WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.050 --> 00:00:13.290 President Katherine Rowe: Welcome it's my great pleasure to kick off the Taylor Ross lecture today and i'm incredibly excited that we will hear from Professor and scholar Dr Timothy snyder. 2 00:00:14.519 --> 00:00:16.560 President Katherine Rowe: I want to set the stage for tonight's lecture. 3 00:00:17.850 --> 00:00:25.500 President Katherine Rowe: As the Alma mater of the nation William and Mary has had a hand in shaping and approving our democracy, for more than three. 4 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:40.530 President Katherine Rowe: centuries this University has witnessed multiple wars pandemics and every presidential transfer of power, our community has served the nation on countless ways recorded and unrecorded. 5 00:00:41.610 --> 00:00:51.390 President Katherine Rowe: As a campus survey indicated 97% of William and Mary undergraduates plan to vote in the 2012 election something to be very proud of. 6 00:00:52.350 --> 00:00:57.450 President Katherine Rowe: As a public university our mission is to educate professionals and engaged global citizens. 7 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:09.720 President Katherine Rowe: Last year, our nation conducted a deeply contested election, the first election under pandemic and in that election large portions of our electorate believe what is being called the big lie. 8 00:01:10.230 --> 00:01:19.680 President Katherine Rowe: that the outcome was stolen Timothy snyder's a scholar, whose work put that concept and phrase into active circulation at the right moment this year so powerfully. 9 00:01:20.610 --> 00:01:28.440 President Katherine Rowe: And he has called for ways to address such breaches in principle actions actions of individuals actions of organizations. 10 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:41.850 President Katherine Rowe: he's done so at the right moment, as so many of us have sought to understand the unimaginable scenes of violence titian at our nation's capital and this week, even as we grapple with senseless violence again. 11 00:01:43.050 --> 00:01:50.970 President Katherine Rowe: His work can bring solace it can stiffened our spines i've been reading Professor snyder's readings for the better, part of a decade. 12 00:01:52.530 --> 00:02:02.550 President Katherine Rowe: it's it, the volume has volume on tyranny 20 lessons for the 21st century, from the 20th century, is when I turned to repeatedly. 13 00:02:02.910 --> 00:02:12.660 President Katherine Rowe: memorized passages and bought nearly 100 copies of and given away because it's a beautiful little chat book and makes a great gift so it's fair to say that I am a serious fan. 14 00:02:13.350 --> 00:02:24.300 President Katherine Rowe: And if you will indulge me i'm going to read the 20 chapter title to give you a sense of why this book is so important they're structured as short imperative statements. 15 00:02:25.830 --> 00:02:36.600 President Katherine Rowe: Do not a Bay in advance defend institutions be where the one party state take responsibility for the face of the world. 16 00:02:37.740 --> 00:02:50.880 President Katherine Rowe: Remember professional ethics be wary of paramilitaries be reflective if you must be armed stand out be kind to our language. 17 00:02:52.020 --> 00:02:53.070 President Katherine Rowe: believe in truth. 18 00:02:54.240 --> 00:03:13.020 President Katherine Rowe: investigate make eye contact and small talk practice corporeal politics, establish a private life, contribute to good causes learn from peers and other countries listen for dangerous words. 19 00:03:14.040 --> 00:03:16.980 President Katherine Rowe: become when the unthinkable arrives. 20 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:19.350 President Katherine Rowe: The patriots. 21 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:28.260 President Katherine Rowe: As we call ourselves back together again institutions of higher education are well place to model and teach civil discourse. 22 00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:37.530 President Katherine Rowe: We have a responsibility to prepare the next generation of public servants Community organizers jurist advocates diplomats, scientists and more. 23 00:03:37.980 --> 00:03:50.310 President Katherine Rowe: These will be the leaders who carry forward the work to ensure that we, the people of the United States are continuously continually forming a more perfect more equitable and more just Union. 24 00:03:50.700 --> 00:04:01.950 President Katherine Rowe: strengthening our democracy is not a partisan commitment, it is a patriotic commitment with that in mind tonight's lecture launches a new university wide democracy initiative. 25 00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:15.060 President Katherine Rowe: Our approaches three prompt first together experts and resources from across the university to elevate democratic theory and practice second to engage our Community through partnerships and collaboration. 26 00:04:15.510 --> 00:04:22.950 President Katherine Rowe: Third, to convene conversations that bolster democratic values and affirm meaningful civil debate. 27 00:04:23.670 --> 00:04:30.780 President Katherine Rowe: I am so grateful to the dean of university libraries care Cooper and vice provost for international affairs at pants and for leading this effort. 28 00:04:31.620 --> 00:04:36.510 President Katherine Rowe: With this, we are charting a more inclusive future for our university and for our democracy. 29 00:04:37.320 --> 00:04:51.510 President Katherine Rowe: William and Mary looks forward to playing a leading role in the national and global conversation to uphold democratic nor and institutions in the 21st century, so that further ado it's my pleasure to welcome Vice provost hanson to introduce tonight's lecture. 30 00:04:53.370 --> 00:04:54.930 Steve Hanson: Thank you so much, President row. 31 00:04:55.560 --> 00:05:00.420 Steve Hanson: As you've just heard, we are really lucky today to have this great lecture from Professor TIM snyder. 32 00:05:01.350 --> 00:05:10.770 Steve Hanson: Professor snyder and I go back a ways in the field of Soviet and Slavic and East European Studies i'm more the Soviet side and. 33 00:05:11.400 --> 00:05:21.750 Steve Hanson: It is really just a wonderful moment to welcome him virtually to William and Mary although as we've discussed, we would really prefer to do it in person, and we hope that that opportunity will come later. 34 00:05:22.710 --> 00:05:28.650 Steve Hanson: I am so as mentioned vice provost for international affairs and director of the Center for international studies. 35 00:05:28.980 --> 00:05:40.140 Steve Hanson: I should tell you that the research Center is the home of the office of the vice provost the Global Education office, the office of international students scholars and programs and the global engagement team at William and Mary. 36 00:05:40.590 --> 00:05:48.990 Steve Hanson: and together we work to advance internationalization and all its forms, across the university the reef Center was founded in 1989. 37 00:05:50.010 --> 00:05:59.790 Steve Hanson: A big gift from Wendy reeves in honor of her late husband emory emory reese was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a really interesting book right after World War Two called the anatomy of peace. 38 00:06:00.270 --> 00:06:04.290 Steve Hanson: And I think, very much in that tradition, this lecture continues that tradition. 39 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:12.960 Steve Hanson: Let me tell you a little about the annual George Taylor Ross addresses on international peace which this is the series, we are enjoying today. 40 00:06:13.350 --> 00:06:24.150 Steve Hanson: It was established to promote peace by exploring and investigating topics of current interest that affect relations among nations, ranging from international political matters to environmental questions so very broad. 41 00:06:24.690 --> 00:06:33.840 Steve Hanson: Previous speakers in the series of included tallahassee coats and Marie slaughter Celeste Walter James goldgeier Ambassador Ryan Parker and many others. 42 00:06:35.010 --> 00:06:41.280 Steve Hanson: Let me now turn to our distinguished guests biography and I can't read the whole thing we would run out of time. 43 00:06:41.970 --> 00:06:51.810 Steve Hanson: But it's truly studying Timothy snyder is the Richard C 11 professor of history at Yale university and a permanent fellow at the Institute for human sciences indiana. 44 00:06:52.530 --> 00:07:03.780 Steve Hanson: He speaks five and reads 10 European languages he's written 10 books I won't read all the titles I wish I could they're all fantastic and they're so wide ranging, but just to give you a taste. 45 00:07:04.530 --> 00:07:13.530 Steve Hanson: The reconstruction of nations, Poland Ukraine Lithuania Belarus from 1569 to 1999 that was published in 2003. 46 00:07:14.430 --> 00:07:32.070 Steve Hanson: As you heard before blood lands Europe between Hitler and Stalin, which really was a game changer in the field of genocide studies and that period of 20th century history that was came out in 2010 thinking, the 20th century co authored with Tony just delayed Tony Jordan. 47 00:07:33.450 --> 00:07:43.710 Steve Hanson: black or if the Holocaust is history and morning in 2015 the book, you heard from from President row earlier on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century from 2017. 48 00:07:44.490 --> 00:07:49.680 Steve Hanson: and his most recent book are melody lessons and liberty from a hospital diary 2020. 49 00:07:50.610 --> 00:07:58.890 Steve Hanson: he's also co added three further books written numerous articles and op eds his work has appeared in 40 languages and as received a number of prizes. 50 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:05.310 Steve Hanson: Including the Emerson prize in the humanities, the literature award of the American Academy of arts and letters. 51 00:08:05.820 --> 00:08:12.630 Steve Hanson: The bus love hobbled foundation prize, the foundation for Polish science prize in the social sciences and many others. 52 00:08:13.200 --> 00:08:21.990 Steve Hanson: snyder was a Marshal scholar at Oxford he has received the Carnegie and guggenheim fellowships any old state orders from Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. 53 00:08:22.530 --> 00:08:30.960 Steve Hanson: As I think most people here know he's appeared numerous numerous times on documentaries on network television and and major films. 54 00:08:31.560 --> 00:08:38.730 Steve Hanson: and his books have inspired poster campaigns exhibitions phil's sculpture, a punk rock song a rap song a play and an opera. 55 00:08:39.270 --> 00:08:43.110 Steve Hanson: And it's quoted around the world, including, most recently in protests in Hong Kong. 56 00:08:43.740 --> 00:08:50.640 Steve Hanson: His current projects include a family history of nationalism and he's finishing up the new philosophical book about the nature of freedom. 57 00:08:51.120 --> 00:08:56.910 Steve Hanson: And I think some of that may show up in the talk today just a couple of housekeeping notes, before we begin. 58 00:08:57.420 --> 00:09:02.280 Steve Hanson: Please submit your questions in the chat box today which all monitoring will return to at the end. 59 00:09:02.700 --> 00:09:09.450 Steve Hanson: And I want everyone to know as well that we are recording today's lecture and we'll send the link to the video when it's available. 60 00:09:09.930 --> 00:09:18.720 Steve Hanson: So without further ado, please join me at least virtually in the warm William and Mary welcome for Professor TIM snyder who's talked today is can American be a free country. 61 00:09:28.020 --> 00:09:29.400 Steve Hanson: But you're muted TIM. 62 00:09:35.460 --> 00:09:35.880 Tim Snyder: All right. 63 00:09:37.050 --> 00:09:55.350 Tim Snyder: Thank you very much, President row, thank you very much Steve it's a it's a great pleasure to be talking to all of you in this format, the format's a tough one, I appreciate the kind introductions putting all of this in context it's a pleasure to be introduced by Steve Hansen, who. 64 00:09:56.430 --> 00:10:06.120 Tim Snyder: was one of the people who introduced the theme of time back into social studies and that's been very important for me in in the in the decades since then. 65 00:10:06.840 --> 00:10:12.750 Tim Snyder: i'm gonna do my best in this format i'm counting on your attention and i'm counting and counting on your questions. 66 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:20.100 Tim Snyder: We usually sit down, we do these zoom things this evening i'm standing up I just I had this impression that. 67 00:10:20.430 --> 00:10:29.970 Tim Snyder: A free person should be standing up and also after a year of this i'm just tired of sitting down, so I hope I hope this I hope this works for you. 68 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:39.840 Tim Snyder: So as you've heard in the introduction i'm coming to the subject of freedom from a history of unfreedom. 69 00:10:40.230 --> 00:10:46.950 Tim Snyder: i've written a number of history books as as Steve Hansen was kind enough dimension, as President, wrote with kind of dimension. 70 00:10:47.430 --> 00:10:53.100 Tim Snyder: About about tyranny in the past about the Holocaust about Soviet atrocity. 71 00:10:53.700 --> 00:11:04.320 Tim Snyder: More recently i've written a couple of books are malady on tyranny, the road to unfreedom which are about authoritarian turns in the world and in the United States. 72 00:11:05.130 --> 00:11:15.270 Tim Snyder: What all of these books res, though, is a question and it's the question that i'm now trying to face head on, in my work and. 73 00:11:15.900 --> 00:11:27.570 Tim Snyder: it's it's a question which i'm going to try to address in this lecture tonight, namely if you can Chronicle the collapse of the rule of law, democracy. 74 00:11:27.990 --> 00:11:35.730 Tim Snyder: and so on, if you can, if you can explain why things have gone wrong in the US and other countries in the 21st century. 75 00:11:36.120 --> 00:11:46.350 Tim Snyder: Then, logically, you should also be able to say something about how things should get better and that's the term i'm trying to make here i'm trying to make the turn towards. 76 00:11:46.770 --> 00:11:54.600 Tim Snyder: programmatic normative more philosophical thinking about the future and, in particular, about how the future could be better. 77 00:11:55.200 --> 00:12:01.950 Tim Snyder: So our question is can America, be a free country now for some of you, this might seem like an odd way to put the question of course. 78 00:12:02.340 --> 00:12:12.330 Tim Snyder: isn't America already a free country, so why don't why don't we start right there now, the answer is basically not I mean if you look at our country from the outside. 79 00:12:12.870 --> 00:12:26.940 Tim Snyder: it's clearly a place that has problems when you have coup attempts by how going to Presidents who've lost elections you're in a category which really is not the the upper class of of democracy. 80 00:12:27.450 --> 00:12:33.300 Tim Snyder: at another level, if your discussions about freedom or about things like wearing masks. 81 00:12:33.780 --> 00:12:46.230 Tim Snyder: Then I mean sorry to say it, but that your discussions as a nation are also not at a very high level right maybe the issue of masks is an issue of self indulgence, essentially, and no one has the right. 82 00:12:46.890 --> 00:12:57.390 Tim Snyder: to breathe viruses into someone else's lungs if freedom exists for one person exists for another person or you know if we think about very recent events. 83 00:12:57.840 --> 00:13:08.520 Tim Snyder: This the storming of the capital or the big lie, which was behind the storm into the capital, these are symptoms of rather deep problems. 84 00:13:08.970 --> 00:13:16.680 Tim Snyder: The people who started the capital did so not on the basis of anything they experienced themselves, but on the basis of a gigantic fiction. 85 00:13:17.070 --> 00:13:27.360 Tim Snyder: And if the early 20th century, the first half of the 20th century teach this anything it's that big fictions or big lies are incompatible with the democratic system. 86 00:13:27.750 --> 00:13:35.100 Tim Snyder: But if all of these arguments are convincing, I would suggest that you check the quantitative measures that are so nicely gathered up. 87 00:13:35.430 --> 00:13:43.860 Tim Snyder: by Freedom House Freedom House has us now in a category which I mean to to be a slightly euphemistic about it is. 88 00:13:44.220 --> 00:13:52.620 Tim Snyder: sort of free countries, there are a lot of countries who are rated more highly than we are, and if we if we take into account that Freedom House. 89 00:13:53.010 --> 00:13:59.160 Tim Snyder: is after all an American institution and there's a certain amount of home field advantage, probably with all due respect. 90 00:13:59.550 --> 00:14:14.070 Tim Snyder: we're really not doing very well compared to the rest of the world, so this is the problem, the problem is that we are, we are not a very free country, and yet we talk about freedom, all the time. 91 00:14:14.820 --> 00:14:27.600 Tim Snyder: We use the word all the time we overuse the word we were the word into the ground without really defining it, so the next thing i'd like to try to do. 92 00:14:28.230 --> 00:14:36.180 Tim Snyder: The next place i'd like you to think about the next subject i'd like you to think about is just what freedom is. 93 00:14:36.930 --> 00:14:46.200 Tim Snyder: Freedom is one of these things like time let's say or like thought itself you think you know what it is until you think hard about it. 94 00:14:46.560 --> 00:14:51.480 Tim Snyder: I think you know, one of our problems United States is that freedom is a kind of speech habit. 95 00:14:51.930 --> 00:15:03.870 Tim Snyder: As opposed to a kind of thought habit, so I want to the second thing i'd like to talk about is just what freedom is so for my money and obviously this is a long discussion, but for my money. 96 00:15:04.350 --> 00:15:14.370 Tim Snyder: Freedom, has to do with the development of a confident individual capable of apprehending the world around herself or himself. 97 00:15:14.760 --> 00:15:21.930 Tim Snyder: capable of making informed choices based upon a set of individually developed. 98 00:15:22.260 --> 00:15:34.650 Tim Snyder: values so freedom has to do with the existence of an individual, the development of an individual, the capacity of an individual the ability of an individual to judge the world as it is. 99 00:15:35.220 --> 00:15:52.020 Tim Snyder: But also the world as it should be now in the US, we have a certain tendency, and this is ironic again because we talked about freedom so much, we have a certain tendency to narrow that definition rather radically. 100 00:15:52.440 --> 00:16:00.360 Tim Snyder: We tend to think of freedom only in terms of what some people like to call negative freedom that is your free if you're not being oppressed. 101 00:16:00.810 --> 00:16:13.770 Tim Snyder: Of course not being oppressed, is very important, but not being oppressed is only part of being free not being oppressed is one way that you're not free. 102 00:16:14.370 --> 00:16:24.120 Tim Snyder: it's it's being prevented from being free by an outside actor and of course it's easiest to see unfreedom what it involves barbed wire to concentration camp. 103 00:16:24.540 --> 00:16:35.820 Tim Snyder: or bars in a prison then it's easiest to see but that's not the only source of unfreedom becoming a free person to put in a different way is not as easy. 104 00:16:36.120 --> 00:16:53.400 Tim Snyder: As not being behind bars, it requires much more than that freedom is not a negative concept freedom is a positive concept being liberated from oppression is not the same thing as becoming a free person it's a necessary but not sufficient, condition. 105 00:16:54.570 --> 00:17:00.930 Tim Snyder: What I want to suggest throughout this talk this is where i'm going to begin and where i'm going to end is that freedom has two sides. 106 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:12.690 Tim Snyder: And in the US, we lean very hard on one side, the two sides of freedom are solitude and solidarity we lean very hard on the solitude side. 107 00:17:13.170 --> 00:17:21.030 Tim Snyder: We tend to think of freedom has been something that a lonely individual does and that's the plot of all of our movies, and much of our literature. 108 00:17:21.300 --> 00:17:27.870 Tim Snyder: One person is cut off from everyone else, and at a crucial moment does the right thing and saves the world. 109 00:17:28.290 --> 00:17:35.610 Tim Snyder: Of course that's not how the world works it's also not how freedom works freedom also requires solidarity. 110 00:17:36.150 --> 00:17:45.180 Tim Snyder: In order to create an individual, we need to help others right, this is, this is the paradox of freedom it's wonderful to be a free person. 111 00:17:45.630 --> 00:18:02.430 Tim Snyder: But no one can become a free person by himself, let me try to give you let me try to make this more concrete, on the basis of a couple of examples, one of them, which was brought home recently to me is the example of health. 112 00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:13.560 Tim Snyder: Thomas Jefferson, for example, thought that health was a precondition to freedom, and I think this is a perfectly reasonable view if you've been very ill. 113 00:18:14.010 --> 00:18:27.510 Tim Snyder: Then you're aware that, without the ability to move your body or without the physical capacity to speak you're simply not free your freedom is abstract, to the point of being. 114 00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:38.370 Tim Snyder: Non existent, but in the contemporary us, I think this point can be pushed a little bit further if you are anxious about your health all the time. 115 00:18:38.940 --> 00:18:54.360 Tim Snyder: If you are anxious about the future of yourself and your children because you don't know that you could have health care where you're worried that you can't afford health care, then you are substantially less free person than you would be otherwise. 116 00:18:54.840 --> 00:19:03.390 Tim Snyder: In the US, we take for granted, we almost treat as normal that lots of us are not insured that almost half of us have have trouble. 117 00:19:04.200 --> 00:19:19.080 Tim Snyder: Treating basic medical needs for financial reasons, this is not normal, this is a source of unfreedom if you are in a country where you can just walk into a doctor's office you are simply a much for your person than it then then then then in the US. 118 00:19:19.890 --> 00:19:30.660 Tim Snyder: Another example and this one is the fundamental one for me, has to do with children, so think about this just logically, if you want to think that freedom is negative. 119 00:19:31.080 --> 00:19:40.170 Tim Snyder: that freedom is just a just a matter of not being a press, if you want to think freedom is just about solitude then consider the example of children. 120 00:19:40.500 --> 00:19:47.610 Tim Snyder: it's ridiculous to think it's grotesque to think that children can grow up to be free, if they're left alone right. 121 00:19:47.970 --> 00:19:59.520 Tim Snyder: Any amount of common sense or basic experience tells us that that's just not true for children to grow up well in any way, including growing up to become someone who might be free. 122 00:19:59.790 --> 00:20:09.120 Tim Snyder: There has to be an awful lot of social energy thrown into the picture, beginning with but but but not not limited to the family itself. 123 00:20:09.570 --> 00:20:20.820 Tim Snyder: Right so from the very beginning, from the very beginning of life, freedom is clearly not just negative it's also positive, it involves it involves solidarity. 124 00:20:21.240 --> 00:20:32.370 Tim Snyder: And thanks to science, I mean thanks to the last five decades or so of research and child development, we can also push this point further it's not just logically, and obviously the case. 125 00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:39.090 Tim Snyder: That children require solidarity require help to grow up to peek into people who might be free. 126 00:20:39.540 --> 00:20:45.420 Tim Snyder: We also know a great deal now about the specificities of the first five years of child development. 127 00:20:45.750 --> 00:20:57.420 Tim Snyder: And without going too deeply into this, some of the things that we learn or don't learn in the first five years have to do with naming emotions taking responsibility. 128 00:20:58.050 --> 00:21:04.620 Tim Snyder: Deferring gratification that the mental and emotional capacities, which you need to be a free person. 129 00:21:04.950 --> 00:21:16.770 Tim Snyder: Because, of course, a free person is someone who an unfree person is someone who is easily manipulated who gives into emotions, who is unable to discern exactly what is being done to him or her right so. 130 00:21:17.130 --> 00:21:24.330 Tim Snyder: We can say very specifically now on the basis of what we know about the first five years of life that if you want to build a. 131 00:21:24.990 --> 00:21:35.640 Tim Snyder: free people, you have to start with investing a great deal in children now i'm giving that here as an example, I think it's a very powerful one of this basic point. 132 00:21:35.910 --> 00:21:48.210 Tim Snyder: That freedom has two sides, on the one side, we want to have individuals, we want to have people can take responsibility, we want to have people who couldn't act alone, we want people who are proud not people who are confident. 133 00:21:48.660 --> 00:21:53.250 Tim Snyder: We want people who can tell the difference between what's what's real and what's fake. 134 00:21:53.700 --> 00:22:06.390 Tim Snyder: On the other hand, if you're going to create those people if you're going to have those people in your society, you have to invest, you have to have institutions, you have to have other people who are involved in this project. 135 00:22:06.810 --> 00:22:12.300 Tim Snyder: that's the paradox of freedom, the paradox of freedom is that it's a collective project. 136 00:22:12.870 --> 00:22:26.730 Tim Snyder: With individuals as the outcomes now this has, of course, a political implication at least an implication for the way we talk about politics in this country, the way we talk about freedom. 137 00:22:27.120 --> 00:22:39.240 Tim Snyder: In this country and i'd like to spell that out now in our country it's generally the case not entirely but it's generally the case, but the language of liberty and freedom is the language of the right fine. 138 00:22:39.930 --> 00:22:48.840 Tim Snyder: it's also generally the case that the language of solidarity and institutions in the future is the language of the Left okay that's fine. 139 00:22:49.260 --> 00:22:59.190 Tim Snyder: But what if it's the case that, in order to be serious about freedom in order to have a rich and realistic about idea about freedom, you have to have. 140 00:22:59.520 --> 00:23:13.350 Tim Snyder: The solidarity and the institutions and what if it's the case that the point of having the solidarity and the institutions is to create free individuals, what if this discourse and this discourse. 141 00:23:13.740 --> 00:23:22.800 Tim Snyder: Actually fit together, or to put it, the negative way, what if, when separated they don't make any sense right, so what i'm trying to do. 142 00:23:23.040 --> 00:23:34.800 Tim Snyder: In this in this in this talk and in this project is to make the point that freedom as a way of bringing together something we're used to talking about some of us with something some things that we would like to do. 143 00:23:35.340 --> 00:23:44.010 Tim Snyder: Often, others of us, and that it just might be that there's a way to reconcile this discourse with these projects and that way is freedom okay. 144 00:23:44.850 --> 00:23:51.150 Tim Snyder: But how would we get there, first, that there are a couple of things that we need to be able to have to be able. 145 00:23:51.480 --> 00:23:59.730 Tim Snyder: To avoid so i'm going to talk about a couple of wrong turns here that we make every day, I believe, and that will have to resolve. 146 00:24:00.030 --> 00:24:07.560 Tim Snyder: And then I will close by talking about what I think are the right turn some of the things that we have that we that we should be able to do, and it could be able to do. 147 00:24:08.040 --> 00:24:15.930 Tim Snyder: So the first wrong turn the first big mistake, I think we make in practice, every day, is a displacement. 148 00:24:16.680 --> 00:24:24.600 Tim Snyder: displacement of the word freedom a displacement of the adjective free now, this might not seem like a big deal, how does it that, why does it matter how we talk. 149 00:24:24.990 --> 00:24:31.290 Tim Snyder: Of course it matters, how we talk look at the language, the declaration of independence, look at the language of the Constitution. 150 00:24:31.530 --> 00:24:40.140 Tim Snyder: it's very clear that that the people who were thinking about the future of this country care deeply about just how the language was used. 151 00:24:40.380 --> 00:24:46.500 Tim Snyder: Just how we articulate ourselves in the present and into the future, so the way we speak. 152 00:24:46.890 --> 00:24:54.390 Tim Snyder: enables and and disables politically and morally and that's why the this displays my want to talk about is so important. 153 00:24:54.750 --> 00:25:00.870 Tim Snyder: And again it's going to seem the thing that i'm about to criticize is going to seem natural because people do it all the time. 154 00:25:01.350 --> 00:25:12.870 Tim Snyder: But, of course, the fact that people do something, all the time is no sign that it's correct to justify So what is this displacement this displacement is talking about a free market. 155 00:25:13.920 --> 00:25:21.390 Tim Snyder: If I could, if I could wave a wand and get people to stop talking about a free market, I would do it right now, why is that well. 156 00:25:21.690 --> 00:25:29.370 Tim Snyder: there's a logical reason, which is kind of superficial, which is that there's no such thing as a free market it's an it's an internally contradictory notion. 157 00:25:29.700 --> 00:25:38.820 Tim Snyder: Markets only exist when there is a law if there is no law, a free market is I steal your stuff or you steal my stuff that's the free market without law. 158 00:25:39.180 --> 00:25:49.920 Tim Snyder: The market only exists thanks to law and once once you realize that then the question is exactly what sort of law, should there be and that's a question of balance, as so many things are. 159 00:25:50.280 --> 00:26:00.150 Tim Snyder: But that's not for me, I mean the fact that it's logically impossible that's not for me the deepest problem, the deepest problem is what the language does to us. 160 00:26:00.810 --> 00:26:04.230 Tim Snyder: Because you see when we say that something else is free. 161 00:26:04.770 --> 00:26:17.760 Tim Snyder: What we're doing is we're not talking about freedom for people receiving the language of freedom to abstractions, and this has costs so, for example, think about our elections. 162 00:26:18.300 --> 00:26:32.550 Tim Snyder: Since 2010 and basically as a general principle corporations have the right to take part in our elections corporations actually have more rights in our elections than individual human beings should be, and we should. 163 00:26:32.850 --> 00:26:42.390 Tim Snyder: Have and when you think about it, of course, that's absurd right, but it is very much the case or think about the example that I just gave which is health. 164 00:26:43.140 --> 00:26:51.750 Tim Snyder: In in the health sphere, the private equity firms who own the hospitals enjoy human rights in a way that patients do not. 165 00:26:52.230 --> 00:26:59.580 Tim Snyder: Patients do not have a human right to health, which I believe is a mistake or look, for example at conflicts in Michigan. 166 00:27:00.060 --> 00:27:10.470 Tim Snyder: Which is shows the future of the United States in many ways, about water, if you see something as basic to human human survival existence as water. 167 00:27:11.280 --> 00:27:20.520 Tim Snyder: To corporations you're saying corporations right to be free, is more important than a human right, for example, to have air or water or something basic like that. 168 00:27:21.270 --> 00:27:25.200 Tim Snyder: But the problem with talking about the free market goes even deeper than that. 169 00:27:25.710 --> 00:27:34.620 Tim Snyder: When you when people talk about the free market, they usually have the idea that the free market is something which brings about democracy. 170 00:27:35.070 --> 00:27:49.620 Tim Snyder: That capitalism and democracy somehow go together, this is a dangerous idea it's basically an authoritarian idea, because if you think that freedom and democracy are brought to you by some instance. 171 00:27:50.190 --> 00:27:57.570 Tim Snyder: By some institution by some abstraction by something which is not a human then you're basically saying i'm just along for the ride. 172 00:27:58.170 --> 00:28:08.040 Tim Snyder: And if you're saying i'm just along for the ride you're saying i'm not a free person i'm not demanding my freedom, I have delegated my freedom to this other thing. 173 00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:17.460 Tim Snyder: This market which is going to bring a lot across my democracy, now I mean as an empirical question the relationship between capitalism and democracy is very vexed. 174 00:28:17.760 --> 00:28:24.570 Tim Snyder: Look at China, for example, but that's not really what I have in mind what I have in mind to something more basic and more and more moral, frankly, which is that. 175 00:28:24.870 --> 00:28:29.730 Tim Snyder: If you want to be a free person, that means that you're the one who's bringing about your own freedom. 176 00:28:29.910 --> 00:28:41.790 Tim Snyder: Not the free market not anything else there's no magic out there there's no there's no there's no invisible hand which is going to bring you these things, it has to be your visible hands that bring you these things and one more point. 177 00:28:42.450 --> 00:28:45.990 Tim Snyder: If we if we if we treat the free market as a substitute for human freedom. 178 00:28:46.440 --> 00:28:54.900 Tim Snyder: We end up with consequences which tend to undo human freedom right, for example, radical inequality which blocks social mobility. 179 00:28:55.260 --> 00:29:02.130 Tim Snyder: and social mobility, of course, is another word for the American dream and the American dream is a way of being free, namely. 180 00:29:02.370 --> 00:29:18.900 Tim Snyder: You think that you can see a future which is better than the present you think your own choices can bring it about right if we allow severe inequality in our country, as we have done in the last 40 years or so that blocks the American dream and blocks freedom in the sense of mobility. 181 00:29:20.010 --> 00:29:30.390 Tim Snyder: Okay Now let me try to point to a second displacement a second way that we talk about freedom or use the word free. 182 00:29:30.780 --> 00:29:40.140 Tim Snyder: which I think is a mistake and and by these critiques i'm, of course, meaning to go deep into our everyday practice. 183 00:29:40.710 --> 00:29:45.600 Tim Snyder: deep into our every way thinking deep into our every every day way of speaking because. 184 00:29:45.900 --> 00:29:53.310 Tim Snyder: If we are not a free country there's something wrong with the way we're competing ourselves there's something wrong with the way we're talking there's something wrong with the way we're thinking. 185 00:29:53.640 --> 00:30:01.770 Tim Snyder: And the way to get at this is by way of of critique right, not by not by humoring us not by talking about how wonderful, we are, and so on. 186 00:30:02.130 --> 00:30:08.400 Tim Snyder: But by by critique and critique means noticing the habits noticing the things that we take for granted, so. 187 00:30:08.940 --> 00:30:13.830 Tim Snyder: I think I think the second one might be even more radical than the first one, the second one, I want to go after is free speech. 188 00:30:14.520 --> 00:30:28.680 Tim Snyder: So I mean just to be clear, I believe in freedom of speech that's that's essential to me and it absolutely uncontested for me, but the the phrase that I worried about here is the phrase free. 189 00:30:29.100 --> 00:30:39.180 Tim Snyder: speech, and the reason why worry about free speech is that it's not the speech that's free it's the speaker that's free. 190 00:30:39.690 --> 00:30:52.830 Tim Snyder: Now, this might seem like a subtle distinction, but it has in our in our current world and our 21st century world this distinction has huge consequences, why because. 191 00:30:53.370 --> 00:31:11.010 Tim Snyder: The vast vast vast majority of utterances in our world are not human at all the percentage of communication, which takes place now in our world, which is human, as opposed to digital is tiny. 192 00:31:11.550 --> 00:31:23.970 Tim Snyder: Which means that when we talk about free speech and don't talk about free speakers, we very quickly find ourselves in disputes that are not really about human beings. 193 00:31:24.330 --> 00:31:34.950 Tim Snyder: That are really about venue for algorithms So the question about, for example, whether Mr trump's of you on Twitter or not is not really a free speech question. 194 00:31:35.280 --> 00:31:43.200 Tim Snyder: it's a question about what algorithms are doing, which is not the same thing at all, and this is, and this is we're thinking about um. 195 00:31:43.830 --> 00:31:48.990 Tim Snyder: So there's a there's a there's a deep value question under this which I, which I want to stress. 196 00:31:49.380 --> 00:31:53.550 Tim Snyder: Often, when we talk about free speech and this is a sign of our decay and assign of our problems. 197 00:31:53.820 --> 00:32:04.440 Tim Snyder: we're talking about free speech, we mean like my ability to annoy you your ability to annoy me right, my my right to have some kind of emotional you know, or even guttural reaction to things and. 198 00:32:04.770 --> 00:32:09.270 Tim Snyder: My right to make you hear it right, but that's not really what free speech is about. 199 00:32:10.020 --> 00:32:20.280 Tim Snyder: I mean, free speech, of course, includes that but free speech has a human purpose or really has to human purposes purposes, by the way, which were understood by the framers when they wrote the first amendment. 200 00:32:20.970 --> 00:32:32.670 Tim Snyder: Those two purposes those two values are truth and risk the essence of free speech is telling a risky truth, the essence of a citizen. 201 00:32:33.270 --> 00:32:43.410 Tim Snyder: performing free speech is putting himself or herself at risk by telling the truth, which of course is what the declaration of independence was it was an example of. 202 00:32:43.710 --> 00:32:56.310 Tim Snyder: risky truth or to appeal to a different intuition, when we think of free speech and we remember pre speakers who do we remember we don't remember the people who are momentarily annoyed. 203 00:32:56.910 --> 00:33:06.660 Tim Snyder: We don't remember the people you know who who who came to you know came to a campus or came to a to some other venue to take them to provocative those people are going to be quickly forgotten. 204 00:33:07.050 --> 00:33:19.980 Tim Snyder: The people who remember are the sorts of need, since the people remember are the harvest the people who spoke the truth to power that's the point of free speech and the reason why I stress this, is that we should remember. 205 00:33:20.460 --> 00:33:27.060 Tim Snyder: The machines, the algorithms they don't have any values truth doesn't mean anything to them. 206 00:33:28.110 --> 00:33:37.020 Tim Snyder: They don't take any risks, the concept of risk doesn't mean anything, so if we, the risk is that if we just talk about free speech. 207 00:33:37.590 --> 00:33:45.810 Tim Snyder: and forget about the free speaker, we then end up seeing ourselves, and we become less free creatures than we might have been. 208 00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:52.320 Tim Snyder: Otherwise now once again I want to, I want to push this argument, a little bit further. 209 00:33:52.920 --> 00:33:58.920 Tim Snyder: Because the question of whether we can become a free country has a lot to do. 210 00:33:59.280 --> 00:34:09.780 Tim Snyder: Has deeply to do with the question of how we comport ourselves where we spend our time how much time we spend in front of a screen and what we're doing in front of that screen. 211 00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:17.520 Tim Snyder: The average American depend on what's dependent upon which study you look at spends more than 10 hours a day, sometimes much more than 10 hours a day. 212 00:34:18.150 --> 00:34:28.590 Tim Snyder: depending upon the study looking at a screen and the the screens, or at least certain parts of what we see on screens are deliberately designed. 213 00:34:28.950 --> 00:34:37.680 Tim Snyder: To make us less free as human beings now again that you know that's again i'm running against our intuitions you know, we want to think that. 214 00:34:38.010 --> 00:34:43.200 Tim Snyder: When i'm moving the mouse or you know when i'm clicking like or when i'm taking part in some ab test. 215 00:34:43.740 --> 00:34:47.550 Tim Snyder: i'm free I mean certainly Facebook would like for you to believe that. 216 00:34:47.970 --> 00:34:57.900 Tim Snyder: But the thing about this is that that reduces freedom down to our immediate impulses it reduces our freedom, down to like the smallest possible bit of attention. 217 00:34:58.350 --> 00:35:12.510 Tim Snyder: Which which which can be extracted from us, so let me just say a word about this before it is the last thing I want to say before I move on to some recommendations about how we might make matters better so when we spend time on social media. 218 00:35:13.110 --> 00:35:23.580 Tim Snyder: As we have done so much since 2010 and as especially we did in 2020 we are subjecting ourselves to a process which is deliberately designed. 219 00:35:23.850 --> 00:35:33.510 Tim Snyder: To make us less free, and this is true for everyone around the world, of course, but it's particularly true for Americans because we've been at this longer than anyone else. 220 00:35:33.720 --> 00:35:46.800 Tim Snyder: And we have the ideology, which makes it seem like staring at the screen that social media is actually free right, where we have we have the deepest problem where, to put it slightly more drastically when it comes to social media. 221 00:35:47.310 --> 00:35:54.540 Tim Snyder: The rest of the world looks at us as a laboratory rats and I want to stay with that metaphor for a minute because it's quite appropriate. 222 00:35:55.260 --> 00:36:09.960 Tim Snyder: What social media does to us has four steps, there are four steps of our of our deliberate of our deliberate disablement bye bye bye bye with social media and the first of them is precisely making lab rats of us. 223 00:36:10.470 --> 00:36:17.790 Tim Snyder: it's it's putting us in a state of experimental isolation when we're on social media we're separated physically. 224 00:36:18.300 --> 00:36:28.620 Tim Snyder: sincerely were separated in every possible way from other human beings, and this is important, because what the behaviorists know. 225 00:36:29.430 --> 00:36:37.170 Tim Snyder: What the people who organize these kinds of experience know what the people who organize advertisement know. 226 00:36:37.650 --> 00:36:48.540 Tim Snyder: What the people who organize interrogations know is that once you get somebody alone they're very vulnerable to something which is called intermittent reinforcement. 227 00:36:49.380 --> 00:36:57.840 Tim Snyder: intermittent reinforcement is when over and over again you're giving something that you like, but then randomly you're giving something that you don't like. 228 00:36:58.530 --> 00:37:05.460 Tim Snyder: Which is the experience of social media you're given this stuff that makes you feel good, but every once in a while you're giving something that makes you afraid. 229 00:37:05.790 --> 00:37:17.130 Tim Snyder: or anxious and that's deliberate that's baked in that's part of the package that's not an accident that's that intermittent reinforcement is meant to keep you online for as long as possible. 230 00:37:17.940 --> 00:37:27.870 Tim Snyder: As a result of this experience, you find yourself, you find your own views confirmed right the things that you think the things that you fear or repeated back to you. 231 00:37:28.230 --> 00:37:41.160 Tim Snyder: you're subject to something which the specialist call confirmation bias you become more of yourself to the point of becoming a caricature of yourself right, and then the certain point you do something in the real world. 232 00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:54.810 Tim Snyder: Based upon the things that have happened to you online so, for example, you vote on the basis of things that you think you know or feel because of because of social media you repeat a lie, or a big lie. 233 00:37:55.650 --> 00:37:58.710 Tim Snyder: That has nothing to do with your personal experience or your own thoughts. 234 00:37:59.130 --> 00:38:08.100 Tim Snyder: You do something more dramatic you storm the Capitol building the United States, again, not on the basis of anything you think or you know, but on the basis of how you've been played. 235 00:38:08.430 --> 00:38:16.110 Tim Snyder: By the algorithms now to repeat these tricks which i've decided to you are designed to make you less free. 236 00:38:16.560 --> 00:38:24.780 Tim Snyder: They are the same tricks that are used in advertising the same tricks that are used an interrogation, but they are now used on a Titanic scale. 237 00:38:25.260 --> 00:38:33.990 Tim Snyder: By non human entities by algorithms right, why does this seem normal to us why does this fracturing of our attention span. 238 00:38:34.860 --> 00:38:42.960 Tim Snyder: What, why does this polarization of us why does this beast utilization of us because that's what it amounts to why does that seemed normal. 239 00:38:43.530 --> 00:38:48.480 Tim Snyder: It only seems normal because of our own ideology about the free market. 240 00:38:48.900 --> 00:39:05.430 Tim Snyder: The the evolution of us as citizens into viewers of targeted advertisements is only really possible because of the notion of the free market, because we accept that freedom should be attached to the market and not to ourselves. 241 00:39:05.730 --> 00:39:16.170 Tim Snyder: So these two displacements that i'm talking about quote unquote free market quote unquote free speech come together in that particular way right, so this then. 242 00:39:16.560 --> 00:39:35.940 Tim Snyder: defines the challenge and it's a very basic challenge the challenges that humans, citizens have to claim freedom for themselves, freedom is for citizens, freedom is for humans and to repeat what I said at the beginning, saying this. 243 00:39:36.960 --> 00:39:48.300 Tim Snyder: is very important, claiming freedom for humans not allowing few freedom to slip by way of our mental habits and our verbal habits. 244 00:39:48.600 --> 00:40:07.500 Tim Snyder: towards abstractions towards non human entities speaking articulately and clearly about what freedom attaches or, rather, to whom to whom freedom attaches to humans is itself very important that's how we use the language determines what we claim. 245 00:40:12.060 --> 00:40:23.760 Tim Snyder: don't claim freedom, but instead by way of how we talk, except that except that freedom as a matter of that freedom is a matter of of. 246 00:40:24.720 --> 00:40:34.680 Tim Snyder: Of of of abstractions right, then we are submitting and I think it's important to insist on that, then we're then we're submitting. 247 00:40:35.310 --> 00:40:47.460 Tim Snyder: If we say that it's not us who are free, but it's the market it's it's it's speech it's some other abstraction that's the beginning of submission, when we talk like that we're beginning to submit. 248 00:40:47.880 --> 00:40:55.980 Tim Snyder: Freedom only really belongs to people or to thinking creatures it doesn't belong to other entities it doesn't belong down over them or firms. 249 00:40:56.370 --> 00:41:04.980 Tim Snyder: And this, of course, brings me to the home with the title of my talk, which is that okay if that's true we couldn't really say that America can be a free country. 250 00:41:05.490 --> 00:41:15.930 Tim Snyder: Because freedom only attaches to people, but what we could have as a country which creates the conditions for free people right, we could have a country. 251 00:41:16.200 --> 00:41:28.170 Tim Snyder: If we believe in freedom, if we claim freedom, we could have a country which creates the conditions much better than it does now for the for the development of freedom among. 252 00:41:28.590 --> 00:41:46.620 Tim Snyder: People Okay, so what then would those structures be what then would those structures feel like and look like i'm going to give just i'm going to give five examples and then say a very brief sort of conclusion and then we'll have time to talk about this so. 253 00:41:48.510 --> 00:41:57.690 Tim Snyder: The first, the first level of structure we've already talked about and i've done what I can about it this afternoon with you, the first level of structure is normative. 254 00:41:58.140 --> 00:42:12.570 Tim Snyder: The first level of structure is insisting that freedom is the highest human value and it's not something we just have to insist upon it's something we can pretty easily reason our way forward to, and the reasoning goes like this. 255 00:42:13.290 --> 00:42:24.390 Tim Snyder: I have values, you have values we all have different values, not only we have different values, our values contradict they have to contradict. 256 00:42:24.750 --> 00:42:36.450 Tim Snyder: Not just my values with your values, but my values with my values and your values with your values right, so you probably think that loyalty, is a good thing that's a value. 257 00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:47.220 Tim Snyder: You probably think that honesty is a good thing that's a value, nevertheless, you probably way the occasions when you speak the the full truth to your friends. 258 00:42:47.610 --> 00:42:52.980 Tim Snyder: that's because you're constantly arbitrating among values that's what a free person does. 259 00:42:53.550 --> 00:43:04.410 Tim Snyder: And the reason why freedom is the highest value is that what freedom is is the ability to adjudicate among values it's the ability to see yourself as one person, among other people. 260 00:43:04.650 --> 00:43:18.300 Tim Snyder: The ability to see your values in their relationship to one another and in their relationship to the values of other so it's not that hard to reason our way to the idea that freedom should be the highest value that's one kind of structure. 261 00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:27.780 Tim Snyder: A second kind of structure is what I would call sovereignty becoming a sovereign human being. 262 00:43:28.200 --> 00:43:37.980 Tim Snyder: By which I mean the education in the broadest sense of children and young people so that as best as we can. 263 00:43:38.310 --> 00:43:48.720 Tim Snyder: We allow them to develop the capacities, which which enable them to be as free as possible, so this is an argument for investing more in young people. 264 00:43:49.020 --> 00:44:04.440 Tim Snyder: But, not just in the financial sense also in a moral and in a political sense that the first five years of life, I think, are absolutely crucial for whether you end up having free citizens free people in your country. 265 00:44:04.950 --> 00:44:11.070 Tim Snyder: Like sovereignty, I mean that, when someone grows up it's not just a matter of attaining a certain age. 266 00:44:11.310 --> 00:44:25.920 Tim Snyder: it's a matter of having learned things in the right way at the right time, such that they are the best adjudicator they could possibly be the best evaluator they could possibly be right, so they feel themselves to be confident in the way that we would like free people. 267 00:44:26.340 --> 00:44:36.540 Tim Snyder: To be a third structure that we need for freedom is mobility in the broadest sense, and, of course, that means simple things like. 268 00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:51.630 Tim Snyder: A mobile workforce, like the ability to get a job coming out of college the ability not to have too much debt coming out of college, but it also means something broader it means something like the American dream and in here, I just have to say a word about history. 269 00:44:52.830 --> 00:44:56.280 Tim Snyder: The American dream has two sides. 270 00:44:57.660 --> 00:45:09.450 Tim Snyder: One of them is unsustainable and one of them is possible one version of the American dream would be go West young man one version of the American dream is the frontier. 271 00:45:10.140 --> 00:45:14.400 Tim Snyder: One version, the American dream is when you were out one place, you can go to another place. 272 00:45:14.790 --> 00:45:26.400 Tim Snyder: And that, of course, has its attractions it's a it's a very it's a central part of our history, but it's now unsustainable, not just physically unsustainable but it's also morally. 273 00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:32.280 Tim Snyder: unsustainable, so the question, then the hard question, if you want to be a democracy now is. 274 00:45:32.700 --> 00:45:41.010 Tim Snyder: What do you do after that kind of frontier experience and there's an answer that question and the answer that question is social mobility. 275 00:45:41.670 --> 00:45:49.830 Tim Snyder: The American dream, can also be social mobility, it can do the idea that my children's lives will be more interesting in my life. 276 00:45:50.160 --> 00:45:59.970 Tim Snyder: My children will have opportunities that I didn't have rather than the other way around that's a version of the American dream that's that's possible but it requires us into the future. 277 00:46:00.360 --> 00:46:06.600 Tim Snyder: Which is the other thing I want to say about mobility mobility, you know the American dream involves not just place, but time. 278 00:46:07.410 --> 00:46:18.240 Tim Snyder: involves the future, and so in the future, cannot be filled with catastrophe right in order for there to be mobility to have a sense of the future, to have an American dream. 279 00:46:18.660 --> 00:46:29.130 Tim Snyder: You have to get your mind around and your policy tools around global warming right global warming isn't just about ecology it's not just about the world of course it's about the world. 280 00:46:29.430 --> 00:46:40.680 Tim Snyder: it's also about the ability of humans Americans to look out into the decades and the centuries ahead and think yeah things could be different and also better. 281 00:46:41.100 --> 00:46:56.760 Tim Snyder: And so far as there's a catastrophe which is closing down on us, it makes it very hard for us to have that sense of mobility, a final structure and all the structures, I hope, i've already hinted out in the body of the lecture final structure is factuality. 282 00:46:57.900 --> 00:47:04.680 Tim Snyder: A human value is truth but truth doesn't arise on its own free people need truth. 283 00:47:05.160 --> 00:47:10.950 Tim Snyder: Because it's only on it's only with the help of truth that you can challenge those who are more powerful than you are. 284 00:47:11.190 --> 00:47:18.840 Tim Snyder: If they're if you don't believe in truth, you don't have access to factuality you will always lose out to speckled took always lose out to spectacle. 285 00:47:19.530 --> 00:47:21.510 Tim Snyder: You know the even the Greeks understood this. 286 00:47:21.960 --> 00:47:35.100 Tim Snyder: It means that that means that we have to not only value truth, but we have to support the institutions which produce truth, which means, above all, supporting investigative journalism and and and local reporting. 287 00:47:35.880 --> 00:47:41.280 Tim Snyder: And then the final structure is the one that that Stephen President row started by mentioning. 288 00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:57.510 Tim Snyder: Which is democracy again a word that we use an awful lot but a structure that we that could very much stand some improving in this country, but if we had a much more democratic democracy, one with less money, less gerrymandering. 289 00:47:58.200 --> 00:48:04.800 Tim Snyder: shorter political seasons and so on, one with one with no voter suppression, a democracy. 290 00:48:05.310 --> 00:48:13.590 Tim Snyder: In bodies, a number of these values that i've been tested have to do with freedom a democracy is a place where we make decisions on the basis of facts. 291 00:48:13.950 --> 00:48:20.610 Tim Snyder: A democracy is a place where we make decisions in time, based upon the past looking towards the future. 292 00:48:21.090 --> 00:48:30.930 Tim Snyder: Voting is the act of a sovereign person, the person who is entrusted to adjudicate values one's own in those in those and those of others. 293 00:48:31.530 --> 00:48:40.620 Tim Snyder: Alright, so those are the basic structures that I think America would need in order to become a free country or more articulately put or, more accurately, put. 294 00:48:41.010 --> 00:48:49.020 Tim Snyder: A country which favors the free development of its own people and in making this argument i'm going to close, where I began. 295 00:48:49.410 --> 00:48:55.920 Tim Snyder: i'm aware that i'm trying to bring some things together, but the things i'm trying to bring together, I believe belong together. 296 00:48:56.460 --> 00:49:08.130 Tim Snyder: The paradox of freedom that it's about individuals but individuals have to be created thanks to others is built into freedom, there is no way around that. 297 00:49:08.520 --> 00:49:20.070 Tim Snyder: And if that's true, we have to accept, and we should accept because it's a nice idea we should accept that we should need a little bit less solitude and a little bit more solidarity. 298 00:49:20.520 --> 00:49:29.220 Tim Snyder: And if we can accept that we might also see that, as I said at the very beginning, some of the ways that we like to talk about for you. 299 00:49:30.030 --> 00:49:39.390 Tim Snyder: might be much more easily reconcilable than we've thought to some of the things that we wanted to do to ensure that we have a better future, thank you very much for your attention. 300 00:49:41.430 --> 00:49:48.930 Steve Hanson: Thank you so much, Tim I know everyone online is just buzzing with ideas and stimulated so much by that incredible lecture. 301 00:49:49.800 --> 00:49:58.890 Steve Hanson: We have quite a number of questions and you've generously agreed to answer some of them will see what we can get through, and my apologies, in advance to anyone who has a question in line that I don't get to. 302 00:49:59.490 --> 00:50:04.080 Steve Hanson: The first one is from Alex who says hello, Professor snyder thanks for doing this lecture. 303 00:50:04.590 --> 00:50:13.620 Steve Hanson: My question is, how do we find the pathway from the catastrophe, we seem to be headed toward, which is actually very you typed this before you concluded, so I think he anticipated. 304 00:50:14.220 --> 00:50:29.580 Steve Hanson: We had just the election of buying them will magically fix the problems of trump is and the influence of cyber more Russia cyberwar continues to wreak havoc the cult of trump and that conspiracy mindset is here to stay, for a while I believe so, how do we break the cycle. 305 00:50:32.460 --> 00:50:39.120 Tim Snyder: Okay, so it seems the catastrophe that Alex has in mind is is a political one, I mean there are a lot of catastrophes, we could be cataloguing through. 306 00:50:39.660 --> 00:50:50.100 Tim Snyder: I I, I want to appreciate that challenge, rather than pretend that there's an easy answer to it, I mean, because I think contained in that question is. 307 00:50:50.580 --> 00:51:03.360 Tim Snyder: Is is basically the right approach, namely that we have to see this as as as a question not of years but but uh but of decades right, so it is correct that the election of. 308 00:51:03.930 --> 00:51:12.420 Tim Snyder: Let me put it this way it's good that the person who won the office when the office of President i'd states is the President i'd states that's a that's a good thing. 309 00:51:12.780 --> 00:51:21.540 Tim Snyder: that's a start, I agree with Alex that does not automatically solve everything but let's let's at least accept that it's much better than other possible. 310 00:51:22.170 --> 00:51:31.920 Tim Snyder: outcomes, I think I mean as as President would kind of have to say I think the way to define the problem that I was referring to is as a big lie. 311 00:51:32.730 --> 00:51:41.880 Tim Snyder: And that's and we know something about big lies, we know the big lies can survive the person who articulated them right, so the famous example is Germany. 312 00:51:42.300 --> 00:51:54.330 Tim Snyder: The big lie in Germany was that was a stab in the back in the First World War, the idea that JEREMY didn't really lose the war but Jews and Socialists stabbed us in the back on the homefront to lie they really lost the war. 313 00:51:55.080 --> 00:52:00.750 Tim Snyder: But that the people articulated that lie we're germany's high commanders 1918 and some other people. 314 00:52:01.230 --> 00:52:08.310 Tim Snyder: The person who wrote that line of power was Hitler 15 years later right, so what I worry about is the is the durability of the lie. 315 00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:14.760 Tim Snyder: And I think the lie is actually more important than trump at this point, and so I think what part of what has to be done. 316 00:52:15.060 --> 00:52:25.650 Tim Snyder: is to treat the lie itself as unacceptable and I think it's very positive that the term big lie has caught on, I think that, like that puts the stigma in the right place. 317 00:52:26.550 --> 00:52:32.550 Tim Snyder: At the at the level of individuals, I think it's very important to calmly talk about these presidential elections. 318 00:52:33.180 --> 00:52:40.080 Tim Snyder: with conviction for a very long time at the level of institutions i'm just going to point to something I said, towards the end. 319 00:52:40.590 --> 00:52:50.040 Tim Snyder: it's it at the level of institutions, we need to redirect very considerable resources from social media towards a local news. 320 00:52:50.520 --> 00:53:00.360 Tim Snyder: Not because that will immediately get people not to believe in the things they believe in, but because that's, the only way to rebuild a kind of fabric of everyday reality and trust. 321 00:53:00.810 --> 00:53:07.500 Tim Snyder: And it's that absence of everyday reality and trust which makes conspiracies like all kinds of distant thinking. 322 00:53:07.860 --> 00:53:16.590 Tim Snyder: more attractive so i'm accepting the business, a challenge which is going to take a lot, which has to be approached from a number of different angles and it's not easy it's important Thank you. 323 00:53:17.580 --> 00:53:25.710 Steve Hanson: So I think that leads very neatly into the next question from Dan dean's it he writes social media has strengthened our human proclivity for tribalism. 324 00:53:26.100 --> 00:53:30.450 Steve Hanson: Historically, Americans and push back against this impulse with the public, sharing of information. 325 00:53:30.780 --> 00:53:45.360 Steve Hanson: But today, social media strengthens tribalism by reinforcing quote unquote alternative facts within the in group, so how can we have a unified America that embraces the value of freedom for all he writes with social media constantly dividing us into the competing tribes. 326 00:53:46.440 --> 00:53:56.370 Tim Snyder: yeah so again, I mean that the premise is very much true and I think the word tribalism is quite appropriate I think there's a there's a fun there's a fundamental. 327 00:53:57.060 --> 00:54:06.780 Tim Snyder: there's a fundamental I mean you know Steve will remember this from vapor you know there's this fun fundamental difference between clan based and rule based societies. 328 00:54:07.200 --> 00:54:12.660 Tim Snyder: And a clan based society doesn't depend upon factuality it depends upon charisma. 329 00:54:12.930 --> 00:54:23.460 Tim Snyder: Right, it depends, you know you're the leader, the leader is going to make the whether the leader is going to have some kind of success, and maybe he's going to share the booty with you, or maybe he's not he's an unpredictable leader who knows. 330 00:54:24.750 --> 00:54:27.420 Tim Snyder: there's that kind of society, and then there you know, then there's the. 331 00:54:27.960 --> 00:54:33.660 Tim Snyder: Then there were the, there is the i'm not afraid of the word, there is the enlightened form of politics, which says. 332 00:54:34.020 --> 00:54:41.040 Tim Snyder: We can all be reasonable, I mean we know there are limits stories and ability or reason ability, has to be has to be sometimes taught. 333 00:54:41.460 --> 00:54:51.300 Tim Snyder: We need to, we need to, we need to kind of, we need to sometimes bring it out when from the other, but we can try to be reasonable and the way we can be reasonable, is by accepting it there's a world of facts. 334 00:54:51.750 --> 00:54:57.570 Tim Snyder: around us right that's the starting point I realized as the starting point of question to i'm just going to put in a slightly different way. 335 00:54:58.230 --> 00:55:05.340 Tim Snyder: I think it's normal that we have different values and good and it's it's it's totally normal that we have different emotional reactions to things. 336 00:55:05.880 --> 00:55:14.370 Tim Snyder: it's when we don't have the the common set of facts that a republic becomes impossible and the Republic literally means a common thing. 337 00:55:14.730 --> 00:55:26.370 Tim Snyder: And if there isn't a common set of factual knowledge and if there isn't a common belief that there are facts I think a republic, then becomes impossible so part of the answer for me is moral. 338 00:55:27.090 --> 00:55:31.410 Tim Snyder: And this is, you know, this is partly a challenge to the left, I mean some of the things. 339 00:55:32.190 --> 00:55:38.790 Tim Snyder: Not everything which right which has gone wrong comes in the left, but there are some things where I do think a certain amount of. 340 00:55:39.420 --> 00:55:47.820 Tim Snyder: rethinking is an order and one of them is this idea of actuality you know that that I think the notion on some part in some parts of the Left that. 341 00:55:48.210 --> 00:55:59.820 Tim Snyder: We liberate ourselves by constantly finding different ways to run away from the horizon of truth, I think that's proven to be simply incorrect I think it's proven to be wrong frankly. 342 00:56:00.870 --> 00:56:06.000 Tim Snyder: And so I think the first thing we have to do is, we have to say I mean it sounds naive it's one of these things that sounds like you say well look. 343 00:56:06.330 --> 00:56:13.260 Tim Snyder: I believe in the horizon of truth, I believe, in pursuing the horizon of truth i'm never going to get there, but I believe that that is the right pursuit. 344 00:56:13.530 --> 00:56:21.840 Tim Snyder: With us the correct pursuit right, you have to be willing to say things I think like that, and then then there's the institutional answer which is, and this is one thing, going back to alex's question. 345 00:56:22.680 --> 00:56:29.100 Tim Snyder: which I think is missing from the bottom up approach so far right there have been some I mean it there have actually been some pretty impressive. 346 00:56:29.430 --> 00:56:34.260 Tim Snyder: moon shots so far from the administration, but this has been missing. 347 00:56:34.770 --> 00:56:48.780 Tim Snyder: This question of factuality, we also need a, we need a factuality moonshot we need something which takes huge amounts of money and uses it to restore local news in the US most the United States territorially right now is a news desert. 348 00:56:49.320 --> 00:57:01.290 Tim Snyder: Most counties in the US, do not have a reporter writing about basic things like is everybody corrupt is there, mercury in the water right these basic things, and when you when you don't have that level. 349 00:57:01.800 --> 00:57:07.470 Tim Snyder: Of the checks you can't have a democracy and we don't have that level of checks, also been going, this is the point of both questions the way. 350 00:57:07.680 --> 00:57:14.670 Tim Snyder: We don't have those checks and it's much easier to be tribal, because if we don't like you know you might be republican I might be a democrat, or whatever. 351 00:57:14.940 --> 00:57:20.010 Tim Snyder: We might have different opinions about Washington, but if we don't have the facts about where there's mercury in our water. 352 00:57:20.310 --> 00:57:28.410 Tim Snyder: Then we really have nothing in common there's nothing to talk about right so that that fact production, I think it's like that's the next political big project that we need. 353 00:57:31.080 --> 00:57:33.300 Steve Hanson: So the next question is from my. 354 00:57:34.320 --> 00:57:43.170 Steve Hanson: Last class each who asks, in your opinion, how does the prevalence of solitude as opposed to solidarity in the American concept of freedom. 355 00:57:43.620 --> 00:57:48.000 Steve Hanson: influence the American body politic as well as the American notion of the nation state. 356 00:57:48.360 --> 00:58:00.540 Steve Hanson: Given that both are dependent on the notion of solidarity, you know which we under emphasize, and I think implicit in that as a question about how you rebuild a conception of American identity when solidarity sort of absent from the freedom lexicon. 357 00:58:01.470 --> 00:58:01.890 yeah. 358 00:58:03.120 --> 00:58:13.140 Tim Snyder: No that's that's a that's a really certainly wonderful question because it gets it gets it gets precisely to this tension, which I think is, which I think is unavoidable, I mean, I think. 359 00:58:13.920 --> 00:58:23.400 Tim Snyder: it's as a practical matter in the US we're not going to be able to formulate big political projects on any other basis in the basis of freedom. 360 00:58:24.210 --> 00:58:35.820 Tim Snyder: And I also happen to think I mean I happen to think that that's also ethically right i've been I believe the argument that I made you know about it being the highest highest value. 361 00:58:36.330 --> 00:58:49.590 Tim Snyder: So that's you know that's one side of the issue, and then the other side of the issue is how do you get out, what do you do about the solitude right, what do you, what do you do and people I mean people are when people are lonely and this goes back to tribalism. 362 00:58:50.910 --> 00:59:01.830 Tim Snyder: it's not that they just stay by themselves it's that they lurched towards different kinds of activities right they they lurch towards the things which are which seemed to be most. 363 00:59:02.250 --> 00:59:11.580 Tim Snyder: elemental so a classic example of this is Union membership and racism, when you break down unions i'm talking about Labor unions now right. 364 00:59:11.970 --> 00:59:23.880 Tim Snyder: When you break down Labor unions you're breaking down one form of human association and us in the US historical setting one form association which actually got white people and black people together. 365 00:59:24.480 --> 00:59:29.670 Tim Snyder: If you break down unions and there's a bunch of research about this, you end up with people who are lonely or. 366 00:59:30.150 --> 00:59:34.380 Tim Snyder: But you also end up with people who are more likely to express racist attitudes right and so. 367 00:59:34.650 --> 00:59:42.510 Tim Snyder: that's an example of how you know it's not that you give up on call activities it's that you, you fall into a different kind of collectivity a more abstract one. 368 00:59:43.320 --> 00:59:53.610 Tim Snyder: Because, at the end of the racial one is pretty it's pretty it's pretty abstract, as opposed to like these are the people I work with these people I bargain with their in some sense on on my on my side right. 369 00:59:54.000 --> 01:00:06.780 Tim Snyder: And I mean, so I mean racism racism and alienation go, I mean they're they're very strong historical roots of American racism, of course, as well, but the alienation in front of the computer. 370 01:00:07.290 --> 01:00:15.600 Tim Snyder: contributes to racism, because, because the social media i'm afraid I mean it's sad but they pick out when you're a racist right, you may not know. 371 01:00:15.930 --> 01:00:25.920 Tim Snyder: Racist you may deny you're a racist I mean America is in this funny point where we like we admit there's racism, but we're a little bit tougher on we have trouble seeing actual racist there's racism, but no racist. 372 01:00:26.580 --> 01:00:36.000 Tim Snyder: But that social media is a ruthless in this way it can tell if you're racist and it picks on that it pulls on that it makes you more than that so and that's another way, that being alone alone with the computer. 373 01:00:36.360 --> 01:00:42.780 Tim Snyder: Is kind of artificial laboratory setting leads to less leads to less solidarity, so I mean part of the argument for me my is. 374 01:00:43.020 --> 01:00:55.050 Tim Snyder: Is is making the argument that like solidarity isn't the opposite of freedom that solidarity actually has to do with freedom and there's you know there's a powerful historical example of this in Poland in 1980 1981. 375 01:00:55.470 --> 01:01:03.630 Tim Snyder: That might be worth might be worth necessitating and then I mean and another another another way to think about it is that once you start. 376 01:01:04.140 --> 01:01:09.480 Tim Snyder: getting a little bit of momentum going right like if you can get Labor Union membership up from 6% to 12%. 377 01:01:09.930 --> 01:01:22.320 Tim Snyder: If you could get health care, you know in this country into you know into a situation where everybody has access, then the argument starts to make more sense, because then people realize a heart, I actually do feel better in the setting that I did before. 378 01:01:24.060 --> 01:01:35.610 Steve Hanson: Oh it's perfect and there were a couple of questions from people asking about racism, so I think you've answered those directly as well, and then tempted to skip ahead to a person who asked what the influence of leisure kolakowski is on your thinking. 379 01:01:36.660 --> 01:01:42.330 Steve Hanson: That maybe we can keep that and just keep that in mind, if you want to sneak it in somewhere because it's not actually the next one in line. 380 01:01:43.020 --> 01:01:53.640 Steve Hanson: So here's Scott, who asks how do you explain it may be related, how do you explain the phenomenon and alarming expensive right wing white self identified Christian america's embrace of bloody murder Putin. 381 01:01:53.910 --> 01:02:08.190 Steve Hanson: and Russia is the seeming avatars of white rule and white support superiority and save here's a quote unquote freedom when both stand almost preeminent as symbols of oppression to the rest of the Western world and i'll leave it at that goes on, but I think that's the crux of the question. 382 01:02:10.020 --> 01:02:14.670 Tim Snyder: yeah I mean, I mean the okay i'll start i'll start with Putin. 383 01:02:16.170 --> 01:02:23.070 Tim Snyder: I mean there's that there's a very there's a necessary condition here, which is the shooting himself is is is white right, I mean, obviously. 384 01:02:23.370 --> 01:02:29.880 Tim Snyder: race in Russia is not the same thing as race in America and you talk about white person in America, you know it's actually the same thing socially in other countries, but. 385 01:02:30.810 --> 01:02:36.510 Tim Snyder: If I mean just to make it obvious point of Putin were an African leader, this would not be happening right, I mean from. 386 01:02:36.750 --> 01:02:42.990 Tim Snyder: from a distance, there are a lot of American racists, who look at Putin and they see him as another great white chief right. 387 01:02:43.380 --> 01:02:50.160 Tim Snyder: And that's only because of the way he looks I mean people in America don't remember a racist America dorm don't realize like how close. 388 01:02:50.460 --> 01:02:57.810 Tim Snyder: A number of Muslims are to the Center of power in Russia, or they don't realize, to what extent Russia was a Muslim country you know these things just get just get mix. 389 01:02:58.230 --> 01:03:04.590 Tim Snyder: Part of it, though part of it, I mean moving from necessary conditions to like actual causation part of it has to do with an active solicitation. 390 01:03:05.310 --> 01:03:13.170 Tim Snyder: I mean there's there's a campaign, the Russian state reaches out to the far right, not just in United States but you know, in all of Europe. 391 01:03:13.470 --> 01:03:18.240 Tim Snyder: with various degrees of success, but it's it's a general it's a general it's a general campaign. 392 01:03:18.720 --> 01:03:28.320 Tim Snyder: And then I think a part of it is, I mean part of it is is is is his style I mean it's it's cool I mean not Russia, Russia is I mean. 393 01:03:28.740 --> 01:03:38.700 Tim Snyder: You know I, it would be great if we could have some kind of exchange program where you know we could send a million volunteer American white racists, you know to Russia for a year and see how they like it. 394 01:03:39.720 --> 01:03:45.000 Tim Snyder: But you know but but from a distance like Putin himself has a certain kind of charisma and this way he's like trump. 395 01:03:45.360 --> 01:03:56.370 Tim Snyder: In that it's like it's it's all about him and he can do whatever he wants and like he's a cowboy and he can lie if he wants and that has a certain appeal I mean that doesn't appeal to a certain kind of I would call it fragile masculinity. 396 01:03:56.760 --> 01:04:06.690 Tim Snyder: Right we're like you don't you can't do it yourself, but you kind of like the idea that somebody out there can can can do it so i'm going to try to keep it short, so we can get to leisure Coco ski. 397 01:04:08.760 --> 01:04:17.250 Steve Hanson: here's a question from Yun on Lou who's interested, other than algorithms aren't their traditional ways that you can also have deception. 398 01:04:17.580 --> 01:04:27.810 Steve Hanson: Instead of freedom, for example, bad journals or bad newspapers can also to see people, so you know with that necessarily be a solution, just to expand those more traditional elements. 399 01:04:28.020 --> 01:04:38.250 Tim Snyder: yeah yeah I mean also bad radio and bad TV and and i'm glad to the question, because we also do there is such there is such thing as bad local news or also or rather fake local news. 400 01:04:38.580 --> 01:04:46.530 Tim Snyder: So let that is to say news which pretends to be local but which is actually comes from a corporation based in another State right that runs rampant in the US. 401 01:04:46.920 --> 01:04:51.900 Tim Snyder: So let me try to be more specific, I mean what I have in mind is investigation. 402 01:04:52.410 --> 01:04:59.790 Tim Snyder: So I don't have in mind paper you know I don't even have in mind let's look at that its location is local what I have in mind is. 403 01:05:00.210 --> 01:05:13.890 Tim Snyder: The job of the human being, who goes out and investigates so it's reporting if a human being gets up out of the Chair and goes out and ask and finds things out right that's the minimal definition of reporting. 404 01:05:14.250 --> 01:05:26.490 Tim Snyder: And by that minimal definition Almost none of what we call the media in the US is actual reporting right, we have, we have a tiny, we have a tiny amount of fact production. 405 01:05:26.760 --> 01:05:32.520 Tim Snyder: Which is then shoehorned into a kind of postmodern American cotton candy every day. 406 01:05:33.090 --> 01:05:46.800 Tim Snyder: By way of the Internet and by way of the 24 hour news cycle right and what we need is more of the facts right and less of you know, unless, of the churning so I agree, I mean the newspaper itself is not them it's not but investigation is. 407 01:05:47.160 --> 01:05:49.110 Tim Snyder: And you need, we need to tilt the rules. 408 01:05:49.410 --> 01:06:01.470 Tim Snyder: Of the market so that or just tax the social media companies so that local news becomes profitable or to be more specific, so that becoming a journalist and investigative journalist can be an attractive way of life. 409 01:06:01.770 --> 01:06:07.860 Tim Snyder: right because right now it's only people who are willing to make sacrifices, who do this right and that's not what you want. 410 01:06:08.310 --> 01:06:17.370 Tim Snyder: You want this to be a profession because civil society depends upon this being on this being a profession, where you can make a decent living, where you have some kind of professional status. 411 01:06:18.750 --> 01:06:25.290 Steve Hanson: So i'm going to put three things together here, because the same person asked about kolakowski is also maybe the person who asks. 412 01:06:25.500 --> 01:06:32.640 Steve Hanson: A question all the money seems to be on the dark side of this argument Facebook will pay more than the government for people trying to feel the truth. 413 01:06:32.850 --> 01:06:39.720 Steve Hanson: So how are you going to get people to choose long term gains essentially you know other Republic over short term pay incentives. 414 01:06:40.140 --> 01:06:46.230 Steve Hanson: Another person asked very Similarly, I stay off social media, because I have found it to play into my hopes and fears. 415 01:06:46.950 --> 01:06:51.690 Steve Hanson: But social media tends to be aware of when i'm about to go out in public and I get more controversial feeds. 416 01:06:52.080 --> 01:07:00.300 Steve Hanson: And so, governments are handing even more power to Google and apple for contract tracing in the pandemic, what would be the best way to fight against all this. 417 01:07:00.660 --> 01:07:10.650 Steve Hanson: And the question from the anonymous attendee was is your point about adjudication of values, influenced at all by kolakowski so that was the specific question i'm sure that all fits together very logically. 418 01:07:11.220 --> 01:07:17.490 Tim Snyder: Okay well i'll make it so so i'm number one I mean. 419 01:07:18.780 --> 01:07:25.650 Tim Snyder: We are not so this is like this is like the great thing about being historian is you can always say that the situation you're in is not unprecedented. 420 01:07:26.220 --> 01:07:32.130 Tim Snyder: I mean, I think the situation we're in now is not unprecedented I mean the US in the late 19th and early 20th century. 421 01:07:32.550 --> 01:07:39.990 Tim Snyder: Also faced a situation where the federal government look like a joke i'm even more than now, it looked like a joke, I mean, in the face of the trust's. 422 01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:53.340 Tim Snyder: It looked like a joke and but nevertheless we pass laws which allow you know that which we pass the antitrust laws which allowed us to make our capitalism more sensible and more competitive. 423 01:07:53.700 --> 01:07:57.360 Tim Snyder: And the funny thing about those laws is that they're still on the books. 424 01:07:57.810 --> 01:08:07.440 Tim Snyder: And the funny thing about those laws is it pretty much if you just read those laws, I mean in black and white it's pretty clear that all of our big software companies are violating them. 425 01:08:07.740 --> 01:08:16.050 Tim Snyder: Right, so I mean part of the answer is really simple the government actually not only has the power it has the legal authority to break these things up. 426 01:08:16.290 --> 01:08:28.140 Tim Snyder: And for us, I mean part of making that possible is for us to recognize that it is possible not only possible and desirable but historically has it has a precedent and that precedent is generally regarded as good. 427 01:08:28.530 --> 01:08:34.770 Tim Snyder: And then, if you want to go into the theory, I mean the like you know Friedrich Hayek who I read the purposes of this project. 428 01:08:35.100 --> 01:08:42.480 Tim Snyder: And, with whom I disagree about a number of things, of course, but I mean high eq says in very strong terms that you have to break up companies like this. 429 01:08:42.840 --> 01:08:50.070 Tim Snyder: I mean, he says, specifically that there's no difference between this come between monopoly capitalism, and so we have central planning. 430 01:08:50.460 --> 01:08:56.940 Tim Snyder: And if you're against one, you should be against the other that's that's high IQ you know that's not some crazy leftist and I think those are those are words to be. 431 01:08:57.270 --> 01:09:05.520 Tim Snyder: Those are words to be heated um second thing is like this question of choice right, I mean social social media does. 432 01:09:05.880 --> 01:09:17.520 Tim Snyder: Is it, it reduces like choice to impulse So if you ask people do you want your social media feed to give you, you know accurate local journalism, people will say yes. 433 01:09:18.090 --> 01:09:28.200 Tim Snyder: That doesn't mean that in practice they'll go for it right, but who is the free person is that is there is who is the real and you know who has the authority, the person who's answering the question. 434 01:09:28.500 --> 01:09:32.220 Tim Snyder: Or the person who can't stay away from the dessert Buffet right, I mean. 435 01:09:32.580 --> 01:09:39.840 Tim Snyder: it's I would vote against the dessert Buffet, I would vote like people say they actually want to have, so I think that we take that seriously right. 436 01:09:40.080 --> 01:09:46.350 Tim Snyder: Most people would like to have Facebook behave differently than it does, I think we should take that seriously okay cool coastie. 437 01:09:47.130 --> 01:09:55.410 Tim Snyder: yeah so um I mean I was, I was very I mean I don't think I still realize just how fortunate, I was to study as a graduate student. 438 01:09:55.890 --> 01:10:02.370 Tim Snyder: In university where, as I oberlin unless I call coffee we're teaching and these are, these are the two, in my view, the two great. 439 01:10:02.880 --> 01:10:10.590 Tim Snyder: The two grade articulators of pluralism as a version of liberalism right so not liberalism. 440 01:10:11.340 --> 01:10:15.330 Tim Snyder: necessarily have the kind of familiar Anglo Saxon type, which means that. 441 01:10:15.660 --> 01:10:24.660 Tim Snyder: We are you know our minds are tabula rasa and we are, we are individuals and we're reacting to stimuli and so on, but illiberalism, which is based upon the inherent. 442 01:10:24.990 --> 01:10:32.760 Tim Snyder: pluralism of values that there are multiple values they can't be reconciled kolakowski actually writes about this as a philosopher. 443 01:10:33.300 --> 01:10:37.800 Tim Snyder: Berlin writes about it kind of indirectly as as as a as a historian of ideas. 444 01:10:38.520 --> 01:10:48.120 Tim Snyder: But it's called chlumsky as the anonymous question or seems to know who is in articles in the 1970s, is very beautifully articulate about this. 445 01:10:48.780 --> 01:10:57.540 Tim Snyder: And he was of course my teacher and I continue to read him and I regard him as a as a as a great and neglected thinker and, of course, as the anonymous. 446 01:10:58.260 --> 01:11:09.030 Tim Snyder: Yes, the anonymous question or might also know Coco ski wrote a famous or locally famous and you know East European Studies article called one page article really a kind of. 447 01:11:09.390 --> 01:11:19.650 Tim Snyder: dissident manifesto called how to be a conservative, liberal socialist, in which he makes the point I think you know which I think is a valuable point not just. 448 01:11:20.190 --> 01:11:29.310 Tim Snyder: In not just politically, but also in a way, socially, that the values that we think of as Conservative and Socialist and Liberal. 449 01:11:29.820 --> 01:11:45.990 Tim Snyder: it's not just it's not not that the same values but it's that sometimes they can't work one without the other and that sometimes not even coherent one without the other right so that's I mean that that I have called cost, he has has stayed with me, yes. 450 01:11:47.370 --> 01:11:58.080 Steve Hanson: So i'm afraid we're getting toward the end and I have way too many questions to get to some again my apologies i'm going to grip a few together, Professor snyder you okay to go a little longer. 451 01:11:58.320 --> 01:11:58.980 Tim Snyder: yeah, of course. 452 01:11:59.340 --> 01:12:04.980 Steve Hanson: Okay, and some of these are from colleagues who will be even less likely to forgive me if I don't ask the questions so. 453 01:12:06.300 --> 01:12:16.410 Steve Hanson: Professor Chris Howard, who is my calling and government asks, thank you very much, how do we find common ground with individuals who embrace freedoms, but only if they do not conflict with the core religious beliefs. 454 01:12:17.250 --> 01:12:27.300 Steve Hanson: And then, Professor prokhorov in the Russia and Soviet program Atlanta pass, how can we talk in simple words to somebody who believes that is their fundamental right through. 455 01:12:27.480 --> 01:12:33.660 Steve Hanson: Quote unquote freedom of speech to yell at someone who is different, so I think these to get it a similar kind of problem right which is. 456 01:12:33.870 --> 01:12:41.670 Steve Hanson: What is the civic approach to those who really aren't buying into this particular program and that you know will use the language of freedom to defend their their position. 457 01:12:43.020 --> 01:12:48.600 Tim Snyder: yeah I mean, these are, this is, this is a version of what I think of as the hard question. 458 01:12:49.470 --> 01:12:56.490 Tim Snyder: which I which which I I confront myself all the time and which i'm confronted with all the time, the hard question is. 459 01:12:57.030 --> 01:13:03.780 Tim Snyder: Okay, you know, maybe you've convinced me, but how do I start in talk, how do I preach to the choir right so. 460 01:13:04.080 --> 01:13:14.790 Tim Snyder: I am, by the way, a big believer in preaching to the choir there's a reason why you preach to the choir if you dont preach the choir they don't come to church right, so you got to preach to the choir preaching the choir is essential, but how do you get beyond the choir. 461 01:13:15.900 --> 01:13:24.990 Tim Snyder: So I guess one point I would make is that we have to keep up contact on other subjects. 462 01:13:25.350 --> 01:13:31.140 Tim Snyder: So I mean that that's you know it's kind of basic common sense, and this is one of the things I write about along tyranny, but we have to try to keep up. 463 01:13:31.470 --> 01:13:45.150 Tim Snyder: Keep up contact on other human subjects, so that we have a certain amount of credibility second thing is, I think we have to flip the freedom argument, this is what i'm trying to do right, I think we have to try to say to people like that, like, why are you against freedom. 464 01:13:46.500 --> 01:13:56.880 Tim Snyder: You know, because it's not freedom, but I mean if you if you if you are you if you're acting on the basis of something which is not true you're not actually free. 465 01:13:58.230 --> 01:14:10.530 Tim Snyder: I mean, I know we're all you know in Soviet scholars here, so you know site be held back to like if you believe, if you if you act on the basis of somebody else's untruth you are a creature of the other person not a factory. 466 01:14:10.980 --> 01:14:16.590 Tim Snyder: Right, so if you're a believer in the big law you're not free, you might think you are but you're just not right, and so I think. 467 01:14:17.010 --> 01:14:23.370 Tim Snyder: I think we have to flip the argument if he if someone is yelling at someone else because they're different they don't that they're not being free. 468 01:14:23.760 --> 01:14:28.440 Tim Snyder: they're not you're not actually I mean I think you're not actually free to be a racist I think if you're a racist or not free. 469 01:14:28.860 --> 01:14:33.840 Tim Snyder: If you're a racist you've been duped right you're somebody else's dupe, and so I think. 470 01:14:34.530 --> 01:14:37.980 Tim Snyder: it's not easy, but I think that's a different place to start the conversation from. 471 01:14:38.310 --> 01:14:46.680 Tim Snyder: You know, not from like Oh well, like we clearly both believe in freedom, but you're abusing your freedom but hey you know you might actually be a free person like it's not just that you're. 472 01:14:47.040 --> 01:14:51.960 Tim Snyder: you're messing with somebody else's freedom, but you might actually be a free person, you might be wrong and thinking that you're a free person. 473 01:14:52.380 --> 01:15:03.090 Tim Snyder: And then I mean the other thing to remember is you never convince anybody right you never convince anybody, if you remember that you can stay a lot calmer you never convince anybody all you do. 474 01:15:03.630 --> 01:15:13.500 Tim Snyder: You know, all you do is plant, the seed and then maybe the rain comes at the right time, you know, and maybe other good things happen, and maybe that seed grows, but all you ever do is plant a seed. 475 01:15:15.840 --> 01:15:24.030 Steve Hanson: So I think we should not make you work too hard, we have a couple last questions that I think will help us get to a conclusion, and when I like it's very direct. 476 01:15:24.570 --> 01:15:33.120 Steve Hanson: From Hudson Courtney who writes, how can America to feed them within the two party system of a populist Republican Party and an ineffective democratic one. 477 01:15:34.470 --> 01:15:37.170 Tim Snyder: I mean, I would put them work more directly than that, I think, I think. 478 01:15:38.370 --> 01:15:44.790 Tim Snyder: I think we have a it's not just populace, I mean we have we have we have a Republican Party. 479 01:15:46.440 --> 01:15:58.770 Tim Snyder: which I think has an addiction problem, and I use this I use this metaphor very seriously, you know I mean, as somebody who's seen addiction and thought about it, I think I think voter suppression is an addiction. 480 01:16:00.030 --> 01:16:09.000 Tim Snyder: I think, once you know you start it you do a little bit of a use to it and, before long, you can't do anything else, before long, it dominates everything. 481 01:16:09.510 --> 01:16:16.590 Tim Snyder: And, and before long, you know you forgotten all the other things, you know how to do and that's where I mean that's where the Republican Party is right now. 482 01:16:17.040 --> 01:16:22.830 Tim Snyder: They are it's all about it's all about gaming the system, I mean it's all about gaming it, I mean, some people have gone beyond gaming it. 483 01:16:23.610 --> 01:16:31.290 Tim Snyder: Like Mr trump himself or Center holly or Senator Cruz they've gone beyond gaming they're openly talking about non democratic outcomes. 484 01:16:32.040 --> 01:16:38.040 Tim Snyder: But once you know, once you treat it all as a game, then you can no longer think about substance you no longer have policy. 485 01:16:38.670 --> 01:16:43.650 Tim Snyder: And the Republicans have this problem they don't have policy, I mean they're all they're all their positions. 486 01:16:44.070 --> 01:16:53.460 Tim Snyder: Are kind of parodies of democratic positions, all of them, I mean the democrats talk about the democrats talk about race they're helping us talk about race in a different way. 487 01:16:53.910 --> 01:17:03.960 Tim Snyder: The democrats talk about you know authenticity, the Republicans to talk about being able to say whatever they want you know it so there's basically write down the line, everything Republicans do is a kind of reaction. 488 01:17:04.470 --> 01:17:14.280 Tim Snyder: And that's you know I mean you know, ours is people in Ohio put it to me like it's all about owning the lives, but like owning the lives is that's a reaction, you know you're just reacting to the other side, so. 489 01:17:14.700 --> 01:17:21.510 Tim Snyder: I don't think it's not just their populace I think it's that it's that it's that our system enables voter suppression. 490 01:17:22.170 --> 01:17:29.010 Tim Snyder: And voter suppression is an addiction and it's incompatible ultimately with democracy and we've seen just how close we could come because. 491 01:17:29.400 --> 01:17:39.540 Tim Snyder: You know January of 2021 or you know second half of 2020 early 21 is all about voter suppression, I mean it's it's it's trump trying to make the case that. 492 01:17:39.840 --> 01:17:47.190 Tim Snyder: More about should be more suppressed, so the right people can stay on top, and of course the loads that should be suppressed, are the ones in milwaukee and Philadelphia and Detroit. 493 01:17:47.550 --> 01:17:59.280 Tim Snyder: Are you the black people right which is a deep, which is the deep American tradition saying fraud you mean you mean you mean you mean black people, so I mean the democrats, so the democrats. 494 01:18:00.660 --> 01:18:08.220 Tim Snyder: I you know I I, I think the democrats are then thrown into this uncomfortable position that they have to be both the party of the status quo and the party you've changed. 495 01:18:09.330 --> 01:18:16.020 Tim Snyder: I mean they're in the position the aspca was in an entire war Germany right on they're supposed to be the left, but actually they have to be the Center. 496 01:18:16.800 --> 01:18:22.110 Tim Snyder: And that's that's I mean that's an unfair position and that's you know that's and that's how you get to look boring because. 497 01:18:22.560 --> 01:18:29.100 Tim Snyder: You, you have to defend, you have to be so normal, you have to defend the status quo, because the other side is an Anti has become an Anti system party. 498 01:18:29.400 --> 01:18:37.470 Tim Snyder: So you have to be born in normal independent system and, at the same time, you have to be that you have to be hard to be offer a vision right, and you can feel that tension, the democrats, right now, they. 499 01:18:37.710 --> 01:18:46.680 Tim Snyder: they're not a centre left party there, like a Center party and a centre left party could be much easier for them if they can be a centre left party, but for that, then you the democrats or Republicans, to be a Center right party. 500 01:18:47.100 --> 01:18:50.940 Tim Snyder: Which which they're not so I mean I that this all points to you know. 501 01:18:51.750 --> 01:18:59.820 Tim Snyder: i'm trying not to be personal about this like I think it's a systematic problem I think if we, I think it would be, I mean, I can say this till the till you know till the cows come home or make a difference, but. 502 01:19:00.090 --> 01:19:04.470 Tim Snyder: I think Republicans could win national elections in this country if they didn't suppress the vote. 503 01:19:04.920 --> 01:19:13.260 Tim Snyder: But since they suppress the vote they're going to be seen as racist because suppressing the boat his racist and not just in its consequences, but usually in its intentions. 504 01:19:13.650 --> 01:19:21.600 Tim Snyder: But if they didn't suppress the vote and then they would start thinking more about policy and, if they started thinking more about policy they could win elections right but. 505 01:19:21.900 --> 01:19:33.990 Tim Snyder: So, but I just telling them that doesn't work, I mean what we what we have to be able to do is is put the bits and pieces together to make boating voter suppression an untenable strategy in this country that that that at least, would be a start. 506 01:19:35.880 --> 01:19:42.030 Steve Hanson: fascinating there are a number of questions about social mobility and how to achieve it, I won't be able to ask them. 507 01:19:42.480 --> 01:19:48.600 Steve Hanson: Again, my apologies to those whose themes didn't come up as directly as they would like I do want to end with this one TIM because. 508 01:19:48.900 --> 01:19:54.810 Steve Hanson: It strikes me that it's quite related to some institutional golem as we face it, William and Mary and that universities face. 509 01:19:55.290 --> 01:20:03.090 Steve Hanson: You know, for example, we want as a university to stand up and support democratic values as part of our mission President Roosevelt at the beginning. 510 01:20:03.900 --> 01:20:09.990 Steve Hanson: And yet we also cannot be top down indoctrinated of our students and we won't do that. 511 01:20:10.290 --> 01:20:18.780 Steve Hanson: So that balance is tricky and the question from Michael is you don't mention the role of science and, in particular, is as his essence that facts are based on skepticism. 512 01:20:19.230 --> 01:20:32.730 Steve Hanson: So you know factuality doesn't come sort of automatically right there's all sorts of ways, one tests and does experiments and then pulls into question the results of those experiments, so can you speak to this aspect of the theme and no fitted in with the the argument. 513 01:20:33.270 --> 01:20:48.270 Tim Snyder: yeah yeah no it's all it's a wonderful question and i'm i'm a big believer in science and if I ever get around to writing the book that i'm talking about now for one of the first times there's going to be a good deal about science and precisely for this reason. 514 01:20:49.740 --> 01:20:56.100 Tim Snyder: it's it's because of course it's not that like science you agree with the premise of the question it's not that science gives us. 515 01:20:56.640 --> 01:21:02.610 Tim Snyder: A kind of state, you know it doesn't give us, it sounds like the dramaturgy of reality like it doesn't give you this fixed reality. 516 01:21:02.940 --> 01:21:14.100 Tim Snyder: against which you then act out your own lives, based on your emotions and values it science brings us closer to reality closer closer, but that always you know. 517 01:21:14.580 --> 01:21:25.050 Tim Snyder: Always always by gradations and never actually never actually reaching it and there are lots of examples which are really cool but which we don't really have time to talk about about how this is true, if you know from fields, from. 518 01:21:25.410 --> 01:21:38.130 Tim Snyder: From you know physics to Microbiology I I, I want to take the premise of the question and just and run with it because the premise of the question is about method right facts I mean facts don't grow from the ground. 519 01:21:39.360 --> 01:21:48.330 Tim Snyder: Facts only come into being by way of some kind of you know let's call it controversy, but controversy which is based upon method. 520 01:21:48.870 --> 01:21:52.830 Tim Snyder: Right, so the word controversy is now an almost unusable word because controversy means. 521 01:21:53.490 --> 01:22:02.550 Tim Snyder: You say something I disagree and I talk louder than you, but what I mean what I mean is a method and skepticism is a good word here a method which forces. 522 01:22:03.450 --> 01:22:15.360 Tim Snyder: Which which forces would go to had a great phrase for this significant roughness he called it like things have to get beaten around before you know that they're right. 523 01:22:16.080 --> 01:22:25.740 Tim Snyder: Significant roughness and the scientific method is one is one form of significant roughness right, you know you have hypothesis it's probably wrong, you know you got to admit it's wrong. 524 01:22:26.490 --> 01:22:34.350 Tim Snyder: For undergraduate students, you know you blew it do it again do it again do it again do it again, you publish you know your colleagues critique they run the same experiment that can't get the same result. 525 01:22:34.920 --> 01:22:40.200 Tim Snyder: But nevertheless, nevertheless, nevertheless, at the end of the day, we can make a vaccine. 526 01:22:40.860 --> 01:22:47.280 Tim Snyder: Right, I mean at the end of the day, like with code for example there's been all kinds of nonsense all along the way lots of people about things wrong but. 527 01:22:47.490 --> 01:22:56.820 Tim Snyder: A year into it, we do actually know more than we did I mean we measurably no more than we did a year ago, and so I would just push that point about method into different realms right so i'm a historian. 528 01:22:57.480 --> 01:23:04.860 Tim Snyder: I also have hypotheses they're also usually wrong, I only know they're wrong because I go into the archives I let the sources come to me. 529 01:23:05.670 --> 01:23:16.440 Tim Snyder: I let myself formulate another question that turned out to be wrong to I keep repeating that until I get to a question which actually allows me to come to some kind of an answer it's not the same as a laboratory based on entirely different. 530 01:23:16.860 --> 01:23:25.260 Tim Snyder: Either and then again like I published in my colleagues disagree and, like some of them scream it turns out to be justified and i've been fortunate my question again maybe you're right maybe read a different book. 531 01:23:25.740 --> 01:23:30.150 Tim Snyder: And this is true, about journalism right, so I don't count as a method. 532 01:23:30.510 --> 01:23:38.400 Tim Snyder: That you know, Professor hanson goes out and does investigative reporting and then somebody immediately copies it on some other site right that's not a method. 533 01:23:38.790 --> 01:23:46.470 Tim Snyder: The investigation, though isn't method investigative reporters do have their methods they have their ways that the methods of talking to people they have their ways of checking sources. 534 01:23:46.740 --> 01:23:53.130 Tim Snyder: They then go back and read you know they read history, they situated right so that's that's also a method. 535 01:23:53.520 --> 01:24:04.050 Tim Snyder: And so i'm green with the premise of the question I just I just want to extend it because it's I mean and then going back to the ways to phrase this question it's not that we need to have a magic wand and say. 536 01:24:04.470 --> 01:24:08.580 Tim Snyder: The scientist is authority and the historians and authority in the journalists and authority. 537 01:24:09.150 --> 01:24:15.000 Tim Snyder: it's that we have to appreciate that they have methods, I mean there was a reason why we use the word discipline right. 538 01:24:15.540 --> 01:24:25.020 Tim Snyder: That they have methods that they go through, and those methods are productive of factuality right, not a magical way, but in a in the end in a measurable way. 539 01:24:25.410 --> 01:24:39.540 Tim Snyder: And in a in a meaningful way, so I appreciate this I mean we can't we really can't do without the science I didn't talk about global warming, not much, but the global warming is a wonderful example of a lot of the theses I was trying to introduce here it's an example of of how. 540 01:24:40.770 --> 01:24:56.970 Tim Snyder: How we need a sense of mobility to be free, I think, global warming is crushing us, I mean even the people who pretend not to believe in it, I think it's crushing them it's crushing all of us, but it's also an example of how inequality crushes factuality because you know. 541 01:24:58.110 --> 01:25:08.550 Tim Snyder: In 1959 Edward Teller was talking about melting icecaps in 1962 the American petroleum Institute was warning. 542 01:25:09.450 --> 01:25:18.960 Tim Snyder: Of the dangerous of global warming right in 1988 George Bush talked about turning the White House effect against the greenhouse effect this stuff has been known. 543 01:25:19.560 --> 01:25:28.920 Tim Snyder: For half a century right, the only reason there's controversy again using that terrible word about global warming is that a few very wealthy people have chosen to make it. 544 01:25:29.250 --> 01:25:36.480 Tim Snyder: Controversial that should not be able to happen right, and the answer, the only way it's a global global warming is an example of how. 545 01:25:36.960 --> 01:25:46.050 Tim Snyder: You can't you can't do without the science, but the science doesn't defend itself right there has to be an ethic of actuality there has to be a kind of active defensive actuality. 546 01:25:46.920 --> 01:25:53.370 Tim Snyder: You have to be in the reason in ethic, is that, and this is like we're like your question and my position kind of meet. 547 01:25:53.880 --> 01:26:05.280 Tim Snyder: You need the methods, but you also have to have the way of talking about it, you have to have the ethic, because you run up against people who are just flat out liars and what they will do. 548 01:26:05.670 --> 01:26:14.880 Tim Snyder: You know their method, and this was true of tobacco to, as you know, shurmur you know better than me what they do is they, they just try to undermine like science in general they say well. 549 01:26:15.330 --> 01:26:25.710 Tim Snyder: it's just like it's an opinion, like other opinions like you think it causes cancer, but I don't think it causes cancer you think you know this causes bullhorn it out everything becomes an opinion, so you have to have the method. 550 01:26:25.950 --> 01:26:34.470 Tim Snyder: But you also have that kind of have to have that kind of edge like have to have that kind of moral Defense the method where you say look, this is a method, but it's a method that actually gets us to something. 551 01:26:34.740 --> 01:26:42.870 Tim Snyder: And that something is true that gets us closer to truth so that's I think it has to be encased in that as well, so thank you, I agree very much. 552 01:26:43.350 --> 01:26:53.070 Steve Hanson: it's a terrific cancer, and I think a really great place to end, I want to mention that Maya who asked an earlier question had written in and said that she's actually in Europe with the classmates and. 553 01:26:53.640 --> 01:27:01.230 Steve Hanson: I think some faculty and was there at the Institute for humane society sciences indiana when you were there so she wants to pass along here greetings. 554 01:27:01.590 --> 01:27:08.400 Steve Hanson: and President oh also told me to thank you very much, you had to, of course, the President of the university to go to something right afterward. 555 01:27:09.330 --> 01:27:24.900 Steve Hanson: But everyone I know has benefited so much TIM from this talk, I personally have benefited a lot from it and we just really appreciate your your contributions right now it's so important, but you're welcome anytime it will luminaries you can see behind me it's quite beautiful hair. 556 01:27:26.580 --> 01:27:38.130 Steve Hanson: But we will do that in the future anytime you'd like so please join me everybody in the warm welcome once again or warmer thanks for for TIM snyder so great talking with that will close the recording. 557 01:27:38.430 --> 01:27:40.200 Tim Snyder: Okay, thank you Steve thanks everybody. 558 01:27:41.190 --> 01:27:41.580 I.