Chapter Review: Equality or Oligarchy (2016)

“Democracies die when people cease to believe that voting matters. .... The road to unfreedom is the passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity.” Timothy Snyder,  The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Chapter 6, 2018

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Warren Buffett, 2006



This is a review of Chapter 6, Equality or Oligarchy (2016), of Timothy Snyder’s 2018 book, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. His specialty is the history of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Holocaust. Snyder also wrote other books, including On Tyranny, about how democracies fall while tyrannies rise (my review is here). My review of the prologue of this book is here and a review of Chapter 1 is here.

The nonsense of inevitability politics vs. eternity politics

The politics of inevitability and eternity are described in detail in the book’s prologue as discussed here. Briefly, the politics of inevitability posits that over time political ideologies such as communism and capitalism will deliver social improvement and good things to societies and people. In that view, progress is inevitable and politically there is not much to be done other than defend the status quo and tweak things now and then while waiting for utopia to arrive on its own.

By contrast, the politics of eternity basically holds that social and individual progress are impossible and history repeats in cycles of threat to the nation followed by a period of relief. This view sees progress for society and people as a mirage and only a powerful leader (dictator) can save the nation from foreign enemies and evil forces such as globalism and international comity. Eternity regimes see concepts such as democracy, elections, objective facts and logic, and individualism as something that ranges from mere ritual (elections) to actual evil (individualism, facts and logic) working in opposition to the needs of the sacred, innocent nation. As described in chapter 1, that is the ideology and politics of Vladimir Putin, the Russian government and Russian kleptocratic oligarchs.

The sacred nation narrative is that the poor innocent state is only trying to defend itself from both internal and external threats that are always present. It needs to be stressed that objective facts and logic are bluntly denied to be real because the only things that are real in eternal politics is what the supreme dictator says is real and logical, even when that is clearly false or objectively flawed.

From an objective point of view, both inevitability and eternity politics are obvious nonsense. Those fictions work to serve narrow interests at the expense of the public interest por common good. History makes that crystal clear. Both tend to denigrate inconvenient facts and logic, with eternity politics being radically extreme in this regard. What Snyder does not describe is an alternative, maybe because he sees none or more likely because that wasn’t the point of his book. Regardless, the anti-ideology ideology advocated here, pragmatic rationalism, offers an anti-biasing, anti-authoritarian, pro-fact, -logic, -democracy and -rule of law alternative. But that’s a topic for a separate discussion.

Chapter 6

Snyder’s Chapter 6 is stuffed to the gills with facts and details that are heavily sourced. That allows for fact checking for whatever facts Snyder asserts but one wants to question or reject as lies. The chapter focuses on the rise of Donald Trump and how he relied on extensive Russian efforts to help him win the Electoral College in 2016.

The view from team Trump about Russia’s role is exemplified by comments that K. T. MacFarland, aide to Trump made after the election: “If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown [the] U.S.A. election to him.” Clearly, at least some Trump aides believed Russia was the cause for Trump’s electoral college win. Not only did MacFarland believe Russia led Trump to win, she also resented, and saw as partisan political, Obama’s efforts to punish the Russians for attacking the US election, commenting that “Russia is [the] key that unlocks [the] door.”

Because there is far too much content in Chapter 6 to review in detail, the following will mention some of the more important context, facts and beliefs that Snyder articulates based on the evidence available to the public and his inferences therefrom. The value of this partial list of events is that it reminds us of who did what and why.

• Russian support for Trump, coerced or genuine, was widespread if not universal in the Russian government, among ruling elites and among Russian journalists. Dimitry Kiselev, a major Russian media influencer and Trump supporter asserted that “a new star is rising -- Trump!” In addition, Kiselev was happy that “the words ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ are in in the vocabulary of Trump.” Alexander Dugin, author of The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, a geopolitics book that has major influence on the Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites, posted a video entitled “In Trump We Trust” where he urged Americans to “vote for Trump!” Alexi Pushkov, Chair of the foreign relations committee of the Russian Parliament’s lower house expressed the hope that “Trump can lead the Western locomotive right off the rails.” Russian journalists were “given very clear instructions: to show Donald Trump in a positive way, and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a negative way.” There was no ambiguity about who the Russian government and elites supported and what they expected him to try to do to America if he gained power.

• In cyberwar, ‘attack surfaces’ are points in a computer program an attacker can access, allowing the attacker to come in contact with human minds. In 2105 and 2016, Russia used Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Instagram and other social media as places where high priority attack surfaces could be found. Such attacks do not necessarily rely on hacking, but instead can simply use and misuse social platforms as they wish. For example, just before the election, Facebook shut down 5.8 million fake political messaging accounts. Six of 470 known Russian fake Facebook accounts had accumulated billions of shares.

• Russian social media propaganda advertising was targeted, not random. In crucial states including Michigan and Wisconsin, Russian ads were targeted at people who would respond to anti-Muslim attacks, e.g., Muslims are terrorists, based on data showing that most members of target audience probably hated or feared Muslims. Regarding immigrants, Russian pro-Trump propaganda associated refugees with rapists. After the 2016 election, Twitter research found that about 50,000 Russian bots were active on its platform. Russian trolls who posed as black activists who portrayed Clinton as a racist reached hundreds of thousands of minds.

• On July, 22, 2016, which was just before the democratic convention, the Russians released about 22,000 stolen emails via Wikileaks. The emails were chosen to increase conflict and distrust between Clinton and Sanders supporters. The strategy worked. Trump supported and encouraged Russian hacking, e.g., by publicly asking the Russian government on June 17 to find and release emails related to Clinton. (My comment: A few hours after that June 17 public request, the Russian government started to hack the DNC and Clinton as Trump explicitly asked)

• On October 7, 2016 about 30 minutes after a Tape of Trump admitting his sexual assaults became public, the Russians released emails by Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. That release significantly blunted public discussion of Trump’s history of sexual predation. Shortly after this episode, Russian trolls and bots began spreading false stories about democratic Satanic practices and a pedophile child trafficking ring run by Clinton that operated out of the basement of a pizza parlor, i.e., the Pizzagate fabrication. (My comments: To a large extent, the press was fooled and unduly distracted by the timing of the Podesta email release. That failure gave many sympathetic people a basis in Russian fiction to see Trump as innocent instead of the sexual predator that he in fact really is.) 

•  The American people shared responsibility for the success of Russian lies and emotional manipulation. Many Americans responded with anger, incivility and sometimes actual threats of violence. Russians also exploited the gullibility of many Americans. Snyder wrote: “Those who chose to call and threaten were in the avant-garde of American totalitarianism. .... Americans trusted Russians and robots who told them what they wanted to hear.” For example, the vulgar Russian Facebook page ‘Heart of Texas’ was clearly written by non-native English speakers and advocated Texas secession. Separatism was and still is in line with standard Russian foreign policy to advocate separatism and the break up of all countries except Russia itself. Russian separatism policy supported and propagandized for Brexit, Catalonian independence, succession of the entire US South and Alaska from the Union, and the Donbas from Ukraine. Heart of Texas had more followers than the Texas democratic and republican parties combined. (My comment: Successful Russian manipulation of the American people included fomenting unwarranted anger, fear, bigotry, outrage, and distrust in democracy, the press, truth, elections and fellow citizens.)

• Professional American media and press and economic conditions shared responsibility for the success of Russian lies and emotional manipulation. Economic factors seriously weakened the media and press. In 2009, about 70 jobs per day were lost at newspapers and magazines, leading to the near total collapse of the local press. The rise of infotainment (and, IMHO, its attendant capitalist immorality) in place of news in the public interest led the press-media to give Trump far more air time and ink than Clinton or other candidates got. Trump’s antics and divisive, deceitful rhetoric were far too entertaining to pass up. That amounted to the professional US press-media giving Trump massive amounts of free advertising. The CEO of CBS commented that the Trump campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” (My comments: Corporate ownership of media also significantly weakens press and media independence. Propaganda outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News continued their years-long propaganda efforts, enthusiastically adopting Russian lies and spreading them, thereby laundering anti-democratic propaganda into something legitimate in susceptible minds.)

• The republican party shared responsibility for the success of Russian lies and emotional manipulation. Snyder writes: “As republicans realized that Russia was attacking the UNited States, the fury of partisanship became the desperation of denial and then the complicity of inaction. .... McConnell let it be known that republicans would treat the defense of the United States from Russian cyberwar as an effort to help Hillary Clinton. .... After categorized the Russian attack as politics, its scope expanded. .... Even as Kasich and Rubio took a stand on Russian foreign policy, the crucial republican legislators surrendered in advance to Russian cyberattack. .... That is how wars are lost.” (My comments: McConnell earned the moniker Moscow Mitch. Putin could not have asked for much more than to have the US Senate majority leader completely mischaracterize Russian attacks as mere politics. In addition to his self described role as the ‘Grim Reaper’ , he deserves the title Moscow Mitch for that bit of deeply damaging disinformation in the name immoral republican partisanship. McConnell’s treasonous action here arguably transcended mere constitutional rot and constituted an actual constitutional crisis.)

• Although Trump said his former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was as ‘dumb as a rock’, Tillerson did a valuable service for the Russians. Before he left office, conducted a purge of a large group of diplomats that Putin considered to be enemies. By throwing the State Department into chaos, Tillerson significantly crippled American ability to project influence or moral values. Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, illegally took money from foreign governments by not reporting it. Later, he lied to the FBI, falsely claiming he had no conversations with Russia’s ambassador. He was eventually convicted of a felony for that. Flynn’s other escapades included (i) anti-Semitic Tweets at Jews, “Not Anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” for claiming that the Russians had hacked emails of democratic activists, and (ii) followed and shared content from at least five fake Russian social media accounts. (My comment: If Flynn’s contacts with Russians were innocent, why lie about it? One logical answer is that the conversations were not innocent. Another is that Flynn was an incompetent idiot. Another is that he was both.)

• Steve Bannon replaced Paul Manafort as Trump’s campaign chairman. While at Breitbart, Bannon was instrumental in bringing white supremacists into mainstream political discourse. Bannon’s radial propaganda effort was funded by the billionaire Robert Mercer and members of his family. Bannon used some of that resource to experiment with mass public manipulation techniques, e.g., by testing audience responses to certain propaganda about Putin. In 2016, Mercer and Bannon’s company stole the Facebook data of about 50 million Americans and that was used to create tools to either increase or suppress voting by targeted audiences. A major goal was to suppress the African-American vote. Like most Russian practitioners of the politics of eternity, Bannon was hostile toward facts and he liked referring to the press as the “opposition party.” (My comment: The Mercer-Bannon effort to suppress Black voter turnout may have had a significant impact.)

• Unlike Paul Manafort and Steven Bannon who were linked to Russia by corrupt, authoritarian anti-democratic ideology, Jared Kushner was linked to Russia by ambition and  money. Kushner's links were best seen by situations where Kushner was silent. Like Trump himself, banks refused to loan money to Kushner’s father. The exception was the Russian money laundering machine, Deutsche Bank, which laundered billions for Russian oligarchs. A few weeks before the 2016 election, Deutsche Bank gave Kushner a $285 million loan. Although Kushner met with Russian officials, including the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Kushner's escapades included smuggling Kislyak into Trump Tower for the purpose of talks to set up a secret communications channel between Trump and Putin. (My comment: If Kushner’s meetings with Russians were innocent, why go up the freight elevator? One logical answer is that the meetings were not innocent. Another is that Kushner was an incompetent idiot. Another is that he was both.)

Chapter 6 goes on at length in this vein. That brief summary should convey a flavor of what the Russians, Trump, his campaign and the felons, liars and crooks he surrounded himself with were up to. What they were up to wasn’t anything good for the American people, democracy, the rule of law, or other decent moral values. It was all corrupt bad faith based on lies, deceit and emotional manipulation. Snyder constantly points out that even the character “Donald Trump, successful businessman” was a fiction that no one of any significance in Russia believed. The Russians knew full well that Trump was a failed businessman who was saved only by Russian money: “From a Russian perspective, Trump was a failure who was rescued and an asset to be used to wreak havoc in American reality.” Well, American reality really has been blown to smithereens. Snyder’s narrative indicates that the Russians got stupendous value for their stolen money.

Legitimate or not?

Being a data, evidence, truth and logic-driven beast, Snyder’s book raised my personal estimate of confidence that Russian attacks on the 2016 election were a necessary factor, but alone not sufficient, in Trump’s electoral college win. Before Snyder, my confidence level that Russia was necessary was about 80%. Now, it's about 95%. The reality can never be known with certainty, but the evidence supports a belief that Trump is truly an illegitimate president. Or, maybe fake president is a better label.