The history of Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust is the subject of a speech by Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University.
A history professor at Yale University, Timothy Snyder is an expert on the rise of authoritarianism.
"The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America" is one of the books written by Snyder.
He spoke to Insider about the threats to democracy in the US.
He doesn't want to be a downer, but he is not too optimistic about America these days. The author of a series of books on authoritarianism and the road to tyranny wonders if the United States will still exist in a few years.
In a recent article marking one year since a former president lost an election, Snyder painted a grim scenario where something like the January 6 insurrection had succeeded. The installation of a leader who clearly did not win would have a big impact on the country and the world.
Donald Trump, democracy, and what he fears could happen in 2024 were discussed in an interview with Insider.
It has been a year since the January 6th insurrection. What do you think about American democracy? Is it a year out that we are on firm ground?
Things could be worse. A year ago, the January 6th insurrection could have succeeded. We could be living in a country that is wracked by civil and violent conflict after Donald Trump succeeds in, at least temporarily, staying in power, thanks to some kind of conspiracy of his supporters, the Department of Justice, supporters in Congress and so on, right? Things could be worse. I wouldn't deny that.
That scenario is not one that is just in the mirror. It's right in front of us. January 6th, 2021, is a failed coup because it is practice for a successful coup. This is a kind of slow-motion practice for a repetition of all of that, but this time with the legal parts more prepared. The states are preparing legal steps that will allow Trump to be installed as president the next time around, in the shadow of a big lie. That will lead to a conflict that we haven't seen before.
Some people look at January 6th and see that it did not succeed. The leading players were kind of dumb. January 6th was dismissed as a foolish stunt that got out of hand, but that never stood a chance of succeeding. I think that's something that could be a lesson for them going forward, but maybe you could both agree with that.
Let's compare. If you think that democracy just succeeded on January 6th, you're missing the point. In the course of the year 2020 there were a lot of important individuals and institutions, ranging from civil society to business, who were aware that there was a chance that Trump would go for it even if he lost. It's very likely that Trump would have succeeded, or at least he would have come close enough to succeeding that we would be in terrible, bloody chaos for a long time.
Imagine an athlete winning a gold medal in the Olympics and then thinking that he never practiced. He won the medal that day in Tokyo. A lot of people put in a lot of hard work ahead of time, which is why democracy succeeded in 2021. A lot of people are going to have to keep working hard if it's going to keep succeeding. If we have that attitude, we're not going to put in the work and we're going to have this problem again.
The people who carry out coups look foolish when they fail, and that's the second thing to say about that. We're in a weird spot in the US. When you fail in a coup, you face consequences, right? In an authoritarian regime, your political life is terminated in a bad way. You face legal consequences in a democratic regime.
In the US, we are in a weird middle state where you can try to carry out a coup and break the law, but you can still stay in politics. We're in a weird place, where this sort of thing can repeat itself.
Do you think the work of the January 6 committee and the charges that the Department of Justice unveiled are encouraging?
I don't want to always be negative, but I will just start with a proviso. Thanks to the archaic institution known as the filibuster, we don't have a bipartisan January 6th committee. It doesn't exist, despite the fact that we had a majority in both the house and the Senate. The January 6th committee is about reflection and self-correction and so it's too bad that it couldn't be done in the broadest way possible.
The work that it's doing is very important. Democracy depends on facts. Democracy depends on knowing what's going on, operating in the shadow of a big lie, as a lot of us are doing, and even those of us who don't believe in the lie have to deal with it all the time. Democracy is incompatible with myths and personality cults. Figuring out just what happened, step by step, is compatible because it gives us the chance to reflect and improve. The work that the January 6th committee is doing is essential.
I was going to ask you about the Democrats' response in January, but your response made me want to ask you about the Republicans' response. Does the Democrats' response matter if one of the major political parties is completely behind the big lie? After January 6th, it seemed like the leading members of the Republican Party were going to break with Donald Trump. It seems like that is a way to get kicked out of the party.
It does matter what the Democrats do. It matters if they try to figure out the truth. It's not pleasant for the Democrats if they have to challenge their colleagues in the Senate in the House. Without a legal and historical sense of the events of January 6th, we're not going to be able to keep going as a democracy. The baggage from the Civil War and the way we don't clean it up is holding back a democratic future. It does matter what the Democrats are doing.
The Republicans have a different problem than the Democrats. They are doomed to become an authoritarian party if they don't stand up to the big lie. Since you're saying the other side cheated, you're going to cheat yourself. You're telling your supporters that you're going to cheat. You're telling your supporters that a vote for us is not really a vote to try to win an election, a vote for us is just to kind of get us vaguely close enough that we can fix the election, thanks to voter suppression and voter subversion. The Republicans are in a different ethical situation because they have to operate within the shadow of the big lie in order to be remembered as a party that broke the system.
A good number of them realized that. I think a lot of them are trying to find a way out of this. I hope that they find the courage to try.
Do you agree with the assessment that this is the worst crisis for democracy since the Civil War?
The Great Depression and the Civil War are both similar. The United States was lucky with its leaders. Lincoln and Roosevelt are the presidents that stand out the most. I think the Great Depression was a time when it could have gone south. We are on historically dangerous territory.
When people refer to the Civil War, one response can be that it's hysterical. We don't appear to be in the middle of a violent conflict. How do you think that will play out? Where could this lead?
America doesn't look good right now, with its high degree of polarization, with its alternative reality, for the people who study the origins of civil wars, not just in the US, but as a class of events. The indicators that the social scientists who work on this topic see suggest that we are on the verge of a conflict.
Are you asking me about my scenario? My scenario is simple. If we install a president who has lost by a clear margin, it's not difficult for the loser to become president. A few states just have to not vote in the electoral vote, the House of Representatives votes according to state delegations, the Supreme Court blesses the whole configuration, and then you have an installed president of the United States.
It's going to be very hard for a lot of Americans to accept something like this since people will have known about it for a long time. At that point, you would have uncertainty among the population and also within the institutions of government, as well as the armed parts of the government.
That's the situation. It's not complicated. It's the kind of thing that one has seen in other countries. It's not implausible.
With the caveat that history doesn't repeat, what parallels can you draw from other countries? What do you think is similar to the situation the United States is in today?
There are many comparisons. History doesn't repeat, but it instructs. The people who are trying to undermine the rule of law are instructed by it. Hungary is an easy example. Hungary is a place where legalistic step by legalistic step, the spirit and reality of democracy and the rule of law were removed, such that Hungary, despite having elections, is not a functioning democracy. We are on that road. That is a model that is contemporary for a lot of Republicans right now. Hungary is going to be more and more present, and it's already been present, for example, on Tucker Carlson, as a kind of positive ideal for rule: an authoritarian regime, on the basis of a minority and kind of ritual elections.
Russia went back a few years. The 'administrative resource' was pioneered by Russia. The elections are arranged in such a way that you know who is going to win. You can't point to where things went wrong because they went wrong at different levels. Your guy always wins. We are moving in that direction. The administrative resource is moving towards us.
The failed democracies of the 1920s and 1930s are a distant historical parallel. Thanks to obstreperousness and complicated parliamentary rules, laws weren't passed and people all over Central and Eastern Europe thought that Congress was just not very important. A strong leader would be better. Someone who reflects our moods. Someone who can get things done. The US is also seeing that kind of sentiment as it becomes difficult for our Congress to pass laws.
Where do you find the beginnings of the Republicans' weakening commitment to democracy? Is it the rise of Donald Trump and his personality call? Is he a product of a conservative movement that had been slowly moving away from the idea of democracy as a value?
You have to go back a long way. The party has always wanted to suppress the votes of Black people and call it democracy. For a long time, that was the Democratic Party. After civil rights in the sixties, they switched to the Republican party. This is the original sin of American democracy, because we've always had a political party that wants to suppress votes and game the system.
I think there are three recent developments. The Republican Party is playing only to the loudest voices in its own choir and is ever less representative of the general public because of the surgical precision by which we now carry out gerrymander. I would include foreign interventions in our social media as a second change. Social media is a way to spread information. Voters can collect themselves into clusters and not have contact with anyone else. That radicalizes things.
The personality cult of Donald Trump is where the credit is due. The Republicans have not had a figure like this before, who would expose them for the bad things they do, as opposed to the values that some of them still would like to express in politics. They've never had a cult of personality like this before. That creates a new type of popularity. I think it will be hard for Republicans to rally around at this point because they don't have the same level of ethics and popularity that Mr. Trump has.
If the Republican nominee were Tucker Carlson, he would openly admire Hungary's Viktor Orbn, which would make him a threat to democracy.
I don't think it's a good situation to have a whole cast of characters who want to come to power using non-democratic means. We have a lot of people who would be willing to come to power in that situation, but it's still not a good situation. That is not a good situation. At the moment, it's Mr. Trump who captures the imagination of the American electorate. To carry out a coup of this kind, you have to be close enough to make it plausible. You have to have someone who is ruthless. I think he is the best of the worst, or the worst of the worst, depending on how you look at it.
I would like to ask you about the president. He's given a couple of speeches recently that have explicitly labeled the Republican Party as a threat to democracy. How do you rate his response on January 6th?
It's a tough time for Mr. Biden. I think he has been put in a very difficult situation. We don't have presidents coming to power at a time when the republic is challenged. Biden can't begin from the position of a clear victory. The people who oppose American democracy are still out there. Every day, Mr. Trump is in Florida. There is no way to remove them from the picture.
He has to be president, and he has to try to get laws passed, which is what a president does. He has to embody the values of the democratic Republic at the same time. It's a difficult combination. He would like to be able to stand above all of this. It's become clear after a year that he can't. All of these attitudes have been correct. I think it's unfortunate that he doesn't have big majorities in his first term like FDR did. A lot of the stuff that we're talking about would be meaningless if he had big majorities. There would be a bipartisan investigation. A lot more laws would have been passed.
We already have electoral reform, which is the most important thing, and making it easier for Americans to vote would be good for the whole system, and it would also be good for the Republicans because it would force them closer into the role of being a party. If Biden had a bigger majority, everything would have happened. I think he's come to power at an uninviting time. His first year has been better than we think, and it's been better than the atmospherics would suggest.
Some polls suggest that President Biden's approval rating is in the 30s, and that the Democrats are on the verge of losing their majority in the House. A majority of the public is concerned about the state of democracy, according to polls. They don't like Donald Trump. They seem ready to return the Republican Party to power, even though they are committed to Donald Trump and his lies. How do you reconcile that?
There are a lot of things going on there. Lots of people, regardless of party commitment, don't see a legalistic threat building up to a second coup attempt or an installation of a president. This is understandable, but people don't see that the combination of voter suppression and vote subversion and a candidate who's going to break all the rules in a few years makes the end. People don't see that because it's a complicated story and people would prefer to vote in 2022. It's unfortunate, but that's understandable.
Democrats tend to trust the institutions that Republicans are corrupting, so there's a kind of irony in our system. Republicans are more likely to say someone is going to fix the election. Democrats don't worry about this because they think the institutions will work, that everybody will come together, and so on. I think it's hard for Democrats to think that we have to vote in 2022, because otherwise we're going to have Trumpland.
The third thing is that people are sick of it. People are tired of living strange lives. People are sick of being restricted. People are going to vote. That's how democracy is.
The things that we're talking about, we should talk about and try to get them across, but there's also this basic matter that people are dissatisfied with. Republicans know this and are trying to keep it going as long as possible because they think it favors them. They're probably correct. It's hard to have a normal election when people want to go back to normal life and things will get to the surface.
The loser of the election has been installed in power because of the legal cloaking of the victory claim by Trump and the Republican Party. You talked about the competing loyalties of different branches of the military. It would be difficult to know who the different institutions in the United States should be supporting.
What do you think will happen a year later? If Trump is seen as a loser-president by a majority of the American public, what will that do for him and the country?
I don't want this to happen. There is time to prevent it from happening. I don't think the scenario you're talking about is the one that we have to worry about. I think we have to worry about that scenario because there isn't a US at that point. The kind of conflict that begins on January 20, 2025, isn't the kind of conflict that ends with a president being unpopular or illegitimate. It's a kind of conflict that ends with the governors wanting to go somewhere safe. It's a kind of conflict that ends with Americans moving from one part of the country to another to be with people they feel safer with. It's the kind of conflict where the US doesn't have to exist, where basic political reconstruction is what happens.
People have the hardest time getting through their minds. We know that the US doesn't have to exist. It's built on flawed constitutional foundations that are being abused. We're going to be in unknown territory if those constitutional foundations lead to something that is unacceptable. The existence of your own country is the most important thing that you should be paying attention to, because it is the thing that you take for granted the most.
The Soviets learned that lesson in 1991. 30 years ago, the Soviet Union came to an end. It came to an end because it was a flawed communist system. That's true. We didn't expect it to end, and they didn't expect it to end. If you don't get a hold of the internal contradictions, the big, powerful systems that you don't think can come to an end can come to an end. There are some internal contradictions. We say we're a democracy, but we're not. The system may not continue if we don't get a hold of that.
I'm worried about that. I like to think that if people on both sides of the aisle could imagine themselves in a future where the country is not in existence, then we could think ourselves back to that time.
The Republicans are right to think that they can game their way to power. By the time they get to power, it's not clear if there will be anything left. I don't think they've thought their way through to the end. I think they need to, so that we can, so that we can operate in a way where we can still be a republic around a few years from now.
You're not thinking of a shooting war between the army and the navy or competing groups in the military, you're thinking of something like what we've seen with blue states and climate change, where they kind of announce. Speak to us, not Washington, DC. That's not America.
I think that's what we're talking about. The more you get into details, the more you'll be wrong because the details won't be what we think. I think that Trump is the president of something, but I'm not sure if he governs from Washington, DC, or the United States of America.
I'm not sure if most of the country is at that point in time. It's not clear who the civilian commander actually is, that's a real problem, because the military is subordinate to civilian command, which is a proud tradition. If there are conflicting orders coming down, or if different commanders within our armed forces are giving conflicting orders, you have a situation where either you're going to have a civil war or people are going to say, "Hey, the way to prevent violent conflict is to have some kind." It will suggest itself. Yugoslavia is the model that I have in mind.
If you don't see a scenario like this at this point, you must be thinking, "Okay, Trump can get installed and nobody will care." I don't think that's plausible. I don't think the combination of Trump himself and his policies will be accepted by Americans and American institutions, and I don't think they will be as radical as they have already been. I can't make that step mentally. I don't think installing Trump will lead to a challenge to the republic.
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