academy and delight to see you all here we're particularly happy to have someone who I think is quite fairly described as one of our most prominent public intellectuals in the United States these days Timothy Snyder and his last two books wrote on freedom and then on tyranny suggests not a comedy routine but something a little bit more serious and he'll be talking about that later but first let me welcome some special folks starting with the intelligence squared Germany who are partners tonight and we could have done it without them Melissa Schneider secret thank you so much and family fun Veda and a leak anna-lysa eliza Apley thank you so much for helping us to set up this event and big warm welcome - handsome - geese and his wife Alma - our trustees who are here trustee is here tonight and we also have a couple of our fellows have already arrived for next semester Fred Donner and Jared farmer so we're we're delighted that they're here and we of course will be having our fellows presentation on January 29th and after that our program so keep your eyes on our program to see which ones you would like to come to we have a couple of other special guests here Wolfgang two months he's here the artist and Carl Schlegel the historian thank you so much for coming that you could come again we're delighted and we will be happy to have Tim's books for sale afterwards they're outside in the lobby and Tim will will happily sign those books for you and we're going to have a he will give a talk and then we'll have some Q&A afterwards and but first time we're asked Melissa to come and introduce Tim thank you sorry mmm so I'm Melissa Schneider Sickert I'm director of intelligence squared Germany intelligence squared is an Oxford style debating and discussion forum that was established in London in 2002 and it stages some of the most stimulating debates on the hottest topics some of the best speakers in the world James Comey Malala yousufzai Mikhail Khodorkovsky Ronan Farrow to name just a few intelligence squared debate bring together eminent experts with opposite points of view and put forward reasoned learning arguments to state their case our aim is to promote a deeper understanding on the most pressing topics of our times in an entertaining and engaging format all of the events are available in our podcast which has over half a million monthly plays and downloads as well as 16 million YouTube views if you'd like to stay in touch and hear more about our Berlin events and podcasts please do sign up on our mailing list which will be at the reception after the lecture I'd particularly like to thank Terry McCarthy and the great team at the American Academy for their cooperation with organizing and hosting the event this evening they've really pulled out all the stops and I've got a great efficient so thank you it's been a real pleasure force intelligence squared has over the last 15 years through these debates and discussions championed both duration and the power of language and has promoted an understanding of how language in all its forms can be used to convince persuade enlighten and understand in line with our topic for this evening I'd like to briefly mention one example of the political corruption of language Salman Rushdie wrote an article back in 2006 five years into the presidency of George W Bush and deep into the murky waters of the US government's facilitation of culture a particular phrase came into usage at that time extraordinary rendition we all now know this to mean an extrajudicial covert kid and delivery of an individual for interrogation to an unspecified country where torture is permitted a meaning which even Donald Rumsfeld would have to agree has actually nothing to do with the dictionary definition of either of the two words in question despite it's clear contravention of the rule of law the euphemism shows how language can be used both to obscure and normalize the real meaning of the Act and after rare endless repetition by the media is then accepted in both form and deed into regular usage tonight we're honored to hear more about the use and abuse of language from leading American historian professor Timothy Snyder Timothy's professor of history at Yale University a permanent fellow of the Institute of human sciences in Vienna his book publications include blood lands black earth and the road to unfreedom as well as the political pamphlet on tyranny which has been translated into 40 languages among his numerous awards his recipient of the hana errant prize in political thought and of state orders from Estonia Lithuania and Poland tonight Timothy will address the spread of misinformation and linguistic manipulation by authoritarian regimes and their supporters and in the words of the Jewish philologist Viktor Klemperer the need for constant vigilance by ordinary citizens please welcome [Applause] thank you much very much for these kind introductions thanks to all of you for being here speaking of language thanks to all of you who are coming to listen to a lecture that is not in your first language Vikram this alkaloid to naba affect American vinegar into vasant of toys I was in English so but I thank you for that I know what it means to listen to something that's not that's not in your your first language I've been asked to speak on this question of language in neo-fascism this is a subject which has to do with a present which we are trying to understand ourselves we it's it's not clear when we talk about politics now just how time works what are the things that we're seeing that somehow come out of the past or reflect the past or imitate the past what are the things that are new in the present and what are the things that are calling out to us from a future brighter dark which we've gotten out of the habit of thinking about so I'm going to take the subject as straightforwardly and simply as I can and and by asking at the beginning what I take to be the most basic of these questions what is it about fascist and neo-fascist language that we would not like to imitate so standing in front of you giving a lecture or having a discussion with you afterwards what is the thing that I would most like not to do what is the thing that I would wish for us most not to do and the answer for me the first answer that I can come to is that we not be unreflective so I'm going to spend a little while talking about fascism neo-fascism and language it would be very easy to do that on the basis of everything that we do is fine we use language beautifully we haven't possibly made any mistakes with language in the last 25 or 30 years that made this more likely that would be a very easy assumption to proceed from and I would suspect that if I started out that way we would probably come along with me right or many of you would come along with me so I want to start a different way I want to ask before I get to the terrible fascists and the terrible neo-fascists who presumably most of us don't like I want to start with what have we done with language what have we done in the last 25 or 30 years which perhaps has made the phenomenon that will be the center of my talk more likely let me offer a couple of suggestions on the Left we've done a couple of things and I give this to you as a hypothesis think about it as I as I go through the talk on the Left we've done a couple of things which I think have made neo-fascist or fascist language more likely the first of these is the discrediting of the idea of attainable commonsensical social truth that idea which did come primarily from the left has made it easier for people to claim that since there is no truth all that really matters is emotion and in that realm all that is going to matter is the ability on an industrial scale now to manage emotion a form of politics which has pushed us to the right something else that we have done on the left is to diminish the significance of the state to treat the state as either not important or as always the enemy the thing to be concerned about which of course opens the way for a form of quote unquote libertarianism which does not criticize huge corporations but which only criticizes the state and it also opens the way for a form of right-wing politics in which there is no critique of the corporation but there is a great deal of an attempt to dismantle the state on the center what are some of the things that we have done with language which have made the rise of the far-right more likely more comfortable less surprising one of these is to say that there are no alternatives this is a phrase which has been repeated so many millions of times in the last 25 years in so many and manifold various contexts in so many languages of Europe and North America that it goes beyond being a banality this is a phrase which we have used to numb ourselves this is a phrase which we have used to hit ourselves in the head until we ourselves are unable to see the alternatives not just the possible alternatives but the really existing authoritarian alternatives even as they emerge in the real world we found ourselves dismissing actual authoritarians with actual right-wing ideologies for example mr. Putin as pragmatists as simply people who are following their own interests that's what happens when you say their own alternatives history has come to an end that's another mainstream position and of course if history has come to an end a number of other things came to an end like responsibility because without history without the historical sense that many things were possible and therefore many things will be possible the time flows forward and that we're always and that what the present is is a kind of structure a dam a canal a structure in the flow of time from past to present and that we are that structure if we say history has come to an end the flow of time has stopped then one of the things that goes away is a sense of responsibility this is what I call in the book the politics of inevitability for the last 25 years or so in the West I think the politics of inevitability has been the main way that we have approached and discussed the world the problem with the politics of inevitability is that it opens the way for something else which in the book I call the politics of eternity the politics of inevitability no alternatives history is over the politics of inevitability shrinks our idea of the future into a better version of the present it tells us that time is like a line moving from here to there and we know what's going to cause what the problem with this aside from the fact that it does away with individual responsibility a problem with this is that it's just not true it may seem true to you or me for a while but it's not going to seem true to people who lose their houses in 2008 or to Russians who lose their savings in 1998 or to americans who in general now make less money than their parents it's not going to seem true to different people in different times this this idea is going to break and when it breaks it breaks into the thing that I want to discuss it breaks into the new mainstream of European and American politics which I would call the politics of eternity so from a cyclic it-- we go to every kite politic that we know slightly cut a politic the AVA kite with eternity what I mean is the idea that time is no longer relying going into the future predictably time as a cycle the same thing happens over and over again and that same thing is we the innocent the members of the nation are under assault are threatened by penetration by some other the Chinese the Mexicans the Jews the homosexuals some other and the same thing happens over and over again the politics of eternity takes the idea that the state doesn't need to do anything and turns it into the idea that the state can't do anything it takes a set of assumptions which says we don't have to think much about the future because we know what's going to happen and transforms them into how can we think at all about the future because the threat is literally always at a gate the politics of eternity though shares with the politics of inevitability the fundamental trait of being irresponsible that in societies where we claim that law freedom and pluralism matter we use if we use a discourse we use a basic trope which does away with the idea of individual responsibility so that is how eternity arises from inevitability the question underneath all of this of course and I will address it is is that fascist is the politics of eternity fascist is it neo-fascist is it something else no let me try to be clear about what I mean by the politics of eternity where we are now I will take the example of today's politics in the United States the example of the wall so what is the wall at first glance the wall is a perfect example of fascist politics in in in every way build that wall is nothing other than a tribal scream it is literally a call-and-response with a leader with a microphone where people respond just in that sense optically it is fascism it is also fascism in the sense as recommended by Carl Schmitt that it beautifully begins politics from us and them build the wall says we are the ones who have to be protected from them we need a barrier so it begins politics not from a social contract but from a notion of us and them it is it is also fascist today in that it's being connected with the idea of a state of exception so as again as Carl Schmitt recommended if you wish to and as the end of the volume our Republic reminds us if you wish to turn a rule of law state into an authoritarian regime what you need to do is find a way to declare a state of exception a state of emergency and then keep that going for as long as possible so at first glance build that wall looks like fascism but it's not just fascism there's a second element to this where did the slogan build that wall come from it an American think of it no build that wall was tested by a British company Cambridge analytical on the basis of tens of millions of examples of stolen personal data from Facebook build that wall was a slogan which was tested out on Americans not to their knowledge and which was found to be a very resonant thing in American politics in 2014 build that wall in other words was chosen by the machine without the technologies without the massive psychographic testing without and without Facebook's ability to collect huge amounts of personal data build that wall that slogan would not exist in American political reality there is a sense in which we are all now prisoners of what the algorithms find out irritate us the most build that wall is very exciting for many Americans it's very irritating for other Americans in this sense we are all this is not fascism but something different build that wall the discourse right the statement the thing the phrase that's it that's the thing in itself that's the victory the machine over us because I'm gonna betray a big secret now there isn't a wall nor will there be a wall the United States is capable of many things but actually large infrastructure projects are not among them so we will not build it we will not build the wall but the thing in itself though may be the notion of building a wall and by the way the things that I'm saying although mr. Trump would of course use other language are things that he understands as well he doesn't want to build the wall he wants he once build the wall to be a slogan he can use in indefinitely but there's another way to look at this phrase build that wall and it has to do with responsibility who exactly is supposed to build the wall when the leader says build that wall and the response is build that wall who were they actually telling to build that wall drain the swamp lock her up kindred slogans with similar digital origins who is supposed to do those things it's not clear right build that wall is not in the imperative it's not I'm telling you to build the wall or you're telling me it's someone should build the wall I don't know how many of you cook with French cookbooks but if you cook with French cookbooks you will have noticed that in French cookbooks when you are told what to do add a cup of flour add a bit of sugar Pence's pinch of cinnamon they use the pseudo McKeith right the subjunctive it's not clear who is doing it it's just we know right one is going to do this I would submit to you that that is the that is the grammatical sense in which build that wall is spoken no one is telling mr. Trump to build the wall it deep down we know that mr. Trump is not going to be pushing any wheelbarrows nobody is telling the Americans to build a wall it's not clear who really should build the wall and if you've considered what we've done with the wall so far remember we're I mean whatever might be happening we are still a big rich country just not when I say things like that it makes me feel better can consider what we have done in building the wall in the last two years what have we done we have said okay how many you've ever remodeled a kitchen when you remodel a kitchen what's the most fun part it's when you choose your kitchen tiles right you go to the store maybe with the Builder and their kitchen tiles right and this one is gray and this one is white and this one has a little pattern on it that's where we are with the wall we have a number of private contractors they have gone to the US Mexican border and they have set up what are in effect huge kitchen tiles one is white one is blue one is gray this one is stripy and what when what and our building the wall consists in mr. Trump every so often going to San Diego driving in front of the kitchen tiles and posing in front of one he thinks looks scary that day right so is that is that fascism or is it only fascism what does it mean when weak when we can't build a wall what does it mean when it's not clear who is actually supposed to be performing the actions because it seems to me that this example that I'm giving you is actually characteristic of a whole lot of things that have happened in the world in the last few years and not just in my beloved homeland what does it mean so what does it mean when you solve a fictional problem of Mexican terrorism with a fictional wall that you're never actually going to build I think it's somehow in the same genre phenomenon as Russia invading a neighboring country on the fictional logic that there is a fascist coup d'etat taking place while denying that it is doing so which is something new in the history of warfare I mean you don't generally invade countries and occupy their territory and then annex their territory and then claim the entire time that nothing of the sort is happening it's also I think of a similar genre to the phenomenon of taking your country out of the European Union on the logic that you are going to join to rejoin an empire which you are not going to rejoin right that strikes me as a similar example this mixture of fiction and responsibility what I'm going to try that the thesis that I'm going to advance is that this kind of multiple irresponsibility this use of language to push us into a place where we seem to be doing something interesting but in fact we're doing nothing or if we're doing something the thing that we're doing is eroding the creations and the work of other people that this particular thing has resemblances with fascism sometimes powerful and revealing resemblances with fascism but that it is also characteristically new in 21st century for the purposes this talk I'm going to refer to this phenomenon as not even fascism so with not even fascism I think the characteristic pose is this farcical irresponsibility the difference with fascism and here I'm now going to propose some historical comparisons to you the difference with fascism is that the fascist pose again posed I'm not trying to endorse this the Espo's is one of tragic responsibilities their thing there are things about the world which demand that I do certain things so they might seem horrible so let me just test this by comparing fascism and these phenomenon we have in front of us across a few of the characteristic political categories of fascism itself the first of these is time which I've already mentioned how do we think about time this is something which comes before politics the way fascist thought about time was that a global crisis was coming this global crisis was going to somehow destroy or warp ruin my nation my race therefore my nation my race my state was justified in taking some kind of extremely violent pre-emptive action in order to rescue itself from this coming global collapse what did the not even fascists do they also generally talk about some kind of threat in the future not the real threat which hint-hint is global warming and hint hint notice how none of the people who were come up as heroes in this not even fascist story talk about global warming in fact many of them deny it like mr. Trump and like mr. Putin and like a number of Europeans who are paid by mr. Putin wait it's a very interesting little side story but so the the the the the future for the not even fascists is one of some kind of disaster the migrants are going to take our jobs the Jews are going to replace us it's not as it's not nearly as fantastically overdrawn at the fascist version and the way to respond to this coming crisis in the future is not to undertake some violent pre-emptive action it is to destroy the only institutions that could possibly protect you right that's different number two this number two the truth so fascists and not even fascists at first plants have a very similar attitude about the truth they did not they deny most versions of endorsement of the truth or facts reality that we would associate with the Enlightenment but they do so in a different way what the fascists say is ignore empirical truth ignore the small everyday truths ignore the journalists hate the journalists but do so in the service of believing in a higher truth right the higher truth being the organic unity of the race or the organic connection between the race and the leader right there is a higher truth it's not an empirically demonstrable proof but the truth but it is but there is a kind of truth the national truth the racial truth the truth of the of the leader what the not even fascists do it first looks similar they say don't believe that don't believe the journalists hate the journalists but the next move is different there's no big lie which serves you which serves to move you into the higher truth right there's no big lie they might play with the old big lies right so basically every version of the Jewish international conspiracy as I'm sure you have noticed is now back they might play with those things but there's no really big lie which moves you into this higher truth instead there are medium-size lies medium-size lies like a Russian girl was raped in Berlin by migrants or Obama was born in Africa or the Ukrainian government is fascist not lies that are so big that they forced you to take on a whole worldview but lies that are big enough that if you believe them it's hard for you to make sense of the world big lies help you into some kind of worldview some kind of mystical worldview medium-size lies push you into a conspiratorial place where you start to doubt everything and that is the big difference where you're supposed to end up with the not even fascists is that you believe your own truths you believe whatever it is that feels best to you you you believe the thing that makes you feel good third comparison the body and when I try not to get personal about this one so the the body in fascism the way that you've experienced the higher truth of the unity of the nation and the unity with the leader was that you got out in you marched you demonstrated you went off to war looking similarly with similar haircuts similar uniforms similarly shined boots in certain kinds of formation moving in ways that you have been instructed to do physicality was very important to fascism not even fascism has a very different idea about the body and not even fascism we are in general not summoned to come out in public we are not expected to march protest we're not even expected to go to war at least not as a mass army right what we were expected to do is something very different we're generally expected to stay at home and people who encourage us to do otherwise they are the conspirators so basically everyone from mr. Trump eastward Trump or Bonn Putin you know you name it now claims that if someone protests for voting rights that's because they've been paid for by George Soros which is of course the international Jewish conspiracy let's not mistake it but it's also an example of this notion that protesting is bad getting out on the streets is bad and interestingly people who study Chinese censorship know that the one thing that makes the Chinese internet police really crazy is the possibility of organizing the physical presence of people outside that that's that's the main sin that's that's in number one so this I think is this I think is a is a substantial difference that fascism did want bodies doing things in the physical world not even fascism generally wants you on your couch number four resources science and resource crisis here we have I think a pretty substantial similarity one which is overlooked often in the history of fascism but which I think is very interesting fascist said as I as I mentioned before fascist said a world crisis is coming a catastrophe is coming and it was a resource crisis therefore we have to act fast we have to assert our Empire quickly we have to act preemptively we have to take what what is our due before other people do this and of course for for National Socialists for Nazis one of the things which was wrong with Jews was the Jews said there are principles of law or Christian charity again according to Nazis their principles of Christianity that would prevent you from doing this kind of thing but from the Nazis there was a resource crisis and the only way to deal with this resource crisis was to act too violently and take land now interestingly in some of the less read passages of mine Kampf Hitler has some interesting things to say about technology Hitler says look I'm aware that people are telling you that we could just irrigate or use or use hybrid seeds or use pesticides I'm aware of all that but science can't work to feed us and the idea that science can work to feed us is actually an example of the Jewish international conspiracy he speaks of it as a Jewish swindle No does that remind you of anything at all we too believe most of us many of us in different ways but there is some kind of resource crisis coming that it this time it has to do with with global warming and we many of us believe that there are scientific answers to this but not even fascists again mr. Trump mr. Putin are examples either either say no it's not really a crisis or the science is wrong there by casting science itself into question that is a very interesting similarity the difference comes in again in this in the difference between tragic responsibility and farcical irresponsibility so for the fascist said science doesn't work there's a resource crisis therefore we must have colonies but not even fascists say a crisis is coming science doesn't work therefore we'll see right we'll see we're not going to do much of anything and interestingly it connects back to the discourse of of the wall in a very in a profound way which if you haven't already seen I think I hope I can make clear why is there south north migration in the world in general I mean of course there are Wars and there's ethnic cleansing and there are other intermediate factors but whether it's whether it's Rwanda or Sudan or Syria or whether it's Mexico and Central America a fundamental driver is climate change when Mexico gets so dry that Mexico City collapses into the earth we're going to have more migration when the Nile dries up you're going to have more migration when when the drought in Libya increases from a hundred days to two hundred days you're going to have more migration there will be associated political events and we will focus on those but the fundamental driver of south and north migration is climate change so in other words the people who are saying hey let's let it all happen are the same people who are saying let's build a wall right there's a scientific solution we're going to we're not going to we're not going to take that route number five and this is maybe the most interesting one is Empire so I've already alluded to what fascist think about Empire Empire is a good thing the fascist moment is the last Imperial moment in European history fascism whether it's Italian or German this time is a kind of catch up to European empire the Italians gonna take a bit of Africa Hitler in meine Kampf draws the conclusion that the only place for Europeans to create an empire is Europe that's the only place left hence Europe hence Ukraine Belarus Western Russia are his target so the fascist view is that Empire is a good thing now what is the European Union the European Union is your post imperial solution it is the it is the first is the first concerted form of European politics that is not only not Imperial but post Imperial in the sense that it gave former European empires including Nazi Germany a place to go it gave former European imperial centers like Berlin Paris The Hague place to go Lisbon Madrid London and then it gave former Imperial peripheries Prague Bratislava Warsaw pauline riga a place to go that's what the european union is it is your form of post imperial politics i realize that's not the nice story about like that you yeah generally here but for the purposes of time i'm not going to go into the nice story that you generally hear because frankly you hear it enough already and it's completely untrue you the EU is your form of post imperial politics so it is the way that europeans have found to have rule of law states and high levels of prosperity and high report levels of happiness and long lives and so on and so forth without imperial exploitation which is interesting now what do the what do the not even fascists say about this what the not even fascists say is let's go back to the nation-state what should never have nation-states there was never a british nation-state you can't go back to it there was never a french nation-state you can't go back to it and the German nation-state existed but it had some bad consequences there is no period of sustained nation-states in European history except for the Balkans in the nineteenth century and the Balkan nation-states are what brought us the first world war so this idea which most Europeans take for granted let's just go back to the nation-state you might be against it but you probably think it's possible there's no reason to think that that's possible what the not even fascists say is let's go back to the nation-state but of course they're very often dreaming of empire right so what is what is brexit brexit is the claim that you can go back to the British nation state which never existed and what people have in mind is an empire which of course is not going to come back I'm trained very rigidly as a story not to make predictions but I'm gonna lay this one out British troops are not going to reconquer India they're not going to Recon Corps although you know I've got mixed feelings about it the United States okay it's not these things are not going to happen so it is a phantom right you're aiming you're aiming at a phantom is there a me that the not even fascists are aiming at a phantom but what does that mean for Empire there are European empires anymore and there aren't going to be European empires except for the Russian one of course what does it mean to aim for Empire when Empire is impossible it means that you're helping the empires that actually exist in the world weakening the European Union or bringing about the end of the European Union will help Empire it will help the Chinese Empire it will help the Russian Empire it will make their life a lot easier at every level so if you're aiming for European empires that don't exist which you know somewhere I assume all those eton boys know somewhere that they're not really gonna bring back the British Empire it may be in their little toes I don't know but even if you know somewhere you're not tripping back there's Empire you are going to help Empire though just not European ones you're gonna be helping Russia and you're gonna be helping China that's we're not even fascism leads us the final thing the final point of comparison is is the state so the fascists had a particular idea about the state which was we're going to take the traditional European rule of law state with its territorial sovereignty and we're going to change certain aspects of it we're going to build things inside the state that don't belong to the state like paramilitary paramilitary forces like the SS the S aw and then we're going to use those forces to destroy other states that's the very special history of Nazi Germany we're going to destroy other states we're gonna say Poland is not a state and destroy the Soviet Union is not a state try to destroy it so fascism takes the European inheritance of the state and twists it and turns it against itself so that there there is a there is a fascist attitude towards the state which is ambivalent but which is definable in fascism you are loyal to the state are your supposed to be loyal to the state that would be that would be unquestionable now that loyalty is not necessarily positive it can be exaggerated I'm sure you all know what one of the SS slogans was involved word loyalty but nevertheless as a virtue loyalty was certainly present in fascism in not even fascism things look a bit different and let's start with loyalty it's very interesting that a lot of the not a large number let's say of the not even fascists have significant connections to a country that is not their own I mean I would even venture the the thesis that the not even fascists in their way or more cosmopolitan than the left is at the moment I mean we know what everyone thinks of Steve bannon's current activity and I think it's satanic but whatever one thinks of see Banias current activity it is a multinational initiative right and I mean pushing this a little bit further it's hard to imagine fascists having the kind of meeting with more important fascists that mr. Trump has with mr. Putin we know more just to take a random example we know more about Antonescu z' meetings with Hitler than we know about Trump's meetings with Putin and that will probably always be true right there the relationships that a number of these people have with Russia are very striking fascism in the 20s and 30s was a matter of separate independent movements in the not even fascism of the present you'll notice that basically everybody has some kind of connection which we can show with Russia and if we can't show it you'll be very hard-pressed to find a not even fascist who doesn't have nice things to say about Russia indeed as soon as a new right-wing party appears on the scene and win seats in a regional Parliament like Volks just did in Spain as soon as that happens what is the next thing that happens they start talking about how great Russia is right um that is different and that is new and I would submit is not consistent with a tradition of hyper nationalism I mean in general whatever you say about nationalism people who are nationalists usually think about their own country in some in some way and not about a second country the attitude towards the state is also different the attitude towards the state of of the not even fascists is not that we perverted and just destroy other people's states the attitude seems to be at least in this might be stronger in the anglo-saxon world the attitude seems to be we are going to show that the state is not really good for anything so in the case of the current shutdown which from this distance might just look like typical American you know chaos it's there is an idea there is an ideological logic to it it is to show that the state is not good for anything the state is not really very important or insofar as the state is important it's important in the generation of these fictional emergencies which we can then address with by declaring a national emergency in other words the state we're turning the point to language is a purely discursive entity it can't change your life it can't clean your water it can't clean your food it can't build your roads it can give you pensions it can't educate your children it can't do those things but it can it can stop a bunch of Mexicans who aren't coming anyway by not building a wall that we talked about that the state can do and so in that sense talking about languages actually actually brings us to the heart of the matter but ok so I've been trying to make you laugh but not too much which is always a hard balance to strike I'm sure you've already recognized the conceit of the talk which is a quotation from Marx which everyone knows right that history repeats itself once is tragedy a second time is farce but here's the thing on the stage a farce is nice I went to the comic opera the other night I saw a farce it was nice in real life a farce is a dangerous terrible thing the particular kind of farcical irresponsibility that we're dealing with opens the way to all kinds of bad forms of politics so for example if we say there's no truth it's very hard to govern if we lose the ability to talk about the future it's very hard to think of policy if we get out of the habit of appearing in public it's very hard to protest and and to me to meet new people if we say to global warming less a fair lizzy la then we'll have unpredictable Wars migrations if we are indifferent about Empire or pursue imperial phantoms other empires are going to benefit and if we dismantle or weak in the state we won't be able to respond to any of these challenges in any way at all so is this fascism I would say there are certain elements of fascism here there's certainly a borrowing a fascist language it's worth following the history of fascism because it helps us get our minds around some of this some of it is not fascist some of it is new some of it is a response to the digital world some of it is a response to extreme economic inequality some of it is indeed new but here's the thing the fact that it's not completely fascist doesn't mean that it's okay I mean this is a move which is made in both Europe in the United States you say well it doesn't look like the Kachinsky the orb on the Putin the Trump the air day on the dew tart day the whoever it doesn't look exactly like fascism and so then we we just spring back to everything's okay right it doesn't it doesn't quite look like fascism therefore everything is normal that's the politics of inevitability talking right that's what the politics of inevitability says to us there are no alternatives things are basically going in a certain direction all these things are just are just blips that's the politics of inevitability talking so how do we do something which is not the politics of inevitability how do we something we do something which is not the politics of eternity I think the first thing to say is is is is what I said at the beginning that we have to be careful we have to be not just careful about our own language that we have to be creative with our own language there is no unengaged point with language to think so is the politics of inevitability there is no unengaged point there's no way not to be engaged but engagement doesn't just mean worrying about saying the wrong thing engagement has to also mean talking about the future filling the future with content filling the future with concepts filling the future with possibilities the most characteristic thing about politics in the West today is that sukoon slows a kite it's the total absence of the future and the only way to start scratching our way back into it is by using language I think in a creative forceful way second thing that we can do is we can realize that the the problems that we're having although they're expressed in language and languages one way of dealing with them are not entirely discursive they think that things are only discursive is I submit that one of the traditional mistakes of the 21st century left there are basic reforms which have to do with the state and structure and inequality like for example the death of local news or the rise of inequality of wealth or the assault on digital privacy all of these things make it easier for the not even fascists to do what they do addressing the not even fascist is not merely a matter of addressing them with words it's also a matter of changing some of these structural conditions the word that I use for this in in the book and the answer which is the best answer that I can think of to venture in general for how we deal with all of this would be something like a politics of responsibility that of course we know that there isn't going to be progress in the automatic way but it's also a mistake to think whether you regret it or not that we must face a cyclical doom of climate change or migrants we don't face that either we have more resources of various kinds than humans have ever possessed in the history of the world it's not an it's not inevitable that bad things happen anymore than it was inevitable that good things happen we just can't count on history to provide either the good or the bad because and this is what the language of history is all about what the language of history says is that we use concepts to identify what comes from us from the past the structures so that we can recognize both the limits and the opportunities to see the present and and to change it and that's where I'm going to stop thank you thank you um a beach view in the future there was one upbeat at the end did you hear it I got it I got it and we're gonna push for that and but I'd like to take up one thing the borrowing of language that's a really interesting or the sometimes misappropriation of language you're after and very familiar to the audience here the way the Nazis misappropriated language certain words you can't even use anymore here silicon simple English word selection but in German that has a connotation which makes it pretty much unusable and they're whole bunch of other words that were used as a dictionary of words that the Nazis used that would we no longer use here and can you give us a couple of specific examples of how language is being misappropriated or borrowed in a weird way today this is an interesting topic well we're the the examples are all around us but when I when I consider klemper one of the things which was interesting about about Klemperer his his this literary critic historian of literature who is paying attention to Nazi language is that he did a very good job of finding patterns there was a Polish linguistic scholar called me how go V and ski did the exact same thing for communism later on I'm struck in the 21st century I'll give you some examples but I'm stuck in the 21st century by how it's much more scattershot right how it's it's it's often not just at the level of the particular word or phrase but at the kind of sentence at the level of a sentence right so think of how sentences are used in Twitter like once you read a sentence on Twitter it makes a certain impression on you you can't get rid of even though it's not you know it's not it's not true in a normal sense the some of the striking examples in in the 21st century for me are our extremism extremism terrorism and rape I mean not that these are words that will shouldn't be used at all I think maybe extremism shouldn't be used at all but extremism for example in Russian law means anything the government doesn't like and if you think about it extremism actually is rather difficult to define and I see extremism creep into everyday public usage as an example of a word which going back to the introduction is now figures routinely in newspapers as though or some kind of neutral thing but what exactly is an extremist and you know don't we all have some views about certain things that are all extreme and isn't that normal that we might have some views about certain things that are a bit extreme should we all actually have moderate views about everything would that really be normal terrorism is another good example especially terrorism as attached to things so in America Islamic is attached to terrorism even though most of the terrorists in America look like this they're they belong to this demographic that I'm pointing to right now we commit most the terrorist acts either in terms of the numbers or in terms how many people or people are killed that's what a terrorist in America looks like it looks like me I mean maybe okay I'm done but but but the the the the adjective Islamic right fits with terrorism right-wing does not fit with terrorism as soon as it's right-wing then it's a gunman which is another example of like that's that's a word which is a euphemism so a white male American citizen who walks into a public place and shoots people as a gunman right now that word you know it's lost the language yeah rape is another good example that the the category the category of rapists which mr. Trump used when he announced his candidacy for the presidency the Mexicans some of them are rapists right which is which is also which is used in an Islamic you know in the context of Muslims here in the European Union like the and what that does of course that gets us to these elemental fears and these elemental needs to protect so those desert those are a few examples which immediately immediately spring to mind I mean if going on the other side democracy okay so now not mr. Trump not the bad fascist but us or Americans in general democracy what is democracy I mean American usage democracy is us go team that's democracy and that prevents us from noticing I mean not only the flaws that are built into the system but that's since 2010 since we legalized corporate donations since 2013 when the Supreme Court legalized voter suppression in since since those we've become substantially less democratic in this period right so on the other side democracies another word which has been doled what is it about Russia you you look at Russia today and you're right in some ways all roads lead to to Moscow and this is a country that that means multiple has tried to destroy most of our democratic systems and yet there's a substantial body of support for it in Western Europe a lot of the more extreme movements take money from Russia are they just smarter than we are in some ways so I mean everyone everyone has the vices of their virtues America in some ways is a low trust society but in some ways it's a high trust society with with law and media it's a high trust society and from the Russian point of view that's just a soft target right so in 2016 I looked on with you know dismay as the kinds of tactics which were used in Russia or in Ukraine were applied successful United States and I just couldn't get Americans to see that like not only is this stuff not true into kind of politics but it's a kind of politics which has been used before and it comes from a certain a certain place so in a certain way they're smarter than we are but like everyone has the vices the virtues so the thing they don't understand is that if they use a campaign of of Twitter bot driven and email theft driven lies and distortions to get the guy into the presidency that doesn't mean that the whole system falls down right because it's hard for them to envision what a high trust society looks like so they imagine that you just get your guy into the top that's all that happens and all the other institutions fall into line which is not as true I'll put it this way it's not as true as they want it to be right another thing which has happened with Russia is that and this is just luck right it was good luck for the Americans and then it was bad luck for the Americans the continuity in Russian counterintelligence is the use of policies of provocation right or active measures so intelligence is when you try to find stuff out counterintelligence is keeping the other guy from finding stuff out active measures are when you look for the psychological weakness I'm not doing it now I'm just looking at you in a nice neutral way you look for the psychological weakness of your opponent and you try to get your opponent to do the things that aren't in his interest for reasons that he can't quite understand active measures were a big part of what the Okhrana did in the Imperial period they were a big part of what of what helped the early Soviet Union to survive and at least in my reading the Soviet Union was always much better at this than the Americans were we were not very good at this kind of thing too many steps of thought and so on that those though if the Cold War had been about intelligence I I'm an American institution so I can say these sides of things we would have lost it about we would have lost but it wasn't about intelligence by the 70s and 80s it was about technological production in the three-dimensional world and so the Cold War went the way that I went however in the if in the 70s and 80s technology was about creating three-dimensional things that changed her life like refrigerators in cars by the to thousands especially two thousand tens it was no longer about those things we still had refrigerators in cars but technology was now about the Internet in particular was about social platforms on the Internet and those social powers on the internet although Americans thought they were great and they were gonna project our values outward and all this nonsense what those things actually do is they make active measures a lot easier so if you were gonna be a Soviet carrying out active measures in the US and they certainly tried you had to like somehow get into a newspaper or write somebody a letter or set up an extremely complicated set of human interactions Facebook made it much much much easier because thanks to Facebook it's not only Facebook but Facebook was the main example thanks to Facebook you can find out the psychological vulnerabilities of people on a mass scale and you can exploit them so an act of measure which was carried out in 2016 was to bomb african-american voters with the message that Hillary Clinton was a racist in order to suppress black voting right it's one of many active measures which were used in 2000 campaign on behalf of to help mr. Trump so what happened was that by way of technological luck in the 70s and 80s the Cold War win a certain direction then the nature of the dominant technology changed and the Russians basically doing the same thing plugging away the whole time found suddenly that they could reach Americans in a way they could never reach them before and we of course we're not ready for this because we thought the internet was just this thing which was neutral and everything which is neutral is of course gonna work work for us in the end there's a lot more to say about Russia but well you let me to say it sure okay so while you're going so the interesting so with I mean I think that the fundamental answer to your question like why why Russia right there are lots of things people say about Russia like oh it's always been authoritarian or it's you know the czars and they have to have centralized power I don't think Russia is any less capable of evolution than any other Society I don't think that Russia is stuck in some kind of fate or in some kind of non historical trajectory I don't think that at all and I think that kind of analysis of why Russia matters today is always going to lead us astray I think the reason why Russia is interesting and important is that Russia has gotten to certain places before the West okay so the traditional way we look at Russia is we say oh well there's democracy and there's capitalism and there was a transition and like some people made the transition and some people sadly just didn't make the transition and they've kind of left the highway of history right that's the politics of inevitability there's one way to go it's liberalism democracy capitalism and Russia sadly just didn't make it right and so this is I mean that's the whole American commentariat in 2016 that's mr. Obama saying Russia is only a regional power right that's the politics of inevitability there's one route to the future and the Russians unfortunately you know they're they're they're they're minibus crashed into a pole somewhere and it's just unfortunate however that's exactly the wrong way to see it because really what's interesting bout Russia is that tendencies that are inside the West are have reached a higher expression they're right so the offshoring of wealth Germans do that Americans do it more and Russians do it even more right inequality of wealth and income you have a problem we've got a much bigger problem Russia has a still bigger problem time in front of the screen you've got a problem we've got a bigger problem the Russians have a still bigger problem what they do in politics represents a an equilibrium point of how you do politics when people live in front of screens when there's extreme inequality of wealth when nobody believes in the rule of law and when democracy's ritualised they've figured out how to do that right and because they figured out how to do it they're the only thing they can do and this is what they are doing is to try to bring us to us bring bring us closer to them so Russia I mean this is again new in the history of politics I think and interesting the Russians are not proposing a model right you notice that like it's true that all the American white supremacists love them and it's true that like basically every right wing party in Europe talks about that are great but you notice that the Russians don't actually organize convoys to bring the white supremacists to look and see how great it is in Siberia they don't do that right unlike the Soviet Union they don't they don't do that kind of thing it's not the Russians don't have a vision right when this the Soviets could show you a dam I mean they could show you something they were doing which was interesting the Russians don't do that the Russians all have a vision what the Russians have is the idea that we've gotten to this point we need to maintain this point and we need to show the Russian population that here comes a famous phrase there is no alternative and a way to show them there is no alternative is to discredit the British and the Americans and the European Union and the way to discredit them and this is where it gets interesting is to actually make them function worse and that might have seemed incredibly ambitious five years ago but maybe it seems a little bit less ambitious now right would brexit have happened is 20% of the Twitter conversation had not been organized in a foreign country would brexit have happened without Artie's attitude towards brexit would brexit have happened without Russian funding of individual British politicians during brexit would mr. Trump have been elected without the theft of Hillary Clinton's emails almost certainly not by the way the theft of her emails was hugely structurally important to that whole election and that's not even mentioning the other things they did for him so it might seem extraordinary to say oh the easiest way to make Russia look like the only alternative is to get rid of the alternatives but they have actually done a fair amount in the last few years along along those lines and that one of the things I'd like to do but this perspective is like the American military budget right the American military budget you know how much ends like an f-35 costs you know much higher of an f-35 costs it costs about as much as the Russian cyber budget cups invent no not that you shouldn't buy our f-35s they're great if you flap the wings the right way they can stop a cyber war so Catherine bento from the New York Times is here her newspaper is banned in China just can't get it you can get it in Russia how you get anything in Russia it was a great surprise to me to go to Russia having spent time in China and to realize that you can get pretty much any media outlet that you could name from the West but nobody believes what's written there because they don't believe what Hooten tells them so they don't believe anything and I realized you're in this suit almost this science fiction world where there's absolutely nothing that is true how do you run a human society like that well I mean this is why I think Russia should be an object of interest you know rather than rather than a subject of dismissal I don't say by the way since we're in Germany I'll just add not not an object of sympathy for the regime necessarily like just because a Russia is interesting doesn't mean they have to build a pipeline which doesn't go through Ukraine right but there's no I mean but but what what the Russians have done is they even I mean the Russians are an example of the kind of politics I've been trying to talk about where the the head of state of Russia mr. Putin consciously refers to and revives Russian fascists he cites Russian fascists he uses their turns of phrase he endorses their ideas Jiri buries their bodies he lays flowers at their raids but is it fascism no it's not fascism it draws from fascism um it exploits certain fascist techniques but it's not fascism mr. Putin is I mean it is I think the biggest understatement possible to say that mr. Putin is personally not interested in the redistribution of wealth I mean it'd be harder to find a failure under us right whereas fascist fascist did redistribute I mean they did it by stealing and killing for Jews and other minorities but they weren't interested in using the state to move wealth around that is the last thing that mr. Putin and the people around mr. Putin are interested in it's not it's not it's not fascism um it some elements that it has it has some debts to fascism but it is in fact a hydrocarbon a hydrocarbon oligarchy whose mission is to convince people that there are no alternatives and the best way to persuade people their own alternatives is to get rid of factuality and getting rid of actualities I try to suggest earlier with the f-35 example is actually relatively cheap right compared to other things for example compared to building up factuality so are the anglo-saxon tradition says basic I mean this is naive and said that American but the anglo-saxon tution says if you just have no restraints on conversation then the facts will come out in that you know I just submit is simply not true right that is simply not true if you have if you have no restraints at all you will have a jungle in which will be very hard to come to facts and indeed people stop believing in facts and this is by the way what the Russians do they build a jungle they over fertilize a jungle in which on television every point of view is represented so did did the Americans land on Mars let's represent all points of view oh sorry the moon let's say the moon because I did actually happen yes it did let's say the minute did the Americans it's been 50 years so that you know here's it's been 50 years since the Americans sent along there did it happen let's bring in five let's bring in five use a few number one there is no moon view number two was filmed in Hollywood view view number three it happened but those were actually Russians and we just want to make them feel better view number view number four view number four it happened but it actually happened 20 years earlier let's have a discussion right that's how it works you can fill the space with fiction you can fill the available space where the space is an hour-long television discussion or whether it's a discussion in the public you can fill it up with nonsense that's what happened when the Russian south on mh17 russian south on mh17 it was totally clear the russian south on mh17 they had invaded a country they had sent in men they had sent an anti-aircraft they've been using anti-aircraft to shoot down ukrainian planes day after day week after week that whole spring with Russian cruise and and weapons and then they actually shut down a civilian airliner why on earth would anyone think it was anybody except Russia but how did they play it well maybe it was the CIA and maybe the maybe the plane was already filled with dead bodies before it left Amsterdam and maybe was Ukrainian exercise and by the way a Ukrainian Jewish oligarch controls all of Ukrainian airspace and you can tell he's guilty I'm not I'm not making these examples up by the way we can tell he's guilty because in the shape of his face and here's an expert which is gonna analyze the safe of his nose and tell you that he's that he's guilty you can tell by the way he moves his nose all of those things right from those things you cannot I'm missing some examples too but for all from those things you cannot get at you cannot get out the truth so this is I mean you you've stated it exactly it's it's something new right you just believe what you feel like you believe what you feel like about mh17 and you know the rush the opinion polls in Russia show that the vast majority of Russians believe that Ukraine was in some way responsible for shooting down the mh17 which is I mean to put it mildly unfair Ukraine was the country on whose territory an invading army shot down a civilian airliner so to say that Ukraine is to blame is just about as unfair as any conclusion you can draw a bit more than 80% of Russians believe that and so yeah if you fill up the space with stuff that isn't true and then the consequence is that people adopt this pose which is also very popular in the West which is to say well you know what is real what is truth anyway what is was truth you know who knows what's true right that's a popular pose you know you've heard that you're probably hear that before the day is out then you'll leave this place you know those who viewed like the guys with the beards you can all go to bars afterwards and somebody's gonna say that before the night is up right your left-wing friends are gonna say that here's it anyway so you get so they appeal to that tendency in us they strike that nerve in us and it and it works and they just push outward and outward outward okay one more question then I'll open it up and round about two years ago maybe early 2017 you told I think so long online magazine that Trump was going to declare a state of national emergency take power resolve everything and we're gonna be like Hitler taking over off the Reichstag the time I said you know Terry I don't think that's a direct quote actually maybe not the last maybe I'll ask but the other time this is regarded as you know Jim's gone overboard and this is totally alarmism never gonna get that far could you give us a report card yeah I mean what I actually told it to a reporter I said something like that first to a reporter from the studio inside to my thing and what I said was that we have basically 18 months to do things and that I that I hold to I mean we did have about that much time unfortunately people did do things and one of the things that people helpfully did was they talked about politics of emergency in the the American public sphere I mean it was discussion which wouldn't have seemed necessary but in the American public sphere people talked and smart people talked about the politics of emergency thereby making the politics of the emergency harder to exploit than it would have been otherwise but you know mmm here we are here we are and I only thing one can say is that because we've had some time to think about this and smart people have been talking about it there's there's no one in the US military above a certain rank and it's a low rank who hasn't thought about this and there's nobody in the FBI who hasn't thought about this eventualities right they've all thought about it and I'm talking about differences I mean one of the striking differences between this particular American leader and fascist the 20s and 30s is that he has very very bad relations with what the Communists like the call to power ministries and that's that's a very important structural difference there I mean it's it's unusual for a very high percentage of the importance officers and thinkers to believe that their head of state is a traitor but that is the case the United States of America right now so the politics of a national emergency are trickier for him for that reason that he doesn't you know the it was a little bit tricky I mean not to minimize this it was a little tricky for Hitler as well like for Hitler it was a long process of marching through the institutions but for mr. Trump from the beginning has gone the other way I mean he's fired people at the top of the institutions but he hasn't acted in such a way as to bring the institutions towards him and the institution that he strengthened poor control or ice in particular is not the kind of institution which will be really helpful in politics in a true national emergency but anyway I mean report card I'm not you know some he doesn't have much choice but to try this I would say he has very little choice but to try this because he he doesn't have he doesn't have policy um he doesn't have mass public support and the other thing he doesn't have as a support of much of the American state and he's facing he's facing what I think Americans will come to see as the reality that his campaign had some rather unusual relationships with with a foreign country which is what my book was actually about so I'm not surprised that we're here but I think I think we're going to get through it mr. Muller hasn't had to say who has a question let's start at the front and work back sir can you wait for them I found very interesting your beginning especially when you talked about us because we don't tend to reflect a lot and that kind of bother me because it's kind of in the title or the speech the word fascism if it's not quite fascism why do we keep using a word they so trench with the store achill meaning of an historical representation and there is not quite there quite substantial differences between what we see right now and what fascism ever was isn't that a simple Assisting I would do in ourselves a favor by using always the word fascism like they were like socialism misused aren't they outdated turn they're not quite represent any longer the phenomenon with witnessing uh I see your point but I mean I think fascism I think both fascism and socialism are real things in the world that we live in one can debate about how important they are when I said that when I tried to characterize these political movements in major western states as not even fascist I was I think or hope I was hoping to use the use the term fascism in a constructive way that is it's a reference point which helps us to see something else even if that something else is not entirely it I haven't noticed I mean we may move in different circles I haven't noticed that everybody's talking about fascism all the time it except for of course I mean the Russian presidential administration is talking about fascism all the time but I haven't noticed it's been so central to the discussion of what's going on maybe maybe yeah it and I am sensitive to like it's too it's too the possibility for abuse but as a historian I can't you know especially as a sort of fascism I can't help but see it as a real thing in the world that's not just a category that flips on and off like a light switch right so when we think about the history of Spain for example was Spain fascist I think after long long long consideration I think the answer is no but I couldn't have come to that conclusion without a great deal of engagement with the term itself and I wouldn't be able to say well this person in Spain was a fascist and this idea was fascist without the concept even if the final conclusion is is no so III hope I can persuade you that the purpose of my talk was not just to say like everything's fascist or it's not but rather to say that fascism is a real thing in history and therefore can be used the other thing the other party answer is that we can choose not to refer to fascism and fascists but we can't stop other people so mr. bannon for example who was a you know the campaign manager at the president United States actively refers to and revised fascist traditions mr. Putin is the president of Russian Federation actually the first two and revised fascist traditions I can't make him stop that by not by not talking about it right so that's the other part gentleman here and then was back thank you for interesting talk I was particularly interested in this idea that centrists had through the politics of inevitability enabled the rise of what we might call neo-fascism and I wonder also however whether that something else was a play which one might call the politics of imitation in that before President Trump started talking about a wall President Obama was the record reporter of people from the United States as the RF they rose in Germany Chancellor Merkel was already talking with President Erdogan about stopping migration from Turkey and even before Matteo salvini came to power in Italy the center-left Mar community was dealing with Libyan militias and stopping migration from Libya so yeah to what extent was that politics of imitation of our rhetoric and policy also an enabler of what's happened or what you feel it was still nevertheless or gameplay because of the politics of inevitability well I I'm going to agree with you but on a slightly different logic so one of the things the politics of inevitability does is it disables disables critique of self and the u.s. in the 21st century is I think a really good example of this so it take the invasion of Iraq for example we invade a send an essentially randomly chosen country for reasons that we know are false in reaction to a terrorist terrorist attack which involved Nationals of a different country a couple of years earlier we kill tens of probably hundreds of thousands of people we don't have any idea what it is we mean to do with the occupation of this country we don't even exploit its resources right we fail even a traditional imperial goal of fighting wars and but what's interesting is not a single I mean you may correct me is maybe somebody lurking him as far as I know not a single major architecture that policy has managed to find a sentence in which he would say maybe this was a mistake and here's why we made that mistake and the war in Iraq was of course the politics inevitability the the rationale that we gave her in vain in Iraq was that and we'd said this pretty much in so many words was if we destroy an authoritarian state if we just knock it over then democracy will spring up because that's just the way history works there aren't really alternatives this idea that there are no alternatives was you know was base was announced as Iraq and we don't we reflect on that I start with the Republicans to move to the Democrats because the politics inevitability disables Democrats from criticizing Democrats so Obama must be you know following the arc of history right that must be right even if as you say there are a lot of ways in terms of numbers like casualties in Afghanistan and so on a lot of numbers or use of drones wear something else seems to be happening if at least as well right not to say that everything is Obama did was was wrong but at least as well it disables critique because you don't have a language for critique somehow everything is this is just a blip but this is just a bump in the road the main story is we've got the first African American president and that's part of a larger story of American you know American correction and moving towards moving towards democracy so I think the politics inevitability disabled but the politics of inevitability also you know in also in in in political strategic terms goes under the name of triangulation because if you're in the politics of inevitability and you're on the left-right you know that's that's Schroder Blair Clinton what you what the politics inevitably means is that you don't actually have a language with the let which the left always had you know sometimes crazily sometimes helpfully which the left always had of here's what a better future looks like right Clinton didn't really have that right what Clinton I mean Clinton number one Clinton really what I mean who was an incredibly gifted politician and did a number of good things but he what he had was the ability to say we're gonna end welfare as we knew it right but he had was the ability to find something in the middle with the status quo and that's not the future right that's the politics of inevitability so the left the public's emmett ability means that the left no longer thinks it has to see the future because all you have to do is basically keep the car on the road so that's where I would go with this I I will be greedy and asked two questions but they'll be very short number one in your parallels between fascism and not even fascism one category I'm interested in is business and corporations Hitler had a lot of very prominent businesses supporting him from even before he came to power we know a lot of existing big German businesses whoever Nazi past and benefited from fascism so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the world of business today and to what extent they might actually be you know colluding in this in this erosion of democracy for their own benefit and secondly and just not like holding on to hopefully to your to your final notions of optimism or potential optimism and you know there is one view which which one could think of which is that you know liberal democracy had this sort of taunt Gloria's you know 30 years of expansion between 1974 when fascism fell in Portugal all the way through the color revolutions in Ukraine and since then the indicators tell us crudely but nevertheless that it has been shrinking in the world and we now have the growth of a liberal democracy or whatever that term really means or whether it's justified but it's sort of helpful and you know you could think of it as perhaps something returning to the stage that we haven't had since 1989 which is a kind of competition with another system and the question I would pose to you is isn't that possibly a good thing because does capitalism now have to actually present alternatives because there are alternatives and we have to make life look better where we are and perhaps think about social equalities and most series where before so there in a way the questions turned out to be turn out to be related because you're asking first empirically does business collude and at the end you're asking does capitalism present us with alternatives mmm just to start from the the kind of meta historical place I I don't believe that the market and democracy stand in the kind of causal relationship that a dominant school political science once held that they did I think the market and democracy both depends on the rule of law and that without the rule of law the market ends up discrediting ideas of rights and democracy which is what happened in in Russia and other places in the early 1990s which is one of things which is special about Russia Russia moves through our politics of inevitability very quickly we offer our politics of inevitability market creates democracy market creates law and they realized very quickly this is not true wait which it's not so any competition I don't think is going to involve capitalism as such offering political alternatives I don't believe capitalism offers political turn this I believe that capital capital capitalism I mean I'll tell you what capitalism is capitalism is is always already a pope is always already a political system you can't have markets without without the state and so on and so forth I don't think capitalism offers us political system and this is like I read with what you're saying about competition but I think the competition has to be at a different level it has to be at the level of NGOs and individuals and political parties coming up with alternatives because we're where we're stuck is the way that this transition you know like I like Havel said in politics of an in power the powerless you know the line between the oppressor and the oppressed is not between the system and the society it runs through every person so when you say like the democracy is receding authoritarian advancing yes it's also advancing inside us all the time inside our societies inside us as individuals it's not that like countries suddenly change colors right it's a little bit there's a little bit of luck and contingency in which who loses an election at the wrong time but this this this movement this counter movement that I'm calling the politics of eternity we're not even fascism he's also moving inside us all at the time right and so we have to be the ones who react to it and the way and I well I I like and I accept and I endorse narrative of the competition it's a competition that you have to realize you're in because the way that inevitability doles us as it thinks they're an ultra zone alternatives alternatives until the alternatives are like literally in your living room and then you say oh okay I never really cared about this freedom thing so much in the first place right so so what we have to do is be able to catch ourselves before we get this flip from I was never responsible for progress and now it's not my fault but things are going badly so III basically agree with you I think it's I think it's a helpful it's a helpful moment but it's only a helpful moment also if we if we see the alternatives as alternatives right so this is what Russia is like like Russia I mean all right the American idea about Russia until 2016 was it had ceased to exist you know and now there's a temptation to say oh well Russia is like this incredibly exotic alien thing which like runs us by remote control but Russia is actually a country right I mean it's an alternative and so we have to be able to see these all you see these alternatives anyway that's as good as I can do I also like to annex the previous question but firstly I'd like to thank you very much for a talk that was very thought-provoking and I'm trying to use some of the filters you encouraged us to put ourselves through to think about what you said and one of the things you said was that we should we get comfortable believing things that we emotionally want to believe in that we're all susceptible to that and I'm wondering when you talk about Russia and Putin manipulating our elections I I very sad about Britain leaving the European Union and I would really love to believe that that's poutines fault but I don't think that I can I mean people were people really don't like the EU people in Britain were very unhappy and a lot of money and sophistication went into the remain campaign and Cambridge analytic I couldn't get Ted Cruz nominated and all the money in the world couldn't get Ted Cruz nominated over Donald Trump and I'm not happy with either of them but there is a reality there is a fertile ground on which this is falling and to just say that Putin is is orchestrating this relieves us of perhaps too much blame and I think he was putting too much agency is he just going with many events so as to seem to be mastering them as Taylor said about Bismarck are we it's it's a comfortable narrative for us to believe that he's pulling strings and that our worldview is falling apart because of him and not because of our failure to maintain the system properly so that's the question that's the tension that your talk why the thing is why is that a choice I mean the answer is both because the moment that we say it's all us and not Russia we're not taking Russia seriously enough it's not a choice the reason why Russian tactics work is because they look into our societies and see the seams and see the weaknesses so you can i'm not going to persuade you not least because i can't be serve it myself that russia determine the outcome of brexit but until you've read the studies by the internet researchers who retro actively followed the twitter campaign and realized that 20% 20% of the discussion of Twitter on Twitter about brexit was organized by a foreign power um you know you don't you haven't made up your mind right because you don't like you may feel to you like lots of British people were against it yeah sure they were um but there are other things going on which you don't necessarily see until we look into that other world not other world matters it matters quite a lot I mean in the United States people spend eleven hours a day in front of the screen what what do we think then matters to them in the United States an absolute majority of people were getting their news from Facebook in the last month before the elections the top 20 fictional stories many of which were bought up by bright minds endure the country but Russia were read more often than the top 20 true stories maybe that didn't make any difference at all but I I think it actually did with I mean but the Russian campaign against the US they are telling us it's a cyber war I mean you can say it like that's like they're just pumping themselves up but they basically say like yeah we did it maybe they're you know maybe they're just bragging but the email intervention alone I mean imagine that a foreign power not some 20 year old imagine that a foreign power hack the emails of a major German political party right in the sensitive six months before the election and drop them repeatedly at critical moments in October there was a moment when everybody including a thing I think mr. Trump thought he was done because the tape was a released in which he said it was okay to sexually assault women what if his Russians friends do 30 minutes after that tape came out 30 minutes they released a whole trove of stolen emails which switched the subject to suppose it's sexual crimes by Hillary Clinton his campaign did not have the resources to do that they did not steal those emails Russia did so in a close election which mr. Trump won remember by 70,000 total votes in a country where roughly 130 million people cast a ballot I think it's legitimate to ask whether that might not have actually swung the ballot so I mean the whole book is I go into this and and there's you know probably one of the one of the leading historian one of the leading political scientists at presidential communications professor Jamison is also just published a book about this and what she makes it much better case than I can that it did actually swing the election but I mean I take your point about responsibility I just think we have to take responsibility for understanding the whole picture as well the way that I think Russia is useful is that it helped because it's um it's not about how we're gonna change Russia right it is about how we're gonna change ourselves the way Russia is useful is that Russia shows us where our weaknesses actually are so to give the example that I mentioned earlier about voter suppression right that was probably the most significant after the email at the email thefts voter suppression of African Americans was a joint American Russian effort right everybody was doing it in 2016 with the result that that serious few seriously fewer numbers of African Americans voted I mean a lot of some of it was because Obama was not on the on the ballot no doubt but Russians and Americans in different ways we're trying to suppress the African American vote that for Americans is a reminder that since just because we have a black president doesn't mean racism is over right every single thing that they did they knew that Michigan and Wisconsin were going to be crucial and they poured in on Michigan in Wisconsin in the last couple of weeks that's a reminder to us that our electoral college system is a little bit stupid and vulnerable right and so on and so forth um the fact that Facebook transmitted chiefly fiction even though it was the major American news source that's a problem right Russia helps us to see this so okay for me it's not either/or I mean I think it's very important to give other countries agency to right we can't solve rush America can't solve Russia's problems but it's a mistake not to give Russia agency Russia has agency and they demonstrated that agency and they did something which was very intelligent then it happened to work but as you say it could only work because of basic problems in the American system and I think the most practical way to respond is by fixing the American problems and by the way there's a whole other class of things which which which go beyond the US and Russia which in which helped explain Putin and Trump one of them is offshoring of wealth right that mean that the thing that brought Trump and the Russians together well before politics were was a mutual interest in ways to offshore well the first contact between Trump and Russians were Russians buying his real estate in order to launder money right and and between the moment when mr. Trump was nominated and the moment when he was elected 70% of the real estate purchases of Trump properties came from anonymous offshore entities right like that they were Russian is one issue but that we should not allow that to happen right the American law should not allowed to happen is another so let's go back because we're kind of John with his bosses right there yeah here two wounds I think you thank you very much for your talk and as you know since our first encounter on the Maidan in Kiev defending the Ukrainian cause and defending against Russian aggression we agree in many many respects and regards in some respect regards I do not share you aren't for instance I do not believe that there is a climate change manmade climate change and I rather think this is a part of an apocalyptic scenario which is part of of a kind of creating a historic situation in the West so but with most points I do agree and I think this situation especially in Germany is very very serious and because there is a state of mind that there is no alternative there is no alternative to realpolitik with Russia and this no having no alternative these there is an alliance from the left to right from the former Chancellor of the Federal Republic up to the state Chancellery in Bavaria from the IFB which is visiting don't bus going to Crimea up to the left deputies of the Bundestag who are visiting regularly the president's administration he turn into a question please okay the question is no I wanted to say that the serious the situation is very serious but that the notion of fascism does not help us to solve the analytical problems I think that you use this term because the situation is very very dramatic and serious but we need new categories to describe the situation which evolve and I would say why fascism it's the irrational tradition of Stalinism why do we not talk about the traditional lines of Stalinism why not about the black hundreds tradition in Russia etc so we do not need the analogies and the trap of analogies with fascism we need new categories to enter a postmodernist dictatorship which is Putin and we will not defend our social and political order if we are not able to create a new terminology and a new sense short before it is turn into a question yeah the question is that I am not satisfied with these analogies to fascism and it's not a question sir please put a question I got it the question is there I do not look for the future I look for the present time and for instance for the heroic work of the new york times which is defending truths the old fashioned truths which is existing and i do not need the the superstructure of the philosophical superstructure ok i mean i think i think we all need we all need different things but i agree with you that the factual 'ti is among the most important things and i agree with you that an analysis of russia which is not what this talk was about although we've gotten into it an analysis of russia today would have to include things not there they go well beyond familiar political categories and would include apparent banality x' like the death of local news one of the ways that the russian federation was ahead of the curve of the united states and europe is that local news died first and when local news dies people began to lose trust for journalism and they start to talk about the media and to become more vulnerable to conspiracy theorizing not just of their own government but in general in the United States local news died essentially after 2008 that's a mistake that I urge you not to repeat so I agree with you about the New York Times and I would add the Washington Post in The Guardian the BuzzFeed did some very important work in I would say old-fashioned and investigation I mean the book that I was talking about a bit tonight is dedicated to journalists as the heroes of our times which I deeply deeply believe the Internet is largely about retransmission if you read a new story in the Internet it's almost certainly the work of some other person and it's just being retransmitted in some way or another there were only a couple thousand actual investigative journalists left in the world and they're doing precious work without them we don't know we don't have the Panama papers we don't have the paradise papers we don't know the extent of offshoring we don't understand the degree of wealth inequality in the world we don't have a clue about the Americans in Iraq or the Russians in Ukraine without those couple thousand people so that is an institution which we absolutely have to support as against old-fashioned things like Stalinism and fascism but also as against the postmodern things which I am trying to describe I mean the politics of eternity is a new term for what I think is is a new phenomenon and it's a new kind of assault on truth that's their egos thanks so much my name is hugh williamson I work for Human Rights Watch here in Berlin I'm gonna be the third person who deals with your use of the word fascism believe me you're not the third I'm interested in in your reflections on it as a public intellectual of using this word obviously you've irritated some people in this audience you in your use of it I'm interested in your I can fully understand your you serve it because you're a renowned historian of fascism but you're a conscious and and clever public public intellectual and what is your reflection on the controversies you evidently stir by using this term obviously that you be a little more clear I don't what does that mean I mean yeah like others like the two other speakers have suggested it maybe it's not the best use of the what is maybe it's not the best use me help me out I mean that that you're irritated okay but like tell me what how what it what is it exactly that irritates you because fascism is a real thing in the world it's a real thing in history right it's a real concept which plenty of people have discussed what exactly is it that it's on your mind I want because I want to talk I think is probably that the probably maybe because we're speaking in Germany and that it relative Isis the terrorist and the horrors of fascism in speaking of fascism relative Isis fascist we don't throw it back to me I'm asking you a question yeah so what is it no let me let me just say two things I mean you did make a point that you might use you said at one point um you know the you know if it's not fascism then it's okay this is sort of flipping back you'll referred to I found that insightful because if you hadn't used the word fascism then people may be concerned about the issues of the eurozone to it not not fascist as Trump and and an orb and presumably and protein and so on in a more considered and concerned way because it's because they're not we reckoned you'd recognize they're not fascist so there there was nevertheless L their authoritarian or their problematic in severe in serious ways and secondly I I'm interested in your use of the example that you can't control others in using fascism like you mentioned Bannen and Putin in that surely you said at the beginning and a theme of your talk is to be thoughtful about the use of language and surely we should be thoughtful in the use of language and not use fascism because others are using the term let me let me start from there and try to clear it up I'm not using fascism because Steve ban incites fascists that's a fundamental misunderstanding I have to use the word fascism when a fascist reads another fat when a fascist reads a fascist book and draws fascist conclusions in the public sphere I have to use the word fascism to describe it that doesn't mean it's the only thing happening in the world or in the world of politics but I don't think it does any service to the memory or their history of fascism to to ignore it when it is in fact present which which it is it's not the only thing which is present but it is certainly present and I don't think it doesn't need service to the history of fascism to imagine that every time the subject comes up were somehow relativizing in the bat's which is somehow a bad thing always relativizing we're relativizing in the bad sense of the word the history of national socialism on the contrary I think it's very important that we return again and again to the history of national socialism because our own memory of it and our own image of it is constantly becoming more abstract and Halloween itself out and adapting itself to the convenient purposes of the day we have to return again and again to the sources and again and again to the experience because those things allow us to see things sometimes in our own present world which we might night might not like to see and the history of fascism of course also includes all of the people who might not have been fascist themselves but were in some way drawn along by some thing like a chant right who are in some way drawn along by some thing like a lie of a certain scale the history of fascism is there to help us enlighten the present klemper wasn't writing for the people of his own time klemper was writing for us klemper wasn't writing because he thought National Socialism would literally repeat itself klemper was writing because he wanted germans and others in the future to be aware of certain symptoms not in the outside world so much as inside themselves so you asked what I think about this as a historian this one who wants to be careful with with with words what I think is we shouldn't do things because other people do them we should do things because we're searching for the truth the question what about this is fascist and what isn't is a legitimate question it was a question by the way which is asked of me and that's why I'm answering it here in front of you right but I think it's a legitimate question I'm not going to question the German institutions that asked me to talk about it in Germany because I think it's an absolutely it's an absolutely authorized question um but the the as a historian what I think is that it's a mistake to fall into a cultural a culture of memory where our response to words like Stalinism and fascism is to be irritated one way or the other the history of fascism is not a point it's not an on/off switch the history of fascism is something which has which starts before 1933 and continues afterwards even the best I mean in Germany today even in its best moments one sees certain echoes of the history of fascism just as in America today in its best moments we see we see echoes of the history of the 1930s um it doesn't take a president who says America first which was an isolationist slogan propagated by among other people American fascists it doesn't take a president who says America first to remind us that these histories go on that we agree or disagree about how much is present that's fine and that's good it would be a bad thing if we all agreed but as a historian and I thank you for this question because it really goes to the heart of one the arguments I want to make as a historian I think that the way we think about time is what enables us to be active in politics this goes back to some of the earlier questions if we think in terms of a politics of inevitability which says these labels whether it's fascism or Stalinism are part of something which no longer is with us because we're in this realm where it's how we are how we feel or how we're offended and so on those are the things that matter if we're in that politics of inevitability it's very hard to get to the future what history says is that things like fascism and Stalinism and all kinds of other forms of authoritarianism are in the European and in the world past and that they present us with certain models and filters they present us with certain sets of facts which we can helpfully use to diagnose what we've got today and also what we can do about it today right because in this exercise which I'm by far not the only person to take it up it's a long tradition which includes for example Hannah Arendt the idea that you can use the history of fascism to diagnose the weaknesses and the vulnerabilities of democracy right this is an idea which helps us think our way in to the future because if we can't diagnose the weaknesses in to vulnerabilities with some set of skills or others we also can't think our way into the future and that that's the way that I try to think about this as a historian who's been asked to answer questions in in the public sphere right this talk was not about the history of fascism but it but your question is perfectly well authorized because why would we why why why should we talk about these terms right and we shouldn't talk about them just because they're terms that we like or we don't like I don't like being called a fascist right I don't nobody likes being called a fascist few people like talking about fascism but nevertheless these are terms which do open up certain kind a certain kind of reality which which we still have in us in which we're capable of seeing around us in which we can do more or less about and also as a point of comparison it helps us to see what's there and what's and what's not but the last thing I wanted to say is that for klemper and for Arendt or for that matter on the other side for Havel the reason why they were note I'm going back to language the reason why they're noticing things about language is not because fascism in Stalinism are set pieces which begin and end it's because they reveal certain vulnerabilities about individuals and politics which is my own primary concern and whether or not we decide that the Trump administration has something to do with fascism there are certain vulnerabilities that we have for certain kinds of things the fascist did which might help us to see what our vulnerabilities now are and so them I think the more history we bring to bear on this the better because the more history bring to brown it the better chance we have of not being surprised and of diagnosing things and in dealing with them in time so that we can start thinking about the future well Tim I would say that the wait is the weightiness and the seriousness of this discussion only underlines the weightiness in the seriousness of these issues these are not simple things and otherwise our discussion that simple so I I thank you so much for this tonight you

Channel: American Academy in Berlin

Views: 139,447

Rating: 4.612843 out of 5

Keywords: Democracy, autocracy, timothy snyder

Id: VHDdzJXM4oY

Length: 108min 24sec (6504 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 03 2019