TIMOTHY SNYDER - THE ROAD TO UNFREEDOM: RUSSIA, EUROPE, AMERICA

[Music] okay thank you very much there there are a couple of things which can didn't mention so one thing which makes me very happy is seeing Kim wearing white pants cuz I that suggests that summer has started right like I've been westerner I've always had trouble with these sort of seasonal dress codes you know when I was a kid working in Washington I would try to wear my shorts I was working for an English economist and and and after September I was still wearing my shorts and he said you know Tim I think Labor Day is behind us right and I I took the head and since then like I just wear a suit all the time right I decide that that's just safest the second thing which which Kim neglected to mention is that this day is timed in a very special way I'm talking about my book the road to unfreedom which is a big fat heavy book if you buy it now you can decide by 4 o'clock whether that becomes the book which Ms Brown is going to tear apart in in front of your eyes so this is this is not at all accidental we've actually no no we've actually planned this I mean so right right after my talk there's a little thing at Atticus across the street where I'm gonna go and I'm gonna sign your books if you want to buy the book and then you then you have another couple an hour or so to decide what you think what's the verdict do I read or you know do I victimize professor Schneider okay so so this this book really is all about time on tyranny which Kim was kind enough to mention is about what to do now it's about what to do right now so things don't get much worse but this book that I'm going to talk about for the next 45 minutes or so is he actually existed before on tyranny this book is the book which allowed me to write on tyranny this book was actually done in the fall of 2016 when I published on tyranny the reason I published on tyranny when I did was because I thought we don't have very much time the things that I think I understand about the 2010s about the present I need to get out in a form which people can find useful but the reason why I thought a lot of the things that I did and the sources for a lot of the lessons that I gave in that book are actually in this larger book that I'm going to be talking about today so this is a different kind of book it's a history book it's a history book about the present which is meant to situate us in where we are so it ends up linked by no coincidence whatsoever it ends up landing where on tyranny starts it ends with the idea that history is what we make of it but its purpose is to show us what that history actually is where we're actually standing right now and it begins precisely I was joking about time but it begins precisely with the idea of time time is a very powerful idea the way that we live in time is perhaps the most important thing about our politics and one of the powerful things about time is that we don't realize that we that we live in different forms of time so I mean one can do this in very simple ways like I can say the arts and ideas festival is an annual thing it comes around in a cycle of once a year and so from the point of view of the organizers Here I am after a year right from my point of view this is the 63rd lecture I've given on this campus right it did this academic year so from my point of view it's much more linear time time moving forward right here I am again on a stage another way to think about time is by looking back right so I came to Yale for the first time in 1989 because that's when my brother was a freshman here and so every once in a while when I walk around Yale I catch myself thinking of myself not as the professor but as the person who was coming down to see you know which particularly dangerous female was on my brother's case at that particular time my brother was was and is the opposite of dangerous oh hi Phil if you're watching this hi all those women from Yale 93 if you're watching this okay but the point the point is that we I mean I I just I I say this in a light way because there's a heavier point which is that the way we live in time is very important politically and I think figuring out why things are so dangerous now but also why things are so strange now requires us to think a little bit about time what happens to us and I think what is happening to us now is that we can shift from one way of seeing time to another way of seeing time very quickly and then when we shifted we don't realize what's happened to us we think Oh was always like this okay what do I mean let me try to be specific in 1989 let me just start then in 1989 it seemed like there were no alternatives communism was over capitalism seemed triumphant people talked about every time I say this phrase ten days go off my life but I'm gonna say it anyway people talked about the end of history right the notion was that now that the Berlin Wall has fallen now that the Soviet Union is weak it's soon gonna fall apart the way that we do things is the only way to do things this is what I call the politics of inevitability a short word for it is progress the idea that the future is going to be just like the present but more and better of the present the idea that we know the rules of how the present becomes the future now there are a couple of problems with this idea one of the problems with this idea is that it completely takes responsibility away if we know how things are going to go anyway it doesn't really matter what you or I do the other thing is that it deprives all meaning of actual facts so if something happens which seems to contradict this general trend you just treat it as a blip as a bump in the road you know as a speed bump on the highway towards this better this better future but then the other problem the fundamental problem the thing we're experiencing now is it this idea of progress this notion that we know the rules this this feeling that there's only one course of history and we're on it this eventually cracks it cracks for everybody different times different places different reasons but I think by the time we've gotten to 2018 it's broken for most Americans it broke for a lot of people because of wealth inequality like the notion that things are getting better has to do with the notion that you're doing materially better it just does you know I'm sorry for most people that's very important if you're an American born in 1945 your chances of doing better than your parents or about 90% if you were born in 1980 your chances were about 50% and it's only gone down since then the idea of progress or inevitability broke for a lot of people in 2008 just to take a simple example whether you can own a home or not is very important to people sense of whether they're moving ahead in time if you can leave your parents house if you're between 18 and 34 in the United States the most likely place you're living is with your parents it's hard for people to believe that they are moving forward in time and those conditions you know of course students out there I love your parents I know you do too but like there's a point I'm trying to make here another you know it's not about how you need to move out no that's not my way well it's about how you should be living in the library that's my view that hurt for a lot of people it broke in November of 2016 I had a lot of people were snapped out of this kind of sleepwalking into the future in in November of 2016 when an unexpected person was elected president when this happens the temptation is the gravity pulls you towards another idea of time which I call in the book the politics of eternity and that's the idea that the good things are in the past if the good things are gone it's because somebody else took them away from us the immigrants the blacks the Jews the Muslims somebody some outsider took those things away from us and the nuts the way that history works it's not a straight line to the future history is a cycle and the same thing happens over and over again those Outsiders come and they take the things that belong to us and so you begin to think of nostalgia Clee about a past which is almost never the way you think it was and the way that you think about the present starts to be about than them and the future disappears entirely in the politics of eternity the time is just a loop and people forget you notice this is happening people forget that the purpose of government is to make policy for the future if you like this kind of politics and people do you're happy to indulge in these cycles of looking back of thinking about America being great again or thinking about America first which is a slogan of course from 1930s if you don't like this kind of thing you're very often still caught in it because you get caught in the cycle of the daily outrage you get bombarded with the bad news or the meme of the day and you're so outraged you're emotionally so spent that you to end up in effect agreeing that there isn't a future that everything is cyclical and we're all called in this idea of of us in them now these ideas about time are very powerful and very important because they affect not just us they affect everyone the case that I'm trying to make in the book and here's where I'm going to start talking about Russia is that these got this shift from forward-looking time to cyclical time - from inevitability to eternity from progress to doom that this shift happened first in Russia and if we understand how it happened in Russia and then we can begin to understand how Russia affected us so this whole book that I'm going to tell you about is about the Russia story this whole book is about how Russia chose our president but rather than leaping to the sordid details tempting and familiar and fun to recite as they are what I'm trying to do is try to find a larger pattern of history and to see what happened to us as an example of a general trend because only I think when we see ourselves in context as one among others do we have a chance of understanding ourselves part of the shock of 2016 is the feeling that oh how could this happen how that nothing like this has ever happened before right which are that's how Americans react to sudden events Americans have two reactions to sudden events right one is it's not happening and the other is it's never happened to anyone before right so what can we possibly do the point of the history of contemporary life is to show the is happening but to explain it in such a way that we can see the commonalities with things that have happened to other people the connections to other people's history and in this case the connections to Russia are the ones that are extremely important I want to make it I want to know something very important before I start talking about Russia my whole point now is not that Russia is some is some alien planet which has just used its magical powers on us sorry mixed metaphors aliens don't have magic aliens have science like Pixies have magic okay but youyou but but the whole point is my the point is that Russia is in this story with us right the story is all one story and the point of understanding Russia is not to be more critical of Russia I mean I can do that too but the point of the point of understanding Russia is to understand where we are and understand how we got where we are so Russian politics what Russia has managed to do is its managed to arrive at the politics of eternity first and land there and find a stable way to exist there and then to spread the politics of eternity outwards Russia has a very traditional problem in government the most traditional problem you can have which is the problem of succession okay that problem is unfamiliar because we don't have it yet the problem of succession is how do you maintain the state how do you maintain the government while changing leaders that seems easy to us because we have democracy sort of but how in in history that is the single hardest thing to get over it's very easy to have a situation where somebody crashes and steals and then divides the booty among his friends right you in the front row are my friends for the purpose of this exercise that's very easy and then the people in the front row are loyal to me and we come up with some kind of mystical story about how I'm wonderful and have special powers that easy what's hard is going from that situation to a situation where our little unit survives when I die right that's the creation of a state that's called succession and the main reason democracy such a good thing or would be such a good thing main reason it's such a good thing is that it offers you a succession principle it means that you know after we elect the wrong person the states still going to be there we're gonna be there together to vote right that's the main thing democracy does it creates a sense of the near-term future which is by the way one of the reasons why democracy and history are so closely connected by the end of this I'm going to be trying to argue that history actually is necessary for democracy and the fact that we've gone off the rails and forgotten about history is one of the reasons why we are where we are okay back to Russia they have the very traditional problem of succession they have a leader after whose death no one knows what's going to happen right so in Russia no one knows what's gonna happen mr. Putin dies I don't mean to insult him by saying he's going to die we are all going to die right not during my lecture none of you was going to tie it on my lecture it's all gonna be fine but we're all going to die eventually including mr. Putin there in the very traditional position that no one knows what's going to happen next right how do you solve that problem well one way is you have elections that's now off the table in Russia because what Russia has done in the 21st century is what many other countries have done they've maintained the ritual of Elections while removing the content which by the way is how democracy dies now democracy doesn't die in a revolution or a counter revolution or a coup it dies by a thousand cuts so at some point you get dawns on you that this doesn't mean anything anymore and that you're just going to the ballot box because you have to at some point that dawns on you write that dawning has already happened in Russia this very traditional problem in Russia has been solved by applying MA a modern idea a modern idea which is fascism okay that's a word that gets thrown around a lot I know but fascism actually has content fascism is a tradition that you can appeal to and it's a way of solving the problem of succession because what or solving it so we've addressing it because what fascism says is you don't need laws you don't need institutions you don't need democracy all you need is a leader right and by the way as a historian of national socialism fascism there's a reason why I don't like that word write the word leader in German is FIFA the word leader in Italian is duche in Russian it's vouched I don't like it when we talk about leaders all the time we don't have leaders in the system there's also another problem that I've noticed in America which is have you noticed that every University is educating its students to be leaders like isn't there a logical problem with that I think like in the Ivy League we should take terms and like only one of us gets to Train leaders and like the other the other rest of them have to Train followers and we could just take turn so it would be fair like Cornell could have the leaders first and you know no because we can't we can't all be Lee all right you get it so then but here here what I'm trying to get at is is um that fascism is a way of dodging this problem you imagine a mythical leader who somehow comes from beyond history and can and somehow solves the problem of time he's charismatic he says the rules don't apply to him he denies factuality he there's something there's an aura around him that's a way of solving this problem that's what mr. Putin has actually done but mr. Putin beyond that has appealed to specific Russian fascist traditions he's a result he's resuscitated a fascist thinker whose name is Yvan alene who's done some very interesting things for Russia and this is by the way also a big trend in the 21st century taking traditional far-right ideas from the 20s and 30s and 40s the 20th century and applying them to a postmodern or a 21st century situation so mr. Putin has literally dug the body of this elite oh he didn't do with his own hands he had he had an oligarch pay for it which is of course what you do right I mean that's how you guys get stuff done right you have your oligarch friends paid for it that's how this whole festival was organized on that principle the staff in the back is like if only it was so easy we had to raise $35 from these people and 50 from these people so well no it's actually true so the philosopher vani lien died in exile in Switzerland and mr. Putin got his oligarch friend Viktor Vekselberg to pay for the reinterment of the body I mentioned mr. buxley Bork's name because he is the same mr. Vekselberg who gave a lot of money to Michael Cohen during the presidential election because this is at every level of detail all one story it's all one story ok now what aleem does is that he gives you some ideas he tells you that as I talked about before democracy is only supposed to be a ritual he tells you that freedom means knowing your place in society so um he says this is what fascists say they say this kind of thing the political system the society is a body right so we're all like cells and and freedom means knowing your place this account of freedom is very helpful if you happen to be at the top of an oligarchical clan which runs the whole country Russia is a system where there is no rule of law in effect right because the money is concentrated in the hands of a very few people it's the one country according to cloudy Suisse which has a greater problem with wealth equality than the United States of America and that's by the way one of the reasons why Russia is so helpful because it shows where wealth and equality takes you politically so this idea that freedom means knowing where you are in society and not ever being able to move around is very helpful if you happen to already control all the money anyway right so I mean mr. Putin is a materialist but not the same way that you and I are materialists if you already have the and I'm happy to debate whether it's 20 billion 40 billion 60 billion you know do I hear 80 billion if you have that much money it's not that you have to like think about why we're you're gonna get your next 5,000 it's that you start to think about ideology as a way to tell a story about the way things are now and be now and should be eternally which brings me to the most interesting thing that Elina offers this philosopher alene who Putin had dug up in whom Putin cites he says that the facts of the world are not true ok that's a very interesting idea it sounds like a very 21st century idea but it's actually it's it's a basic fascist notion it's not that the facts of the everyday experience or not what matters what matters is what makes us feel like we're together right truth is not the same thing as facto a Latif actualities irrelevant the whole world says Aileen is corrupt and spoiled it doesn't matter what I'm feeling or what you're thinking all that matters the only truth is some kind of totality that's truth and allene says that it's russia who has the capacity capacity to lead the world back into truth by which he doesn't mean factual truth there's no such thing as factual truth truth in the sense of some kind of higher entity so no matter how what Russia looks like even though Russia looks like you know it looks the way that it looks it has inside the deep and visible potential that's also a very nice idea because it excuses everything Russia does but it also means that you can't lie right so let's say you use your cyber budget to project into United States all kinds of lies about Hillary Clinton there's nothing wrong with that right because there is no truth about Hillary Clinton there's no truth about anything at all on which leads me to to to the place where we are so now that I brought us up to the 21st century I'm just wanna say a word about globalization the way globalization was supposed to work is that if you think back you know 1989 the end of history the world is flat you know all these ideas the way globalization was supposed to work was that we are already a model democracy and we're just going to project our ideal outwards you know basically we're gonna put our feet up on the beach and the rest of the world is gonna learn to become democratic by looking at I don't know I was about to say our beautiful naked body but somehow that doesn't like as a nation somehow I don't I feel like you know that's maybe not the best so I'm just going to stop that sentence right in the middle so the rest of the world is just going to contemplate us because we're gonna project outwards this model of liberal democracy that's not what actually I mean I know this is not news to anyone at this point but that's not what actually happened what actually happened was that beginning about 12 years ago this turned around completely the last 12 years have been have seen the collapse of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism pretty much everywhere in the world and with respect to us in particular we haven't I mean no this is not news to any of you but we're not actually such a great democracy and we've become less of a democracy in the last decade and several important material respects and here's here's the globalization part everybody knows that right the only people who don't know that are us this this is the very special thing about globalization it allows you to be trapped in your own misconceptions about yourself while the rest of the world can see what your weaknesses actually are right so what globalization then can go can go dark you can be in a system situation which is where we are where we can think we can tell ourselves you know we're still in this world of progress we're a democracy but Russians looking at us who have no concern right for our future Russia is looking at us can see our problems and they can look into them and try to make them worse and this and this is where we're gonna get to the point of the book this is what they have to do because you see the thing that I've described in Russia it's not just it's not just um a reality it's a predicament the predicament so the way the politics of eternity feels when it's good is we're innocent we're right right um we're on the right side the outsiders are always attacking us again and again this is what aleem says this is what all philosophers or politicians of eternity say it feels good to always be right I mean if you're in a marriage you know all about this it feels it feels good to always be right no I remember like one of my dear departed great-uncle said like his advice about marriage was you just remember you just remember that 60% of the time you're wrong okay we just know that's hot that come on that's hard right I mean how many of us in relationships could actually live up to 60% I mean I think like a good tolerant partners like at 5 or 7% okay okay I always I'd love to see where the laughter comes from right like like that man knows life okay so but so okay whereas my point was okay so my point was that this pretty eternity feels nice when you're in it right but it's a problem for you as a political system if you don't have a succession principle you don't have a future if you don't have social advancement right if you don't have social mobility because you don't know the rule of law because wealth is concentrated and permanently concentrated you also don't have a future so what you need to do is keep your society constantly in the present right so you have to govern by way of spectacle another thing you have to do is you have to convince your society that it's not better anywhere else and this is an authentically new thing I think about the 21st century in the 20th century for better or for worse countries generally had ideas about how things might be better and sometimes they would try to project those ideas onto other countries again for better or worse in the 21st century we have something new which I call in the book strategic relativism the idea that actually things aren't good anywhere now why would that be a way of governing because if you're Russia if there is no succession principle if there's no social advancement Russians are going to think well what about Ukraine what about Europe what about America aren't things different there and you and in order to make your domestic policy work you have to make things look no better in Ukraine in Europe and in America right and partly you can do that by way of propaganda and those of you who like me watch lots of Russian television can know how skillfully this is done but also you can do it by message with reality the easiest way to make Ukraine or Europe or America not look good is to make them not look good which might seem like an incredibly demanding thing right when I was reading the Russian press and I was when I was reading interviews with Russian soldiers in 2014 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and they were talking about how they were actually invading the United States and when I was reading you know from there there was a commander security commander I mean called unto faith who was in Ukrainian 2014 and he was talking about how Ukraine's a disintegrating state just like the United States and it's all one war or when subway glassy off who was mr. Putin's advisor on European affairs and economics talked about how in order to win the war in Ukraine we have to what's the word he used terminate the American elite that could seem over ambitious and in 2014 it was easy to kind of laugh at that maybe and you know we you know the way our government reacted was to say oh Russia is just a regional power right this doesn't really matter but interestingly it all it does matter because what you do from position of the politics of eternity is you try to change the rules of the game you try to make everything psychological you try to make everything subjective when mr. Obama said Russia is just a regional power like if I had the power to like go back and like rewrite mr. Obama's speeches that would be one of the things I would take out but and here's why it misses the point sure if the world is all about economics and technology in some objective way then california wins and america gets dragged along great but if okay sorry this is not a pro california audience i see all right so I'll start again if the were if we really if it really is about economics and technology then America wins especially the Northeast especially yells West Campus where it all happens okay um just a little populous trial balloon right there but but what if but what if that's not really the way the world works right what if economic and technology doesn't automatically translate into how people feel about things what if you can go directly into how people feel about things what if ironically the very technologies which we think have propelled us into progress namely the Internet what if those very technologies make it rather easy for people to get into our minds and affect us psychologically right what if that's actually what happened this is Russia's gambit if you're dealt a weak hand what do you do I know the answer to this because I have small children you play a different game you play a different game Russia's not playing the game of who's got the most fighters who's got the best technology they're playing the game of how do we feel about the future are we anxious are we afraid who are our enemies are their internal are they external that's the game they're playing and that's the game by the way that they're winning right so think about it this way which costs more an f-35 or the entire Russian cyber budget an f-35 by a lot the tires of an f-35 almost cost as much as the Russian cyber budget okay so the know this right which would you rather have not you personally which would you rather have right if you wanted to change the world like if you wanted to fly something over the Superbowl okay I'd rather fly the f-35 right but if you really wanted to change the world so Russia this is the point Russia has a domestic problem right etern D is a way of governing but it creates a problem and the problem is since you don't have a future since you've thrown the future away you have to persuade everybody else that there are no alternatives in the rest of the world the best way to do with that or one way to do that is to start messing around with the rest of the world and the way you do that is that you make things psychological you take distrust here's another way of thinking about it you take distrust and you export it okay this is another 21st century thing in the 20th century governments one of their people to believe them okay that's not necessarily true anymore the Russian government knows that it's people don't really believe it their attitude is yeah you don't believe us that's fine just don't believe anybody else either because there is no truth at all and that that turns a corner in what nationalism means because Nationals and then becomes I prefer our lies to other people's lies right and that is that is what 21st century is very much like and again not only in Russia all right I mean there's a growing part of the American population which more or less openly says I just really like these lies that make me feel really good okay now let me try to be more specific about how this actually happens and then we'll have some time to talk so um this all of this that I've been talking about its first applied to Europe so I know like you want me to jump to Trump and I will I promise I'll talk about Trump before it's all over but in a way like my way my goal is to keep that to the very end because it's so easy to just talk about the man as though the man was the problem the man's not the problem I mean he's a problem but he's not the problem the problem is how we got to a point where that's possible if the one thing in the world that we're not gonna actually change is mr. Trump right I mean mr. Trump is the way mr. Trump is neither you nor I is going to have a meaningful therapeutic romantic or any other kind of relationship with mr. Trump that's going to change him right what we can think about is changing the society around him changing changing ourselves or seeing the things which allow us okay so all of this begins with Europe Europe is in all of this more important than we are more democracy's a bigger economy right isn't it isn't it interesting how like on fox news everyday they never say the European Union economy is once again bigger than the American economy right isn't it emits not and not just Fox I mean we don't as it does anyone ever say that ever in the American media right never right and by the way Canada that doesn't exist so but I've got submit since mine is a history book right I'm trying to like douse us in reality I have to say that Europe matters more because Europe is next to Russia and Europe is a much more meaningful model in many ways than we are for Russia and what with the Russians do to Europe starting in 2013 is they turn this whole idea of subjectivity against them they take the things that Europeans already believe they take they take tendencies that are inside Europe towards a politics of eternity and try to make them stronger right so Europeans the way the European history has worked I teach a whole class on this and I'm now gonna do a whole thing in a sentence the way so you're sorry that you went to that whole semester the the way that European history works is that European states used to be empires and now they're an integration project that's it in a sentence the way that Europeans think it works is that they have a long glorious history of nation-states which actually never happened never happened didn't happen and so their their politics their politics of inevitability is we wise Europeans learn the war was bad and we started to cooperate economically their politics of eternity is but we could always go back to the nation because we had the nation what Russia does is it pushes them towards the nation right so if it runs all kinds of internet news platforms in the Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary Poland meant to instruct people that the European Union is very dangerous they should go back to the nation because the European Union is all about gays and gypsies and migrants and gay gypsy migrants the and the the in-state in in France they subsidize the full national which is the major into European party in Germany they use their BOTS to support alternative alternative aphid wetland which is the far-right into European Party in Germany in Britain they use their BOTS and several other means to support brexit right the idea that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union all of this what this has in common is that they're spinning the Europeans in a certain direction outside of this integration project which has brought them peace prosperity democracy all these boring things and towards the exciting abyss of becoming a nation-state which you've never actually done before but you think you have now Europe so Europe's in the center of this story and it begins in 2013 the the way that Europe the European experience or the way that Russian policy towards Europe starts to bleed into American policy as with Ukraine in 2014 it has to do with what the Russians learn about us in 2014 so what happens in 2014 is pretty straight forward many Ukrainians want to get closer to the European Union there is an association agreement a kind of a very complex trade agreement which Ukraine was going to sign many young Ukrainians thought this was a very good thing because they want the European future many Ukrainian business men and women thought it was a good thing because it would help with the rule of law at the last moment the Ukrainian president pulled out having received threats and promises from Russia that led to protests the protests were put down by force and then Russia invaded the country okay not terribly complicated but how did we experience those events did we experience them in terms of the simple people want to become closer to Europe Russia invaded no we experienced them in terms of the Russian politics of eternity in the first half of 2014 indeed through most of 2014 we were thinking things we were being told things like this is about the conversion to Christianity a thousand years ago or this is about the Russian Empire this is about the second world war this is about Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers this is about ancient hatreds it's about a line across the country and all the American newspapers published maps of Ukraine with lines down the middle of them that's what the politics of eternity feels like right and we went for it and the fact that we went for it was a very important lesson for Russia not about Ukraine Ukrainians didn't go for that most of them but we went for that hard and the Europeans went for it that was one of several employs or several ways that Russia began to export the politics of eternity during 2014 during 2015 during the war in Ukraine another is what I call implausible deniability which is when a leader stands up and says something that you know is not true then he knows that you know it's not true and it's big and he says it anyway and then you just ask what you're going to do so in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine what mr. Putin said and again this is pretty new it's not 20th century's 21st century Russia invades a country and mr. Putin stands up and says we did not have made a country those people you think are soldiers are actually locals who bought camouflage at the local army surplus store that's what he's that's literally what he said now what does that do it's a challenge to the whole journalistic profession because it's a very tempting to cover this larger-than-life character who seems to be able to say whatever he wants it's hard to go cover the artillery and the refugees right it's easy to cover this larger-than-life character who's gonna keep saying these colorful things that aren't true and if you cover him what you're doing is you're turning a real war into reality television and you're putting this person who makes stuff up you're turning him into the hero of this reality television program right so you see how this is familiar right that is a way of governing another another thing about Ukraine which then bleeds into us is the way that Russia the way that Russia handles surprise so you can have the most masterful propaganda you can control all the television stations you can have philosophy you can have it all you know the whole package but sometimes things will happen that you don't expect like for example you're invading a neighboring country and you accidentally shoot down a civilian airliner which Russia did what do you then do you don't deny it right because if you deny it you're accepting the framework of discussion that you either did or didn't do it that's a losing move and even in on the very day when Russia shot down mh17 they didn't do that they were not throwing off their game what they did instead was they came up with a bunch of different versions of what happened so the main one the first day was the Ukrainians shot down the plane because they mistook it for Putin's presidential plane which was plausible in the sense that like both planes had two wings and they both flew they were both in Europe at the time they said Ukraine was carrying out a ground-to-air missile exercise they said Ukrainian fighters were in the area they said NATO was carrying out exercises they said that a Ukrainian Jewish oligarch controlled Ukrainian airspace and did it on purpose and we can prove it because of the shape of his nose which was an actual story on Russian television they said a whole bunch of stuff right which was not only not true but mutually contradictory right the stories don't they're not even possibly consistent but the point is that at the end of the day and by the way I mean literally at the end of the day at the end of the day people have completely forgotten about the actual thing that happened now if that doesn't sound familiar I will just say Access Hollywood that's what happened with Access Hollywood you remember those thirty minutes when you thought that Access Hollywood was going to affect the election right you remember those thirty minutes when you believed it mattered that a presidential candidates an endorse sexual assault why didn't it matter it didn't matter because the Russians used emails that they had hacked from John Podesta two further two stories one was that John Podesta went to these dinner parties where he consumed human bodily fluids I mean you can say a lot of that mr. Podesta but you know that one just ain't true or that that that Hillary Clinton was a pedophile pimp who ran a prostitution chain out of a pizza parlor in Northwest Washington DC now that might seem ridiculous just like the idea that the Ukrainians were trying to shoot down the presidential airplane of Russia might seem ridiculous but it completely changes the story you don't deny what you do is you surround with fiction and by the literally at the end of the day by the end of the day when Alex Jones and other people were broadcasting the Russian versions of Hillary Clinton as the sexual predator instead of mr. Trump it didn't matter right Access Hollywood didn't matter and you know just incidentally what did Russia do in 2014 in Ukraine which we overlooked and which might have mattered just a little bit they tried to cyber hack the election results which an event which was little reported here but if you keep all those things in mind you know if we were to put it to look at it from my point of view because I'm I work on Russia and Ukraine in Europe I don't really work on America but for me that the striking thing about 2016 was that this was all so familiar that enough that none of it Americans were saying this is all new but none of it was new right this was a pattern which had been flowing out of Russia since about 2013 into Europe into Ukraine and into us and it's not just a resemblance it's a connection if you think about the chronology the or the institution's the internet research agency which is the Russian institution which spread these fictions about Ukraine is the same institution which carries out cyber warfare against the United States it's the internet research agency which within a few days of mr. Trump's announcement that he's running for president creates a whole new American division hires 90 people and gets them to work for mr. Trump include at the end actually sending people to the United States who are then later indicted by by by mr. Muller um this is it's so it's it's it's really it's all it's all just one story and my point is that by treating Ukraine as something distant and irrelevant and by instructing the Russians that we go for this kind of thing we were basically inviting an attack and an attack is in the end what we what we got which brings me to America and and to mr. Trump so I'm gonna close with this so there there are a couple of ways I mean the road to unfreedom the last chapter chapter 6 that's the chapter that I wrote after on tyranny and it's the chapter about 2017 and that's about the Trump administration the whole book was already written before mr. Trump was elected right the whole book was written before mr. Trump was elected I was the first person to write about the Trump Putin connection I broke that story and the reason I was able to broke the break that story was that I was writing on the basis of the Russian sources and seeing this as part of a larger pattern I wrote in summer of 2016 about Russia hacking the American elections because it was not only because I could see the evidence of it because it was a familiar story from from from from other places so in the end of rude unfreedom I give you the blow-by-blow of the multi-pronged attempt by Russia to change to choose really the American president to change the outcome of American presidential elections but here what I want to do is just give you a kind of general overview of how I think we should think about this there are basically two schools of thought that I run into in my life one of them is the school of thought that says yeah maybe Russia did something but America's got big problems so let's not talk about Russia let's talk about America's big problems then there's another school of thought which says Russia did something extraordinary it violated the sovereignty United States it shows our president we have to think about Russia Russia Russia and what I want to say about this is that everybody is right and that if we don't manage to bring those two conversations into one conversation neither those conversations will ever lead anywhere because yes America has big problems and the reason why Russia was able to choose our is because they could see those problems and exploit them which means that the only way to prevent a similar attack because it doesn't have to be Russia right the only way to prevent a similar attack is to address some of these problems at the same time we have to recognize that it actually happened and we have to look to Russia and see not just not just a country that wants to change us but an example of how we might turn out so let me just give you a little bit of detail about this and then and then we'll be done so what did Russia actually do very briefly it created mr. Trump right if Russia doesn't fund this totally failed sixth I'm bankrupt who's completely uncredited II in the 1990s and 2000's he doesn't exist if he doesn't exist he doesn't have a public profile if he doesn't have a pal profile he can't run for president of the United States that's one to personnel um there has never been in the American presidential campaign which is so thoroughly penetrated by a foreign country if you look at the careers of people like mr. Page or mr. Papadopoulos if you look at the the investments of mr. Ross if you look at the moral commitments of mr. Flinn if you look at the behavior of Jared Kushner or Trump jr. even Trump himself who's retweeting Russian material during the campaign you see there's never been a collection of individuals like this in the more investigation only scratches the surface of it because Moeller can only go after things which are actually crimes right the third the third thing is they are the email hacks Russia getting into the Democratic Party's email this matters a lot not just because they can drop email bombs later which they do but it also changes the entire atmosphere of the election if you're in the Democratic Party your donors private information is out there and your donors are getting getting calls and then they love the night and and if you're the Democratic Party the your your campaign workers phone numbers are known and they're getting they're getting death threats during the convention these things change the atmospherics of a campaign right it doesn't matter about the Democrats or Republicans at this point it's that one party does not have to run a campaign in those conditions and another party does the third thing that they do is the social media campaign so they are in they are involved in social media especially on Facebook creating sites that people read so 10 GOP a site that purports to be the Tennessee Republican Party but which is actually a Russian site has 10 times more followers than the actual Tennessee Republican Party does right that matters and the message is that 10 GOP are spreading are retweeted by people like Sean Hannity or Kellyanne Conway or Michael Flynn in other words very important people who serve important functions in the campaign and then the administration are becoming conduits or really elements of a Russian propaganda campaign and then of course there's rescuing him with the bot campaign after Access Hollywood right that's that also seems to be rather important so you have you have all that you have you have the Russian choice of our president and you and now we see the consequences if you don't know what Stan mr. Trump is going to take on an issue all you have to do is ask what Russia would like it to be right it really is that simple and there are there are not any exceptions basically there are no major exceptions whether it's climate change whether it's our diplomatic or whether it's our relations with our allies whether it's our policy towards Syria whatever your favorite area foreign policy is it's pretty easy to answer what at least the presidential administration is going to be trying to do so Russia did something on the other hand oh and that's something that they did what it does is it pushes us towards the politics of eternity right because all of our problems are only gonna get worse and we are gonna be tempted to think about making America great again not about a future we are going to be drawn into a daily news cycle where we feel pounded and abused and overwhelmed and outraged or may be elated if we like it but we're gonna forget about the future we are forgetting about the future this is happening so so um but my point here is it couldn't happen if it weren't for the vulnerability right so the the logical argument the philosophical argument if you want in the book is that the politics of inevitability this sense in progress this sleep walk along the sleep walk towards the future it opens you up for the politics of eternity it prepares you to be shrunk shocked if you think like a lot of Americans think that that capitalism is just going to bring democracy which I heard a lot of smart people say smart powerful people say for a long time then you might think well the more a free-market will just bring more democracy but the thing is it also brings wealth inequality wealth and equality in the u.s. is now as bad as it was in 1929 and conditions of wealth and equality make democracy hard because people have trouble believing in democracy if they don't see a future and there's a reason why the current young generation in America you know high the current young generation in America believes in democracy less than any generation that we've ever pulled I think that's the main reason or if you think the market just brings democracy you'd think well free markets would be great but what does a free market actually look like a free market is banks who can do business with anonymous clients a free market is anonymous real estate because why should there be regulation saying that I have to put my name on a lease or a contract why that's the government interfering in my affairs so in Delaware there's a building where there are two hundred and eighty five thousand companies registered that's what the free market looks like um the free market means shell companies the that and and that is the world the free market means seven to twenty one American trillion American dollars offshored that's what a free market looks like and that free market creates the zone of lawlessness or the gray zone where people like mr. Trump who don't believe in the rule of law can meet Russian friends who come out of a system where there isn't the rule of law and that is exactly what happened mr. Trump's first contacts with Russians were with people who were buying apartments in Trump Tower in order to launder money in the 1990s were jumping ahead to 2016 70% of the purchases of Trump real estate from the point of his nomination to the point of his election were by anonymous shell companies right so his campaign was funded by anonymous entities from outside the United States from guess where who were buying who were buying his apartment units that zone that we chose to create it makes this kind of politics possible or the opioid crisis if you really think the markets gonna solve everything then you know why should we have health care why not would just let big companies dish out the pills how about every time somebody you know hurts themselves in West Virginia they get a thousand pills and that may seem like an obscure example but it's not the opioid crisis which can do which is continuing to get worse in the US by the way changes the way people think about life if you're addicted to opioids or anything similar life for you is a cycle there isn't a future things just go round and round you're just looking until the next hit til the next hit till the next head and how did Trump win the election well every single County he flipped in Pennsylvania everyone is an opioid crisis every county he flipped in Ohio except for one is an opioid crisis he won massively in places that are in public health crisis across the country that's something that we did to ourselves right we made we made we made people see the world that way or technology part of our politics of inevitability was the idea that technology had to bring progress that the internet had to enlighten people that just turns out not to be true I'm just sorry it just ain't so I mean there are many good ways to use the Internet but the rise of the Internet has coincided in time with the collapse of democracy around the world that's just the key and there are reasons why this is true the internet breaks up our ability to concentrate it takes us out of the three-dimensional spaces which are necessary for honest communication and it closes us down into a world of us of us and them so and of course it created the conduit it created the avenue along which Russia could carry out its attack on the United States which is also not a not a not a small thing when the Russians talk about war they're right the Russians all the time talk about how they're at war with us I mean unless they're speaking English and it's like a very diplomatic situation in which they say no of course we're not what are you thinking but when they're talking to themselves the word they use all the time is war and they're not joking right it doesn't have to be combat to be war the great student of war Klaus Betts said that war is about breaking the will of the enemy combat is a means to that end but what and this is what Russian military doctrine now says what if you can skip the whole step of combat and break the enemy's will directly what if you can mobilize what they call the protest potential the population to turn the country against itself what if you can do that what if that's already happened what if that is what just happened so we have opened ourselves up for this when we say that there are no alternatives we blind ourselves to them we don't see them when they're coming which is one reason why it's so important to have history and this is the last thing that that I want to say this is um this is a book that's a this is a book that not only is a history book it's a book which is meant to make a case for history so it's a very conservative history book in every respect except for one it goes forward in time it uses lots of primary sources it uses sources in the proper language is the beginning it's almost all Russian sources then we move through other languages till we get to English at the end it's a it's a it's a book which develops an interpretation on the basis of facts the only thing which is not conservative about it is a history book as it is about the present but it's a history book and it's a history book which is trying to make the case that we have to have history to have freedom and to have democracy as we've understood these things so if you if you're in the politics of inevitability as so many of us have been and some of us still are you're not moving away you're not moving towards freedom you're moving away from it if you say history is over and we have to be free what is that that's not freedom right that's imagining it the world is working for you that's not the same thing as freedom if you say that that there's no alternative to freedom that's not saying that you're free it's just saying mmm the world is such that I have to be free that's the opposite what a free person would say if you're a free person you're always working a little bit against the world if the war if your claim is that everything has to be such that I'm free Europe you have a problem that's the problem that we had if you're in the politics of eternity and you think well the only thing that ever happens is the other people are gonna come around for us over and over and over again you're also not in history right you're in the night another idea of time so what I'm saying and what I'm struggling for that's not to you know ambitious a word what I'm struggling for is a sense of forward time which is not determined which is not heading the in particular terrain direction inevitability is not true it's comfortable it's not true eternity comfortable it's very comfortable always to be innocent right very comfortable ways to be the victim no matter who you are if you're Russia if you're America if you're mr. trump he's always a victim it's very comfortable to be a victim all the time it's very comfortable to think that things are always gonna turn out those ideas of time are comfortable they're just not true history is not comfortable what history does is that it forces us to look around and say this is the actual state of things these are what the structures are and then within these structures you can ask what can I do and then this is why the book lands where on tyranny starts if you see the structures for what they are if you see they're both the risks and the opportunities for what they are then you have to ask what can I do and with that question comes a kindred question which is what should I do once you recognize that in some measure it's up to you which it is because that's what history says history doesn't say it's all going to be fine history also doesn't say it's all gonna be terrible right history says here are the opportunities here are the cracks here other ways that you could make a difference once you ask what can I do then you have to ask what should I do and I'll say the most conservative thing I can possibly think of this means that history is about good and evil because history if you take it seriously if you recognize your place in history if you see what you can do and then you ask the question what should I do you're asking what's right what's good and we need history for that thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: International Festival of Arts & Ideas

Views: 15,762

Rating: 4.7342191 out of 5

Keywords: Timothy Snyder, The road to unfreedom, russian oligarchy, cold war, russia, europe, ameria, donald trump, new haven, connecticut, Arts & Ideas, international festival of arts & ideas, trump, putin, politics, republican, democrat

Id: 2kdQ0ZP-omQ

Length: 59min 45sec (3585 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/taintedblu]

I'm glad to see more of this guy popping up. From what I've seen of him, he clearly has some really valuable insight to add to the conversation.