And then democracy starts to roll back and liberalism doesn’t seem so inevitable. We’ll have liberalism, we’ll have democracy.” And then there are globalization shocks and suddenly we’re all surprised.
TS: One big pattern is globalization, and how at the beginning of globalization, people are very optimistic and think, “Aha! Things are going to go the right way. You started looking at patterns that seemed to be repeating itself. MR: Tim, you’ve been studying history a very long time. “And above all, when people stop caring about – or even actively oppose – the thing which underlies all the laws and institutions, and that’s the truth.
“When you worry is when people stop caring about the laws and stop caring about the institutions,” he says in this Rappler Talk. In this interview on Mawith Rappler’s Maria Ressa, Snyder talks about the interesting political patterns he’s observed in his study of history, and what this might mean for the future of democracies. He highlights the function of truth as the foundation of a healthy democracy, and warns against the fundamental divide between true and false seen in politics today. Bookmark to watch on Friday night, April 3ĬONNECTICUT, USA – Award-winning author and Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder specializes in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, and the holocaust. He has written several books about authoritarianism, fascism, and nationalism, the latest being On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.