Timothy Snyder: contemporary liberalism’s Elmer Gantry
2023; Routledge; Volume: 51; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03017605.2023.2238451
ISSN1748-8605
Autores Tópico(s)Nuclear Issues and Defense
ResumoAbstractCritique of Timothy Snyder - historian and prominent public intellectual in US and Europe- in particular works Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin 2010 & The Road to Unfreedom 2018 & journal articles - despite quality of research Snyder employs selective use of historical facts analogous to religious fundamentalists selective Biblical literalism -presents a Manichean theory of history – reminiscent of Cold War -democracy versus authoritarianism –a revised Whig theory of liberal progress but amounts to a political/intellectual closure – refer to Sheldon Wolin's theory of inverted totalitarianism and Cold War school of Sovietology. In Bloodlands Snyder presents a picture of not only Nazi-Soviet equivalence but symbiosis- Nazism becomes a response to communism—a false dynamic of history - basis of fascist revivalism in Europe. The Road to Freedom claims Trump owes victory to Putin, but is preoccupied with history of Russian far-right ideologues and events in Ukraine – this is a narrative of Putin's plan to restore Empireconquer Ukraine- destroy European Union – This exercise ignores the complexities of competing notions of nationalism and identity in Ukrainian politics and omits facts which could support a counter-narrative which show an element of Russian response to the escalating expansion of NATO and the policies of the 2014 government of ‘national unity’, in Kyiv - some US foreign policy insiders had warned about this from the 1990s – such a counter-narrative does not necessarily exculpate Putin. Recent research in the US has demolished that claims that Trump was a Russian agent, and that Russian bots and social media postings had any significant reach or effect on the 2016 election result.Keywords: Timothy SnyderNazi-Soviet equivalenceRussiaUkraineNATORussian influence in US Notes1 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Vintage, 2011).2 Jacob Minanowski, ‘The Bleak Prophesy of Timothy Snyder’, The Chronicle, https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20190412snyder3 Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism (September/October 2022 edition of Foreign Affairs). Nazis, Nukes and NATO; Or What the Russ- Ukraine War is not About, https://snyder.substack.com/p/nazis-nukes-and-nato4 Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (Bodley Head, 2018).5 Jason Stanley, Fascist Politics (Random House, 2018).6 Allen Frances, Twilight of American Sanity (Harper Collins, 2017).7 Snyder, Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., p. 218.8 Ibid., p. 240.9 Mark Danner, ‘The Slow-Motion Coup’, NRB, 6 October.10 Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated (Princeton UP, 2017).11 https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1949v07p2/d38712 https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf13 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf14 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, 1976).15 Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Harvard UP, 1965).16 Snyder, Bloodlands, op. cit., p. 380.17 Ibid., p. 387.18 Adam Hochschild, Tug of War: Snyder Looks East (Harpers, February 2011).19 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghosts (Mariner Books, 1999).20 Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge (MacMillan, 1972).21 Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (Verso, 2005); Russian Peasants and Soviet Power A Study of Collectivisation (Norton, 1975).22 Shelia Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (Oxford, 2008); Everyday Stalinism (Oxford UP, 2000).23 ‘What’s Left’, LRB Vol. 39, No. 7, 30 March 2017. Review of China Mieville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution; Mark D. Steinberg, The Russian Revolution 105–1921. S.A. Smith, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890-1928; Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History; Tony Brenton, Historically Inevitable? Turning Points of the Russian Revolution; ‘People and Martians’, LRB Vol. 41, No. 2, 24 January 2019. Review of Robert Conquest’s, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, 2018 (original 1968); The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine, 2018 (original 1986).24 Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Red Famine by Anne Applebaum – Review; Did Stalin Deliberately Let Ukraine Starve?’ 25 August 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/25/red-famine-stalins-war-on-ukraine-anne-applebaum-review. see also: Mark Tauger, Review of Annie Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (George Washington University History Network). https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/16943825 Timothy Snyder, ‘Who’s Afraid of Ukrainian History?’ NRB, 10 September 2010.26 Snyder, ‘Who’s Afraid of Ukrainian History?’ op. cit.27 Snyder, Bloodlands, op. cit., p. 60.28 Ibid., p. 197.29 Ibid., p. 203.30 Ibid., p. 243.31 Ibid., p. 292.32 Ibid., p. 250.33 Rab Bennett, Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance in Hitler’s Europe (New York UP) reviewed in Foreign Affairs July/August 2000, p. 157.34 William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid, 1976 (now Google Books).35 Snyder, Bloodlands, op. cit., p. 397.36 Yehuda Bauer, ‘Remembering Actually on Int’l Holocaust Remembrance Day’, Jerusalem Post, 25 January 2010.37 Snyder, Bloodlands, op. cit., pp. 284–285.38 Daniel Lazare, ‘Timothy Snyder’s Lies’, Jacobin Magazine, September 2014.39 Edited by Istvan Deak, Jan T. Gross and Tony Just, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: WWII and its Aftermath (Princeton UP, 2000).40 N. Ruben Ainsztein, The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt (New York, 1979), pages 38, 50 cited by Lazare.41 ‘Poland and the Jews: An Exchange’, New York Review of Books, August 18, 1983, the same title in April 9, 1987, and What Happened in Poland, February 19, 2015.42 Snyder, Bloodlands, op. cit., p. 250 & 252.43 FN Ernst Nolte, The Past That Will Not Pass: A Speech That Could be Written but not Delivered, 6 June 1986, https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=184544 Richard Evans Ernst Nolte Obituary. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/29/ernst-nolte-obituary45 Snyder, Bloodlands, op. cit., p. v.46 Tony Just, Post- War Europe: A History of Europe After 1945 (New York, 1945), p. 18- cited by Lazare.47 https://www.ww2wrecks.com/portfolio/the-nazi-occupation-of-greece-1941-44-an-endless-list-of-crimes-atrocities-and-bloodbaths/. Australian Department of Veteran Affairs posting commemorating the battle of Crete.48 Timothy Snyder, Frankfurter Allgemeine, 14 April 2014 Putin’s Plans.49 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., pp. 47–48.50 Ibid., p. 35.51 Ibid., p. 56.52 Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Balancing the East, Upgrading the West’, Foreign Affairs (January/February, 2012), p. 98 & 99.53 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Bucharest Summit Declaration, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm54 NPR -National Public Radio McCain’s, Advisor’s Ties to Georgia Questioned 15 August 2008. https://www.npr.org/2008/08/15/93631243/mccains-advisers-ties-to-georgia-questioned.55 John Mearsheimer, ‘The Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault’, Foreign Affairs (September/October 2014), pp. 77.56 Alan Kuperman, ‘Obama’s Libya Debacle’, Foreign Affairs (March/April 2015).57 Alan Sheifer and Daniel Triesman, ‘When Russia Says No: A Question of National Interest’, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2011), pp. 123–124.58 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (Basic Books, 1997), p. 38 – published online by CIA, https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/36/36669B7894E857AC4F3445EA646BFFE1_Zbigniew_Brzezinski_-_The_Grand_ChessBoard.doc.pdf.59 Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, op. cit., p. 52.60 Timothy Snyder, ‘The Battle for Ukraine Means Everything’, The New Republic, 11 May 2014.61 Umberto Eco, ‘Ur Fascism’, New York Review of Books, 2 June 1995. Chris Hedges, American Fascists (Free Press, 2008).62 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., p. 8, 160, et al.63 Ibid., p. 32.64 Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine Crisis in the Borderlands (Tauris, 2016).65 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 11.66 https://www.forbes/com/profile/petro-poreshenko/?sh=2214bc9d23be.67 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXgli7tpTpINw.68 Luke Harding, ‘Ukraine Leader Set Up Secret Offshore Firm When his Troops Were Being Wiped Out in Eastern Ukraine’, The Guardian, 4 April 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-ukraine-petro-poroshenko-secret-offshore-firm-russia; Jack Dutton, ‘Was Volodymyr Zelensky in the Panama Papers? Offshore Companies Revealed’, Newsweek, 24 January 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-panama-pandora-papers-offshore-companies-finances-1776124.69 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 50.70 Ibid., p. 20.71 Ibid., p. 19.72 Snyder, The Road, op. cit., pp. 125 & 128.73 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 82.74 Ibid., p. 84.75 Ibid., p. 83.76 Ibid., p. 81ff.77 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., p. 138.78 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-31435719 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJhJ6hks0Jg https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/magazine/ukraine-protest-video.html79 Ivan Katchanovki: Maiden Massacre Trial. file:///C:/Users/Michael/Downloads/MaidanMassacreTrialInvestigationTestimoniesby 47WoundedMaidanProtestersaboutSnipersinMaidan.pdf.80 Ivan Katchanovski, The Russia-Ukraine War and the Maiden in Ukraine, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=424620381 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/unsolved-maidan-massacre-casts-shadow-over-ukraine/; https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-modern-ukraine-was-made-on-maidan/national-coming-of-age/82 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 86.83 Ibid., pp. 86–87.84 Ibid., p. 84 ff.85 http://www.youtube.com.watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY86 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 94.87 Ibid., p. 97 ff.88 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., p. 170.89 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 150.90 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., p. 11.91 Ibid., p. 73.92 Ibid., p. 108.93 Ibid., p. 218.94 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 213.95 Paul Sohn, ‘Russian Nationalists Feel Let Down by Putin Again’, Wall Street Journal, 5 July 2014 – cited by Sakwa, op. cit., p. 214 – footnote 20.96 Snyder, The Road, op. cit., pp. 135–136.97 Sakwa, op. cit., pp. 207 & 214.98 Snyder, The Road, op. cit., p. 153.99 Sakwa, op. cit., pp. 274–275. Jochen Hellbek, ‘Ukraine Makes Amnesia Law of the Land’, New Republic, 22 May 2015.100 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-map-of-the-monuments-busts-plaques-and-museums-to-Bandera-Source-Designed-by-O_f; Jerusalem Post 21 January 2021, Nazi Collaborators included in Ukrainian memorial project; Institute of National Memory; https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/nazi-collaborators-included-in-101 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-crisis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html102 New Republic Jochen Hellbek, Ukraine Makes Amnesia Law of the Land, 22 May 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/121880/new-laws-ukraine-make-it-illegal-bring-its-ugly-past103 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary/commentary-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem-idUSKBN1GV2TY104 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline105 Nazi’s Nukes and NATO or what the Russo-Ukrainian War is not about. https://snyder.substack.com/p/nazis-nukes-and-nato106 Timothy Snyder, ‘Ukraine Hold the Future: The War between Democracy and Nihilism’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2022, p. 124.107 Jeefrey Veidlinger, ‘The Killing Fields of the Ukraine’, Tablet, 23 February 2022. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/killing-fields-ukraine100,000=108 Ukraine Holds the Future, p. 131.109 Ibid., p. 141.110 https://theanalysis.news/putins-war-driven-by-domestic-politics-boris-kagarlitsky/; https://againstthecurrent.org/behind-russias-ukraine-disaster/111 James Goldgeier, ‘The US Decision to Enlarge NATO How, Why, When and What’s Next?’ Brookings Institute, 1 June 1999, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-u-s-decision-to-enlarge-nato-how-when-why-and-what-next/.112 Alex Jordan, ‘Did the US Take Russia’s NATO Concerns Seriously?’, Responsible Statecraft, 28 April 2022, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/04/28/did-the-us-really-take-russias-nato-concerns-very-seriously/113 In April 2015, the BBC reports Ukraine Crisis; Tension Over Rise of Nationalist Yarosh, after far-right politician Dmitry Yarosh appointed as advisor to Army Chief of Staff BBC, 8 April 2015 Ukraine Crisis; Tension over rise of nationalist Yarosh, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32216738114 Sakwa, op. cit., p. 209.115 James Carden, ‘McCain Talks Tough as the War in Ukraine Continues Without End’, The Nation, 21 February 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mccain-talks-tough-as-the-war-in-ukraine-continues-without-end/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWHviwLMy8116 https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf117 In June 2019 after attempts to implement a demilitarisation of the town of Zolote, Dmitry Yurosh threatens Zelensky that he “will be hanging from a tree if” he betrays those who died in the Maiden or the struggle in the East. In October the Kiev Post in an article Glory to Ukraine: No Capitulation What Price is Zelensky Prepared to Pay? reported on the confrontation over Zolote and the threat to withdraw but would assemble thousand more Kiev Post, 8 October 2019 Glory to Ukraine: no capitulation what price is Zelensky prepared to pay ? https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/im-not-a-loser-zelensky-clashes-with-veterans-over-donbas-disengagement.html Also on October the LA Times reported that Far-right groups oppose Ukrainian president’s peace plan and that Zelensky had warned against violence at far-right demonstrations against peace negotiation,The L A Times of 14 October 2019 Far-right groups oppose Ukrainian president’s peace plan. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-14/ukraine-protest-zelensky-peace-plan. 10,000 people Zelensky warns against violence. In November the Kiev based UNIAN Information Agency reported further death threats from against Zelensky from a female blogger and European Solidarity Party MP over Zolote incident. I’m open to any evidence that the bastion of democracy provided any support to Zelensky in these circumstances. The web page proceeds to `second headline: Ukraine’s SIB Launches probes as evidence in Maiden shooting case goes missing.UNIAN Information Agency https://www.unian.info/society/10771814-vlogger-s-home-raided-amid-probe-into-death-threat-to-president-zelensky-video.html 22/.11/19118 Joe Gould and Howard Altman, ‘Here’s What You Need to Know About the US Aid Package to Ukraine that Trump Delayed’, Defence News, 26 September 2019, https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/09/25/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-us-aid-package-to-ukraine-that-trump-delay119 Aurora Bisotti, ‘Clinton Warns Putin Repeating Mistakes of Moscow’s Past; It Didn’t End Well for Russia’, Express, 8 March 2022, https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1577226/Hillary-Clinton-Putin-warning-Afghanistan-Russia-Ukraine-invasion-vn.120 Bisotti, op. cit.121 Julian Borger, ‘Pentagon Chief’s Russia Remarks Show Shift in US Declared Aims in Ukraine’, The Guardian, 26 April 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/25/russia-weakedend-lloyd-austin-Ukraine122 https://www.salary.com/tools/executive-compensation-calculator/lloyd-j-austin-iii-board-member-of-united-technologies-corp-de?year=2018123 Pavel Luzin, ‘The Inner Workings of Russia’s Military Industrial Behemoth’, Riddle, 27 March 2019, https://ridl.io/the-inner-workings-of-russia-s-military-industrial-behemoth/124 Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, ‘The World Putin Wants’, Foreign Affairs (September/October 2022), p. 108, a 118–119.125 Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 187–188.126 John Mearsheimer, ‘The Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault’, Foreign Affairs (September/October 2014), p. 77. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aNMOEQ0248&t=8s&ab_channel=HolbergPriz127 Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton UP, 2008).128 F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Collected Works of F.A. Hayek Vol. 2 (University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 5.129 James Q. Whitman, Hitlers’ American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2017).130 In 1942 Hitler discussed the fate of Ukraine with some of his colleagues: “There is only one way to Germanise this county by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon these natives as redskins.” A few months later, on the problem of bringing order into the East: “The struggle we are waging there against the Partisans resembles very much the struggle in North America against the Red Indians. Victory will go to the strong, and strength is on our side. At all costs we will establish law and order there.”. Hitler’s Table Talk. Compiled by Martin Borman Ostara 2012 p 29 & 269131 Yehuda Bauer, Memo to the ITF on Comparisons between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Regime, pp. 1, 2 & 5. https://www.ereinnern.at>yehuda-bauer.pdf>file132 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/B-9-2019-0098_EN.html133 After the March 1939, when Hitler took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, he escalated his agitation over the last and perhaps the major grievance of Versailles, the grant of the Danzig Corridor to Poland, separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany. In May 1939 according to the historian William. Shirer. Hitler met with chiefs of the armed service, where his adjutant Rudolph Schmundt took notes of the Fuhrer’s directions: “Further successes can no longer be obtained without the shedding of blood … Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East, securing our food supplies and also of solving the problem of the Baltic states There is no other possibility in Europe … If fate forces us into a showdown with the West, it is invaluable to possess a large area of the East. In wartime we will be less able to rely on good harvests than in peace time … There is no question of sparing Poland, and we are left with the decision: To attack Poland at the first available opportunity. We cannot expect a repetition of the Czech affair. There will be war. Our task is to isolate Poland. Success in isolating her will be decisive”. According to Shirer, Hitler had, by late May, already decided on the eventual invasion date of 1 September. William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Book Club Associates London1984 p 484– 485 & 491.134 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., p. 219.135 Jeff Gerth, ‘The Press Versus the President, Part 1’, Columbia Journalism Review, 30 January 2013, https://www.cjr.org/author/jeff-gerth136 “A new study shows online push by foreign disinformation accounts didn’t change attitudes or voting behaviour – but the disinformation campaign may have add other consequences … … Only 1% of users in the study accounted for 70% of the exposures. In addition, those who identified as ‘Strong Republicans were exposed roughly nine times as many Russian influence accounts than those who identified as Democrats or Independents … … [the exposure] was eclipsed by content form domestic media and politicians CSMP. Exposure to Russian Twitter Campaigns in 2016 Presidential Campaign Highly Concentrated Largely Limited to Strongly Committed Republican Partisans. https://csmapnyu.org/news-views/news/exposure-to-russian-twitter-campaigns-in-2016-presidential-race-highly-concentrated-largely-limited-to-strongly-partisan-republic137 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., pp. 261–263.138 Thomas Macaulay, History of England, From the Accession of James II, 1848, https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/history/whig_interpretation_history.html139 Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade (Picador, 1997), p. 243.140 Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (Vintage Books, 2014), p. 205.141 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit., pp. 68–69.142 Adolph Reed, ‘The Whole Country is the Reichstag’, NONsite.Org, https://nonsite.org/the-whole-country-is-the-reichstag/Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichael de YoungMichel de Young is retired lawyer who worked with the criminal law divisions of legal aidand was involved in about fifty homicide case, his advocacy in the higher courts were confined to bail and procedural applications, mental impairment order reviews and the occasional plea. On retirement he wrote and distributed a critique of the organisation which resonated with fellow workers and beyond. Since the he has done research on political theory, the history of liberalism, the human rights field, in the tradition of historical materialism. Email: m.deyoung@iinet.net.au
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