Timothy Snyder has written one of the most important books I've read about the forces that seek to destroy democracy. The Road to Unfreedom is about Putin who is selling the politics of humiliation to his people: "We are aggrieved, and we have the right to use any means to destroy our oppressor." By any means, Snyder doesn't limit his analysis to brute force but to cyberwarfare, fake news, any means to make the aggrieved appear to be the innocent victim. In this world, there is no truth, no history to remind us of good and evil. The aggrieved people conform the facts and reality to their aggrieved mindset.
Not surprisingly, Donald Trump is an extension of Putin. Trump, too, champions the politics of humiliation. "You were once a great people, but other, dirty people are coming to our country to steal your greatness." Snyder writes that Trump "was unable to commemorate the Holocaust when the occasion arose, nor condemn Nazis in his own country."
Putin and Trump are kindred spirits with a liking for gaslighting the world to rationalize their evil.
Snyder lays down the groundwork for these types of dangerous mountebanks. Too many of us, Snyder observes, have grown complacent in our belief that liberal democracy, truth, and history giving us "lessons to be learned" are inevitably propelling us to a better and better society. He calls this delusion "the politics of inevitability."
But in fact, too many people lack a historical knowledge of the Holocaust or Russia's role in brutally starving and killing Poles and other nearby Europeans in the 1930s and 1940s.
Snyder is a historian shouting in the wilderness.
He laments the loss of memory and history as he contemplates the rise of smartphones: "The machines that were supposed to create time were consuming it instead."
Without lessons learned from history and a breakdown of social norms (growing social inequality in United States for example), we foster the growth of nationalist demagogues like Putin and Trump. Such demagogues spew "the politics of eternity." Snyder writes:
"Whereas inevitably promises a better future, for everyone, eternity places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past. Within inevitability, no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats. progress gives way to doom."
Snyder then explains how the demagogue manipulates the masses:
"In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, eternity politicians instruct their citizens to experience elation or outrage at short intervals . . ."
It's hard to read the above and not think of a Trump rally with the mob elated and outraged as Trump hurls invective against the media and all his other perceived enemies. It's hard not to read Snyder's description without thinking of studies that show the majority of Trump supporters are white people who think they are victims of racism.
Thinking of Trump's use of Twitter and reality TV, we read Snyder explain the odious tactics of the nationalist demagogue:
"In foreign policy, eternity politicians belittle and undo the achievements of countries that might seem like models to their own citizens. Using technology to transmit political fiction, both at home and abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life to spectacle and feeling."
Snyder correctly points out that both inevitability and eternity are narratives, fictional ones, "that masquerade as history."
Inevitability is the narrative of false optimism. Am I wrong if Steven Pinker comes to mind with his optimistic Enlightenment Now?
Contrary to the narrative of Inevitability is the Narrative of Eternity, which is the narrative of altered facts and lies to deny the achievements of democracies around the world. All must be done to make sure the authoritarian demagogue dissuades the citizens from longing for the democratic achievements of others. Therefore, he must paint those countries as "decadent" or "overrun by immigrants" or "consumed by crime," etc.
Snyder's aim is to present the history of truth in order to combat the complacent and Machiavellian fictional narratives that poison minds and weaken democracy.
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