America Is Entering a Dangerous Moment — with Timothy Snyder

We have a quasi secret police which is shooting people in the streets, and that, as a politician, you know, whether you're a senator or a governor, it's your job to frame that rather than to wait and see how it gets framed. You know, you have to aim for a big victory in '26 and '28 which affirms values, right? Like, you take this as an opportunity to talk about what you think is good and what you think is right and what you think the American republic should be. At the end of the day, you're not going to get big victories just by being against bad things, no matter how bad they are.

The moment that we're in, like all moments, is open. You know, I'm a historian. I'm not like, I'm not a determinist social scientist. I don't think there are like overarching laws of any of this stuff. And one thing you definitely learn from the history of authoritarianism is that there are conjunctures, like there are sets of circumstances where what people do matters a lot. So I guess I would say we are in one of those moments where if we choose to see it, it's clear that the people who are running the United States of America would be very happy to carry out by way of propaganda, occasional violence, um, and threats, an authoritarian regime change. That's just totally obvious. And the question is whether one chooses to see that and to make preparations and to react accordingly. The moment we're in is one where if we just let things go, we will get a change of kind of government or we'll get a break up of the republic as people try to change the government if we do nothing. But we're also facing people who can't take a punch, who are imminently beatable and who are essentially counting on us to be fooled over and over again.

Um, I mean, isn't it sort of self-evident? Like, 95% of what the Trump people do is based upon bluff and anticipatory obedience from our side. If so many of our bureaucrats and oligarchs hadn't gone over at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, we'd be in a completely different place. But if you push back a little bit, right, if you're Denmark and you push back a little bit, or if you're Minnesota and you push back a little bit, then they pull back, um, because they're essentially counting on a lot of verbiage and a little bit of violence to be enough to bully you. And if it's not, they're not quite sure what their next move is.

It does. And I will turn a little bit back to a part of your first question that I didn't answer, which is historical comparisons. It reminds me a lot personally of the moment in early 2014 when Ukrainian protesters were killed for the first time. And each time one person was killed, then the regime made this effort to describe this person as a terrorist, as an extremist, and so on and so forth. And then it would turn out that very quickly it would turn out that like it was a mom or it was a dad or it was a student or it was somebody who was just trying to do the right thing. That it reminds me of that a lot. And the Ukrainians were actually able to win in that situation. I mean, they had the bad luck of being next to Russia and Russia could invade. We don't have that problem, right? Nobody's going to actually invade us. So, that was a turning point, like, because in this barrage of lies, in this attempt to create total unreality around us, most of us still recognize the difference between life and death. And most of us are still capable of appreciating a human being in her or his, you know, particularity rather than being immediately willing to accept that this person was quote unquote a terrorist or quote unquote an assassin. So it is a turning point. Um, it's a turning point where it's not just that you say, 'Okay, we can't have a republic if the federal government is going to gun people down on the street,' which is true. It's also a moment when you can be reminded of the very basic things like the dignity of the individual which are at the foundation of having something like a republic.

I mean, I think our reactions were very, very similar. What I thought was, I guess, I mean, I guess kind of start where you start, which is the respect for the dead. I mean, before you say anything about the dead, you should think, learn something about their lives. Um, and you know that like that part where, I mean, this like, you know, none of us is perfect, right? But when we die, like that's a moment where those of us who know us and don't know us have a chance to demonstrate what's good in them by finding something which is good in us. And to miss that chance so completely and horribly and to do the opposite and to consign, you know, one human being's very specific memory to a general category is terrible in itself. And for that general category to be something that's a lie is even worse. And for the lie to be a slander is even worse. So, I mean, as horrible as these deaths are, the reaction to them is just as damning, I would say, because if you're going to lie about things like this once, you'll lie about things like this over and over again. And it reveals that there are no restraints on you. Like, if there are any moral restraints on you in your pursuit of power or in your obedience to those who are pursuing power, they would show up at a time like this. And if they don't show up now, they're just never going to show up. There's nothing which is going to cause you to be a decent human being if you can't be a decent human being when people under your orders kill someone.

If you think back to the '70s and '80s of the last century, the end of communism, which is one of the focuses of my own research, you see that what the dissidents are trying to do is to answer big lies, not so much with big truths, but with little truths. So there's no longer the confidence that there's one big truth, but there is the confidence that we know our friends, we know our colleagues, we know the other people who are taking risks for us, and we can make a record. And they had to make a record using typewriters and mimeograph machines and, you know, the tools that were at their disposal. And they took incredible risks basically just to type lists of people who had been arrested and to try to keep track of in which, you know, in which facility in the Gulag those people were sent. And then they went to prison for doing that. And I'm thinking about that just because my reaction is to say we do have a technological advantage in this way that we can create the small truths by way of camera shots from phones from all kinds of different angles. And those, you know, enough of those from enough people can then dissolve or at least push back the attempt at a big lie because of course you've hit the nail on the head. If there was no evidence and it was just like the word of a couple of citizens against the entire top of the federal government shamefully, you know, slandering and defaming this man, then I'm afraid you're right that the conversation would then take a very different form. It would take an on the one hand, on the other hand form. And let me just take this occasion to note that although major media are getting better at this, there is still a worrisome tendency to start every story with conflicting accounts. And like, conflicting accounts is not news, you know, like that's like conflicting accounts is like the atmosphere is made of air, you know, or relationships are sometimes difficult. I mean, it's not news. Conflicting accounts are always there. What's news is what actually happened. And I mean, we're making some progress on this, but news outlets have to try to start from what actually happened as opposed to the government has propaganda and we're going to repeat that propaganda and then we're going to admit there might be another version.

Mhm. I mean, I will happily do a little speculative, basically Sovietology about this, but before I do that, I just want to say that it's important to recognize that despite the fact that people are now taking, you know, a slightly different quote unquote tone, and despite the fact that Bo has been sacrificed and maybe Gnome will be, the basic policy is still the same and ICE is still carrying out these raids and the basic big ideologist and practitioner of all of this is still Steven Miller who's essentially, you know, he's basically running things as the president at this point. So, having said that, I mean, I think you're right that it's a struggle between the—struggle is between the vice president and the deputy chief of staff, between Vance and Miller. And my basic take is that Miller is a convenient person for Vance because he's essentially the only person in MAGA world who's less popular than Vance. And the way that Vance is going to play this is that after Trump goes down in some form or another, he's incapacitated, he dies, they make a move against him, whatever happens, Vance's obvious move is to say that all of the distortions are the fault of Miller, right? That like there was once a pure MAGA, like we have it all right, but then Miller came in and he messed things up. That's Vance's absolutely predictable play. Um, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if there was an element of blaming the Jew in it because that is the world in which Vance's mind seems to be. And so Vance, I think, wants to have Miller around until the right moment, right? And I'm not sure that moment has actually yet arrived. Um, Rubio is sitting pretty because even though our foreign policy is a disaster, he's done a very good job at directing the most disastrous parts of that to Vance, who doesn't seem to be smart enough to notice that that's what's happening. So, the Greenland portfolio, which was obviously doomed, was given to Vance and so Vance could make a mess of it. So, I agree with you. There is—and there's another basic point here which is worth noting. These guys are old. I mean, Trump in particular was old, but if you compare this to the fascism of the past, in the fascism of the past, you weren't worried about, you know, Mussolini having a stroke, right? You weren't worried about Hitler having a heart attack. Compared to our fascists, those guys were quite young. And so, the fact that Trump is old and visibly declining adds a dimension to this which is new.

Being in favor of Israel does not mean that you're in favor of Jews. These are just different issues. There have been all kinds of anti-Semites, including fascists, who were in favor of Israel because they thought, well, that's a good place to have the Jews, better there than here. So there isn't an organic connection between being in favor of Israel and supporting Jews. It can overlap, but it doesn't necessarily overlap. And so I worry that—I worry that not all American Jews conflate that, of course, but I do worry that too many American Jews could conflate that, right? I mean, the Nazis themselves until 1937 or so thought that Israel was a great idea because that's a place that you could put the Jews. So like that—I'm not saying it's exactly the same. I'm just saying that history teaches us that being in favor of Israel is not the same thing as caring about the rights or the dignity of the Jews. And as far as this administration, I mean, I think they've been anti-Semitic from the get-go. I think the way they treated Zelensky in the Oval Office is basically impossible if Zelensky is not Jewish. It definitely had an element of making a circle around the Jewish guy and taunting him. And the whole thing against campuses, I mean, although it claims to be anti-anti-Semitic, in my view, it's clearly anti-Semitic because what it does is that it sets up this expectation, which the real anti-Semites immediately grasp, that the Jews are in charge, right? The Jews are in charge because they're able to do this on campuses. And I think many American Jews don't notice that dynamic, but the anti-Semites definitely notice that dynamic, right? I mean, so I think that whole thing has been a trap, that the notion that the government comes in and closes down, you know, free speech on universities, which is what happened, then they do it on behalf of Israel, that tells the anti-Semites that, oh, look, the Jews really are in charge. And I think they know that. I mean, I think they're perfectly aware that this is what they're doing. And I wish fewer people had been taken in by this. So yeah, I mean, getting to your question, I think it's very telling that Vance, you know, when he's basically—so first, I mean, look at who Vance follows on social media. He follows people who are just unremitting American Nazis. And when he's asked about whether the Republican party is a big enough tent for the Nazis, he says, well, you know, his response is basically, yeah, it has to be a big enough tent both for people who are Nazis and who aren't Nazis, you know. And so that's really where we are, and they're not making too many bones about it. And so I think, you know, if Miller is around long enough, it would be really surprising if Vance—if Vance is around long enough, right? Because in these situations where it's a tiny number of people vying for power, it's all kind of unpredictable. But in that situation, I think it'd be very surprising if Vance didn't resort to something like, you know, this guy's not really American or like this guy went too far or, you know, people like him always take things to extremes, you know, that kind of thing. Um, I think that will be a natural move for Vance to make.

That's a beautifully framed question because it gets at something very important, and that is that in an unusual situation you can't count on the political parties to be the solution. And we are definitely, however you want to characterize it, we are in an unusual situation. I mean, we're in a place that a number of political scientists, I think wisely, would call competitive authoritarianism, where there are going to be elections, but elections are going to be an uphill struggle, and you can win, but the way that you win is by recognizing that it's an uphill struggle and that you have to do unusual things. And part of that is understanding that although there will be elections and the opposition party has to win those elections, it's not going to do it on its own. And that you don't wait for the opposition party. Instead, you have to push out ahead as the opposition yourself or as the resistance. You have to set the moral terms. You have to take the risks and you have to build a coalition of which the opposition political party is a part but isn't necessarily leading or, you know, pulling the wagon on. So, and the examples of this, I mean, the scholars who work on non-violent resistance and who work on authoritarianism and pulling back from authoritarianism, I think the consensus is pretty clear on this that the way that you win is with a coalition. But it's not just, so to speak, a cool, calm, calculated coalition. It's a coalition that emerges because people have had experiences and are willing to do new things and get out and take some risks and show themselves. So the coalition—there's a mathematical logic to the coalition. You have to win elections by a meaningful margin. But there's also an emotional or subjective logic to the coalition, which is that you care enough at this specific moment to open yourself to cooperating with people with whom you don't agree on every single issue. Now, historically, we know that that works. It has worked over and over and over again. Competitive authoritarianism is a bad situation to be in, but it's not an insurmountable situation if you recognize it for what it is. And so taking Minneapolis in context, and I can't say anything, you know, terribly smart about it because I was in Europe for the whole time, but taking Minneapolis in context, that's a moment where people took risks, they did the right thing, they self-organized, they set an example, they responded to a particular wrong in a way which enables coalition building and which enables people to formulate the stakes of what's going on.

I don't think that's how it works. So, I mean, I think I disagree with every part of the premise. I don't think Trump actually enjoys it. I mean, if you look at the social media response, I mean, he may take pleasure in attacking people in a kind of generic way, but I don't think he was happy that, for example, his presidential self-parade, you know, that military march, which one can only remember for like the posh of it all, that that was so wildly outclassed by the protest. He didn't seem to be happy about that. But I mean, getting beyond his personal reactions, it is my experience—and there are many people more experienced than me—but it's my experience as someone who helps to organize some things and as someone who takes part in public protest that one of the effects of public protest is that it enables people to go back and organize on a smaller scale. So I don't think it dissipates. I think what happens is that people realize that these protests were organized by somebody and maybe they could join those people who are doing this organization.

Yeah. And I think that's like—that's invisible, right? Like, I mean, I think the media hasn't actually done a great job of covering these things. I think they've been much more—I mean, these are the biggest protests in the history of the country and they have not really gotten the media attention they deserve. I think partly because our media is still too much in the notion that politics is a game and it's played behind closed doors and what you're supposed to report on is what somebody leaks when they like, you know, crack the door open a moment. I don't think they've gotten the attention they deserve. But yeah, I disagree with the premise because I think that one of the main reasons you protest—and the main reason you protest—is to tell the rest of the people who are watching you that this is what's normal and that going along isn't normal. But I think the second reason you protest is that it is the gateway to doing other things. Like, it opens the door to doing other things. It allows you to meet people you didn't know before and then to go on and do other things.