Timothy Snyder Speaks, ep. 4: Sadopopulism

so I'm Tim Schneider this is the fourth of these little informal chats that I'm doing the first one was called Russia defeats America the second was called America defeats America and the third was about oligarchy which in a way tied the first two together because the rise of all our key oligarchy is the thing that makes Russia influential in the United States what I want to do today is answer a question which is left over if oligarchy is real if oligarchy is a thing if it's difficult for oligarchs to make policy then what do all our darks actually do in power or how do oligarchy stay in power in the 21st century that's the question for today and the answer is something that I'm going to call Sato populism now why do we need a new word we need a new word because we need a concept we need a concept that helps us make sense of what's happening in 2017 it's very easy to look back at 2017 and say I'm baffled this is confusing this is not like things that have happened before this this makes no sense the president doesn't even seem to be governing in the interest of his own electors well and good but if we're just confused we can't do anything the first step towards doing something is understanding and the first step towards understanding is having a concept so the concept I'm proposing here is Sato populism now what Sato populism is it's an answer to something I was talking about last time which is the problem of oligarchical impotence if you are an oligarch it's very hard for you to govern in a traditional sense if you're an oligarch that is if you're somebody who's wealthy and your idea is to have both power and wealth it's very hard to have either the right wing or the left wing manner of policy you don't want to have the right wing manner of policy you don't want to have free markets because if you have free markets other people can rise up to the top you don't want to have the left wing policy either you don't want to redistribute because if you redistribute then other people can work the way up to the top so if you're facing oligarchy will impotence your problem is how do I stay in power how do I make policy how do I appear to be democratic although in fact I'm not really and the answer is sato populism okay so what do I mean by Sato populism when people talk about mr. Trump or other authoritarians around the world mr. Putin for example they often are referred to as populist I don't think this is quite right because a populist is somebody who actually has some sort of policy that offers some kind of promise to the people I don't see that a contemporary America or for that matter in contemporary Russia what I see instead are policies which if they were implemented would actually hurt the very population which put the person in office hence Sato populism sadism the administration of pain the deliberate administration of pain no that probably sounds strange how could you possibly govern by deliberately hurting the people who put you in office question mark here's how to understand how let's compare where we are now with the way democracy usually works in this country the way democracy usually works in this country is you have two parties who have some vision of the future um politics is about the future it's about the immediate future one party has a program that says we'll make the future better this way the other party has a program which says we'll make the future better that way but both parties are talking about how the present is going to be transformed into a better future that's normal in democracy because what democracy actually does is it produces the future you and I go to the ballot box we cast our vote and the reason why our vote matters is because we're thinking of the next election how we can do this over and over and over again democracy in that way produces time Sato populism breaks with all of that Sato populism stops talking about the future in fact it destroys the future what Sato populism does is that it removes the future as the natural subject of conversation by looping back to the past looping back looping back looping back moving back over the decades let's not make America great let's make America great a and let's loop back to the past no what's wrong with this well let me try to put it in practical terms if you think about making America great again you're probably thinking about the 1940s 50s 60s 70s and fine so let's think about the 40s 50s 60s and 70s what was different about the 40s 50s 60s and 70s well for one thing in those decades the gap between the wealth held by the top 1% and the wealth held by that by the 90% or the vast majority of the population that gap was closing in those decades it's been increasing since the 1980s another thing which was different unions were a lot stronger than they are now unions have been breaking apart in this country since the 1980s a third thing which was different in the 40s 50s and 60s our public education was clearly the best or close to the best in the world that's no longer true okay so if you were seriously thinking about making America great again in terms of policy you would be trying to redistribute wealth which nobody's doing you would be trying to improve public education which nobody is doing you'd be trying to prop up unions which as far as I can tell in the federal government nobody is doing so if you actually look at the 40s 50s 60s and 70s in terms of opportunity for the kinds of people who put mr. Trump in office there are policy instruments but they're not being used the way that you look back at the past if you're a state a populist as you ask not how we can make people actually objectively better off you ask how can we revive enmities which were there and are still here so another way to look at the 40s 50s 60s and 70s is to say discrimination and racism were bigger problems then than they are now and you can make America great I'm not putting quotation marks around the Great you can make America great by reviving racism by reviving these enmities by trying to teach white people that they are doing better or at least are better than black people or Hispanics or Native Americans or Muslims or grunts or what-have-you in other words the way that you quote unquote make America great is that you teach white people that it's not about policy giving them and their children opportunity it's about hierarchy where no matter what's actually happening the world you at least think that you are doing better or are better than other people now here's where the sadism comes in here's where the administration of pain comes in if you are a Saito populist you don't have policy or if you do have policy the policy is designed not to make your own people better off but to make them worse off so let's consider the policies that were actually on the table in 2017 first policy was tax regression that is giving rich people tax breaks and making middle class and poor people now or in the future pay more taxes that kind of regression makes the very people who put mr. Trump in office worse off second policy on the table was removing people's health care again the very people who put mr. Trump in office were people in the Midwest who came from counties where there's a public health crisis the very last thing they need is less health care so these are policies that are deliberately designed to administer pain to add to the total amount of pain in American society how can that possibly make sense the way that it makes sense is if you hurt people you create a resource of pain of anxiety and fear which you then direct against others against the blacks against the Hispanics against the immigrants against the Muslims against the Native Americans whatever whatever it might be and you teach people that this is the normal state of affairs government can't help you life is full of pain but at least we have the consolation this is how saito populism works at least we have the consolation that other people are suffering more the way this looks day to day is that the head of state the president united states instead of offering policies every day offers insults offers grievances offers reinforcements to people who think they are better than other Americans and that takes over that takes over so the past takes over a nostalgic view about how things are better and then the present takes over the the endless drumbeat of enmity it's meant to set some Americans against other Americans and what gets lost in this like it's completely lost in this and what's saddest about this is the future it's very easy to get motivated by thinking well other somebody's ahead of me in line or somebody's privileged and I'm hurting and I want those other people to hurt more it's very easy to feel like that and that's how saito populism works the government makes you hurt and then you want somebody else to hurt more and that's a completely new dynamic in politics because it does away with the future it also does away with society because instead of thinking about how we all might be doing a little bit better together in the near future we're thinking about how we're different groups and some of us are going to hurt others that's a profound change but I would submit that we have gone pretty far in that direction just over the course of the last year No so let's ask ourselves is that what's happening and let's also ask ourselves can America stop this because we're basically being offered say to populism at this point people are being hit and the question is are they going to be asked to be hit again that's that's where we are that's what we're about to find out now this is all perfectly plausible this is how other countries work besides the United States we know that this kind of thing can work because we see it elsewhere for example in the Russian Federation and we also know that this kind of thing leads away from democracy because if in the long run the way that you govern is by hurting people who don't mind being hurt because they think other people are hurting worse what you will tend to do is take the vote away from people who expect more from government but you will tend to do is try to suppress the vote and keep the vote down to the people who accept that government can do nothing except for administer pain and then that moves you away slowly from democracy and again we now see that mr. Trump has a federal voter suppression Commission under way so this is where we might be going the point of the point of this little talk was was to give us a concept Sato populism populism which is not policy but which is instead pain I hope that helps some of you to sort out what is happening in United States right now and to give us a sense of of how we might begin to stop it which is actually not that difficult I think we have to recognize it for what it is we have to recognize that it can work it does work on a lot of us and it should work on fewer of us and to realize that the way to stop it is to think about the future to think about our children to think about what kinds of policies we should have for our children because of course we can disagree about what those policies are but if where we end up is government can't do anything then we're just going to have more inequality less social mobility and more hopelessness for all of us which is something that I think we all of us can agree that we don't want Thanks

Channel: Timothy Snyder

Views: 70,548

Rating: 4.9050446 out of 5

Keywords: Tax Plan, Tax Cuts, Trump, Republicans, Congress, Populism, Healthcare, Policy

Id: oOjJtEkKMX4

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2017

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[u/thelivefive]

This is part of a series where he explains. They're all worth watching.