Timothy Snyder: The Road to Unfreedom - The John Adams Institute

means self-determination it's the ability to choose and I think that's what we all should have a right to and that's what we're all fighting for public debate is vital in a Democratic Society because that the public doesn't take part then the politicians take over and decide everything for themselves and a place like the Bali is important because that's where the public gets to say what they think of shaped their opinions and listen to debate it's incredibly inclusive that people continue to speak out in as well acknowledge the limitations and taking responsibility for questioning the limitations with knowledge comes a certain beauty we are then in a position to take action on that particularly in this very noisy fast culture what documentary does I think is to take time to make meaning if so select my remaining America's each people longer losses among clones a new muffler the valley is something good happened um sonido warm welcome to everybody my name is you will be over it and the director of the valley and it's a great pleasure to be able to welcome you here also the watchers at home because you're one of the lucky ones because you understand that it's important to be in person at a place where there is something going on there whether is meeting a gathering of people there are many people in the internet though looking as well so a warm welcome to them as well and a very very warm welcome to Timothy Snyder it's a great pleasure to welcome him and welcome you again here for the third time and I think three years we just established Timothy Snyder is one of the most rigorous forward-thinking intellectuals of our time I think it's truly striking that he's here that he's willing to talk from a few notes for the in this evening about our time the road to unfreedom reminiscence to the Road to Serfdom I would say from Philly from Hayek he's I think he's in that league I think it's a great honor that he's here it's wonderful to have been working together with John Adams Institute with Tracy thank you for working together so well it's wonderful that I want us joined us as well in organizing this evening thank you very much hunters for him helping us and thanking thank you John Adams Institute for working together with the body I'd like to give the floor to Elko boast follows Intel and I can't see where he is now and me but he's somewhere here yeah he's there who was going to introduce our speaker of tonight and who's going to moderate the evening he'll call the floor is yours thank you very much for being here Thank You Unni and thanks a lot to professor Snyder as well and thank you everybody for coming I'm a reporter for new to you as we can have all read in the book the foreword according to mrs. Snyder reporters are the heroes of our time who am I to take issue with that thanks for being here Uli's had a little bit about a mr. Snyder's reputation let me add what the renowned historian Yuval Noah Harari the author of Homo Davis has said about this book he calls it a brilliant and disturbing analysis this is the work yeah which should be read by anyone wishing to understand the political crisis currently and golfing the world about this book the road to on freedom while I briefly introduce professor Snyder further I'd like to begin with a picture of the celebration of the past weekend's 100 year after the Peace of the Great War the pictures can obviously be distorting this picture made it to the newspapers across the world but it does fit a certain narrative at least I'm going to use it for my narrative we see the back of president Putin's hat obviously some people you don't see Prime Minister Rutte I'm sure he's thinking about mh17 he's in the back but also American and micron they are looking with I guess everybody has to define it for themself if it's amazement or disgust or at least they're very worried about him there's one person laughing and Donald Trump doesn't laugh a lot I've been watching this guy for a couple of years quite intensively and it doesn't smile very often he is smiling here the narrative which this fits is the axis of liberalism if there is such an axis these two world leaders Trump and Putin and professor Snyder can talk a lot better and more about this than I can but but these two may be the poles of that a liberal axis even the the pillars of American democracy I think although shaken are still standing but maybe you disagree and we'll get to that in a minute will most likely spend more time today discussing President Putin than President Trump but let me just briefly point out at the past week some of the things that President Trump has said are done in the days after the midterms because when we talk about democracy and the pillars of democracy it's quite important he fired his attorney general because he didn't feel that this attorney general was protecting protecting him enough he didn't feel the loyalty that he expected of his Attorney General at a time that he is under investigation for his own for his own dealings at the same time he denied a correspondent for the most important TV network in the u.s. CNN he denied him access to the White House because in the end just because he was posing questions which the president did not like then he pushed election officials in two states this was days after the midterms in Arizona and Florida to stop counting the votes because he said that other election officials were rigging the votes these are all things I'd like to get to the floor these are things that I did not expect to see happen in the US let's say two years ago maybe I'm now if there's one person who was not naive and that was Timothy Snyder I interviewed professor Snyder here about two years ago and then last April or of 2017 in his office in in in Yale this was after the first hundred days of the Trump administration and a few months before I think even before the inauguration you published your book on tyranny which well which predicted many of the things we've seen since during our interview in in in April of 2017 this was for news or the program I work for professor Snyder said and I'm reading from notes in terms mind there is no rule of law there's no constitutional system the architecture of his mind is clear when he says journalists are enemies when he attacks judges etc he imagines in America without a constitutional system and what also stayed with me was professor Snyder's warning that if we think this won't happen here if we think it doesn't fit the general course of history where we are very wrong since there is no general course of history we've seen the rise of nationalist parties we've seen the longing for a strong leader the Brazilian president-elect Yair Ball so narrow being the latest example of that and I think we need somebody like Professor Schneider not only to interpret this but perhaps also show us the way out I hope so because otherwise this evening is going to end in misery I will sit down with Professor Schneider in about half an hour post him a couple of questions but there'll be plenty of room for audience questions right from the start and also let me stress that after the event which will be in about an hour and a half professor Schneider will sign books books will also be for sale if you didn't bring your copy and that will all be in the lobby but for now let's give a warm hand to Professor Schneider to discuss his book [Applause] so what what happened to the future where did the future go I was talking about this book a couple of weeks ago in Bratislava to a very young audience mostly university students and at the end of the question and answer session one of the students asked what was it like to grow up with the future and growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I can remember what it was like to grow up with the future and I think it may be the most astonishing characteristic of our own political moment that we don't have a future that is we all have not trying to fulfill the prophecy of the introduction and make you very depressed I believe that you all walk out of this hall alive that you'll go home to your children or your goldfish or whatever it is I don't mean you don't have a future in that sense I mean that it's hard to think of a moment in modern history when thinking about the future has been so impoverished where politics has been so much about the risks of the present and lies about the past we've got ourselves backed into a kind of dead end where politics is either about defending a present that needs to be improved instead or about telling lies about a past that never happened so what I'm trying to do in this book in the road to unfreedom is to get at this question of the rise of authoritarianism at that deeper level I'm trying to ask what comes before politics what are the things that we take for granted that form how we think about politics and how we behave politically and then what happens all of those assumptions when our implicit systems of thought break and something else happens it surprises us this is how I'm trying to characterize the present moment because the present moment is strange it's not just that democracy is retreating which it is it's not just that authoritarianism is consolidating which it is it's that we're constantly surprised right it's not just that mr. Trump is an authoritarian which he is it's that he's strange he's uncanny right the fact that we keep talking about things being unpredictable is itself a sign that something has gone very strangely wrong because how smart can we be if we're constantly being surprised what does it mean that we're constantly being surprised so I start out this book by talking about time precisely what happened to the future what I'm the claim that I'm trying to make the claim with which I begin the book is that for the past 25 or 30 years many of us in the West have been living inside an idea an idea of time that felt like life itself because of course this is the thing about ideas when you really believe ideas they seem like life they seem like reality you don't see the outside of them because you're inside of them and one of the great ironies I think of the period after 1989 is that many of us shrugged our shoulders and said history is over there are no alternatives the only ideas left or liberalism and democracy and we didn't notice that that itself was an idea an idea over which which we could choose to accept or choose to reject it's this idea in the book that I call the politics of inevitability the idea that we know the future because the future is going to be like the present but better the notion of progress to put it in one word that we don't have to ask what's good because we know the present is good the future is just going to have more of the good things that we have in the present time is like a line going forward and word to a point that we know that's the politics of inevitability now the problem with the politics of inevitability is that it crashes it breaks at different times in different places whether it's in northern France or whether it's in West Virginia whether it's in central Russia at different times in different places this notion of progress this notion that we know the future based on the present has crashed for different people in different times but for different reasons but it's crashing and now I think it has crashed I think we've now reached the point that very few people believe in this idea anymore and what's rushed into replace it is something else another version of time more dangerous which I call the politics of eternity and this is what I think all of these different kinds of authoritarians it's so nice you get to drink beer like that that's just yeah Cheers I mean that's civilization right there the it's the so all of these things if you're looking for something they all have in common from Putin brexit whole national alternative of food all and urban Kachinsky machine different and they are but one thing that they all have in common is this thing that I call the politics of eternity that is using a notion of the past where we are good and they are bad because we are inside and they are outside and the thing that happens over and over again is that they come for us and we're good because we're us and they're bad because they're them and the same thing happens over and over again in history this is also a view of time like the politics of inevitability it's a view of time which pretends to be history but which actually crushes history which takes actual history completely out of the picture what the politics of inevitably turn 'ti enables is a kind of politics of us and them where and this is where we are now the future completely disappears what the politicians of eternity do is they loop back to a past which never happened or a pass which can't be regained I'll go into detail about this in a moment but they do this in a postmodern way with postmodern technology so a mr. a Trump for example talks about making America great again oh and incidentally what does social science tell us about when America was great if you ask Americans when America was great it predictably turns out to be when the American in question was young and you know we can disagree or agree about what the state can do but one thing that the state cannot do is make you young again right I think that's like that's the that is the classic I see some disappointed looks perhaps we have some billionaires in the audience who really believe in the immortality thing all right we can talk about that later the but so the the poet the politics of eternity does is that it simultaneously loops you back into an imagined past and there's a small daily loop the technological loop the tweet in mr. Trump's case where every day you're elated or you're crushed by emotion by technologically generated emotion which makes it very hard for you to think about the future you're thinking about the present all right so the politics of eternity has a big loop back into an imagined past but it also has a daily loop the news cycle the way that we're prevented from thinking about the future because we're constantly and this is mr. Trump's genius right we're constantly shocked surprised humiliated whatever it might be by something that he did that day right he runs the White House as if it were a television program in that very specific sense now these are ideas and the move that I make at the beginning of the road on freedom is that I insist that ideas matter which is a very old-fashioned I know conservative way to start a book my publishers my excellent Dutch publishers from Alva anthos are here they did not encourage me to start this book by spending 30 pages on a dead Russian philosopher that no one has heard of but I did it because I think it's true that ideas matter I think it's true that ideas from the 1920s and 1930s are coming back I think it's interesting that President Putin of Russia had the corpse of this fellow reburied I think it's telling that he found where his papers were the Philosopher's name is Ivana Dean that Putin found out where the papers were and brought them back to Russia I think it's interesting that mr. Putin lays flowers on the Philosopher's grave I think it's telling that mr. Putin cites this particular philosopher at pretty much every relevant occasion but the reason why it's interesting for me is that this philosopher is an example of the politics of eternity what aleem says is Russia is always innocent the outside world is always guilty democracy should be a ritual in which a leader who comes from outside of history has his power consolidated and reaffirmed and interestingly and this is where the fascist past links up with the postmodern present interestingly this philosopher elene also says nothing about the world we live in is true the only truth for alene is God and God can only be it's a long story he wrote 40 books so I'm gonna give it to you in one sentence yes this is in the I read it so you don't have to category got the only good is God's integrity God God's integrity has been broken the only place God can be restored is in Russia and therefore since the only truth is God facts don't matter right these things that we think of as facts they're not true the only truth is God and the only way to God is Russia hence lying in the service of Russia is serving the truth you see it's right to lie in the service of Russia and this is where the fascism a Christian fascism links up with a postmodern attitude towards truth which is that facts are what we choose to call them there are alternative actualities there are there alternative views there's no truth out there it's not worth looking for them now this is very important because this gets us to the way that in politics of eternity work why is Russia so important is Russia important because Russia is so different because Russia isn't like an alien power which somehow magically chose the American president is Russia important because it's an alien power which somehow magically determines the outcomes of Dutch referendums is Russia important for these reasons No Russia is important because Russia represents a possible line of development that we are all participating in and which Russia itself is encouraging us to follow it's a line of development which shows how you can govern from what I'm calling eternity it shows how you can govern without a future and because we are all moving into that world where we can't think about the future the fact that Russia has been governed from this futureless point for about a decade now is very significant No so putting in a different way we used to think that what happened in the West mattered for the East and it did for about a decade but for about a decade it's been the other way around what matters in the East actually happens matters for us not only at the level of wars like the invasion of Ukraine which is profoundly important for us and I'll get to it but also at the level of ideas ideas that emerge in in in Russia turn out to be much more important in the middle of the United States than we would have anticipated okay so why is Russia why did Russia reach this place first because this is the argument of the book the Argand of the book is that Russia matters because Russia got to the politics of eternity first and is bringing the rest of us along so why is there no future in Russia or I mean to be precise about this why is it impossible to talk about the future in political terms in Russia first of all because Russia is a hydrocarbon oligarchy okay by hydrocarbon I mean natural gas and oil right so like Saudi Arabia like a number of other states Russia is a hydrocarbon oligarchy and if you a hydrocarbon oligarch you do not like to talk about the future because the future is global warming and it's your fault so whether you are the Koch brothers in America or whether you're Vladimir Putin in Russia the future is not your topic for that reason second reason why the future is gone in Russia is radical inequality so there's a radical left-wing organization called Cuddy Suisse which issues annually a wealth report a kind of love letter actually it is and in the Cuddy Suisse annual wealth report America is number two in wealth inequality you have one guess as to which country is number one right the Russian Federation when there is extreme inequality of wealth it is very hard for people to change their social and economic status extreme enough one of the bad things about wealth inequality is that it leads to a lack of social mobility when people can't change their social and economic positions they don't have a future right they don't have a future different than the present that's the second reason after hydrocarbons that Russia is a futureless political system and the third reason is the problem of succession so what's the problem of succession the problem of succession is how you keep your state going when a leader becomes sick or dies or is overthrown this is the central problem of politics right we have solved this problem with a little thing we like to call democracy you know with we're now struggling to say why democracy is a good thing I've got lots of reasons why democracy is a good thing but one of them is that it allows the state to continue you see we're in this interesting moment where we think authoritarianism is sexy because like these guys come in and break all the rules right this is what they have in common the Putin the Trump you know the the air doyon they come in and they break the rules and like that's attractive I don't I don't get like I don't actually understand like the strange masculinity of all this but there's something about how breaking the rules is attractive now that's interesting for a while but the thing is once you break the rules once you break the rules of the state once you don't know what comes next once you actually get rid of a succession principle you've created future lessness for your own society right so in Russia no one knows what's going to happen after mr. Putin dies and no one is allowed to talk about that which is a proposition that you are welcome to test by going to Russia and holding up a sign which says no one knows what will happen after mr. Putin dies you will not be able to do that for more than about 45 seconds if you're in a big city because that is the deep dark secret and it is very deep and very dark authoritarianism seems attractive when it's all about challenging the system right but when it's about getting old and dying and leaving your state in this independent in a condition of distress it's suddenly not so sexy anymore that's the deep dark secret of authoritarianism it's also this one of the secrets by the way of why democracy is such a good thing is that it solves that problem to the point where we don't have to think about it anymore so for these reasons succession inequality and hydrocarbons Russia has to govern from future lessness and a way that Russia governs from future lessness is by way of mistrust the way that Russia works is to take mistrust and turn it into something positive through which you can govern and this is something what which i think is new in the history of politics and it's interesting so what the Russian leadership says to its population is you are correct not to trust us we are in fact corrupt oligarchs our news is in fact not true you know this we know that you know this and that is a new form of social contract fine mistrust us but if you mistrust us mistrust everyone else too and this is where that it becomes foreign policy if you must miss if you're going to mistrust us your Russian leaders you should also know that Dutch leaders and American leaders and British leaders and European leaders are just as much line oligarchs as we are and the next step you should understand that Dutch journalism European journalism American journalism or Dutch law American law European law Dutch democracy American democracy European democracy is just as much of joke as ours right it's a joke everywhere and we all know this we smart people we're in on this we know it's all surfaces it's all hypocrisy right we know this we're in on it that's what you have to accept that's what governing from mistrust means and that's the way you can govern without a future because if everybody everywhere really are just hypocritical cynical lying oligarchs it's very hard to imagine that the world has much of a future which is different from the present and so you can fall into the oh well you know the powerful are gonna be powerful the ideas are all just masks for power nothing really matters and then the system of eternity wins and so you'll notice that the way that Russia plays in foreign policy is not to say that Russia is good I mean they make some half-hearted efforts at that sometimes if you know mr. Putin is forced into a corner he will say something about how Russia is good but that's not the way it generally works the way it generally works is to say other places are bad and to say you can't trust anybody and that's the ultimate weapon the spreading of mistrust so the way that this has becomes foreign policy is interesting because how if this is how you need to govern what do you want to do to the rest of the world well you want to tell your population that the rest of the world is just like Russia despite appearances and you want to make the rest of the world more like Russia which would seem like something very difficult to do if let's say your President Obama looking at the Russian Federation you say well this is what mr. Obama said this is just a regional power right the conventional wisdom in among our elite was they don't make anything therefore they don't have economic power therefore they don't have any real power but somehow they got to choose our president which suggests that they did have a certain form of power which is worth thinking about so um the how you govern with mistrust is you not only try to convince your population that the world is just as cynical and hypocritical as we are but you try to make the world that way you try to push against European and American institutions you try to take institutions which by their nature are going to be a little bit flawed and make them more flawed you try to find people who don't really believe in the in the institutions like mr. Trump you try to find people who are willing to push ideas that are controversial painful and not true ideas whether they have to do with global warming denial or denying the efficacy of vaccinations you find those people and you support them as much as you can you try to spread distrust and above all you try to spread the idea that there's not really any truth anyway who knows you've got your opinion about vaccinations I've got my opinion you've got your opinion about global warming I've got my opinion in the end who knows it's all a matter of preferences so this is why Russia is so important and this is how Russia links into the United States because what happened in the I States in 2016 is that Russia found ways of making us just a little bit more like them and now we're becoming more like them every day every week there are very few things which mr. Trump does which can't be classified either as undermining our institutions or more fundamentally undermining people's ability to trust in some kind of factual reality okay so this gets me to the American version of the politics of inevitability and this is going to be the fun part of the lecture for those of you who are not American because this is going to be the part where we notice all the bad things about America and how the Americans really had it coming and how they really deserve it and they're dumb and so ok so this is gonna be that part of the lecture so yeah perk up so the the the American the American tech this is one of the many ways I can tell who the Americans are in the audience the other well I'll give another is that you slouch we slouch I slouch do so the the American politics of inevitability says this it says we won the Cold War history came to an end economics determines politics which is actually a strange thing to say right after you win you think Marxism is dead and so you could say economics determines politics right but economics term is politics capitalism brings about democracy there are no alternatives oh and technology is always enlightening that's that was our politics of inevitability and there's a slightly more right-wing version there's a slightly more left-wing version but that's our politics of inevitability where that leads you of course is into a world where all of the gains in wealth and income in the United States in the last quarter century have been captured by a very small percentage of people where an American born today has a much less than fifty percent chance of making more money than his parents an America where average life expectancy is going down which is a shocking thing to be happening in in the developed world an America where the average citizen spends eleven hours a day in front of a screen and in America where we have now seen just how the Internet are specifically certain parts of the internet especially social platforms lead people away from the ability to carry out rational discussion with fellow citizens and towards a politics of us in them all of which or much of which is is as it were personified by mr. Trump mr. Trump is the kind of American capitalists who survive by playing outside the rules and the way that he came to power has everything to do with the way the Internet can be mobilized as a weapon of fear and anxiety also as a weapon if you're an anxiety used by foreigners so um the the three main camp Trump campaign slogans build the wall lock her up drain the swamp were all tested by foreigners using Facebook before mr. Trump even announced his candidacy right and incidentally I mean these things these things have an encanta Tory by the way fascist but and then Kant Ettore power which has nothing to do with reality they're not going to drain the swamp they're going to be more corrupt they're not going to lock her up her means Hillary Clinton because yes committed any crimes they can prosecute her for and they're not going to they don't even have to build the wall this is the interesting thing about postmodern fascism right mr. Trump and the Republicans have been in power for two years you can build a wall in two years I mean the United States of America could build a wall in two years but we didn't and the interesting thing is we don't have to there doesn't have to be a real wall there just has to be an incantation about a wall so now they're talking about finishing the wall but they haven't even started it right at the us-mexican border now this is very American at the us-mexican border there are like giant tile samples you know how like when you're building your kitchen and like the fun thing to do is you go and pick out what color the tile is that's what mr. Trump does he goes to the US Mexican border and there are these giant tile samples set up vertically and he like goes and inspects them he says oh I like that oh yeah I mean that one goes with the color of dead Mexicans and that one goes with the color of a depressing sunset you know and that one kind of matches my tie right that's what he does and no I mean this is an interesting thing about the United States of America we don't we're not building anything except rhetoric right people think we have you know that that's an interesting difference by the way between this fascism in the previous one the previous fascism actually built things I mean say which you want against it and I'm happy to agree with all of it but I but the the previous fascism actually built things it actually redistributed resources the American fascism this time around doesn't do either of those things this one of the ways anyway so mr. Trump is an example of Meister Trump is a very successful politician of eternity making America great again right a cycle back to the past and then the daily the daily Twitter feed and Russia fits into this because he's a natural for them right he's he's very he's somebody who fits very nicely into the way that that Russians think the politics of the world should work and and does work but more importantly the reason why the Russian campaign in 2016 was effective was because it played on very real issues in American life so there's a reason why the Russian version of Republican Party websites were always more popular than the actual Republican Party websites and that is that the Russians were willing to go further and provoke more and play on emotions a little bit more directly there's a reason why Russian fictions were more effective than are fictions because they don't care about us at all but they're willing to use the things that we want to believe so a lot of people don't like Hillary Clinton but the notion that Hillary Clinton is a pedophile pimp running a prostitution ring out of a pizzeria basement is one that we actually needed for and helped to believe in we got that foreign help at a critical time right after a tape was revealed where mr. Trump said that sexually assaulting women was fine 45 minutes after that we got the pizza story about Hillary Clinton which by the way is a very good example of how the Russians got him into office because if you what happened then is that a story which everybody thought was going to kill the Trump campaign is immediately canceled out by another story about how Hillary Clinton is even worse and that's what people thought a third of Americans believe the pizza pedophile prostitution story one-third of Americans believe that in October of 2016 so so I won't go into all the details here but you know I'll give you a couple of interesting stats 137 million Americans voted 126 million Americans saw Russian material on Facebook and one could go on okay so this is our politics of inevitability right our politics inevitability opens up inequality it opens up vulnerabilities having to do with tech because we're terribly naive about how the internet actually works and then these things can be used against us and a figure of something like mr. Trump okay that was that was that was the good part oh wait there's one more part about the good part climate change climate change is very important I said at the beginning that hydrocarbon oligarchs don't talk about the future because the future is climate change and it's their fault mr. Trump is very important here there's a style of politics which is being practiced which goes like this you talk about for example the migrants the Mexican migrants right the Mexican migrants they're terrible they're rapists that was his very first campaign speech the Mexicans are rapists the rapists are Mexicans he talks about the criminal immigrants which is a trope which is familiar from Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe you talk about this but you don't talk about why it is that there's migration from the south the reason why there's migration from the south is climate change not only do you not talk about that in policy you do everything you can to make climate change worse right so the very same people who make migration a political issue are the climate change deniers which is incidentally very often true in the in Europe as well the number of influential politicians especially in Central Europe who talk about migrants or also climate change deniers this this policy goes together right because what you're doing is you're making a crisis worse even as you're trying to define politics as the politics of us in them so you're bringing a bad future closer all the time and you're preparing for it by getting people into this politics of eternity I wish it weren't that sinister but it is okay that was the good part um that was the part you're supposed to feel good about because like those Americans and the crazy things they do the European politics of inevitability okay this is the part where you don't get to feel so good the European politics of inevitability goes like this it's just as complacent and Justin just as crazy and just as wrong and just as dangerous the European politics of inevitability says we are old nations we are wise we've learned from experience and what we've learned is that war is bad we had two world wars we've learned from them that war is bad and unlike the Americans who just keep fighting these wars we understand that war is bad hence the European Union that's the story um everything about this completely wrong and for three generations that hasn't mattered so much that it was completely wrong but now that America is withdrawing and now that Russia is posing a normative challenge to the European Union it matters a great deal that your foundational story is completely wrong how is it completely wrong it's completely wrong because your nations are not that old because the nation-state has never existed in most of Europe and because the real story in European history is how you get out of Empire that's the real story in Dutch history that's the real story there's not a Dutch nation-state in modern history there is an empire and then there's integration those are the stages and the great success of European Union is Europe that Europe became the place to rest after Empire if you want to put it in a slight in a post-colonial way the Europeans are privileged after Empire because they can go home right no one else can go home but the Europeans can go back and they can create the biggest economy in the history of the world and then they can say to themselves we are very wise because we learned that war was a bad thing our nations have learned over time that war was bad which of course is complete nonsense what happened was you lost a whole bunch of colonial wars and only then did you land in Europe right that's your actual history it's not the one you teach your children but that's your actual history and it is now dangerous that you think this this is your politics of inevitability we always have a nation we always have a nation-state the nation-state learns the nation-state could choose to be in Europe or not it'd be fine either way no right what European history shows at least if you're a conservative empirical historian is that there have been two political alternatives in modern history for almost all of you empire and integration the nation-state does not actually figure it only figures in your imaginations and then again what you teach your children which is why it's in your imaginations this is a self-perpetuating cycle and this means in turn that all the debates from brexit outwards are completely miscast the brexit debate says is it a good thing or a bad thing for Great Britain to be inside the European Union but there's never been a Great Britain there's been a British yeah try to remember when there was a Great Britain because there never was one there was a British Empire and then there was Britain inside a European project alright in the 60s British the most of British trade shifts from being hiring Commonwealth to being in on the European continent not long at there after Britain becomes a member of the European what was then the European community there there is no story of the nation-state you don't have one either no one has one or the ones that European countries who do have one places like Poland and Hungary or Estonia that's not exactly an object lesson of how the nation-state works right all of the nation-states formed after the First World War which was our great moment of national self-determination were extinct twenty years later all of them Austria Czechoslovakia Poland Estonia Latvia Lithuania all the states that were created were then destroyed right and people used to remember that so that the historical achievement of Europe is that it's its unified former imperial metro poles and former imperial peripheries into units which pride themselves falsely on their long national histories and pride themselves falsely on having learned from history that's the historical achievement of the European Union and the reason why that matters is to take the example of brexit just like Russia tempts Americans into the notion that we can be great again Russia plays the same game or play the same game with brexit the Russian propaganda and brexit was all along the same lines you've always been independent you've always been a great nation you'd be fine without the European Union Amin by the way the weapons were the same so 20 percent of the Twitter conversation about brexit was organized from abroad 20 percent and how many British citizens were aware of this at the time zero percent and interestingly it's very often the same Twitter accounts they were active on mh17 brexit and in the Trump campaign because it's all fundamentally about the same thing it's all fundamentally about moving us towards this thing that I'm calling the politics of eternity so if you look at the way that Russia intervenes in European politics it's symptomatic there's a there's a very interesting detail which gets overlooked which is that Russia supports climate deniers right interesting Russia supports climate deniers Russia supports opponents the European Union and Russian general supports whatever will create informational chaos and make people distrust so bringing this to a close the the the the lesson that we didn't learn maybe some I mean I imagine since I'm in Amsterdam some of you did but in general the let the tests that we failed in all of this the opportunity that we had to notice this that we didn't seize was Ukraine in 2014 that's where we blew it in Ukraine in 2014 we had a chance to see how the politics of eternity works and we didn't see it in fact we fell for it because what did we think about Ukraine I mean not all of you individually personally but in general in the West what did we think we thought it's about language it's about culture it's about lines on maps it's about Russian speakers it's about the conversion of low DeMeo to 988 it's about the 18th century it's about the Second World War it wasn't about any of those things none of those things had anything to do with it what happened in Ukraine was at a serious part of the population correctly understanding the history of the European Union thought that Ukraine getting closer to the European Union would help Ukraine build a rule of law state correct and as that movement was taking place Russia invaded Ukraine pretty straightforward happens with some regularity in European history one country invades another but that's not how we processed it those are this that's the fairly simple reality but we process it in entirely different ways why because when you're inside the politics of inevitability you want to think that there is a line of development and that the facts that seem to challenge that line of development that those facts are somehow just irrelevant details bumps in the road their marginal their peripheral they're not the mainstream so again mr. Obama saying Russia's a regional power that's a way of dismissing something from the story or I mean Adam Gulf Nick was somebody I respect a lot writing in New Yorker saying history has never decided that the margins is a site at the center right you're just just going to push this all to the side a European country invades another European country we're going to push that to the side a European country annexes territory from another European country somehow it's not so important it's all about ah what's it all about it's about false ideas about the past which are in the when you're in the politics of inevitability this is your vulnerability what did the Russians say to the Dutch and the Europeans they said the Ukrainians haven't really understood the past right you good Europeans know that war is bad but the Ukrainians haven't understood this the Ukrainians in fact are fascists they're Nazis and then then good Europeans could say oh yes well Nazis that's certainly a bad thing and fascists who would want to be on the side of the fascists right they push on your vulnerabilities consciously because they the thing that I'm talking about they would use different words but the thing that I'm talking about they understand so what happens in Ukraine is telling not just because it shows how we were vulnerable but also because of the techniques and you're here in Amsterdam you're familiar with some of the techniques right so the technique of clustered fictions is the technique which was used around mh17 so what happened was pretty straightforward Russia innovated Ukraine Russian soldiers and officers commanding a Russian unit and Russian weapons shot down a civilian airliner leading to the mass murder of 289 people that's actually pretty straightforward and the evidentiary trail was pretty clear on day one what actually happened but rather than saying oh we invaded the country and we accidentally shot down a civilian airliner and we're sorry what the Russian leadership did was create a cloud of fictions around the event interestingly and this shows how intelligent they are by the way they never directly denied what happened they never directly denied the fact they never said the opposite of what happened they just had a bunch of other things like it was NATO or the Ukrainians were trying to shoot down president Putin's jet or Ukrainians were testing ground air missiles or Ukrainian fighter pilots were in the area or a Ukrainian Jewish oligarch is in charge Ukrainian airspace and it was somehow his fault these Oh or the CIA launched the plane full of corpses from Amsterdam and there was never anybody alive on the plane right and these things were not meant to yeah as you cannot know whether to laugh or cry right I cry is what I would vote for but the point of this kind of discussion is to first make it impossible to see the obvious truth and the truth was pretty obvious honestly but second to make the event itself somehow irrelevant right because then when there are so many versions of fiction around an event somehow the simple thing that people died who shouldn't have died gets lost from view and somehow Russia becomes the victim right so more than 80% of the Russian population believes that Russia was the victim of mh17 because the West conspired to create the story about what's not true so that's one tactic another tactic is total denial of reality which has spread from Russia to United States when Russia invades Ukraine one of the confusing things is the President of Russia says oh we didn't invade Ukraine those were just local guys who bought uniforms at the army surplus store and you know that's that was his position that's new in history as far as I know and it changes the game because then journalists have to decide do we cover this guy who has this amazing power to create fiction or do we cover the war and this then is now the problem of journalists in United States do you cover this guy and his incredible you know stream of fiction which is very entertaining and diverting or do you cover the opioid crisis you cover the actual stories in your own country but the third the third technique which is I'm going to just remind you of before I go into the the happy optimistic closing note which was promised for you in the introduction is is is susceptibilities so I mentioned fascism if you were if you're if you if if Facebook thought you were on the political left then Russia in your Facebook feed in 2014 would place stuff along the lines of Ukraine Ukrainians or Nazis and fascists and so on right which led to a lot of very unfortunate writing in the European press and the Guardian for example we're actual actual people in the actual European Press wrote on the basis of things which are complete fictions but interestingly if you were on the extreme right and I'm just doing this rhetorical purposes I don't mean you but if you're on the extreme right and you're on Facebook and Facebook thought you were a racist or anti-semite then the Russian stuff in your newsfeed said that Ukraine is a Jewish state you the Jewish construction people who run Ukraine are you Jewish oligarchs right and of course those things contradict it can't be both Nazi and you and you know part of the Jewish conspiracy at the same time but on the internet no one talks to each other contradictions don't matter and what happens is at the extreme versions then crowd out the middle and make a discussion of what actually happened much harder the same men in the same building working for the same institution the internet research agency in Russia then did the same thing in the American presidential election this is just one tiny way in which what happened in Ukraine in 2014 was part of what happened to us in 19 2016 the same men did the same thing they said okay if you like Hillary Clinton if you're african-american you like Hillary Clinton we were going to fill up your Facebook feed which tougher this says Hillary Clinton is a racist so you won't vote if you are a racist we are going to fill up your Facebook feed with stuff which says Hillary Clinton loves black people again it contradicts but that doesn't matter because we're just trying to suppress your votes and we're trying to get you activated so you will vote and there were consequences to this so that's the third technique this and this is a way that the internet facilitates this sort of thing okay here comes the happy part the part about the future you want you want there to be a future right you'd we do want there to be a future okay so I think that this is the real game in politics I think the division in politics now or not it's not right left I think that the main division is true-false which is another way of saying future no future because the truth in the future go together if you don't believe in the future there's no reason to care about faction reality in the present those two thoughts go together if you want there to be a future you have to make policy towards the future and making policy towards the future requires factuality in the present I think Europe has a wonderful chance maybe the best chance to be the youth the political unit which creates some sense of the future and I'm just gonna articulate very quickly what I think that future might not what it would look like that what the argument for it would look like I think it has to do mainly with humanity so humanity versus the Internet humanity versus the algorithms Europe is the only entity in the planet which in a constructive way is trying to deal with the Google in the Facebook you're the only ones and that's not just plain defense that can be seen as an affirmation of humanity it's not just protection against electoral intervention which is very important it's also that it's also the positive claim that we're carrying about the humans were on the side of the humans the second aspect of the future is climate right you are the political Union which cares most about this and has maybe the best chance of solving it dealing with climate change is about creating a future in the most basic existential sense but interestingly hydrocarbons and future lessness are very intimately connected the same whether it's Russia or America or anywhere else whether it's Saudi Arabia the people who are closely connected to hydrocarbon wealth are the same people who suppress the future and who suppress sexuality in a very in a very elemental way whether it's saw a Saudi Arabia killing a journalist and having his body cup into little pieces or whether it's mr. Putin getting dead journalists delivered to him on his birthday it's the same phenomenon hydrocarbons are direct are intimately connected to the loss of factuality which leads me to the third thing about the future the future has to be about the production of factuality the production effectual not just believing in truth but I think is also very important but increase actively affirming institutions which go out and hunt for the truth so we have this very complacent in my view tradition and anglo-saxon philosophy from John Milton through John Stuart Mill through Oliver Wendell Oliver Wendell Holmes which says there's a marketplace of ideas in a fair fight the truth will win the fact that that argument has won disproves it that's just not true it is just not true it's lazy and it's complacent if you put five people up on a stage you have five contradictory and crazy views the truth does not somehow emerge if you create an institution like the internet in which 99.999% of what's out there is not connected to investigative reporting put a whole bunch more nines in there it's very unlikely that that's going to lead you to the truth if you allow local news to die and the reporting profession to go away if nobody's producing the facts to fill up some of the information space how can the truth possibly have a chance of winning in a debate it just doesn't happen by itself there's no automatic mechanism so I think the places are going to remain sovereign or to put in a different way the places where humane politics are gonna be possible are gonna be the places which actively engage in the production of facts which treat factuality is a kind of scarce resource that you have to you have to try to suppose the final thing is democracy in time so democracy let me to put this in a positive way democracy produces time you need time for democracy if nobody believes in the future nobody will vote but democracy also produces time because when you vote you're thinking I might vote two years from now four years from now six years from now so the two of them the two of them go together and then finally this is the very last thing what the politics of eternity in the politics and navigability have in common is that each of them does away with responsibility so if you think that the futures inevitably going to be like the present but better that you don't have to do anything about it you can just kind of go along for the ride if you think time is just a loop where the others are going to come for us no matter what we do you don't have to ask what's good you're good because you're innocent and they're bad because they're attacking you and that's the end of the story the question of responsibility never arises that's what the two of them have in common and that's why it's so easy to go from faith in progress to faith in doom that's why this shift is so easy and that's why it's happening and the only way to get out from under it I think is to believe in history as history write to say okay there is a line of time but it's not predictable and deterministic we do have to know things about the past so we can situate ourselves in the present but once we situate ourselves in the present then we have to ask the ethical question of what kind of future we want and this is the final thing I want to say about the future European or not we can't get to the future without ethics we can't get there without facts but we also can't get there without ethics what what inevitability and eternity do is they farm out they subcontract the question of what's good and evil we can't do that if we want to have a future we have to be concerned about the way the world is but we also have to be willing to make arguments about what's good that's where I'm going to stop thank you thank you for that that was great I just briefly because when you say when you said the state cannot make you younger you may have heard some numbers here let me explain you why there's a there's a professional attention seeker slash entertainer right now in the Netherlands who just suits the state of the Netherlands because he's 70 years old and he wants to be recognized being 20 years younger because that's his natural age okay got it I never expected to be talking about Amy or out of bounds in this venue but here we are connected you can now forget about anything thank you for this let's let's talk in a few chapters chapters and after a few questions might be half I'll give the audience a chance to post questions as well to start off with your own country almost matter-of-factly you used talked about the current American fascism which made me wonder do you consider your president I guess you can say he's not my person do you consider Donald Trump a fascist the way that I would put it is that he's not even a fascist so I it's it's it's it's better in some ways and it may be also worse in some ways so it's clearly the case first of all the United States of America is by no means free from the traditions in history which in Europe are categorized as fascist the idea that somehow the Atlantic was a barrier and political thought and that we didn't have fascist traditions is completely ridiculous one can disagree about just who was a fascist in the United States but we in the 1930s were not that different from you in the 1930s in fact america-first itself is a reference to a movement in 1930s which was headed by a man or what's most most famously represented by a man Charles Lindbergh who thought that the United States and Nazi Germany should make an alliance against the brown people so that's what America first was that's it so we have those traditions we can disagree about you know where the lines are but I just think that's important to set out at the beginning because in at least in the United States we kind of we like to start from position of innocence which says we're a city on the hill and of course they're bad things like monarchy and fascism but that was around there in some other part of the world I don't accept that at all I think in the 1930s our politics are very similar to your politics and that we had a good deal of luck frankly that we had good leadership and we had good luck and we have neither good leadership nor good luck right now so the so what is fascism that is the second thing I mean for me fascism has has three important parts the first is that you treat globalization as a face rather than as a series of policy challenges relatedly you you reason by way of conspiracy rather than reasoning by way of individuals and the things that they do related to that you you oppose enlightenment and you oppose factuality and you try to put in their place a myth two myths really the myth of the organically connected nation and the myth of the connection of the nation with with the leader mr. Trump has indulged in all of those things I mean I think the most fascist thing that he does is this is the fake news move where the Germans and the Austrians who are fascists now that is the extreme right in Germany and in Austria now quite correctly translates fake news as lugan presa which it is it's exactly the same trope I mean lugan pasa in the mouth of Google's or Hitler meant there were a few investigative journalists left in a condition of financial crisis and media centralization and we're going to hit them as hard as we can by saying that they're the true liars and that's exactly what mr. Trump is doing so I mean in historical terms that's that's fascist that's fascist behavior I think the in Kent Encanto Tory chanting the lock her up or lately lock him up with reference to George Soros who by no coincidence as a Jewish teen on CA and you know the whole idea that mr. Soros finances political demonstrations the United States which mr. Trump has said that mr. Soros might even be financing migrants from the south which is by the way a Hungarian idea which we have just copied the our fascist ideas I mean the idea that it's actually that's actually the central idea of mine comp the central idea of mine comp is that there's no such thing as liberalism democracy rule of law there's there's only the race and if it appears that there's democracy rule of law liberalism somewhere behind it there's a Jew that's what Hitler says right that is a major art so when you say oh we don't really have protesters we just have a Jewish p9c you were actually doing something fascist whether Americans see it or not as it is a different question but I say when I say he's not even a fascist I think there are a couple of things there there there are several things that are missing one thing which is missing is a party right fascism was about single-party rule there are many things you can say about the Republican Party it's it actually in some ways is edging towards single-party rule but it doesn't have an open ideology of single-party rule another thing which is missing is a youth movement or more broadly physical activity again like say what you want about the mark the fascist but the flesh could put on a march Trump supporters can no I mean it's not it's not a joke it's an interesting difference right we are we are older and we are in less good physical condition and we don't like to get off the couch and that's actually that's and that's a difference because this is but the Marches is online now you don't need a mark that's the thing the politics of us and them takes place largely virtually so you hate people that you never see the people who don't like migrants this is true of Europe too by the way are generally people for whom the images of the migrant comes in online face to face yeah well I think it's I think it's different I think it's different but I I think physically Trump likes a certain amount of physical violence but it's interesting that both he and Putin don't like people on the streets whereas fascist really did like people on the streets and the other thing I mentioned is redistribution so again fascist really did want redistribution they wanted redistribution from punished humiliated Jews and other punished humiliated national minorities but they did seriously believe in redistribution mr. Trump does not seriously believe in redistribution and that's and that's that's a difference so I mean what I tend to think is that fascism this time around is a little bit like what the Marxist said the last time around which is that it's a it's a cover for preserving the the present system in what sense do you consider mr. Trump perhaps left dangerous because he's an outlier in Washington meaning that even his own people in his own administration perhaps don't take him seriously I mean what the the Republican administration right now is doing is pretty standard Republican policy when it comes to economic Texas etc they almost seem to if you read Bob Woodward's book to contain Trump in a way is that something that is comforting or am I completely off well so I mean I ended by talking about ethics and responsibility and I believe that very seriously I think in 2016 Americans democratic or republican had an obligation to say we don't want somebody running for the highest office who encourages his supporters to carry out acts of violence we don't want someone running for the highest office who muses publicly about the assassination of his opponent which mr. Trump did twice and above all we should be very careful about a candidacy which seems to be closely connected to a foreign power and I think it's it's a very I mean who knows what historians will think in the future but I suspect that that moment in 2016 where the Republican leadership said essentially we don't care about sovereignty we just care about winning I think that was a very important point of self demoralization essentially because of course when the Republican leadership says that they know it's not true but their but their voters don't know it's not true and so now we've reached a point where the basic facts about the Russian intervention in American politics I've become a matter of completely partisan epistemic swear some people think yes some people think some people think no so I I don't find it encouraging fundamentally I find it I find it demoralizing I think what mr. Trump has done is gotten that there much of the Republican Party into a kind of dance of demoralization where they rationalize the situation by saying he shall pass and and then they do the things that they want to do anyway as you say that is tax cuts for the rich tax cuts for corporations but one they do the things they want to do anyway they are morally brought into the whole situation there now morally implicated in the whole thing because you can't just say what we're taking advantage of this it's it's you right it's it's all one political system and by the way I mean I think that itself is a bad thing you know that it's interesting how little legislation there was this is another I mean the fundament like the activity of mr. Trump is basically negative chipping away at trust chipping away at people's belief in the rule of law chipping away at the rule of law itself that's that's his main success is to get Americans not to trust things not to trust one another and this is why it's a Russian victory by the way but they don't pass very many laws and the laws that they do pass are entropic I mean giving money to rich people is not actually policy giving money to rich people as gravity right give you money to rich people is just that's the way the world works if you're rich people give you more money that's just the way things happen that doesn't really count as government policy I don't think right and that's what that's essentially what they managed to do in two years no built walls no infrastructure projects you know no alternative health care plan nothing just a couple of laws tax cuts for the rich taxes for corporations which itself I think is a bad thing I mean not only do we have the biggest deficit imaginable but we also have a situation where it's going to be much harder for the state to do the things it needs to do in the future to promote equality before the inauguration I think at the by the end of 2016 you published on tyranny which was a brief one I call it a pamphlet or you know about the steps towards tyranny and and I said we spoke in your office that was 100 days into the Trump administration back then you were saying he's checking all the boxes so far is there any is there any light any box he has not checked yet would you agree with me that that even though they've been shaken that the pillars of democracy have proven themselves to be intact I think it's more like we're like we're you know like we're archaeologists and we're digging in the desert and we think we know where these pillars of democracy are and they turn out not to be there at all but there may be a couple of other pillars or at least rocks and we look at these rocks and we say you know with a little bit of imagination this could be a pillar that could be a pillar I think it's more like that like there definitely are some rocks but it's not clear that their pillars and they're definitely not where they're supposed to be but two checks and balances work there's there's no Democratic Congress half the house that's not that's not so it's already in rep but no no please that's not the way that checks and balances are supposed to work checks and balances are supposed to be that at the federal level the legislature that is the Congress and the courts are supposed to check the executive regardless of which party is in power right and that didn't have them so the fact that you see that you have to say the Democrats have to hold a chamber for there to be a check actually indicates the failure the right of checks and balances where where I mean where we have found these things that are like pillars are in unexpected places so the the American is we were talking about before the American elite is actually brought in deep I mean it's one of the sad they're one of the tragic things about the United States right now is we really I mean we really do have a broad and deep and interesting elite it's just just that at the moment we're doing negative selection that is that the people who are least qualified are the ones who are rising to the top I could give a number of examples but there's a broad and deep American elite which fills certain institutions and it's it's not that easy to control those institutions those institutions are often institutions of power which you would need a brute power of armed power which you would need if you were truly going to form an authoritarian government in the second place where you know we there have been some of there's been some resistance which we which is important is journalism I mean it's just if the Trump administration happened five years later I think we'd be in a very very difficult position because it happened at a time when we still not now yeah I mean because in 2016 there were still a few journalists right and now there are more but what if it happens a time when journalism was dead as a profession then we wouldn't know anything then the more investigation wouldn't be possible then we wouldn't you know then there would be very few checks on him I mean there's a reason why he says journalists are the enemy of the people his political instincts are right if it's not for the journalists then then then a major check would be would be gone but the other place which Europeans sometimes overlook is the states so America's a federal system right and both progressively and regressively it's often the states which set the examples so progressively gay marriage is possible in the u.s. because it started in certain states regressively voter suppression is an experiment which is carried out in certain states it's it's it's a good sign that voter suppression didn't always work this time around because whenever when voter suppression works then people start thinking well it really doesn't matter where the right vote or not the system really is a joke well I want to get to journalism at the end and and how the media should deal with people like Trump because it is a struggle obviously but but one more question and then I'd like to go to a first round of audience questions one more question about the more we talk about Russian interference in the American system that the less we seem to talk about another reason for mr. Trump winning many American voters being disgusted with generations of neoliberal politicians you know the Clintons Obama in a way etc etc it's an isn't that a risk that by focusing keep focusing on Russia that we forget to focus on things that Russia has no party yeah I mean I think part of part of living in a factual world is recognizing that several things can happen at the same right book is about no no but and that sometimes they're related interesting ways so I think I mean in one way I agree with you I think it's very important not to blame everything on Russia because there's no way Russia could have done what they did if it hadn't been for what I was calling our politics of inevitability like if we weren't so unbelievably complacent about the way social platforms were the Internet then we might have noticed a little bit earlier that major websites that people were squatting I mean including mr. Trump himself were Russian operations but that didn't occur to anybody in time because we were so basically because we were very naive about it and then the other thing you mentioned you know what you're calling your liberalism which I would you know characterizes inequality that's that enables mr. Trump you're absolutely right but it but it but it fits into this larger argument because Russia shows how oligarchy works right Russia picks out mr. Trump as their pet oligarch right or there he's actually a wannabe oligarch he's not actually an oligarch because he doesn't have any money but and if he does just prove it right I challenge anybody to prove that the man actually has any money because if he does you know we know he has debt and we know his father gave him the equivalent of 340 million dollars which like if I pick any of you in the audience and give you 340 million dollars you will then be 340 million dollars richer than mr. Trump which if I if I may if I may interrupt you so this is a big New York Times story investigation of the summered one you're referring to huge investigation into his finances one day later everybody forgot about it yeah nobody can well I can't have you I know you care like you're still thinking about what you do with the 340 million dollars and how you could make more out of it than mr. Trump did um which is six bankruptcies and 800 million dollars in debt you can all do better than that that's my American dream for you if I give you 340 million dollars you can do better than six bankruptcies and 800 million dollars in debt never accept but but I know but the charming think about the New York Times report is that they know that like they knew that they were writing this for the future right right like they knew that this was part of some future court filing that this was part of some future history book but doesn't mean they did it anyway well what it means is that that journalism is a precious thing which is challenged on all fronts because of course a much worse world than one where everybody changes the subject of next day is one where the story's never published I know but the fact I mean nobody basically cared I don't know I think I think you were doing it I mean some people it has that didn't make a certain difference in the conversation okay and the Moller team certainly Gared and in the state of new york carrot i mean look we're in a very weird situation in the US Trump has to be President because he knows he's violated laws and he knows that we know these violated laws and some of those laws are state laws in other words he even if you believe he can pardon himself which is like mind blowing the unethical like it's like loaning it's like loaning money to yourself right hey I'm gonna load myself 340 million dollars but but even if you believe that mr. Trump can pardon himself he actually lacks the he lacks the statutory power to pardon himself for state crimes and he's clearly committed state crimes so he has to be president you see he has to be president till he dies look look at it from the poor man's point of view I wish he was here I don't know where Tim is who's the most yeah important guy in the room because he has the microphone so if there are any questions but hopefully a bit about the u.s. first he's not an intern he's a very well paid young man the first one it seems that you you like to blame Russia for for the elections and etc at the same time America is notorious for fixing elections and maybe changing even governments and different countries so I wonder how you look at that I think America started Russia is just you know learning and the question is is there any sorry is there any scenario in which Trump is going to be impeached yeah okay let's start with the first that's yeah but so there's a there's a there's a very important ethical point to make before I answer your question historically and the ethical point is do we think that intervening in other people's elections is bad I take it you think that it's bad I'm looking for a nod here or a head shake you don't care okay so do we think that on principle in intervening elections is bad that seems to me to be the live ethical question because if we think it's bad then we think it's bad so I think it's bad thing for the United States to intervene in Italian elections or Latin American elections I think it's bad because I think that I believe in both sovereignty and democracy I don't think the United States ought to be in that business by the same principle I don't think Russia should intervene in the American elections it's not about liking to blame Russia it's about a principle I mean it's the same I mean I find and this is a very simple thing I think but it's it's somehow very hard in practice like take Wars another example how many people were both against the American invasion of Iraq and against the Russian invasion of Ukraine I was against both on the same kind of logic I don't think countries should be invading other countries on the basis of total lies it's a simple principle and it seems to rule out both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the American invasion of Iraq I'm against aggressive illegal wars fought on the basis of complete lies if you're if you accept principles then you have to be critical of everyone whether it's Russia or America right so it's not that I like to blame Russia I'd like for Russia to be completely blameless it would be a better world but in this particular case there is a now moving to the historical part there is a huge amount of evidence that Russia did nervine in the American elections and we can't not Chronicle what actually happened we have to chronicle what what actually happened on impeachment we compete one more thing on this because that was actually one question that I wanted to ask as well because even though what you say and what you're saying is true people like delayed John McCain who has never found a country that that he didn't want to invade was so much so big on this Russia into the I mean there was some hypocrisy there right and and there still is it that I mean that this is the thing if we can't make ethical arguments because people aren't perfect we can't make ethical arguments I mean not being perfect is to complete up that's that's to complete one end but know it well if we can't make political arguments if you can't be right because someone agrees with you look for bad reasons you can't be right I mean either we believe that there are ethical arguments to be made or we don't I mean either we're in the world where we say I am for example I'm against a legal wars of aggression fought on the basis of total lies or run a world which says no well some of the people who didn't you know some of the people who opposed the invasion of Iraq had didn't brush their teeth in the morning or whatever I mean either were in this world or in that world I don't care what John McCain thought about other things he was either right or wrong I mean this is where I end right yapped you either believe in you know right and wrong you don't believe in right and wrong and you know I think if you want to outline principles you have to outline principles and then you can't say well this principle doesn't count because somebody else is say is a hypocrite I mean if we do that then there did print there will be no principle left standing because somebody is somebody who agrees with you about this thing is always gonna be wrong for some other reason so you know I think Europe should have an army President Putin thinks that Europe should have an army does that mean that you're right I'm right you know that point okay so we're gonna talk about impeachment let's go about impeaching yeah yeah I mean so just be I mean like it's it's gonna be unclear what impeachment actually means impeachment is an accusation so it's not a trial in the in the American system the House of Representatives impeaches by a simple majority which then triggers a trial in the Senate where the Senate can only convict by two-thirds majority which ain't gonna happen so it's possible that he'll be impeached but impeachment is not a route to his leaving office unless it's all are comes up with something astonishing even well I would say even yeah it has to be pretty astonishing because the things I mean honestly the things that we already know were pretty astonishing like that his you know his campaign manager has been convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy against the United States like these are already things which in a previous world would have been totally unthinkable I mean mister mister Clinton was impeached for lying about sexual relations which I mean lying is bad and I'm against it but you know compared to asking a foreign power like mr. Trump stood up and said Russia if you're out there please try to get Hillary Clinton's emails and that same day Russian military intelligence began a spear phishing attack which included mrs. Clinton and people who knew are trying to get her emails if a Democrat had done that right we certainly Republicans would be calling for impeachment so I'm not quite I no longer believe that there is anything I mean I think that we could have video of mr. well this - not my fantasy right but I do think that there is I I don't think that I think the Moller I think the Moller thing will be very significant but I don't think it alone is a route to impeachment unless as you say there's something truly outrageous but I think it's much more likely that mr. Trump's reaction to the Moller report is what's going to do him in right in what sense well I don't I feel like I shouldn't give away their strategy there's no live feed tonight in what sense thank you very much for your wonderful speech Bailey you mentioned Europe should I stand up you've mentioned Europe you mentioned Ukraine when Russia invaded first took Crimea the lugar II ma'am and after that Dumba's I think Putin was handed the most beautiful gift Europe said war is not an option which is in line with what you said about Western Europe being convinced that war is such a terrible thing it should be unthinkable but now we have the situation of Crimea still in Russian hands and a war that continues in Donbass what is wise for Europe so there's there's there's there's an interesting deep point which I would develop from that premise which has to do with nature of war and it's a point which Russian military doctrine actually has advanced in open documents namely that war is not about combat combat is a means to the end and this is this is by the way a very traditional position this is what clouds of it says combat is a means to an end war is about breaking the will of the enemy and the interesting thing about the campaign in Ukraine is that although as you say Russia used military force in a quite straightforward way in Crimea and in the Donbass the that was I think a minor part of the overall campaign the ratio of actual traditional military activity to what we used to call propaganda but I think is more properly called cyber war that ratio was incredibly low right I mean for every dead Russian soldier there was an immense number of Giga gigabytes of fake news distraction invented stories or put in a different way the number of people who were engaged to create communication about the war was probably significantly greater than number of soldiers who were actually fighting in the war which i think is probably something new in history and it's it's it's it's interestingly relevant because and this is something that I said back at the time I wrote this in early 2014 that what's happening is that Russians are losing the war on the ground which they didn't expect but they're winning the war in the ether which they also didn't expect and that that was the constructive lesson and that's the thing I was trying to say at the end about how we were vulnerable with our politics of inevitability because what the Russians learned in 2014 was that they could really fool us about basic things using certain kinds of tactics which they then applied in the Netherlands as you all know without around mh17 and around the referendum and then the United States in 2016 they learned that where they learned where they could actually break our will which was less on the battlefield and more over the Internet and that's you know that's that's why I classified the 2016 US presidential campaign as a cyber war which we lost and if you only like you know you only it's good lose wars sometimes I mean we lose them a lot but you only the weakness of Americans is they don't recognize when they've lost a war right like that you you have to learn you have to recognize that you've lost a war to learn from it and that's that's kind of our weak spot because we've lost a bunch but we have it we have trouble remembering them or we remember them as like a victimhood but anyway my point is that we lost a cyber war in 2016 and then we we were failing we're very actively failing to draw the lessons from that partly because the nature of the outcome you know which is that losing a cyber war means that a certain person becomes president of the United States but yeah I mean I agree with I agree with your premise when we say war is unthinkable then you don't then if it's unthinkable it can't be happening it can't be happening and you can't be noticing the reaction now what what should Europe you're doing about this I don't think I mean as I said I've actually thought for a very long time that there should be a European army um and you know this is one of the many ways in which I don't represent the official American position if that hasn't been clear to you up to now let me just now issue this qualification but but I think I think it i think it's very sensible every European Army I think it's very sensible for there to be European cyber defense I think more important than cyber defense though is is what I mentioned at the end the developing factuality like actually cultivating factuality because the only way to defend yourself against the myths that foreigner send into your system is to have a network of fact of fact producing of fact production but with respect to Ukraine in particular the way that Europe wins is that the unoccupied parts of Ukraine work and that is a big challenge that's a big that's like a half century challenge which by the way is how long it took to unite Germany it's that kind of event I think you know I don't I don't see the Ukrainian army triumphantly storming into you know Luhansk anytime soon but I certainly can't imagine a West German East German type scenario where one part of a country ends up looking so much better than the other part of a country that the the outcome then becomes more or less for ordained and that's not just for you I mean that's my advice to you crane Ian's but it's also like the war is not an excuse not to reform the war is the reason why you do reform but but it's also I think advice for Europe that that this part of the part the unoccupied part of Ukraine has to succeed and that's I think your best I think that's the most sensible Russian policy as well it's very hard to influence Russia directly but it is possible to do something for smaller states to show that the rule of law is actually not a joke not easy but I think it's possible just briefly about the the misinformation campaign you talked about that you're going to phrase in plausible deniability or in your book or do you mean by that well by in plausible deniability I mean you deny facts that everyone knows are true and then you dare people to call you on it so in the invasion of Ukraine the the chief example in plausible deniability was the denial the invasion itself I mean of course there have been many cases of black operations and covert operations but to actually invade a country and then stand up and say we're not invading a country those are guys who bought camouflage uniforms at an army surplus store that's actually new I mean that's that's a that's a form of audacity which I don't think had been seen in the history well I wouldn't want to say in history of line but history of Lion is big and broad but in the history of warfare that's a pretty big lie and it served a purpose because implausible deniability is is a trap because it's it's it's it's its catnip for journalists it's honey for journalists because then the journalists say oh we're gonna focus on this person and trying to prove that what he's saying isn't true and of course it's not true but when you accept those rules of the game what you've done has become a participant in a reality television show which is what happened in fact so everybody I mean I remember this with intense I mean this was intensely painful for me at the time I was trying to get journalists German journalist other journalists to cover the war or to cover what were the obvious preparations for war right I mean I actually said I went I went on the record and predicted that Russia would in Russia would invade Ukraine partly on the basis of troop movements but but at the time all the journalists want to talk about was Putin's mind like what's in Putin's mind is he will he go in or won't he like it's all about him and that's a problem because once once the story becomes all about him then it's not about Ukraine Ukraine disappears it's not about the it's not about the agency of Ukrainians it's not about the Ukrainians are trying to do it's not about the war that they're going to suffer it's not about the shells that are gonna fall on their towns it's about this man and his ability to defy or define reality that that's what I mean by implausible deniability but it's also a big it's a big dilemma because obviously when we go back to trump he keeps throwing little shiny objects to the media but you know this president lies the fact-check of the Washington Post has you know is keeping track of this he lies thirty times a day during the midterms campaign it's always the task of journalists you know whenever a president is either attacking the rule of law or their basics of the basic stuff in politics ethical stuff but particularly politicians not telling the truth you have to point that out or not so what's the alternative for not going after all those lies except for also doing deeper investigative stuff yeah I mean it's very simple but that's I think that's the answer I agree with you when politicians lie journalists have to correct them everything it's like yeah every time but it's in that that is very just that is very distracting work because this president not only lies he lies orders of magnitude more than others like other people breathe yeah almost yeah I don't like you know like Buddhists with really regular I think breath powder yeah but but but yes journalists have to do that but I think they have to not see that as their main task I think like that that you have to play defense but the best defense is a good offense and the way journalists play offense is just by reporting stuff so the you know the big stories are the big story in the world is a story of inequality the big story in the world is a story of where the oligarchs hide their money and that is a story of which mr. Trump is an active part and it matters a great deal I mean even if one story doesn't seem to change the world it matters a great deal that reporters are actually reporting on those stories they feel in general the American press is doing a decent job oh I see it's quantity rather than quality right I mean we there's so many stories to be reported on and there aren't enough journalists to report on them that's the problem we just they're only a couple thousand actual investigative journalists in a country of more than 300 million people that's just not enough there this is why I keep stressing the local news you have to have local institutions that create factuality on a local basis by way of investigation it seems very simple but it just it doesn't happen so the post and the Guardian and The Times and also other other other news agencies including BuzzFeed is that a good job on some things they have done reporting and that reporting has made a difference but what I think is ok if you take away those five institutions we would be completely lost and I'd rather imagine a world where instead of five or six or seven or eight there were 60 or 70 or 80 institutions that were capable of doing serious investigations I think I think that's I think that's the answer I think mr. Trump is aware that it's the answer and this is why you dedicate your book to reporters in a sense I literally I mean that when I say I dedicate to reporters the heroes of our time because I believe that reporters in the heroes of our time in the sense that they are taking risks for things that are real and also in the sense that without them we would we would literally be helpless right without the reporters we would we would not be able to get our minds around inequality and more which are the big stories of our time so and also in a philosophical sense I mean like you know a doctor can't tell you exactly what health is and a reporter can't tell you exactly what truth is but reporters are professionally dedicated to pursuing truth just as doctors are professionally dedicated at pursuing health and that is invigorating for all of the rest of us we all of the rest of us need that now we don't just need the particular facts we need the pursuit of the ethic of a factuality so was it different for you while writing this book as a historian too to write about the now different from previous books because you're writing this as a you know as a journalist in a way as well journalist write about the present so it was it was harder but not for the reasons I would expect I mean I guess one thing I would say is that the road on freedom is a history book it's not anything else it's a history books are the weird thing about is it is about the present but the very the traditional conservative things about it are that it's mostly on the basis of primary sources lean very heavily on the languages that I can use so it in the beginning of the book it's mostly Russian sources and Ukrainian sources and then we get to the German and the French at the polar stuff and then English at the end when I'm talking about the United States it's also very traditional history book and that it develops an argument over time I mean it's meant to be an argument for itself so the thing that I'm saying is the answer to inevitability an eternity is history and responsibility so by writing a history book about the present I'm trying to show that we can actually understand the present we don't have to fall into these narratives and that history is one way of doing so I'm sure that there are others the thing that was hardest about it is that video is awful that's the hardest thing about it so the pretty more so awful about video I tie to the Internet audience vo that the the thing the reason why video is awful is that it's unbelievable at the ratio of how much of how many computer bytes you need to confer actual information in the human sense is unbelievably awful right so like a video which let's say it takes you know whatever let's say this video takes one gigabyte and it takes you three hours to watch and at the end you've learned as much as you could have learned by reading a transcript of that video in two minutes right or a newspaper article about it in one minute that's that that's the all if you're a historian I mean the thing that you can do your superpower is historian is that you're literate and so you can go back and you can read documents very quickly you can take two you can take 10,000 documents this is you know more or less typical example you take 10,000 documents and you have a couple of weeks and you can sort through them and figure them out or read the most important ones with care collate them compare them and come up with some version of events which is plausible with a video that's unbelievably difficult that's actually the hardest thing about right about the present is that so many things that happened like around mh17 there's in the inroad unfreedom there is a careful four or five paragraph discussion of the various Russian fictions throughout mh17 to write those five paragraphs I had to expose myself to hundreds of hours of Russian television and not just that that was bad for my mental health it also just took hundreds of hours that I could have usefully spent doing other things so the hard thing about the present is that in and it's and when people are writing about and interestingly 50 years from now it's gonna be worse because a lot of the video is simply not going to exist anymore right I did not expect this answer well no I know good questions over here thank you very interesting talk i puts me in mind of something i just like to check with you freedom unfreedom Eisinger democracy I think the Germans and the Russians and all the other aspects you've mentioned are a little bit of a smokescreen because what I'm hearing basically is a problem a crisis with democracy itself and Socrates spoke about this five stages of governing or to cross the aristocracy eventually tyranny and in democracy democracy will itself devour itself where there's too much freedom when the people elected are not really up to the job and you mentioned in America a big layer of people who are just getting up there but they're not quite that the real deal and the voters who are not thinking are not invested with the truth and don't have the time span for it like so much so much what's your place my point is actually the problem with freedom coming our way is current democracy dissolving this self whereby a tyranny a tyrant and their Darwin saying the fascist because Stalin was a tyrant Mao was a time but a tyrant arises when people are uninformed they vote out of instils guts and alliance and then the tyrant once he's in he's talking about back the troubles doing now backsliding fire Komi fire what's your question the fundamental problem here not a quintessentially a problem with our modern democracy and not with the fact that the Russians are there are making a bit awkward - no the problem is the fundamental democracy thank you so I mean I would I would cast out a slightly different way and it goes back to ethics which has come up in a number of different connections you do we think democracy's a good thing or not but that seems to me the important questions do we do we no I'm not asking you this is part of my answer don't questions yeah there's this the Socrates and the questions they're not actually meant to be answered so the the the where was I so the I think you can't do without the ethical part of whether we think democracy is good or not and the reason we can't do without it is that is the point which you quite correctly make namely that democracy doesn't defend itself so when you say that like it's a problem of democracy that it gives rise to tyranny well I mean it's a problem of tyranny that gives rise to tyranny - you know that there is no automatic defense against tyranny there's no like there's no magic bullet there's no word that has a see at the end of it there's no ism which automatically defends us from tyranny there's just no such thing and that's kind of my point there is no oh do you have one okay well I am interested the there is no there's no set of human beliefs or values or institutions which is incorruptible right that's the nature of us that's an of history so we have to start from the question do we actually want democracy and you know I think some of us do why like why is it why is it good and then what would you actually do to keep democracy going because they're gonna I agree with you and I agree with what you say about the Greeks of course democracy doesn't automatically you defend itself over time of course it's subject to challenges and knowing Aristotle did say what you say namely that the problem with democracy is well you've put Aristotle and Plato together here the problem with democracy is that democracy tends towards oligarchy because the oligarchs will always spread fiction among the masses which you know admittedly is not a completely an accurate description of what's going on in the present world but it doesn't mean that all the details are irrelevant it doesn't mean that how Russia works it is irrelevant it doesn't mean that how Facebook works is irrelevant it doesn't mean that the details of our present political predicament are rolling because we have to understand those details if we want to make democracy better able to defend itself and that's why I think the details are important other questions yeah over there thank you very much I'd like to move it back to Russia if you don't don't mind connecting your notion of inevitability with future lessness I mean many people would argue that Russia today has indeed no home no future at the same time over the past a little over 100 years the Russians have made you surprised the world by having two revolutions more or less so what is your assessment of the capacity for change of the Russian population thank you yeah so I mean I know I know that you got this but I'm just gonna clarify my position before I answer your question when I was talking about the future lessness of Russia or America or any other place I don't literally mean that there's no future right I don't literally mean the time is going to stop what I mean is that we're in this interesting moment in historical time where discussing the future seems to be very difficult and we're proposing futures seem two have become very difficult and I think in as in many other things Russia has been at the forefront of of this particular development it's like a lot of other things it came to Russia first and then it's arriving in other places in the West afterwards but of course I do think that Russia as a country has a future and I think that Russia as a society has a future and I think that future is highly unpredictable now when you speak of when you speak of revolution I thought sure with the second would you mean 1905 and 1917 or did you mean light in 89 that okay I mean there wasn't there were revolutions in the Communist world in 1989 I don't I don't think one can characterize what happened in August of 91 in Russia as as a revolution it was a it was a failed it was a failed coup but I I mean I agree with the premise of your question which is that something unpredictable will happen in Russia the nature of the current Russian system is that probably bad unpredictable things will happen before any good unpredictable things can happen because what the what the current Russian system is very bad at doing is preparing any kind of let's say not so bad future it's very bad and admitting that there's a succession problem it's very bad at training up with who the successors might be and it's even worse at creating the institutions which would naturally allow people to become those successors so that means that we're likely to have bad surprises before they're good surprises but do I think that Russia can renew itself of course I think that of course I think that I think that I mean I think so in the 20th century I'll analysts of Russia the ones that I'm most sympathetic to are always the ones who say Russia is full of possibility and they're always the ones who say there are multiple traditions in Russia they're always the ones who point out that the Russian intelligentsia has includes big swaths of opinion which haven't yet come to power which remains true um and they're always the ones who say that Russia is not somehow separate from European history but it's part of European history I believe all of those things - I don't think that where Russia is now as a dead end I do think though that there is a there's a there's a like and I try to make this connection earlier it's it's very hard for Russia or Saudi Arabia or anyone else to get out of this kind of political system so long as there are such easy rents to be made from hydrocarbons that is that is a that is a structural problem which affects you regardless of whether you're Russia or Saudi Arabia and I say that because you know Europeans don't often make this connection but insofar as you're in favor of Nord Stream like insofar as you're in favor of a long term European dependence on Russian hydrocarbons you're also in favor of tyranny and Russia because Russia is not going to get another Russia is not going to get another form of government without another form of economy and Russia is not gonna get another form of economy until Europe wins itself away from hydrocarbons so there's a deep connection here between hydrocarbons in the form of politics there's also a deep connection between European policy choices and the in the system that we currently have in Russia but yes in the medium and long term I certainly believe that other kinds of Russia's are possible absolutely so you're siding with Trump on the North stream issue yeah I'm also i mean i disagree with industry with mr. Trump about many things and I disagree with the Polish government about many things but on this particular issue I think they're both right good we have room for one more question well you pick thank you very much for your talk I have a question about the future you said something about Europe the focus we have fear on the First World War and the Second World War somehow these are also the limits how we consider ourselves and that we are very much looking to the Past framed in the nation-state and use it actually that the future is somehow in the colonial past in the empire we have so I would be very interested in which way would we need to link back to our imperial past to form a different way how a Europe looks into the future okay that is such a wonderful question because the the so so I'm a historian I'm I believe in historical time and I believe in the pursuit the pursuit of historical truth we never get there just like a journalist can never quite get there but I believe I really believe that historians can make can make the past make more sense and thereby make the present make more sense and this the the the way that Europeans process the past I think is a very good example of this there are architects and artists of memory who have constructed these separate parallel European national pasts which are taught to children in which are commemorated and which when they're not false they're so incomplete as not really to make very much sense and the way that the European Union is is is set up is actually designed to confirm that right in in matters of national culture the European Union as it's currently set up basically mcc's EPs the National pasts as a kind of national responsibility and so there's this paradoxical consequence of European integration which is that the way that you teach history is even more nationalist than the way we teach history because it involves it involves a couple of dozen different nationalisms and ours only involves arguable maybe two we'll see um so and and what I think is that history is the answer to that because what history shows and I'm by no means the only person to argue this I mean there are plenty of specialists on Europe you know from who makes some version of this argument tawny Jets post-war makes a version of this argument Harold Harold James makes a version of this argument mark manzara makes a virgin's argument that the the real story in European history is empowered integration which means that your real past is the imperial past which means that the way to think about Europe is how it is and isn't an answer to Empire so for Europeans so the interesting thing about the European Union is that more powerful states recognize less powerful states as equals that's the interesting thing in the history of the world another way of putting that is that former imperial powers who had gone around the world not recognizing other polities as real recognized European polities as real or another way of looking at it is that the major European power in Germany which had just fought a World War the Second World War on logic that some of its neighbors Poland and Soviet Union in particular were not actually States that they were they were they were zones inhabited by colonial peoples that that same state then made the move to acknowledging other states as being as being equal that's the interesting thing and so I think the way to think about the European achievement is to think about it as as precisely post-imperial like as a way of getting Europeans out of Empire once you think about it that way then the next question becomes what does the European Union then do or how can put the zero pinyin then do four other places which are post-imperial which are either north african or which are east european because the the the the be incredibly the incredibly sad self-satisfied thing about the european achievement is it it's a withdrawal back to europe right like we we went out and you know we went to Indonesia or you know we went to North Africa whatever it might be India but now we're gonna basically block that out of the way we think about the past and we're gonna focus on this false story about how we learned lessons from the Second World War that you know that that's the weakness that's a self-satisfied part that's the politics of inevitability part where you say we're smart nations we've you know we learn from the past I think a European history which was actually taught to schoolchildren which began from Empire and which related the loss that defeats and imperial wars to European integration which show both what Europe has achieved but also what your what the moral obligations of Europe are with respect to the world which I you know I can't answer definitively but I think that would be that kind of reframing of the issue would be it would be very constructive but the fundamental thing I would say is that then this is what I like the question so much your past it's not just that your past to have a future Europe has to be the future Europe has to be the future because if it isn't the future it's not it's not gonna be if the if politics is about the past Europe is gonna lose all right it's gonna lose to the nation's it's already declared the past belongs to the nations your if Europe's going to be it has to be about the future and the only and and this is gonna sound like a very provincial historian talking but I'm deeply convinced of this you can't have future time without past time you can't have a future without history you can't think your way into a future without having some more or less true version of the past and so part of getting to a Europe part of thinking sensibly about a European future I think involves getting the past of Europe right and so I think that would that itself would be a step in in the right direction it's not about saying you know it's not about making the move to we thought we were great but now we realize everything is our fault because everything is our fault is also a form of inaction right everything is great is the politics of inevitability everything is our fault you know can be a form of the politics of eternity right we take responsibility for everything and therefore we do nothing what it is about is seeing Europe hit European history and global history together that's that's what it's fundamentally about I've learned a lot and I think I speak on everybody's behalf thank you so much for this thank you Elco thank you all of us for joining us many disheartening things have been said this evening one of the hardening things is that there are institutions like the valley like John Adams Institute which bring the best and brightest minds of America to the Netherlands such as Professor Snyder and I'm grateful for your having shared your insights with us if you'd like to know more about what we do and come to some of our upcoming events this Sunday we're showing in collaboration with in fact the International Documentary Film Festival we're showing Errol Morris's film on and with Steve Bannon so Steve Allen as far as I know is not here in person but the film is and the director is 5:30 in car a on December 6th we have our post-election event this year with conservative Frank Luntz as a pollster and a Fox commentator together with a young black Democrat Darius Baxter and I hope they'll have it out on December 11th our last event of this year Michael Pollan who has this time not written about food but about psychedelics his book is called how to change your mind and his moderator will be dummy underneath the head of psychiatry at the I'm say hospital we're now going to by Professor Snyder's book and have it signed and those of us who have and those of us who are not we'll have a beer together outside come back soon yes I couldn't mention Christiane Amanpour but I don't want to make all the people sad who've missed the tickets because it sold out thank you already but the queen of CNN is also joining the John Adams on November 30th come back soon bring a friend tell them about us thanks very much [Applause]

Channel: The John Adams Institute

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Keywords: Lecture, The John Adams Institute

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Length: 120min 5sec (7205 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018