The annex of Timothy Snyder (Dayton, 1969) broke out on December 3, 2019. I was in Munich to give a talk I called Can the United States become a free country? The German doctors who listened to him missed the diagnosis. They took away their pain. Back in their country, at the New Haven hospital, they realized the true extent of the damage but did not detect a threatening liver abscess, although very serious, because it was causing a blood infection. He was about to die.
“This experience was a revelation. Now I pay much more attention to my body,” he admits to El Cultural de Toronto, via video call. Such a revelation showed him that there is no freedom possible without minimum health conditions.
In 2020 he wrote Our illnesswhere he develops this association between freedom and physical state and, in doing so, challenges the conception of the body as a commodity in the American health system. However, reflections on freedom multiplied in his head at different philosophical levels, while Trumpism filled his mouth with this polysemous and equivocal concept.
From there it flows About freedom (Galaxia Gutenberg), his latest book, which is in turn a counterpoint to About tyranny (2017) and The path to unfreedom (2018). In it, based on European thinkers such as Simone Weil, Václav Havel And Leszek Kolakowskiattempts to separate negative freedom (which, according to him, Trump and his acolytes brandish) from positive freedom.
“The first is a very tempting idea because it says that all our problems are external in different forms. In politics, one of the main ones is the State, which we must get rid of because, with its taxes and laws, it is an obstacle to achieving “What we want. Therefore, we must reduce it as much as possible. But, of course, if we reduce it too much, it will not be able to do what is necessary to expand freedom. positive, like building and supporting schools where we can train or roads where we can travel.”, reasons Snyder, historian specializing in Eastern Europe, author of bestseller Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin (2010) and professor at Yale, today established on the American public stage as one of the most powerful intellectual bulwarks against Trump’s post-truth histrionic speeches.
–And how exactly would you define positive freedom, the one you claim?
–It is what allows us to choose between positive values which, although they are not physical entities, are as real as a rock in the road. Ordering in your bookstore [se refiere a la que se ve al fondo del plano del periodista]the courtesy with which he asks me, the beauty, the honesty, the grace, the loyalty… These are good things that cannot be measured or weighed, like stones. They are just different. The important thing is to have the freedom to choose between them or to be able to combine them, and from there change the world, at least a little.. It is a positive freedom from a philosophical point of view, which has its political consequences, because it is the value which allows all the others to be put into practice. Freedom does not consist of not having limits but of knowing them and transforming them into tools to live better together.
“Freedom does not consist of not having limits, but of knowing them and transforming them into tools to live better”
–To what extent is capitalism compatible with freedom?
–They talk about free market but for me it’s a linguistic error which generates a moral error, because only men can be free. A market cannot be free in the sense that it can be. He has no conscience. As soon as we talk about free markets, we let capitalism do the work for us.. The market is an institution that can be very good but it must be designed by human freedom. A simple example to understand: a society with only one or two means of communication is not very consistent with the idea of freedom. The one who relies on thousands of local media is more important, as is the one who determines that water is a public good for all.
– He asserts, however, that in the United States, it is taken for granted that capitalism inevitably leads to democracy.
–Yes, that’s a very crazy conclusion. And empirically incorrect. China is capitalist. Russia too. Here, everyone assumed that it would become a democracy as soon as the Soviet regime fell and capitalism was established. It is tempting to believe that democracy is the fruit of an entity other than us, but this is what I have already said: capitalism will be how we build it. If one believes that his freedom will come from him or from another authority, it is a sign that he is no longer free, that he has thrown in the towel. This is how the worst version of capitalism is established. In the United States, in fact, the main companies behind social networks seek to overthrow democracy.
Snyder has numbers in mind like Elon Muskowner of Twitter, who poured millions into Trump’s coffers to boost his campaign. He also regrets the harmful use of these networks by people because he has no doubt that they constitute a factor which limits freedom and maintains prejudices thanks to the algorithm. The prestigious historian, who About freedom combines the forms and pretensions of the philosophical essay, memoirs (with flashbacks to his rural childhood in Ohio) and those of the combative manifesto, compares the brains of Silicon Valley (“who invite us to live inside a screen”) with the Czechoslovakian communists of the 70s, who after a harsh repression, with physical violence, they resorted to a more subtle population control mechanism: television.
“Both have a common discourse: they affirm that there could be imbalances, as is currently the case global warming or socio-economic inequalitiesbut this cannot be changed. And that’s very good, making us believe in a false reality, that of communist television of the time and that of networks of oligarchs like Elon Musk. “They don’t talk to us about the future, even though they started by promising a glorious future, but about the present, the best we can have, and the past, with nostalgia,” denounces Snyder, who also states in his book the decline in the IQ of the population (reverse Flynn effect) as a possible effect of generalized shielding.
“In the United States, the main social media companies seek to overthrow democracy”
In recent weeks, the professor has taken a break from his academic work to tour the United States presenting About freedomwork which, unlike that produced by other academics, relies on direct contact with the traumas it addresses. Particularly two. The first, the war in Ukrainewhere he reaffirmed his certainty that negative freedom is a myopic vision: he shows us how Ukrainians think well beyond the expulsion of Russian troops from their soil, the immediate barrier that separates them today from freedom, already tried to glimpse the values with which will cement their national future once they have achieved it.
The second, his experience as a philosophy teacher in the prisons of his countryin which he confirms that inequality determines the probability of finding oneself trapped in one of them. The latter is one of the circumstances which, as pointed out About freedomthey relegate the United States to 50th place in terms of freedom. The house of the freeas the hymn says The Star Spangled Bannerthis is not so much the case according to the ranking established by the American organization Freedom House, which primarily tests political and civil rights. Rights which he fears will be even more restricted even with Trump’s possible return to the White House. A possibility which will become clearer during the presidential elections of November 5, which we are approaching with the options of the Republican candidate and Kamala Harris very equal.
–You directly call Trump and JD Vance fascists. Are they really analogous to the leaders of the original fascism, that of the 1930s? Isn’t this going too far?
– Well, in these cases I use the category of fascism in the broadest sense. I am referring to a certain way of doing politics. I’m not just talking about Hitler, but also Mussolini and young Franco. I mean the existence of a single party, with a leader supposed to represent the people, where reason does not matter because emotions are everythingwhere propaganda is centralized, where people live captivated by a big story, by a big lie, and where conspiracy is the usual way of thinking. So while there is some difference (fascists in the 1920s and 1930s were, for example, more interested in mass mobilizations and physical activity), I see no problem in calling Trump and Vance fascists .
“If Trump wins, there will be an unpredictable transition. Americans will have to make difficult decisions”
–Fascist is a political word from the past. You regret that we lose a lot of words in this area, and that this reduces the ability to analyze the present.
–I see that In Spain, you talk more about fascism than we do In English. We have lost part of our political vocabulary, yes. And the word “fascism” may be useful as a reference if Trump wins the election, because in the United States the system will be very different.
–Is this an authoritarian drift?
– Trump, like Putin, says that there are no values, that what matters is power. He limits himself to criticizing others, ensuring that the government can’t do anything, creating spectacle and pitting some Americans against each other. This is how he will govern. This will not protect or promote health, infrastructure, education… In short, it will not help to liberate people. The oligarchs will do very well because they are their friends. They will be stronger with a weaker state. Trump does not believe in the rule of law. For him, the Constitution means nothing. He will use the state to attack his enemies. He plans to eliminate all officials whose role is to execute the law. If he wins, there will be an unpredictable transition. We Americans will have to make some very difficult decisions. January and February will be an extremely difficult time for this country.
