Timothy Snyder Discusses His New Book The Road to Unfreedom

good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Michael Glickman I'm the president and CEO of the museum a true heritage a living memorial to the Holocaust thank you all for joining us this evening we want to welcome our livestream viewers so we are both here in person and we have viewers joining us on Facebook live and a number of other channels from around the world so we're quite excited as a reminder please silence your cell phones 20 years ago the Museum of Jewish heritage a living memorial to the Holocaust was dedicated by survivors since then we have welcomed more than 2 million visitors through the doors here in our Battery Park City home and we've emerged as the primary resource in the New York tri-state area for teaching and learning about the Holocaust we've taken our place as the third largest Holocaust Museum in the world survivors remain the core and driving force of our community as a living memorial one of our sacred mandates is to magnify their voices and to preserve their testimonies when a survivor tells her story she reasserts the very humanity and dignity that the Nazis attempted to destroy we offer as many opportunities as possible for survivors to speak to school groups and members of the public I mention all of this because tonight's event is taking place during our Holocaust commemoration programs and events which will run through the end of April young people of all backgrounds enter our doors to learn about the Holocaust and to remember we continue to work to defy the Nazis attempts to dehumanize and destroy the Jewish people we remember the history of the Holocaust as a history of individuals and this in itself is an act of resistance seems like a perfect segue into introducing tonight's speaker Timothy Snyder is one of the leading American historians and public intellectual of our time he is the Richard C Levin professor of history at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for human sciences in Vienna his publications include the road to unfreedom Russia Europe America the subject of tonight's lecture on tyranny black earth the Holocaust as history and warning and blood lands Europe between Hitler and Stalin his works have received the Emerson Prize in humanities a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters the Hannah Arendt prize and the Leipzig Book Prize for European understanding he is the 2017 recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship has received state orders from Estonia Lithuania and Poland he is a member of the committee of conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum serves as the faculty advisor to the fortune off collection of Holocaust testimonies at Yale and continues to be a good friend of this institution we have had the fortunate privilege of hosting a number of tim's book launches here in software Hall at the Museum of Jewish heritage so with that ladies and gentlemen Tim Schneider [Applause] thank you Michael for that very kind introduction and thank you for setting a tone which I would like to continue it seems to me that in the United States of America the Holocaust serves at least a double purpose on the one side as Michael was stressing it's an event which we must remember in and of itself in all of its specificity in all of its detail on the other side the Holocaust is for us a connection to the history of the 20th century and in my work I've tried to stress both aspects of this that we must remember the Holocaust as a crime of individuals perpetrators victims and bystanders but also understand the Holocaust because understanding the most important events of the 20th century can give us some kind of purchase on the 21st one of the weaknesses I think of American public life American intellectual life political life and moral life in the 21st century has been that we've chosen to let history go the Holocaust is one way of trying to bring history back directly or indirectly it was not so very long ago that I was very often criticized for the claim that the Holocaust has some relevance to our own experience and to our own history that the history of the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s might be in some way relevant to our own time sadly that view is now approaching conventional wisdom what I'd like to do and what I'd like to do in this talk and really as I describe the next book is to do for our time a bit what wasn't done in the 1930s that is the 1930s although of course in many ways much more dramatic and and and much more and much more catastrophic than our own time the 1930s shared a future with the 2010s and that is a sense of the uncanny the sense that things are happening which haven't happened before things are happening which we hadn't predicted things are happening which our own view of how life works somehow can't handle things are happening which shake us things are happening which are disturbing that which are also just strange deeply strange and frequently strange so that the strangeness of it all can become the main feature of the situation and then in turn we can lose our bearings and we can we can find it difficult to know what to do and of course in a minor key right in a minor key that's something that we have in common with people who live through the 1930s this uncertainty as to what we should do and when we should do it how to evaluate a situation which seems unprecedented that's something that we share so what I've tried to do in this book is something a bit unusual which is to write a history of the present time the road to unfreedom is a history of the 2010s which essentially it doesn't conclude it lands rather in in the middle of the Trump administration it starts with Putin coming to power as a president for a second time in 2012 it doesn't end mac'n clusion considers the kinds of politics that we found our way into and the central theme is precisely about what history is or what restoring time would be what I'm trying to do with this book which is a kind of special a kind of special effort is to try to regain historical time to give us history back not just in the sense of knowing the past which frankly would also be very welcome but other books were about that but rather in the sense of helping us to see ourselves in history because once you see yourself in history then you have a sense of what's possible and impossible if you have a sense of the structure then you also can have a sense of agency of what you can actually do and so the book actually begins with a consideration of time because I think it has to and here's why I think in as we've let as we've let history go it hasn't just been a matter of letting the facts go letting the details go it's been a matter of accepting a certain story a story of progress a story that I call in the book the politics of inevitability the idea that we know the rules of how society works that so long as we have X let's say capitalism we'll have Y let's say democracy right or if you're on the Left you know that the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice not true not true there's no arc and it doesn't bend towards justice neither of those things are true both of those are comforting stories which I call the politics of inevitability when when when when after the end of communism in 1989 we decided that our story about the president was true and the future was was true then the problem with this there are many problems with the politics of inevitability but one problem is then you get a shock from many Americans that shock was the financial crisis of 2008 for perhaps many Americans in this room it was the election of mr. Trump in 2016 the problem with the politics of inevitability is that if you imagine that everything is going in a certain direction when something happens that you can expect you're shocked you're disoriented you're vulnerable you don't know what to do and then what creeps in from the side is the alternative to the politics of inevitability what I call the politics of eternity rather than progress do rather than certain optimism certain pepti pessimism the idea that the only thing that ever happens is those other people are coming for us the good ones that the only thing which ever happened in history was threat and by the way whether you oppose mr. Trump or whether you support mr. Trump this mood might apply to you in the politics of eternity the future goes away all that we have is the sense that the same thing is happening over and over and over again and of course this is a description of the United States of America that we're living in now how many of you you don't have to raise your hands but how many of you actually believe that the federal government is capable of formulating policy for the future how many of us are actually trapped in a cycle whether it's outrage or indignation where the daily where the daily news is what determines our moon how many of us have noticed that a big part of the country now thinks in terms of America first or making America great again loops back into the past which of course obliviate any ability to think about a sensible future together the reason why I dwell on time like this is that this is what the road to unfreedom is in the road to unfreedom people who have hope give way to despair people who are sure about progress give way to do and the only way to catch that - stop it - stop it in the middle is to see the history for what it actually is and so this book is meant to be a history of the present know one of the things which the politics of eternity taught us is that there are no alternatives which is a very very convenient unbelievably lazy thing to think if there are no alternatives of course it doesn't really matter what you or I do civic action doesn't matter very much things are always going to sort themselves out the way they are and again there are no alternatives can appeal to people who are on the right or on the left on the right you can say well of course the markets a good thing it always brings about democracy on the left you can say it's neoliberalism what can we do about it it's an unstoppable force right but either either way you seem to be seem to be trapped by the idea that there are no alternatives the way I start the book in Chapter one is to show that of course there were alternatives there are alternatives there will always be alternatives and some of these alternatives emerged before our eyes without our even paying attention so for example to begin in Russia book begins and the book begins in Russia by the way because everything now begins in Russia right you might have noticed that the way that the way to tell what's going to happen tomorrow in America is to read Russian newspapers from 10 or 12 years ago right it is actually much more effective than following our own news cycle even the language I mean every news every new American phrase whether it's fake news for example those are things which Russians were saying 10 years ago the book begins with ideas and it begins with Russia because I need to insist that ideas do matter the reason we don't think they matter is that we're trapped in one it were trapped in the idea of the politics of inevitability that's an idea that says ideas don't matter and whenever anyone comes up against us with something that's an idea we say hmmm how interesting but at his core he's really a pragmatist he really just cares about his own material interests and therefore goes the assumption everything will turn out well because so long as we all care about our own material interests everything will somehow sort itself out in the great market of the world so if for example the president of the Russian Federation begins to regularly cite a major fascist philosopher if the President of the Russian Federation exhumed the body of this major Russian philosopher and brings it back to Russia if the president the Russian Federation finds the papers of this great fascist philosopher at Michigan State and brings them back to Russia if the president of Russian Federation talks about this fascist philosopher in 2002 to 2011 in 2012 when he when he plans his new mission for Europe I mean the president of Russian Federation cites this fascist philosopher when he justifies his invasion of Ukraine this campaign against the West in general do we notice no we don't notice and if we do notice we say well deep down he's just a pragmatist and really you know this is all just window dressing for his baton no ideas do matter when the politics of inevitability shifts to the politics of eternity ideas matter this particular Russian philosopher whose name was Yvan he leaned with begin the book is someone whose return heralds this shift from progress to doom it's worth taking these ideas seriously because this return to the 1920s and 1930s is happening all over the place like so many things first in Russia but also in Poland also in Hungary also in Britain in France and in our own way in the United States of America we're returning to thinkers and ideas of the 1930s what is this philosopher say he has a very interesting and useful view on life is not useful to any of you but useful if you are the head of an oligarchical clan in Russia the the view of life is God's creation was a failure nothing in the world around us is meaningful or true there's no factual reality the only good thing is a restoration of the totality of the world which will be brought about by which country which we brought about uniquely by Russia in the meantime Russia is inherently innocent because Russia is the font of God's innocence and goodness and the rest of the world is decadent corrupt and the only thing that happens in history therefore is a cycle of uncomprehending foreigners attacking Russia over and over and over again and if you listen to the way Russian diplomats talk about the world now you realize that it is purely this no matter what Russia actually does whether it's interfere in the US elections or invade Ukraine whatever it might be it turns out that actually it means that Russia is being attacked over and over and over again now this view which was fascist in its origins this meant aleem was a thinker of the 20s 30s and 40s this this view which is fascist in its origins is very convenient if you happen to be at the head of eclipta chronic regime why well for one thing he leaned as a fascist says that the the Russian the Russian nation is like a body everyone has their own role individuals are like cells or like embryos democracy is therefore a meaningless ritual that's how he describes it it doesn't make sense to count votes those are all very convenient ideas another convenient idea is let's say that politics is entirely about the foreign enemy coming to Russia that then becomes a justification for not having any domestic policy at all but instead governing the country through regular attacks on chosen enemies be it Ukraine be at the European Union be at the United States of America and these ideas are also very convenient if you're an oligarch like mr. Putin who is discredited democracy as a succession principle this is the key and the central and the essential problem of Russian political life no one knows what will happen when mr. Putin dies and no one is allowed to ask the question out loud no one knows and therefore what you do with the politics of eternity like mr. Putin does very skillfully is you refer back to the past you create daily spectacle so the question of what happens next never actually arises never actually arises and and this is where things get interesting if you're beyond Russia what you must do is you must create spectacles abroad which distract your own population and which somehow confirm the impression that you are the victim the entire time and the first target of all this was the European Union I promise I will talk about Donald Trump before this is over I will talk about America before this is over but there are really good reasons to put Europe in the middle of the story for one thing Europe is the biggest economy in the history of the world right as they don't teach us in American schools the European Union is a bigger economy than ours it's a beer economy than China's it's the biggest economy in the history of the world as no one ever notices it is also the largest and most important zone of contiguous democracies in the world it is also a direct neighbor of the Russian Federation when Russia begins this turn in 2012-2013 the turn is not directed first against us it's directed first against the European Union what mr. Putin does is he defines this politics of eternity he transforms these fascist ideas into a foreign policy which he calls Eurasia Eurasia is very interesting but Eurasia says is we don't need European integration the way the Europeans have it based on those boring laws and those dreadful bureaucrats and based on things like freedom and prosperity which who needs those things what we need instead is an integration which is based upon the values civilization as mr. Putin says it's unclear what those values actually are it seems to involve heterosexuality as far as I can make out but the basic which is for me a kind of a fuzzy I mean you know fuzzy its fuzzy as a virtue but but but but but the idea is we will organize integration or rather will redefine integration as a kind of dictators Club where you don't have to do all those tiresome things that the European Union wants you to do like have elections like have the rule of law like have a functional market economy will have a dictators Club which starts with Russia of Kazakhstan Belarus and it will have Ukraine and it's Ukraine where things start to get interesting as we're gonna see but we have to pause on Europe and speak about Europe because it's in Europe where we can see a preview of how the politics of inevitability the certainty that everything goes your way breaks and starts to give way to the politics of eternity the Europeans have their own politics of inevitability which goes like this we European nation states have long histories in our long history as European nation states we learn things and the main thing that we learned was that the Second World War was a bad thing and from that lesson we drew up this project of European integration and we're smart because unlike Americans we knit we learned that war was bad okay so that basic recitation is something that you've probably heard from your European friends if you happen to have European friends the interesting thing about it historically is that it's a hundred percent wrong it's out there's absolutely nothing correct in any of that the Europeans never had nation-states unless you're finished in which case I apologize they had empires and those empires broke apart in a series of bloody anti colonial wars around the time of the Second World War and the fragments that were left over from Empire then joined in this economic project which becomes the European Union there's never a moment when the year in the major European states were actually nation states so they weren't nation states that parts fundamentally wrong second they didn't learn from the Second World War also not true if Europeans had learned from the Second World War that war was a bad thing then the Russians and Ukrainians and the poles and the biella Russians and the Jews would be the most Pacific people in the world because they're the ones who suffered most from the Second World War and we can happily debate like whether the Jews of the VLE Russians the Ukrainians or the Russians are the nicest whatever you like you know I'm happy to concede that the Jews are the nicest but you see you see that was populism don't let it work on you okay but the point is that there was no direct there was no direct learning of this kind what happens when people actually learn from is losing colonial wars Germany lost a colonial war in Europe and then the Dutch and the Portuguese in the Spanish and the British and the French lost colonial wars elsewhere and it was the losing colonial wars which allowed Europeans to form the European Union and then once they formed the European Union they say we were always nation-states and we were always nice and we learned from war that war was bad and so on which allows them not to talk about their bloody colonial history okay that's the European politics of inevitability why is that so important because it creates the vulnerability for the politics of eternity because then someone comes around and says well since you were always nice innocent nation-states why not go back to the 1930s when you were such good nation-states things were really good back then in the 1930s when you were a nation-state and of course that's the argument for brexit which is historically ludicrous that's the language that the foulness way now speaks in France it's also the language of alternative food which land in Germany right and here's the point it's the message which Russia pushes on Europe in Russia support of the extreme right in Russia's funding of the fullness canal in France in Russia's cyber intervention on behalf of brexit the message is always the same go back to when things were good to a newer a nation-state in other words because all Europeans believe a fairytale about their own history they all believe a version of the politics not all okay I know there are some that don't I know you're gonna like raise your hand and say I never believed any of that okay I'm ready for it but because most Europeans believe in a fairy tale about about their own history they are vulnerable to people who abuse that fairy tale whether it's populist at home or Russians abroad so what Eurasia does is it Cummins comes in and says you don't need all these rules you're naturally good on your own go back to being a nation-state there's a philosophy to this the test of this which I mean if I was gonna make a long story even shorter everybody fails the test of this is Ukraine the test of the politics of eternity is Ukraine what is happening in Ukraine in 2013-2014 is that a number of young Ukrainians and others believe very sensibly that the purpose of the European Union is to give them the rule of law a number of young Ukrainians very sensibly protest against a president who first said he would sign an association agreement with the European Union and then changed his mind right and that sets off protests which are organized at first mainly by young people who precisely want to have the kind of European life which other Europeans have in which they had taken for granted for themselves know the reason why all this becomes extremely interesting so why is that interesting that's interesting because it's a politics of the present and the immediate future right it's neither a politics of inevitability nor politics of eternity it's a politics of how things might be better a year from now five years from now ten years from now but it gets clobbered in Europe and in the United States by the Russian politics of eternity what Russians come in and say is no no no this is not about the rule of law this is not about Europe this is about much more interesting things it's about the deep historical past it's about how someone may have been baptized in Russia a thousand not in Russia Russia didn't exist what am i sighs just given way to it myself um it someone may have been baptized a thousand years ago in in what was going to become a Kiev in state and therefore Russian Ukraine of the same place or Catherine the Great conquered some of what's now Ukraine therefore Russian the same and/or Germany invaded the Soviet Union 1941 therefore Russia and Ukraine at the same place in other words these these are that's that's the politics of eternity at work looping back to the past right or too poor to bring it closer to home when when Russia argues that the Ukrainian question is a matter of culture or language or Russian speakers that's the politics of eternity rather than thinking what are people's interests or preferences as they themselves express them we accept a language of permanence of eternity they always spoke Russian therefore they're always going to be Russian right we accepted that to a startling degree if we look back at our own news coverage in 2014 we find it full of maps where people are colored according to their supposedly äj-- or ethnicity right we're part of the map is one color and part of the map is another color that's what the politics of eternity looks like in practice when you were convinced that for deep historical reasons the people inside a country are divided into two warring groups because of ethnicity or language that's what the politics of eternity feels like and when you accept it in another country you've taken one very big step towards accepting it in your own that's at a level of principle now let me talk about talk about the level of practice in Ukraine mr. Putin and others did a number of things to which we didn't pay close enough attention because they were then going to repeat themselves in the United States a couple of years later one one of the most important is the appeal to susceptibility so we all now know this right we all now know that this is how social media platforms work that I know that you care about the montreal expos and i know that you care about evel knievel and i know that you care IRA's you're a stamp collector and therefore i facebook direct content at you according to these vulnerabilities right we don't we know that that's how it works now what Russia did in 2014 was use social media platforms and other means to direct political propaganda at people who would be vulnerable to it so if you were on the left you were told that Ukraine was a rising fascist regime meanwhile if you were on the far right you were told that Ukraine was a conspiracy of Jews these people never heard that message and these people never heard that message but everybody got riled up and the fact that it was contradictory didn't matter right the contradiction didn't matter since the point was just to divide and confuse I'm trying to make this sound like the 2016 presidential election is that my succeeding because it's the same tactic they applied here another thing was the brute denial of obvious reality right governing from that mr. Putin although Russian forces invade Ukraine three distinct times in February in August of 2014 then again in January 2015 he simply denies that a war is taking place so that governing from a position where you simply say something obvious is not true and then you fill the vacant space with complicated and interesting fictions that is something else which starts in Russia and then which comes here right imagine having a head of state who denies the most obvious realities and then fills the public space with lots of sophisticated and interesting fictions wouldn't that be a weird country to live in right mr. Putin pioneers that and that comes here the weird and caught the weird and sophisticated fictions that appeared in Ukraine were things like the claim that a russian-speaking boy was crucified by the Ukraine army which was completely wrong right did not happen as a fiction in district fiction in literally the same sense that Barack Obama is born in Africa is a fiction a consistently and deliberately told lie which is meant to occupy a certain amount of the physical space and by the way birtherism was also spread directly by Russian propaganda in case you didn't know beginning in 2010 or went another example when mh17 is shot down what happens you respond to it by coming up with five or six mutually contradictory versions of what happened what actually happens is not complicated the Russian weapon shoots down a civilian airliner during the war when they invade another country simple but you come up with a bunch of stories where in fact it was the Jews or in fact it was the Jews or maybe it was the Jews oh there's some other versions where no the there was a Jewish although there was a Jewish Ukrainian oligarch called Igor kolomoisky who they actually blamed for this in one of their versions and another version it was it was an accident another version it was Ukrainian fighter jets but what you do is you fill up the media space with a whole bunch of stories so at the end of the day people are just not sure that again is used in the United States in 2016 who really believes that Hillary Clinton is a pedophile and who really believes that you know John Podesta consumes bodily fluids at weird satanic rituals I mean given the way tastes are in New York maybe some of you do believe this stuff but the point is that you fill up the public sphere with these stories right and at the end of the day everything is confused and and nobody knows we didn't catch this in Ukraine in time and this is this turns out to be a shame for us it's not just a mental failure it is because because it is all one campaign when we looked at Ukraine from the point of view of a Russian politics of eternity and we said oh look those Russian speakers are fighting those Ukrainian speakers oh look there's some clash of civilizations in a faraway country you know that meat of which we know nothing right when we did that we were failing to see the stakes which were us the stakes were can you have an international order based on law those were the stakes and the Russians understood that even if we didn't understand that they were saying over and over and over again our war with Ukraine is a war against the West and they meant it literally when Putin's advisor on Eurasia Sergei glazyev says that in order to win the war in Ukraine we have to exterminate the American elite he's making a pretty direct connection when the person in charge of security for Russian forces in Ukraine says that the thing that American Ukraine have in common is that they are disintegrating States these are words which perhaps we might have paid more attention to than we did and it wasn't just rhetoric as I as I Chronicle in the book and some of this has now come out also thanks to mr. Muller the cyber campaign against the United States of America begins concurrently with the Russian invasion of Ukraine it begins at the same time and the same things are done they just work that around us because we weren't expecting them they work better on us because we didn't see the connections and these are these are not just the tools of media manipulation which I talked about these techniques but there are also very simple things like malware and power plants the same malware which was installed a Ukrainian power plants or the Ukranian electricity grid what the look is now installed the American electricity grid you know that right right okay you know what now so and it happened at the same time this is all one story in 2016 when we were shocked right we suddenly all this rushed to us all at once but in fact all of these things had begun much earlier and the point of the book is to show all the connections that point of the book is to tell this as a history so that it all makes sense right so that by the time I get to 2016 which is chapter 6 which I'm going to talk about now and then and we'll have some questions by the time we get to 2016 things are interesting and perhaps distressing but they're not surprising right because the history the patterns of the history have already been established so um let me now talk about the United States for a moment I'm on my friends and colleagues who talk about US and Russia and so on they're basically two camps they're people on the Left who say let's not talk about Russia because we don't know anything about it okay that's not what they say they say let's not talk about Russia because if we talk about Russia that will just disguise the fundamental problems in the u.s. and then there are some folks I know who are more interesting foreign policy who say let's talk a lot about Russia because Russia poses a basic geopolitical threat to the u.s. the interesting thing about this is that those are not alternatives everybody is right there is no way that we can understand the problems the United States without asking why we're so vulnerable to Russia and there's no way we can understand the tactics of the Russian Federation without understanding the vulnerabilities of the United States this is this is a false distinction which is leading us nowhere so of course it's true that Russia chose the present United States of course that's true mr. Trump doesn't exist publicly without Russia mr. Trump exists as what as a as someone who plays a successful businessman on TV which by the way is itself very interesting because you know I know a lot of successful businessmen and with all due respect to those of you who are in the crowd not a single one of you could play a successful businessman on TV because it's a completely different skill set right mr. Trump has the skill set of someone who can play a successful businessman on TV which is an unrelated skill set to actually being a successful businessman it's unrelated right doesn't they have no relationship one to the other it's two different sets of people I mean you wouldn't actually hire you know the guy who is they wouldn't hired jr. from Dallas to manage your retirement portfolio um you wouldn't but you would have lucked impress the United States so we so we we we fell for this and it's important to own it but my point about Russia is this mr. Trump wouldn't have even been able to make a case for himself as such a TV character without Russia because when mr. Trump after mr. Trump's six bankruptcies after US banks stopped loaning to mr. Trump he DS only the Russian investments in the 2000s in the 2010s which vaguely keep him afloat without Russia mr. Trump does not even exist as the fictional character who we elect President of the United States right and this is important because we can get into quarrels about like how important wasn't in November 2016 and the answer is very but before we even get there we should know that he doesn't even exist without Russia he certainly doesn't become the Republican nominee without Russia which is why Republicans have every reason to have just as much reason to be upset as Democrats I mean if you were you know if you're done cases or if you're Marco Rubio or whomever um this person was chosen over you by a foreign power to be the Republican nominee not just present the US but to be the Republican nominee so certainly mr. Trump would not be our president without the actions of the Russian Federation and by the way the Russians have not particularly hidden this I mean one of the one of the ways in this book is a bit different than other books about Trump and Russia and so on is that I start from Russia and I start from the Russian sources and that gives the flavor of the night changes the flavor very dramatically because of course when Russian diplomats speak to us in English they deny the whole thing and they scatter various versions and so on but when they're talking to themselves in Russian they say very different things like ha ha we chose the American president and they slept through it right they say they're not actually trying to hide this I mean those of you who know Russian will know this as well as I do they're not actually trying to disguise the fact that they interfered in the u.s. elections only when they pro forma they have to talk to us and like hold up how about you know some kind of hope that they didn't do it okay so without without the Russians he wouldn't have existed he wouldn't have been nominated he certainly wouldn't have one right I mean his campaign was the Democrats asked the whole time where is the campaign and that was a very good question because the campaign was largely run by foreigners the foreigners of Cambridge analytical and the foreigners of the Russian Federation the the financing the campaign I'm sure we'll learn more but it's interesting that between his nomination and his election 70% of the purchases of Trump real estate were by shell companies which will lead back exactly where do you think that is going to lead back he certainly wouldn't have won without the hacking of the Democratic Party which is a bigger deal than we think it's a big deal when one political party and not the other gets hacked because it means that everybody on the Democratic side was operating in completely different psychological conditions than the people on the Republican side were if you're on the Democratic side you knew that all of your donors were getting cell phone calls with death threats right if you're on the Republican side I mean thinking I mean the Democratic side it meant that your staffers during the convention we're getting cell phone calls from people who were threatening bombs and so on and so forth that's the kind that changes the whole game psychologically the Republicans didn't have to deal with that and that's not even beginning to talk about how the the email hacks were then used later on so for example Access Hollywood why wasn't everybody scandal but scandalized by Access Hollywood because 30 minutes after the Access Hollywood tape was released 30 minutes the Russians then drop portions of John Podesta's emails and then Russian BOTS and trolls help to spread the story that these emails reveal how Hillary Clinton is a pedophile pimp and how John Podesta consumes bodily fluids at dinner parties which means that immediately the people who should have been scandalized by Access Hollywood are able to say but you're your person your woman is much worse and that's what they said by the way right that's what they said that's what people thought well maybe Trump did this but your person did something which is much worse but the reason why Access Hollywood doesn't kill Trump is that he has Russia on his side and again that's not even mentioning the social media campaign which was massive right we now know that Cambridge analytic I had had the had the personal data of most of the American electorate it is just a matter of time before you find out everyone to whom they sold it we now know that the Russian Federation attempted to hack and successfully did hack the voter rolls of seven that attempted more than twenty successfully hacked the voter rolls of seven American states that's useful data to have if you're carrying out a social media intervention and of course we know that Russia and other actors very successfully got to voters in crucial states like Michigan and Wisconsin in the weeks right before the election we know all kinds of interesting things now like for example that the fake news stories on Facebook were more popular than the real news stories I mean for those of you who were out actually campaigning as I was I'm in that fall it was very striking what you were encountering it the fact that the 20 most popular fake news stories were more widely read than the 20 most important news stories in September and October of 2016 really made a difference for the kinds of conversations it was possible to have with with real people and yeah and I think it pretty clearly affected electoral behavior and all of that is leaving aside the fact that from Papadopoulos through page through Flynn through Kushner through Trump jr. through Trump himself you have a remarkable set of personal connections with the Russian Federation um manna fort when it doesn't even need to mention right that manna fort was the main political adviser of the very Ukrainian president who turned away from Europe and caused a revolution right that same Paul manna for the Ukrainian story in the American story repeat themselves almost uncannily when manna fort was finally arrested people literally celebrated on the street in Ukraine we in the United States are still asking ourselves what does this exactly mean this manna for right in other parts of the world it was it was it was very clear what it meant so on the one hand of course no Russia no Trump on the other hand the form that the Russian attack takes reveals our vulnerabilities very clearly Russia is like dr. an evil doctor right the doctor who you go to and who diagnoses all of your problems correctly in order to make them worse now knowing that doctor is useful because what is on his clipboard is very good information right his diagnosis of you is correct his actions may be malevolent but his diagnosis of you is correct and worth listening to so the Russian diagnosis the u.s. goes to the heart of what I'm calling the politics of inevitability we weren't concerned enough precisely about how our version of capitalism our unregulated version of capitalism created grey zones where actors from Russia could for example prop up and support a politician like mr. Trump if it weren't for the fact that you could have anonymous real estate purchases in Trump Tower in the 90s Russia and them the Russian mob and Trump might never have made friends if it weren't for the fact that you can have anonymous companies in Delaware it would've been much more difficult for Russian shell companies to purchase real estate in this city by the way driving up real estate prices here tremendously right okay good second populist move and you resisted it good job although that part is of course also true if we worry more if we were more attentive to the form that our capital or capitalism took we wouldn't allow our banks to do business with anonymous clients with simple things like that the connection between Russian oligarchy and an American American aspiring oligarch would be much harder to make that's our politics of inevitability our sloppiness about about our capitalism likewise if we didn't believe that technology were were automatically enlightening if we hadn't fallen for all that nonsense about how like the more connected we are the smarter we are and so on if we hadn't fallen for that it would've been much much harder for Russia to hack an election right but we fell for that most of us fell for it most of us believed it in some version even more specific things like our health system if we didn't have the idea that the free market were an acceptable way to handle health here we wouldn't have the opioid crisis which is a which is something which is happening in the US and a horrifying scale and one of the uncanny things about American life is that American life expectancy is going down year after year two years in a row now it's gonna go down in 2017 as well that is uncanny that is very strange right um but in one of the main reasons is going down is opioids and we have opioids because we don't pay attention to how we run healthcare we don't have a national health care system why is that relevant why am I talking about opioids aside from the fact that while I gave this lecture multiple people died of an overdose well there's another reason which is that mr. Trump won the election in counties which are an opioid crisis every single county that mr. Trump flipped in Pennsylvania is an opioid crisis every county in Ohio that mr. Trump flipped except for one is an opioid crisis right that is how he won the election he took traditional Republican voters plus he took people in counties where people are killing themselves or dying of overdoses so the fact that we let things go the way that we did helped mr. Trump win which is and all these things are just examples of the larger problem of inequality when you allow inequality to reach the kind of stratospheric proportions which we've allowed when you become the only country that rivals Russia in wealth inequality that's us when you become that country it's not surprising that Russian style information warfare works because the greater the income and wealth inequality there is the harder it is for a society to talk to itself if you are extremely wealthy the truth is not enough for you and if you're extremely poor the truth is too much you can only have a society that communicates with itself if you have some plausible version of equality and we didn't and we paid the price our other weaknesses Russia also notices societal ones like racism they aimed for that lobbying ones like guns they aim for that institutional ones like the electoral college they aim for that they knew perfectly well that they had to concentrate on Michigan concen at the end and that's exactly what they did so um what we see at the end whether you see by the end of this is a kind of dark globalization right in our politics of inevitability we were normal there were no alternatives history was over the only thing left to happen was that merit the rest of the world it was gonna become more like us in fact what happens in the history that I try to tell in this book is that we're becoming less of a democratic society all by ourselves right citizens united in 2010 decision in 2013 by the Supreme Court which allows 22 American states to institute voter suppression laws galloping wealth inequality we're becoming less democratic all by ourselves and the world is becoming less democratic around us for the last decade or so that's been the general trend but more than that it's not that our normality projects outward virtuously into the world it's that the world or specifically hostile actors like Russia can see the flaws in our system not just as flaws to critique but as vulnerabilities to attack as attack surfaces which is exactly what happened which is why we are where we are in other words we were shifting from the politics of inevitability to a politics of eternity anyway and a Russia which was already in the politics of eternity beckons us forward with its cyber with its psychology beckons us forward into a future where we are even more like down this is a road that's the road to unfreedom that's the road to which from which we should get off so what's the point of history then the point of history is to try to stop us where we are to see ourselves where we are to see our country in the world where it is and to see the ideas as ideas because the idea of the politics and navigability in the idea the politics of eternity have many things secretly in common and one of the things they have in common is the total absence of responsibility if everything is gonna go well no matter what you do you have no personal responsibility if everything's gonna go badly regardless of what you do you also have no sense of personal responsibility so it is sadly very convenient to go from being basically content to being shocked and not knowing what to do and being in despair that's convenient because in both modes you're not personally responsible what history does or at least what I've endeavoured to do in this little history book is to show just what you can do because if you see history for what it is if you see the structure for what it is then you can also see the places where you can push in the structure so in one way - this book is incredibly old-fashioned aside from the fact that it has a huge number of sources in lots of languages one way that this book is very old-fashioned is that I talk about virtue I talk about good and evil what I say at the beginning in the end is that it's the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity which take responsibility away from us which take good and evil away from us because think about it if you're in the politics of inevitability then the good is just the thing you have now and you're just gonna have more of it so that's fine if you know politics of eternity the other side is always evil they're always attacking you you're always innocent therefore you're always good and you don't have to think about what's actually good and evil it's only when you start thinking historically and you realize a-ha I actually have responsibility there's this I can actually move this world one way or another that you have to decide what you're going to do right and then you can't do that without making you can't make that decision about what you should do without having some account of what's good and what's not good so the book is actually framed not just in terms of contemporary history in countries which I've talked about here it's also framed in terms of virtues you know I mean that world and that word entirely on ironically I run through Russia Europe Ukraine and the US and I run through the period 2010 to the present but I also go through the virtues that I think our political institutions instantiate the virtues of individualism as opposed to totalitarianism the virtues of succession as opposed to state crisis the virtues of state integration with neighbors the virtues of new things the virtue of truth and finally the virtue of equality because I'm deeply convinced that we're not going to get out of where we are unless we understand where we are but we're also not going to get out of where we are without some account of how things might look if they were better and that's the note that I close on it's not a note of things must be better where things must be worse it's a note of civic responsibility thanks [Applause] thank you very much I think the format is that you now have a chance to ask questions if you wouldn't mind just telling me who you are oh you asked the question that'd be nice my question my question concerns the the growth of this totalitarianism the authority Authority realism in Hungary and Poland this seems to be by consent to the populist rather than through intimidation and coercion it seems like the people here are green having their freedoms limited you come my thumb talking about hungry in Poland okay so I'm gonna make a couple of introductory remarks about this because I think there's some really important things in the background in both Hungary and Poland the most important thing which goes unsaid in their conversations in their countries in which we often also leave unsaid here is the European Union Hungary and Poland are where they are as prosperous modern States largely thanks to the European Union just like their West European neighbours Hungary and Poland do not have a fantastic history of success as nation-states they did exist as nation-states in the 1920s and 1930s in both cases it ended catastrophic ly with Hungary as an access power and with Poland invaded from both the east and the West perhaps ironically the way that European States actually secure their sovereignty is by joining the European Union so there's this entire phantom dance about how the Europeans are taking our freedom away and they're making us measure cheese in a certain way and bananas have to be a certain shape and all this like utter you know English tabloid nonsense the fundamental truth is that the only way that European states have proven they can be durably sovereignty without Empire is inside the European Union and this is important because you know because of the political the major political truth that what we're really good at is taking things for granted I thought that's our truly human gift I think the one that goes beyond all others is fantastic ability to take things for granted so the beginning of this conversation is that poles and Hungarians take the European Union for granted a little bit like you might take your parents for granted a certain stage in life and so they feel free to push back against the European Union to treat it as the enemy to treat it as the oppressor and then to tell to tell the electorate that you know the bad things are coming from the outside and we're actually going to protect you from the European Union taking our sovereignty away taking our way of life away and this is possible again to make another European point because the European Union although it's very important in lots of ways it has zero symbolic capital the nations have all the symbolic capital and Europe has zero and this is it's a little bit like the United States only more so right like Montana is very charming Wyoming's beautiful you know but but from Miami from Montana and Wyoming Washington DC looks like nothing you know it has it has almost zero symbolic capital the federal government is not that charming the European Union has the same problem only more so Brussels is just not charming to anyone it doesn't seem to actually it doesn't seem to have any charisma it doesn't seem to represent anything meaningful so that's actually III dwell on this because it's central to how this politics can work these countries think they're not going to be kicked out of the European Union that therefore everything is permitted so or Bonn and Hungary literally governs by being a kind of chief among oligarchs who can take European Union subsidies and decide which way they're gonna go right so his whole way of his whole style is impossible without the European Union which of course seems powerless to do anything about this similarly in Poland uhm you flout your you flout European Union decisions but you you never really believe you're gonna get kicked out right you never believe that so there's this weird sort of safety net around around the whole thing which makes it all make which makes it all inauthentic ok now let me separate Hungary and Poland in Hungary what one has which is worth worrying about is a a one-party an electoral one-party state where a party actually does win elections to such a point where it has a constitutional majority and then draws up the Constitution in such a way that it can never leave that's not the same thing as the people not wanting to be free right that model that model of the fish you know slowly being boiled whatever the frogs will a being boiled is a model that we have to watch out for because it happens in America too right think about North Carolina or Pennsylvania or states which have been which although there are plenty of people who oppose the existing government nevertheless have been moved in terms of their legislation towards basically one-party situation that's the huh that's the Hungarian pattern um and and you know it's it's very hard to resist that kind of because every step you can say well it wasn't illegal right it was I mean they're smart they're smart constitutional lawyers who make arguments but the Hungarian leadership are basically all lawyers and they're what they try to do is in a lawyerly way destroy democracy by destroy the rule of law by way of by way of law Poland's a bit different I mean Poland was a bit accidental the government that's in power is is authentically popular it won office not with a majority of the vote but with you know with about a third of the vote and it wasn't the kind of odd constellation where and I write about this in the book where the other major party had just been hit by a tape scandal which was almost certainly organized by the Russian Federation and which is part of the Ukraine story because it was revenge for particular Polish leaders helping Ukraine during the my Don so in Poland I didn't talk about it at all but things happen in Poland in 2015 like weird cyber scandals and dumps of emails which are very similar to things that happened the u.s. in 2016 we didn't pay attention of course but that's but many things ruled out in Poland much the way they rolled out here the thing which is specifically interested in Poland is political fiction Poland shows how authoritarianism grows from political fiction which is which is an old story but the most important political cleavage in Poland now the single most important is do you believe that in 2010 a Polish a Polish military jet with the Polish leadership was shot down by Russia or not if you do believe that you're on one side if you don't believe it you're on the other side it's a bit like was Obama born in Africa here but more so and the reason more so is that I mean it's not that they're like we're than we are it's that there there was an actual issue I mean if the actual president of your country and his wife and dozens of other important people died in a plane crash that creates real emotional and spiritual for lack of a better word capital which can then be exploited right something actually happened which was then turned in a certain direction um and that and precisely because it's fictional it's very hard for people to get away from it and it's very easy to manipulate and so pulling in this way like tilted that tells a slightly different story because where Poland is basically doing fine economically for the time being which means that you can divide the population by saying those people who don't believe in our martyrdom they're not the real poles right and that's and then you have the argument along cultural or long cultural lines but again in Poland it would be a vast overstatement to say people don't want to be free right there you wouldn't find a pinion pulled data which says we want to give up freedom of the press what you do find is that the freedom of the press becomes ever harder as the government is using state media to support its own agenda and so forth so I mean in general there's a European story here and then there are particular stories which are a bit different one from the other but both of which are useful in helping to understand how things can go here all right there hi my question is um I was reading about the FBI raid on Trump's lawyer well and it was just obviously one of many you know criminal things that have happened in the White House since Trump took office and my question is do you think it'd be fair to say that America that there's enough evidence that we have known to say that America is basically the same you know kleptocratic government that Russia is I know that you know you've said in the you know in Prior lectures that there's a lot of similarities between the two but it just seems that every day it seems to be getting worse and worse and we probably even know that half of it at this point but do you think that we've pretty much we've pretty much become the same type of kleptocratic government today that Putin runs in Russia no I wouldn't say that we've become this but one of the reasons I wrote this book was that I was trying to reposition Russia in our minds so there are some people who still say you know Russia doesn't matter I clearly think Russia matters and and then there are people who say Russia matters but as this kind of hostile external force I'm saying something different than that I'm saying Russia represents a possible future for the United States of America Russia is very useful to us because Russia shows how you can govern in conditions of severe wealth inequality with a very limited social advancement without the rule of law but govern how you can do it it's not a pretty picture but it can be done and the things which mr. Putin does are things which mr. Trump tries with much less success it should be said right so Russia's in the book partly because I want us to see possible futures besides just the politics of inevitability right besides just where America we're exceptional everything's going to go great because we're America right and Russia is also in the book because I'm trying to show secondly as I talked about a little bit how these practices can spread so when when Russians look at America they see it the way you describe it because they see the things which are most like their own experience and then they conclude the rest of its a joke right so they think well if I can set up a shell company in an anonymous cut in an anonymous company and buy real estate you know anonymously that means American capitalism is a joke and they're only partly right right but the fact that they're partly right is enough to convince them that the rest of it is a joke and that's important because the whole thrust of their propaganda towards us is it's all a joke right the rule of law is a joke everything's everything's rigged everything happens in politics can be explained by conspiracies that's what they're trying to get us to think and the closer we move to their reality the less farfetch'd farfetch'd their stories are right so I wouldn't say no I wouldn't say that we're there but I would say that they represent a possible future and the essence of their foreign policy is to try to seduce us into that future right the enemy is at home your emotions are what matter forget about policy that's the siren song of Russian propaganda that's the underlying message mr. Trump fits very well with all of this because mr. Trump is a an aspiring oligarch right not all American politicians are like mr. Trump I mean whatever we want to say about the American political class I think we can agree that they're not all like mr. Trump he is he's exceptional in this particular respect or he's pretty far off on one end of the of the distribution um and mr. Trump is also very useful in this respect because mr. Trump doesn't believe in truth right mr. Trump is a he's a he's a natural-born storyteller which by the way is a skill set right I mean it's easy for us to look at him and just criticize him and say he lies all the time from his point of view he's not lying from his point of view it's all a story he is a fictional character living inside of fiction and he's not lying right he's just spreading unreality which is something different he's not lying because in his world there's no truth it's all that's all just that that's just for stupid people right in mr. Trump's world so so there are overlays and influences and it's all as I see it it's all one story where Russia got to a certain point faster than we did and then it's kind of pulling us along would you my name is Stanley Cooper you characterize extent which the politics of inevitability are a threat German today and whether I think I'm gonna Merkel up to the job up to the task okay so first of all I want to thank you for using the term politics of inevitability because these are these are my words right which which I am trying to you know which I which frame the but they ended on tyranny by the way as some of you might have noticed like these are the last things I talked about it on tyranny and the first things I talked about in road to unfreedom this is my way of trying to draw us out of the confusion draw us out of the shakiness and the weirdness of the present moment and to try to say where we are has a kind of logic we're shifting from one Timescape to another Timescape and that's why it feels like we're on a ship you know we're just we're we can never get our sea legs because we're moving from one idea of time to another and until we recognize that we always live in ideas of time and that they can change it's hard to figure out what's happening anyway this is I think this is really important but so I appreciate you're using that term I'm do I think it's dangerous yeah of course it's dangerous I mean the politics of inevitability was what was the major American reaction or one of them one of the major American ratliff reaction is the election of Donald Trump we said you know various forms of American exceptionalism the institutions are gonna save us you know a lot of people thought the stark mocker was gonna crash on the first day and that you know that would immediately save us we had these various versions of how we would automatically self-correct which I personally don't think I mean I think self correction is something you do yourself right that's why it's called self correction you know people say self correction like it's somebody else's job no then it would be called somebody else correction it's called self correction for her reason right so so yes I think I think I think in the story it's a problem and I think it's still priming in this story it's a problem because the thing that unites Bush Clinton Obama is the increase in wealth inequality right that's the overall what's the overarching story not that they're all equally to blame but that's that's the overarching story from the 80s through the 2000 intends and and we had various ways we talked about that inequality but nobody was facing up to it as something that could break the American system which it is so yes I think the politics of inevitability is very much a problem I think the Europeans are probably a year ahead of us in general and recognizing what's going on right so when in late 16 when the US finally got a team together to send over a team of two to Europe and say look what the Russians did to our elections the Europeans were basically like yeah you know we've been trying to explain this to you for some time right because the thing that happened to us in 16 which I mean whenever anything happens to us right it's the first time it's ever happened to anybody right that's it's true now look whenever an American gets divorced it's like this is the first time anyone's ever gotten divorced you know when we die it's like the first time anyone's ever died who knew this was gonna happen to us Americans yeah it's you're trying to decide whether that's funny or not aren't you but so so with you know when when Trump happens you know the reactions are something like either there isn't really happening right like somehow it's gonna get fixed or nothing like this has ever happened and and when we find out about the cyber war then we say either it's not real right a lot of people are still in that place like it's not real the Russians didn't really do it or if they did it didn't really matter or nothing like this has ever happened except to Estonia in 2007 except to Georgia in 2008 except to Ukraine in 2014 except to France in 2015 except - except to Poland in 2015 and except to Germany in 2016 except for those examples of Russian cyber war it hasn't happened anybody else right but that story never became our story because we were we were in this view of we were of how we were special so miracle is miracle up to the task miracle has the advantage over a lot of other politicians that she grew up in East Germany and has a certain amount of healthy skepticism about political fictions mrs. Merkel has the advantage that Hillary Clinton would have had I think when dealing with misogynists which is that you treat them with a certain amount of a basic skepticism so I mean one of the things one of the one of the things which is happening this book one of the themes was I couldn't really go into is the theme of a fragile masculinity you know the odd connections that hold mr. Putin together personally with other male leaders like Berlusconi and Gerhard schröder and for that matter Trump so masculine of the challenged individuals and kind of a last-ditch clique you know to rescue some version of masculinity Merkel has the advantage that she can't be drawn into that right at the very least and you know in many ways she's also very she's also a very skilled leader she's right in the crosshairs as I know which I mean as I assume you know which is why you ask the question miracle of all the leaders in the West is the one who's in the crosshairs of Russian propaganda you will know you know this or if you don't something outright about length in the book but the very same Russian bots who went after Secretary Clinton go after Angela Merkel right literally the same BOTS and by the way it's very often with the same kinds of messages like you can't trust this woman this woman is a criminal you know this woman will give away your sovereignty things things like this so she's not gonna be she's she's admirable she's not gonna be able to do it herself right I mean that the politics of eternity gives you leaders who are gonna save the nation from eternal threats the politics of responsibility or which is what I call it like the good thing isn't gonna ever depend upon just leaders right it's gonna have to depend upon a whole bunch of other things Russia is always going to be more dramatic you know in the role that it's in then the people who are working against Russia are gonna be because the people are going to win against Russia are gonna be loyal to institutions they're gonna cooperate one with the other they're not gonna make a big deal about everything they're gonna follow the rules and and so forth right so it'll never be like just like it's not molar against Trump like we wanted to be molar against Trump it's a good you know because that's it's two tall guys right you know one of them slim one of them is not you know they both were ties it's it's very appealing but it's not Muller against Trump it's rule of law against flouting the law that's what it's really about right and with Merkel and Putin it's basic it's it's basically the same thing it's can you have boring integration and let people out normal lives or do you have to have spectacle and and in psychological war all the time it's not so much the personalities and so it's never gonna be like a boxing match where like it's two it's two figures one against the other okay that was a very long non answer to your question but I hope you found it interesting I'm handing over agency to microphone yeah thank you for a very interesting talk my name is Marion I'm very concerned about inequality of the society so I among the things that I am doing out of personal responsibility is that I'm a member of an organization called JH Jews for racial and economic justice and I wanted to ask you in terms of the politics of eternity one of the striking things to me about the American domestic scene is the role that right-wing white evangelical Christians played in bringing Trump to power and the role that people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders continues to play on the level of ideology the fact that there is now blatant attempt to dissolve the constitutional separation between religion and state with Betsy DeVos with Sarah Huckabee Sanders with a completely unconstitutional Bible study group in the white house I'm wondering if you would come in on all of that okay so I honestly think a certain amount of Bible study would come in handy I mean there are some really interesting passages about you know I think the greatest the greatest law after loving God is loving thy neighbor strikes me as an interesting passage specifically about which is specifically about loving the other specifically about that both in Leviticus in the Gospels there are some interesting passages about giving away your wealth in order to join me about how it's harder you know for it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to reach the kingdom of heaven there's a lot of interesting stuff in the Bible if you actually study it so I mean the thing I object to least and your catalogue would be people reading the Bible in the white house it's also the thing which strikes me as the most unreal the so on on the institution's I I completely agree with you and this is and this is a way where you know you and I are being together as it were conservative right I mean the the legal war the United States is built upon the premise that there's going to be there's not the state's not going to found a religion that's how the whole system works and interesting that is precisely why the system has been so favorable for the kinds of the kinds of groups you're talking about if there weren't separation of church and state AB angelical Christianity would not be so widespread right because they would you know that if there were actually a contest for the state among religions they probably wouldn't do so well as they're doing right now in any event it would be a very it wouldn't be a pretty picture and of course I mean I I'm also I'm also scandalized by you know the in Venusian that one's going to find the country religiously or that somehow the Constitution doesn't say what what is what it says it says where I would like to connect with you would be on the idea that this has some to do with the politics of eternity because of course you know there's Christianity and there's Christianity you know and as with Judaism there are plenty of Christians who are happy to say like that's not actually Christianity right on both sides of the evangelical non evangelical dispute I've heard it said by people on both sides but the the way that some of these views go together with the politics of eternity is this you don't treat Christianity as a set of precepts at all right you don't think about Christianity you think is said about christened dung and you say christened dung is eternally threatened by the Jewish conspiracy and by the Muslim masses and so forth that's how it becomes a story of eternity so therefore you are not responsible for your individual behavior as a Christian because the idea of good and evil comes entirely from the story of how the outsider is going to is going to somehow disembowel you know you're innocent community and by the way this is exactly what this russian philosopher Yvonne aleem says and it's not surprising that there's a certain amount of common ground that's been found between some American Protestant evangelicals and the Kremlin they actually have actually worked together on a number of issues including including sexuality so anyway it works as a politics of eternity precisely because you say we're in a constant crisis how can we think about doing the right thing as individuals because we have to preserve the collectivity against this regular assault from the outside and having a white male president who calls himself a Christian is seen as a form of defense against that these so appreciate the depth of these answers but this is all we have time for this evening we want to thank Tim for being here tonight you can in the shop and we look forward to greeting you in the lobby thank you [Applause]

Channel: Museum of Jewish Heritage

Views: 9,644

Rating: 4.7647057 out of 5

Keywords: Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, On Tyranny, Rise of authoritarianism, Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Authoritarianism, Education

Id: Ht_o8l9DzHY

Length: 77min 40sec (4660 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 11 2018