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GELFAND’S WORLD - Timothy Snyder is a historian who studied the rise of fascism in Europe in the early part of his academic career. This knowledge caused him to recognize the danger when Donald Trump was first elected to the presidency. His book On Tyranny warned us of the methods used by would-be dictators in their pursuit of power. This was to be prophetic: The first Trump presidency made use of some of those same techniques, for example his attacks on the judiciary.
Trump’s reelection has brought back the same risks, only at a steeper level this time around. It was therefore of interest to hear Timothy Snyder in person, as he discussed the Trump administration and a strong personal interest of his, the Ukraine war. Snyder’s talk included a large amount of material, including a discussion of the Russian mindset, the future and possible end to the Ukraine War, and the methods we will have to use to resist the worst aspects of this new Trump presidency. I will try to describe a few of the highlights here.
And by the way, the talk I heard came on the same weekend that Donald Trump announced a punitive tariff on Canadian imports simply because one provincial government ran a TV ad quoting the former American president Ronald Reagan. Trump is getting worse, and this was a timely moment to consider how we are going to live under the current administration.
Timothy Snyder grew up in Dayton, Ohio, went on to study at Brown University and then Oxford, and has gone on to become not only an academic analyst of European fascism, he has also become a defender of Ukraine. He is someone who has spent a lot of time in the war zone over the past several years and has raised money for Ukrainian defense. In doing all of these things, he has taken on the role of being the foremost academic critic of this administration.
Snyder is famous, among other reasons, for popularizing the term “anticipatory obedience,” which refers to the fact that some people and organizations, recognizing the ascendence of a dictator, will show obedience even before that dictator has solidified his power. It is something that happened in Germany in the early 1930s, and we can recognize an early form in this country in the way that CBS and ABC turned against their own late night talk-show hosts Colbert and Kimmel.
Let’s consider some of what Snyder said about the Ukraine war.
As Snyder and others point out, we Americans always want to ask, “When is it going to end?” It’s our way of thinking. Snyder points out that the Ukrainians have a different point of view. They expect the war to go on, perhaps for years. They are determined to continue fighting it.
So what will bring an end to the war? Snyder says that it will happen when there is political change in Moscow. The inference is that the end of the reign of Vladimir Putin is what will finally allow for an end to the fighting. He pointed out that the end of Putin and the resulting turnover of power will be viewed by Americans as a danger, but to Russians it will be the normal way that their history proceeds.
An aside: Back in 1984, at the height of the Cold War, physicist Freeman Dyson published the book Weapons and Hope, in which he discussed how Russia, because of its history, will inevitably see foreign dangers differently from the rest of the western world. After all, going back to the 13th century, they’ve been overrun first by the Mongols and more recently by Napoleon and then Hitler, each time with the loss of substantial parts of their population and significant loss of their home territory.
It is useful for Americans to understand (from multiple informed sources) that Russians think differently about foreign affairs than we do. Snyder pointed out that unlike Donald Trump, Putin has a purpose (as weird as it is) which involves bringing back Russian control over the lands that they have lost. Snyder pointed out that Trump sees the Ukraine struggle as merely a real estate deal. I think we can take that as a real possibility which, if true, signifies Trump’s lack of intellectual and historical depth.
The defense against authoritarianism in our own country
Snyder is both frank and defiant in his discussion of Donald Trump and the Trump administration. The determined effort to pervert the law was the opening observation, something that the rest of us have already taken as a given.
Snyder mentioned several threats from the Trump group that, he pointed out, are also vulnerabilities on their part. For example, Trump’s attempts to make things about money is a threat to those being extorted, but also a vulnerability in Trump’s pursuit of power.
He referred to Trump’s aid Stephen Miller as “an impatient man,” pointing out that this is also a vulnerability.
He also pointed out that from a historical standpoint, the history of fascism is that the fascists tend to fight a foreign war, as this is one way to develop support among their countrymen. The idea of trying to unify a country by getting people to rally against a common enemy is an old idea. Yet the Trump administration has generally avoided this technique, at least in the way that 1930s regimes did.
Resistance against a Russian invasion or against fascism in our own countrymen
Snyder offered an analysis of methods that have been tried, and one that works, in opposing incipient dictatorships. He was adamant in arguing that no one tactic on its own will work; what works is a number of tactics used together.
Without doing a detailed description of a long discussion, I will summarize Snyder’s prescription for resisting Trump’s worst efforts: Persistent nonviolent protests will work; there is no one thing that works by itself, but together the sum total of all of our resistance will work over time. In brief, the No Kings rallies were an important part of resisting, but are not sufficient on their own.
He pointed out that it is necessary to maintain our own morale and to win the victory over our own despair.
And the corollary to this is the following: Keep doing what you’ve been doing.
In other words, it is not preferable to give in to temporary problems by quitting. The constant flailing to try something new after every momentary setback won’t do the job.
Keep doing what you have been doing: The Ukrainians will continue to fight, to suffer loss of life, and to continue living their own lives as best they can.
The little bit I have summarized here is of necessity a stripped down version of a deeply concerning discussion about a future which includes the loss of American freedoms. To me, the main lesson is that we have to consider the current situation to be something more, and considerably worse, than what we might otherwise take for politics as usual.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
