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With Vrbill's last minute deals, you can save over $50 on your spring getaway. So whether it's a mountain escape city break or a week at the beach, there's still time to get great discounts. Book your next day Now. Average savings $72 select homes only. Joining us on IHIP News is Timothy David Snyder, a historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. He is a leading scholar, Nature of Tyranny and authoritarianism. That all seems rather appropriate right now, and is the author of several acclaimed books including On Tyranny and On Freedom. Welcome to IHIP News.
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Glad to be with you.
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A
This is our we you've been on before. My listeners absolutely love you and this is our first time in person. There's so much to discuss. And I read recently that Vladimir Zielinski is giving up on the United States, the Ukraine. Ukraine has stopped trying to win Trump over and is actively pivot from the US and seeking new military partners. Speaking bluntly about American unreliability in planning for a European security architecture without Washington, what is your take on that?
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B
Well, it's, it's a symptom of larger American mistakes. I mean, we can talk about Ukraine, but what the Ukrainians have to do is a result of what Americans are failing to do. Americans are neglecting their traditional allies and mocking them and marginalizing them. Americans are not attending to the most important conflict which is going on in the world right now, which is the Russo Ukrainian War. Americans not only denigrate their allies, but they make it impossible for their allies to plan. So I've had a lot of conversations, not just in Ukraine, but around Europe. And nobody wants to leave the United States behind. It's not anybody's first choice or second choice or third choice or fourth choice. But we're making it impossible for people to deal with us now from the Ukrainian side. They've got a war to win. They have serious things to do. They can't afford to rely on people who they can't trust or who are unpredictable. So, I mean, I wouldn't take this to mean that there aren't going to be any Ukrainian American interactions. There are Ukrainian American interactions in Ukraine, in the Middle east and in other places. But I do take it to mean that the Ukrainians are saying something which pretty much everybody else thinks, which is that if you're going to be secure in a world in which the US Is choosing to decline and thereby allowing Russia and China to be more powerful than they have to be, you've Got to find new partners to get along with.
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All right, so you recently wrote on your substack a great piece titled the Next Coup Attempt. Obviously, we're all incredibly worried about this. And he is hyper fixated on the military and has proposed a massive budget for next year. And we see that he has already flexed his muscle with Homeland Security, and ICE is his next takeover within the military. And you see Hegseth firing, not promoting people. Obviously, this is very worrisome.
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Yeah. I mean, I think the way to feel about this is not to be worried as you watch things unfold, but to recognize there's a standard set of moves that somebody like Trump is going to make to try to stay in power. And if we recognize that, yeah, these things are coming in some version, then we're not surprised by them. And surprise is a. Is the big excuse to do nothing. Right. And so we can't let him have the element of surprise, which is why it's important to talk about the kinds of things that you're raising. So, number one, Trump is a person who has said over and over again he doesn't want to leave power. And there's no sign that Mr. Trump cares about anything at all besides staying in power. Zero evidence of that. Lots of evidence that that's all. That's all he cares about. Number two, as you say, he's been creating an effective, effectively a secret police in the form of ice. And then he and Hegseth talk all the time about a Department of War, and the war that they seem to have in mind is a war against American citizens. And then you have to add to that that there's an election coming up which the president's party is likely to lose, I think, by just historic margins. And then we're also fighting a war abroad, which creates the possibility for generating some kind of pretext. All of this is clear. The question is, are we ready for it? Right. So it's not a matter of, like, worrying about whether Trump's going to go for something. He's going to go for something. And the real question is, can we name the possibilities ahead of time and be ready for those possibilities? Because if you can name them and be ready for them, you can also rule them out. None of these things should work. The US Military doesn't have any interest in intervening. ICE is incredibly unpopular, and people in many states in the Union already have good methods of. Of checking. ICE want there to be free and fair elections in November. And if there's some kind of terrorist stunt that can be called out in advance and turned against the president. So, I mean, I don't see him as somebody who's powerful. I see him as somebody who's weak, who's looking at a standard set of authoritarian tricks. Fight a war abroad, try to use your military at home, fake some kind of terrorist thing, you know, create, generate some artificial state of emergency. Yeah, he's going to do some combination of those things, but there's no reason they should work and they should be turned against him.
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There's already been some reporting, I think it was yesterday or perhaps Sunday from the Wall Street Journal, that in the Pentagon, when they are making plans for the war in Iran, they are implicitly leaving him out because he's so volatile and moody. And these are my words, not theirs, hysterical about the war. And so if we think about Trump is he campaigned on, we have to take out the enemy from within. He campaigned on an anti, you know, half of the population sentiment. And he has people in his cabinet that echo these things like Stephen Miller, J.D. vance and others. How do you think? Because the nature of our elections are localized. You know, it goes from state down to city, down to county, down to little precinct. How much does that protect us from what he has planned? Because I agree with you, he is going to try absolutely everything. He's still hyper focused on 2020 and trying to disprove that which we all know was a free and fair election.
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B
Yeah, I mean, the recent rationale he's been giving is that he should be allowed to stay in power forever because they stole an election from him once. And of course, no one stole an election from him. He lost it by huge margins. And so that's just one more expression of his basic, which is regardless of the votes, he should be staying in power forever. I think your point's a good one, that whatever his plan is, it has to be centralized. It has to go from Washington, D.C. outwards. And I also take your point that the kinds of things that he would want to do are not only difficult but wildly unpopular. Right. ICE is wildly unpopular. The idea of using the Department of Defense inside the United States is wildly unpopular, including inside the Department of Defense. But I think these majorities, this strong feeling has to be expressed in a way besides just like polling or what we know, it has to be expressed in the form of local organization protests, generating an atmosphere where it's absolutely clear in advance that these kinds of things can't work. In other words, all of these protest actions that we see are not just a matter of demonstrating opposition or articulating the better vision of the future. They're also a form of deterrence. If there's mass mobilization potential across the United States, as for example, the no Kings protests show, that there are, that makes it much less plausible that there'll be an attempt to do anything on the scale of the nation. And if there is such an attempt, it makes it much less likely that it will work.
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And I think he even, you know, I say that Trump is entering his deathbed confession era with his advanced, you know, age, and he just starts kind of tattling on himself. And he has been saying, everybody, nobody understands it. I'm talking to psychologists about it. But everybody says that whoever isn't in power, that party wins in the midterms. Nobody can explain it, even though I'm so popular and the country's, you know, absolute fire right now. So somebody's in his ear telling him, like, this is going to be a blue tsunami. And I think something that has helped democracy worldwide, as painful as it is for all of us to sit through this right now, the gaslighting, the abuse, watching our citizens get shot, senseless wars, the lying, the corruption in the Oval Office is horrible. But it is shown on a global stage, particularly in Europe, that was kind of trending to this far right. There seems to be a backlash. You see the Prime Minister of Spain with absolute moral clarity in Europe. You see what happened in Hungary. And I think it's pretty fascinating growing. I grew up in a deeply red state and all of the Republicans I know are very the founders in the constitution and national security and we're the Republican Party. And then you find out they're all getting inspiration from a two bit dictator named Viktor Orban in Hungary. And I thought that's just really fascinating. And it's come to light that Orban was funneling taxpayer money that the Hungarians paid into cpac. And then now he has taken a massive, humiliating loss and he was endorsed by J.D. vance and Netanyahu and Putin. And this is to me, me, such a great sign. Can you speak to this and how important this case was for kind of the epicenter of the MAGA movement. And now it's been dismantled.
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Yeah, now this is, these are, these are great points that you're making, and I'm just going to emphasize them. The first is that the American far right is not the American far right. I mean, people who are in it might think it's American, but the organization, the money, the ideas are largely Russian and Hungarian ideas. And the people like Trump and Vance the president, the vice president, United States. They regard Orban and Putin as their teachers. And this is why they cared so much about Orban, the former Hungarian prime minister, or the outgoing Hungarian prime minister. Orban was there before they were. Orban was prime minister when Vance was in high school. In the Cincinnati excerpts, they. Vance, as you say, went to Budapest and told Hungarians how God wanted them to. To vote, which, of course, is, I think, shameful on any number of levels and, you know, metaphysically and morally very troubling. But they did it for a reason, which is that Budapest under Orban for the last decade or more has been the main node, the central node in a network which shares money, which shares ideas, and which generates personal relationships. So things that we think are American, not just Trump and Vance, who I don't think you know in any political sense are American, but. But institutions like the Heritage foundation, which is supposed to be a conservative American think tank, it's funded by Hungary, cpac, which is supposed to be a conservative political action committee in America, it's funded by Hungary, and Hungary was the central node of something where the money and a lot of the inspiration came from Russia. These are individual facts, and there are many others that point to the general conclusion that the American far right is cosmopolitan, it's international, or to use the word they don't like, it's global, right? They are taking their stuff from other people. Our oligarchs, or the people who carry water for our oligarchs are much closer to the oligarchs and the water carriers for oligarchs in Moscow and in Budapest than they are to their own people. Much, much closer. And that's the basic structural reality of all this. And if you start from the premise that a Trump or a Vance cares more about an Orban or a Putin than they do about Americans, all of a sudden, our foreign and domestic policy will seem much clearer, right? Because starting from the premise that they care about America or Americans gets you nowhere. That premise is wrong. So this is significant because it reveals the things you're talking about. It helps us to pull the veil aside and see what's really going on. But also it's significant because for a Trump or for a Vance, Orban was a sign that their kind of politics was going to go on forever, that all you had to do was wrap yourself in the flag, steal money from people, and you could just do this indefinitely. Right? But Orban had done it for a long time, and then he got absolutely cooked in the elections. Constitutional majority on their Other side, absolute landslide against him and in conditions where the elections were rigged in his favor, right? And so the Hungarians managed to climb up that hill. They managed to win that election. And that shows a Trump in advance who think that like, okay, there's no alternative. This is just the way history is going to be. Right wing oligarchs like us are going to be in power forever. It's a body blow to them. Because it turns out that's not true, that you can lose elections and you can lose them big. So that's the importance. But then if you're thinking about being the opposition in the United States, there are lessons here. Number one, the Hungarians didn't just wait for election day, right? They weren't just like people say things like, let's just get through to November. No, no, no, no, no. They were organized on a national scale, on a local scale, for two years. The second thing which is incredibly important to see is that in Hungary, the person who won the elections, Piotr Magyar, he was able to make this connection, which I think people here really have to make, between affordability, which is a word I hate, and democracy. You have to be able to say the reason why your everyday life, your standard of living, the reason why this is going wrong is this, that when people take a democracy and they turn it into an autocracy, when they centralize power, when they privilege their wealthy buddies, when corrupt, that, that thing, when democracy gets weaker, that is what makes you poor, that is what makes the economy fail, that's what takes social mobility away from your kids. And that, that is true, right? Like that is a message which is useful, but it's also true. And the Hungarian opposition was able to bring that together. They were able to say, these scandals around the president and his friend, all this wealth, friends, all this accumulation, all of this shuffling away of money that should have been yours into other goals, all of that is what has made the economy tank and has made your lives worse. And that message was correct and they won on that message. I think that's a lesson for Americans.
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And I also found it fascinating that it was so rigged against him that he was unable to appear on television.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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And so. So if you'll provide some information to my listeners about how they. Victor Orbon is so penetrated into media, all forms of business and government, the same way that Maga is doing that here, judges, the judiciary, the media. And since he won, the new prime minister, the incoming prime minister, he has appeared on what is state or Orban owned, controlled media. And Said he was going to shut it down. I believe that that's what he said. And I thought that was really victorious. To see the Hungarians campaign against a rig system where LGBTQ+ and immigrants were scapego, much like they're being scapegoated here and fight for democracy. And then this whole oligarchy, oligarchical system where they control everything that we see. I thought that was just really fascinating that he then finally appeared on state television. Will you tell us about that?
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Yeah. I mean, there's a really basic, important point here, which is that when you're trying to build up a system, you try to control the media. And this is what the Trump people are doing. They have their own buddies in charge of evermore media organizations. The media organizations are themselves consolidating. Local news is dying. Right. This is exactly the formula that was pioneered in Russia and in Hungary. And by the way, this is no accident. Orban is their daddy. Like, they learn from Hungary. This they're copying from Hungary. They didn't think of this stuff themselves. Project 2025 is basically like, it's what Hungary did with a few footnotes, right? This is all copied from a Hungarian model. So this is the path towards it. And so when you see o Trump's wealthy friends are going to take over national networks, when you. This news is not. It's not just a piece like it is the puzzle. That is how you try to consolidate power. But as you say, even as that is happening, if you pay attention to independent media, as Hungarians did, if you let independent media inform you about the oligarchical scandals, as Hungarians did, and if you turn the independent media information into popular understanding about how you have to have a big win in an election to transform the system, you can actually get over this. So your point is really good. It was a rigged election. This is what political scientists call competitive authoritarianism. And that's where we are, too. It's not as difficult as it was in Hungary, but that's where we are, too. The election in November will not be entirely fair. People will have to go uphill, but you can get up that hill. And then the other part in what you say, which is so important, is that when you get up that hill and you're on that hill and you've won, you have to say that you've won. And you got to do things consistent with winning, like Manjar is doing, like saying, okay, now I'm going to completely clear out the state media. It's not going to be like it was before. I want everybody to resign. And by the way, if you committed crimes, you're going to be prosecuted. Oh, and incidentally, I don't want any more foreign influence in my country. I don't want the Russian influence. I don't want any of this American influence. We're going to run things our own way. So that is, that's also a message that I think maybe some Democratic politicians need to hear, that this election in November, it isn't just some normal election where you talk about affordability, you get a majority and you keep on going. You have to tell people that there are going to be consequences to what they're doing now, right. In the next six months, people are going to continue to commit crimes. And the worst crime would be trying to rig the November election. We have to try to deter as much of that as possible. And one way to do that is to say, look, we're going to win this thing big. And when we do, if you've committed crimes along the way, there are going to be investigations of that.
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Okay. I think you have the key to a lot of Democratic messaging in quote, unquote, middle America where I my experience and expertise reigns. And it is this notion where people are America first and they feel like vote when they vote Republican, that that is a patriotic thing to do. There is this overwhelming feeling in red states that the Republican Party is more patriotic. And but really the facts on the ground is that the Republican Party has been taken over by these far right Russians, Hungarians, et cetera and oligarchs. And if you look into the that it was fascinating and one of the Epstein file drops that Peter Thiel was messaging with Jeffrey Epstein about Brexit and how happy they were about that and what a huge win that was. And I think it's just an incredible message for Democrats. They're going to have to run on anti corruption, which the incoming prime minister did. They're going to have to run on affordability, which we've seen success in politicians doing that in the United States. And they're going to have to run on some component of America, our identity, because Trump has really blurred what that is, where it's the enemy from within. And I think that your facts on the ground about Heritage foundation and the Republican Party looking to these anti Democratic dictators for inspiration is a damning indictment on the MAGA movement.
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Yeah, I hope you're right. I mean, it's been true for a long time. I wrote a book called Road to Unfreedom, which was a history of the 2010s. Where this was the major theme, that the, The, The. The authoritarianism that was emerging in the United States was largely a recycled version of techniques that had first been used in Russia and then in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe. And, yeah, I mean, I'm not a politician, so other people find better ways to say this, but there is literally nothing American about Trump. It's all copied. It's all copied. And some of it is borrowed. Right. Like, it's borrowed in the sense of borrowed money. Project 2025 was built up by an association of think tanks, some of which were funded by other countries. Right. So the program that's being used to dismantle the American government was funded by other countries. And you're right. That has to somehow break through. And this. You're. And you know, I'm from Ohio. You're totally right. Of course, there's a, There's a, There's a reflex, which is like that R on the ballot is the thing which, you know, that's the more American thing to do. You don't even have to look at the candidates, just, like, look for the R's on the ballot. And that just, just hasn't been true now for a really long time. And this administration, in particular, it's governing on behalf of proximate oligarchs. And some of them are American, and some of them are not American, and some of them are people who are American citizens, but whose interests are largely abroad. And this is just the way that it is. And that has to somehow get through. I agree with you. I think it's an illusion that can be broken. You know, Trump is a guy who's. He literally wraps himself in the flag, which, I mean, I find, like, that's not how the Boy Scouts taught me you were supposed to treat the flag. And he's somebody who now, like, associates himself with Jesus. Like, he's pushing these things to a degree where I hope it becomes impossible. Right. Where it's somehow at some point it breaks. But, but yeah, you're. You're right. I mean, we're. The. The Republican Party has reached this kind of extreme where it talks about the country all the time, but the policies, whether foreign or domestic, just don't have anything to do with the interests of Americans.
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A
I completely agree. Okay. When I follow you, I follow you on social media, which you should, too, listener. You always have in. In the facts on the ground can be devastating. Like, everything that we're talking about, but as in Hungary, it's not hopeless. And what I really like about following you is you give us the unvarnished facts, what's happening here, but also the power of democracy, the power of cooperation in organizing protests. So will you speak with, you know, your vast knowledge on this, of how, when we feel so hopeless and we feel like we might want to not pay attention to the news or descend into nihilism, how right now, heading into this, these midterms, how important it is for my listeners and other listeners and Americans at large to stay engaged and stay focused, and that this, this is not fubar completely, that we can come back and fight this?
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B
Yeah, no, that's a great question, because I think, I mean, Americans have different historical experiences with our country, and they come from different places, but there are a lot of folks who. Who tend to think, okay, it was going all right, and now it's not going all right, so what am I going to do? It's all. It's all on me. And that's where the mistake begins. Like, it's not. It's not all on you. So the question, like, what can I do? The answer is, you can do a little bit, right? Because if you think it's all on you, then of course, it seems hopeless. But it's not. You just have to do your little bit, and you have to do your little bit with other people. Because if you do it with other people, then you don't feel hopeless, because suddenly you're around people who are maybe better organized than you or more courageous, but just being with them makes you feel better. And that's part of the key to protesting. It's one of the reasons why you do protest is that you realize, oh, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, oh, look, millions of people who feel similarly. And that break, that breaks that dark spell of feeling alone. And that's really important because all of this, the Orban version, the Putin version, the Trump version, it all depends ultimately on breaking democracy by breaking the people. Right? Democracy is the people ruling. But if we're all alone, if we all feel lonely, not just solitary, but lonely, if we all feel like no one really understands us, what can we do? Then we're not the people. And anymore. And if we're not the people anymore, then, yeah, we can be manipulated by media, by social media, by charismatic politicians. Our worst sides are there to be manipulated. But when we're together, when we organize, when we protest, then our better sides start to emerge. Then we seem more like a people. Then we can not only defend ourselves, we can start to think about what a better future would look like. So what you're talking about is really, really important. Whether it is making sure you vote yourself, registering people to vote, creating conditions where it's easier for other people to vote, whether it's local organizing in a way which is not even directly political, but just keeps you involved and engaged, whether it's going to protests. All of these things help to create a sense that you're not alone, that your actions actually make a difference. And they do. Right. And this is. I know it's funny that everybody's talking about Hungary so much. We East European specialists are having our little moment here. But Hungary really does show that you can not only win, you can win when the deck is stacked against you, and you can win big when the deck is stacked against you. And that's, you know, that's a. But you. It doesn't happen on its own. It happens when people realize that it's possible and do the things that are necessary along the way. But we can do that.
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A
And just. Final question. I think that there's going to be a lot of Americans that are scared to go to the polls because Trump and Stephen Miller, via ice, have shown that they will flex their muscle. And they are now talking about using ICE officers at the polling places. Historically, has Putin ever done anything like this? Orban. What can you speak to any fears people have about, you know, voter intimidation, voter suppression acts by an armed government agency at the polls?
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B
I mean, you're from the south, right? We don't have to look to other countries for this. There's just a long tradition in the United States of police officers at polls, looking at African Americans and saying, you know, what are you doing here, son? Or, yeah, but. Or, you know, yeah, or the KKK and voter intimidation. I mean, you don't have to look abroad for this kind of thing. It's unfortunately an American tradition, and it's an American tradition which can be. Which can be overcome. I mean, it's go to the polls with other people, recognize that ICE has no legal authority to actually do anything to you at the polls. If you're an American citizen, they can't do a single thing to you. Most of this is bluff. There will be some unpleasant stuff which can be overcome. It's sad to say, but people have had to overcome this kind of thing before. Right. There are many, many Americans, especially African Americans, who have had to deal with this kind of thing and for a long time. Right. And the rest of us can deal with it, too. And if we feel scared, then let's go to the polls with other people. Let's make it a point to make a plan with other people to go to the polls. But I do take your international point. We have to recognize that what the recent international precedents are Hungary and Hungary in 26, Poland in 23. In all these cases, there was a certain amount of intimidation. And in all of these cases, people were nevertheless able to come together and get an overwhelming result and change the status quo. So it's like the things we were talking about at the beginning, like the. More like the. The possibility of some fake terrorism thing or trying to use the war to distract attention where it might be. All these things are predictable. They're like they're speed bumps on the road. We know they're there and we can get over them.
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A
I would say what I take from this is MAGA is laser focused on trying to dismantle democracy, but they're incompetent in copycats. So we know what their playbook is. We the people need to be laser focused on preserv serving democracy and fighting for our rights to move forward and win. Because, you know, it is pretty embarrassing for them that they're not even original in their dismantling of democracy. Timothy, I want to thank you so much for coming on. And I was at dinner with our mutual friend Ruth Ben Guy the other night, and I told her I think I can speak for my audience and for myself in the face of. Of the administration like belittling educational institutions and universities and experts. There is a thirst for knowledge and what you're doing. So thank you for making yourself available to the American public so all of us can get a free education and learn more to fight for democracy. Truly, it's a gift that you and Ruth and Jason Stanley are giving all of us, that we can educate ourselves every day from these, you know, scholars in the world. So thank you so much for everything you're doing. It helps so much and everybody has such a thirst for this type of knowledge right now.
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B
All right, well, thanks. Thanks for your great preparation. Thanks for making it so easy. Really enjoy talking.