![]() What we know is that people who oppose democratic republics do so by taking very different attitudes toward facts and factuality. Sean IllingĪnd what is the logic of fascism? What is the attitude that fascism takes to truth? Timothy Snyder That, too, depends upon the assumption that we can all see and agree upon the facts. The logic of democracy assumes that people can be educated, and can make choices for themselves about who should represent them. The logic of monarchy is different, the logic of monarchy is that you need some kind of familial or mystical or even divine rationale for holding power. That only makes sense if you imagine that politics is basically about thinking about reality. The whole idea of a republic is that the state should belong to the people, that the state is a public good - that's what republic means. Sean IllingĪ constitutional republic is more or less premised on the idea that a populace lives in, thinks about, and shares a common reality. If you don't have a confident sense that there's truth out there in the world, it becomes very difficult to articulate a threat in terms that aren't just emotional. ![]() But when the political system is under threat, it deprives people of goodwill, of the ability to act, because it becomes very difficult to find a way to characterize what the problem is. I think being skeptical about the existence of truth is the luxury that one can afford when everything else is going well. The indispensability of truth to liberal democracy is a recurring theme for you. I was very concerned early on and remain so. I'm not more concerned or less concerned. It is designed to create the conditions for alternative realities and to train minds to follow changing lines rather than evaluate facts. Are you more or less concerned than you were post-election? Timothy Snyder As the handling of the Comey firing illustrates most recently, the lying has continued. Your book was in part a response to the incessant lying of Trump throughout the campaign. His message is simple: If there is no truth, there are no facts if there are no facts, there is no rule of law and if there is no rule of law, you can’t maintain a liberal democracy. We also discuss the role of truth in a liberal democracy, and why illiberal regimes thrive on confusion and cynicism. In this interview, edited for length and clarity, I talk to Snyder about Trump’s increasing indifference to the truth and how it aligns with his post-election concerns about tyranny and fascism. As my colleague Matthew Yglesias points out, Trump’s initial rationale for purging Comey was an abject lie and makes no sense given what we’ve since learned. Most recently, he lied about the firing of FBI Director James Comey. One of the first things Trump did upon taking office was, naturally, to lie about the size of his inaugural crowds. Snyder’s piece speaks directly to our present moment, given our president’s relationship with the truth. “You submit to tyranny,” he wrote, “when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.” The central theme was the relationship between truth and tyranny. Then the post went viral, and became the basis of his new book On Tyranny. ![]() ![]() Snyder went on to lay out 20 lessons from the 20th century as they apply today. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” Shortly after Donald Trump won the election, Timothy Snyder, a professor of European history at Yale, posted a long note on Facebook that began: “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism.
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