Historian Timothy Snyder has spent much of his career studying how democracies unravel. And right now, he believes the U.S. is living through a pivotal moment.
“For me, it’s pretty clear that what has happened in the United States or what is happening is an authoritarian regime change,” Snyder told Katie Couric in the latest episode of her podcast, Next Question. "We have people in power who are doing things which are unprecedented on a national scale."
Snyder later pointed to aggressive gerrymandering, the erosion of voting rights, and the potential for voter intimidation in November as signs of that broader shift. He argued that what distinguishes the current moment from previous periods of authoritarianism in American history is its national scope and its focus on political opposition.
That’s why Snyder, the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, believes Americans need to think beyond any single election, even as November approaches.
“I see it as a turning point for the history of the United States,” he says, arguing that Americans need to recognize that “the stakes of the election are the republic itself.”
Does America recognize what’s happening?
For Snyder, the concern isn’t simply what’s happening to American democracy, but whether Americans recognize the shift — and what they make of it.
Snyder’s answer is more complicated than simply saying voters aren’t paying attention. He argues that some Americans may recognize the country’s authoritarian drift and welcome it.
“A lot of Americans don’t want democracy, and a lot of Americans don’t like freedom,” Snyder says. “A lot of Americans would like to be told what to do.”
But Snyder sees another, much larger group as potentially persuadable: Americans who believe the political and economic systems are fundamentally unfair but don’t necessarily see strengthening democracy as the solution.
“It’s not that people don’t know something is wrong. They do,” he says. The challenge, he argues, is connecting that dissatisfaction to the idea that the country needs “a more just and a more democratic society.”
Snyder says Democrats can’t promise a return to normal
That distinction could be especially important for Democrats heading into the midterms. Snyder believes simply campaigning on restoring the pre-Trump status quo would be a mistake.
“My view is that for these elections, the pragmatic is the radical, and the radical is the pragmatic,” he says.
In Snyder’s view, Democrats need to offer voters something more ambitious: tackling the influence of money in politics, investigating corruption, and convincing Americans that the system is no longer “rigged.”
“If you can’t promise people justice, they’re not going to take you seriously,” he emphasizes.
He pointed to Hungary, where former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government was recently defeated, as an example of how an opposition can connect public anger over corruption to a broader political message. Snyder believes Democrats should take a page from that playbook, rather than promising voters they can simply turn back the clock.
“You can’t be saying, ‘Oh, it’s time to go back to where we were two years ago or four years ago or six years ago,’” he says, “because no — literally nobody wants that.”
But is Snyder still hopeful?
For all his warnings, Snyder doesn’t sound resigned to the outcome. One of his most striking observations is that fully recognizing how bad things have become can actually make it easier to imagine something better.
“If you don’t appreciate how bad things can get, then it’s also hard to have the imagination for how good things can get,” he points out.
Later, Snyder offered another metaphor for the challenge facing the country: The question, as he sees it, is no longer simply who can stop the house from burning down. “They can’t burn the house down because it’s already been burned down,” he says.
Instead, he argues, Americans should be asking a different question: Who can they trust to build a new one?
