The Trump phenomenon moves us in that direction, because Mr. You go to vote because it’s expected, but you don’t believe in it. What the Russians have achieved is a system that kind of looks like a democracy - people vote every so often, but nobody believes in it anymore. This is fundamental to democracy.ĭoes Russia represent a major warning for us in this regard?

The facts allow you to protect yourself from the ruler. People on the left and the right share a certain amount of blame for that in our culture. If you think the truth is just what makes you feel good, then the people who make you feel good temporarily are going to be able to take away your freedom and prosperity in the long run. You write in the new book that freedom “depends upon citizens who are able to make a distinction between what is true and what they want to hear.” That’s a development which led directly to what happened to the U.S. I realized we’re starting to enter into a new world where a significant event like a revolution or a war can be made over by Internet and television propaganda. Instead, they were reacting to these propaganda tropes. Americans and Europeans were not looking at the actual events. I realized during the Ukrainian revolution and Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 that I had to account for the extraordinary effectiveness of Russian propaganda. Tendencies in Russia, like wealth and inequality, can have similar consequences. Things that begin in Russia could end here. in 2016, are extraordinarily strong and clear. Timothy Snyder: The lines from Ukraine in 2014, to the U.S. See here for details.Ĭapital & Main: Why is the recent history of Russia and Ukraine, and the European Union important for us here in the U.S.?

Snyder will speak in the Los Angeles area tonight and Tuesday morning. In our conversation, shortened and edited here for clarity, Snyder talks about Trump’s assault on democracy, his dangerous connection to Putin’s Russia, as well as what we might do to turn this all around. Indeed, both books speak clearly and directly to a world in which democracy is in crisis. talking to people in churches, synagogues and other venues, which, he told Capital & Main by phone from Seattle, “helped me write the last chapter of Road. Snyder had spent a year traveling across the U.S. Later, he would finish all but the last chapter of his newest book, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, before Donald Trump was elected president.

The title alone suggested that historian Timothy Snyder saw what was coming during the 2016 presidential campaign, when he wrote On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

The road to freedom timothy snyder