Chapter Review: Prologue (2010)

This is a review of the prologue (13 pages) 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 and tyrannies rise (my review is here). He is a highly regarded historian.

In essence, Snyder’s book is an urgent warning about the power of dark free speech[1] or propaganda and the terrible corrosive power that undermining trust and institutions, e.g., the rule of law and a free press-media, can have on democracies and the rule of law. In a broader context, what is described is an ongoing, deadly serious global war between democracy, truth and the rule of law vs. tyranny, dark free speech and corruption. Snyder makes it crystal clear where our president stands in this war.

Inevitability vs eternity political ideologies

A theme that runs through Snyder’s book is two different conceptions of how politics plays out over time. He calls them inevitability and eternity. The inevitability politics mindset holds that society is moving toward a fixed, stable end situation. For Marxists, the final state of social evolution is a classless, governmentless communist utopia. For capitalists it is the final triumph of a free market utopia. From a point of view grounded in history, philosophy and cognitive and social science, the Marxist and capitalist ideals are unattainable nonsense. Utopias are not possible, only aspirational ideals. They are rigid ideological mirages that wind up serving narrow interests, not the public or human interests.

On the other hand, the eternity politics mindset posits that history progresses in more or less static cycles of threat, conflict and rebirth of the nation followed by a temporary calm before the next spasm of violence and rebirth. The eternity mindset creates foreign enemies when domestic threats have been subdued. Technology advances, but society is stuck in the hate, violence, destruction and rebirth cycle inherent in the human condition. This vision of reality is more plausible than the inevitability ideology, but not necessarily true. Human societies have advanced over the millennia. They are not static, at least not yet. What isn’t knowable now is just how far human society as a whole can advance. Also unknowable is, if there is a social plateau and stasis, what that world would look like.

Inevitability politics promises a better future for everyone, while eternity politics promises endless cycles of conflict. Snyder argues that inevitability tends to collapse into eternity politics, which envisions an innocent, righteous nation at the center of endless cycles of victimhood.

Snyder takes a very dim view of both ideological mindsets based on history, including events as recent as 2018. Both narratives foment and lead to intolerance of enemies, real or fake. They also tend to rely on religious religious iconography to help draw the true believers in. These narratives create out-groups or enemies from people who questioning the narrative’s supposed truth. People who dissent from the narratives are generally not tolerated. Snyder comments on eternity:

“Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom. In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. .... Using technology to transmit political fiction, both at home and abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life to spectacle and feeling.”

In essence, eternity drowns the future in cycles of present emotional whiplash grounded in fear, intolerance and outrage, followed by elation. Inevitability doesn't fare any better:

“[Inevitability politics is based on] a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. In the American capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness. .... Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, communism had its own politics of inevitability: nature permits technology; technology brings social change; social change causes revolution; revolution enacts utopia. .... American politics of inevitability, like all such stories, resisted facts.”[2]

Snyder makes a prediction and gives his basis in facts and logic for it:

“What has already happened in Russia is what might happen in America and Europe: the stabilization of massive inequality, the displacement of policy by propaganda, the shift of politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity. Russian leaders could invite Europeans and Americans to eternity because Russia got there first. They understood European and American weaknesses, which they had first seen and exploited at home. .... Concepts moved from East to West. An example is the word ‘fake’ as in ‘fake news’. This sounds like an American invention, and Donald Trump claimed itv as his own; but the term was used in Russia and Ukraine long before it began its career in the United States. It meant creating a fictional text that posed as a piece of journalism, both to spread confusion about a particular event and to discredit journalism as such. Eternity politicians first spread fake news themselves, then claim that all news is fake, and finally that only their spectacles are real. .... The techniques were everywhere the same, although they became more sophisticated over time. .... Russia in the 2010s was a kleptocratic regime that sought to export the politics of eternity: to demolish factuality, to preserve inequality, and to accelerate similar tendencies in Europe and the United States.” (emphasis added)

Footnotes:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally legal and protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)

2. If my recollection of American history from public education and my observations of American conservative and populist political rhetoric is any indicator, the facts that American capitalist politics resists or denies include those chronicled in the 10-hour documentary Plutocracy, which is discussed here.

Massive Propaganda Attacks on the US

In recent days, descriptions of current Russian propaganda attacks on US society and politics have appeared. The scope and sophistication of foreign attacks on truth and civil comity are increasing. Yesterday, Rachael Maddow discussed how the attacks are being carried out. The propaganda includes a bizarre assertion that the US is prone to break into separate countries within 20 years as states simply secede from the union. A segment with democratic representative Sean Patrick Maloney, member of the House Intelligence Committee, discussed the reluctance of American social media companies to try to combat Russian lies and social attacks. Maloney commented that he has no confidence in Facebook's "moral compass."

Maddow's broadcast segments referred to an article by Lawfare that found a massive Russian internet propaganda campaign now underway. The Lawfare article describes huge Russian online propaganda operations run by an outfit called TheSoul Publishing (TSP). It turns out that TSP is the third largest presence on YouTube in terms of views and subscribers. Only Disney and WarnerMedia are bigger.  TSP operates at least 140 YouTube channels and 70 Facebook pages, including the YouTube channels 5-Minute Crafts, Bright Side, 5-Minute Crafts Kids, 5-Minute Crafts Girly, 7-Second Riddles and 5-Minute Magic. The point of that was to build a massive audience and people's trust. Lawfare researchers found that As of December 16, 2019, 5-Minute Crafts had more than 62.8 million subscribers, and about 16.6 billion views, while the Bright Side channel had over 32.3 million subscribers and about 6.3 billion views. All of TSP's channels YouTube were apparently created in 2016 or later.

TSP also operates on Facebook. Bright Side on Facebook claims to have begun in June 2004, but Facebook’s transparency measures show a start date of July 2, 2015. Bright Side has more than 44 million followers, as compared to the New York Times which has a Facebook following of 16 million. Lawfare comments on TSP:

It is run by Russian nationals and based in and managed from Cyprus, with U.S. operations housed in a shared work space in New York. It funds itself with ad revenues from YouTube and Google worth tens of millions of dollars. And in 2018, it purchased a small suite of Facebook advertisements targeting U.S. citizens on political issues—and it made those purchases in rubles. 

Indeed, TheSoul Publishing does create nonpolitical (and apparently lucrative) craft videos, reaching worldwide audiences. But it also creates political content, including pro-Russian versions of histories that contain inaccurate information. The social media platforms, which I made aware of TheSoul’s activities, have not taken action against the company—apparently having concluded that its activities do not violate their policies.

TSP history videos are posted on the Smart Banana YouTube channel. They are are pro-Russian propaganda. A fake history post from February of 2019 falsely asserts that Ukraine is part of Russia, and even weirder, it claims that Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev gave Alaska to the US in 1957. Real history is that the Ukraine is not part of Russia and the US bought Alaska from Russia in 1867.

In related news, a recent article by Wired magazine points to the rise of deepfake photos of fake people generated by artificial intelligence to set up fake social media accounts. Wired writes:

Facebook on Friday removed what it called a global network of more than 900 accounts, pages, and groups from its platform and Instagram that allegedly used deceptive practices to push pro-Trump narratives to about 55 million users. The network used fake accounts, artificial amplification, and, notably, profile photos of fake faces generated using artificial intelligence to spread polarizing, predominantly right-wing content around the web, including on Twitter and YouTube. 

It represents an alarming new development in the information wars, as it appears to be the first large-scale deployment of AI-generated images in a social network. In a report on the influence operation, researchers from disinformation groups Graphika and DFRLab noted that this was the first time they had seen the technology used to support an inauthentic social media campaign.

We are under attack

I have heard some people argue that the influence of Russia on America and its politics is low to non-existent. Evidence keeps piling up that Russian influence is large and growing in both size and sophistication. Russia has all the time and money it needs to keep finding ways to foment distrust in democracy, government institutions and each other.

For context, it is very well worth knowing that a spy who defected from the Soviet Union in 1970 asserted that most of the KGB's budget (about 85%) was for disinformation and social disruption campaigns against Western democracies and the rest was for spies and their activities. Other defectors have said the same thing. One source comments:

Later high-profile Russian intelligence defectors, such as Yuri Bezmenov, confirmed that the targeting of community groups and the subversion of western societies was a primary objective of the Kremlin. Bezmenov was granted asylum in Canada in 1970 and later worked for the CBC. In a 1984 video, Bezmenov describes the goals and tactics of KGB active measures: 

The main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion and [the] opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower [are] spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process, which we call either ‘ideological subversion,’ or ‘active measures’ – in the language of the KGB – or ‘psychological warfare.’ What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality, of every American, to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. (Bezmenov 1984) 

Historically, Russian disinformation and active measures have targeted democratic systems by attempting to undermine the society and institutions of the West through proxy organizations, distortion of narratives and the media, compromised individuals, agents of influence, and the manipulation of elections. The Kremlin’s tactics and objectives remain fundamentally the same today as they were in the 1940s. The main difference is, as former Kremlin insider Gleb Pavlovksy, who once worked on Putin’s election campaign, has said: “[I]n Soviet times the concept of truth was important. Even if they were lying they took care to prove what they were doing was ‘the truth.’ Now no one even tries proving the ‘truth.’ You can just say anything. Create realities” (Pomerantsev and Weiss 2014, 9).

Defense of Russia as a poor, threatened innocent nation is as much nonsense now as it was under Stalin. America is under a serious, sustained Russian attack and it has been for decades. Unfortunately, our president is working for the Russian government, via bribery and/or via blackmail. Americans cannot look to either the president or GOP members of congress to stand up for American democracy or the rule of law. Defense of nation will have to come from the people and the democrats.

What Worries Evangelical Christians

The key fears that American Evangelical Christians often voice is fear about attacks on their freedom of religion and religious speech, and the existence of abortion rights. The fear of abortion is in the context of existing law that forces no woman to have an abortion, while increasingly draconian abortion restriction laws now prevent abortions for some women who want them. Regarding religious practice and speech, they feel besieged by what the see as relentless anti-Christian attacks. This is never said as far as I can recall, but presumably they believe that attacks on religion are leading to a society where religious practice will come to be banned and punished, or relegated to some sort of persecuted underground existence.

If that accurately describes fears for religion, it has never made any sense to me.

All US presidents have been or at least claim to be Christian. That includes the current president. Congress, state governors and state legislatures are all dominated by Christians and that has always been the case. The US military and civilian police forces are dominated by Christians and that has always been the case. Most federal and state judges are Christian and always have been. Republican presidents appoint radical conservative Christian justices to the Supreme Court and other federal courts. The dominant religion among the American people is Christianity. On top of that massive solid wall of overwhelming pro-Christian political, social, law enforcement and judicial power and dominance, US law forces Americans to subsidize religion with tax breaks worth over $80 billion/year.

Under those circumstances, Evangelical Christian fear of persecution is baffling to say the least. What is there to fear? The list above doesn't even cover all the power and rights that Christians have but take for granted or ignore, e.g., private and state employers in states that don't ban discrimination  against non-heterosexual people can and do fire employees simply for being non-heterosexual.

Exactly what dire threats do Evangelical Christians see that terrifies them so much that about 70% of them support a corrupt, deeply immoral president? They often point to same-sex marriage as a massive threat to religious practice and speech. They cite the example of a few businesses in some states that have been sanctioned for discriminating against same-sex couples in commerce. (Only 22 states and D.C. have anti-discrimination laws and in the other states, discrimination against non-heterosexual people is completely legal and Christians can discriminate all they want in the name of their heavily protected personal religious freedom; federal law does not explicitly ban discrimination against LGBT Americans) Some Christians claim they fear perverts in public and gender-neutral public bathrooms. Despite their massive privilege, power and majority status, they fear non-heterosexual people and want unfettered freedom to discriminate against them in commerce in defense of religious freedom.

Employers and governments in states in gray can discriminate 

against non-heterosexual people in commerce and employment

The Christianity Today editorial

Against that context, the Evangelical publication Christianity Today (CT) published an editorial yesterday asserting that the president should be removed from office on constitutional and moral grounds. Despite that conclusion, the editorial firmly asserts that in this impeachment, democratic motives have always been bad and partisan, the facts are questionable because of partisan animus and the president has been treated unfairly by being unable to defend himself. Despite that logically incoherent defense of Trump,[1] CT concludes the president should be removed from office. CT writes:

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral. 

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

The CT editorial points out that in the Clinton impeachment in 1998, CT argued this in favor of impeaching Clinton and removing him from office:

The President's failure to tell the truth—even when cornered—rips at the fabric of the nation. This is not a private affair. For above all, social intercourse is built on a presumption of trust: .... And while politicians are notorious for breaking campaign promises, while in office they have a fundamental obligation to uphold our trust in them and to live by the law. .... Unsavory dealings and immoral acts by the President and those close to him have rendered this administration morally unable to lead.

What is surprising is the emphasis on morality as a basis to assess political behavior. Some evidence indicates that for Evangelical Christians, personal morals changed to accommodate the president's immoral character and behavior. Before Trump, they believed that morality in a president was important more than other groups, but by June of 2017, Evangelical Christians was the least likely group to say that morality in a president was important. Does the CT editorial reflect a swing of the moral pendulum back to pre-Trump days? That's not yet clear.[2]

Footnote:
1. Regarding CT's flawed logic: If Trump was unable to defend himself and the facts are in question as CT asserts, then there is no objective basis to call for Trump's removal from office. The CT assertion that democratic motives are bad is irrelevant if facts count in deciding what the president did or did not do. Neither partisanship nor bad faith changes objectively true facts to false facts. The CT editorial seems to reflect a lack of understanding on that point.

2. Not surprisingly, the president has incoherently attacked CT as a far left organization that wants to take religion and guns away: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1207997316424187905

My Jewish Students’ Reactions To Trump’s Executive Order: ‘Confusing,’ ‘Unclear’ And ‘Really Scary’

by Alex Green: a writer and researcher.
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/12/13/trump-jews-national-origin-antisemitism-executive-order-alex-green

For the last four months, my 11th grade students and I have tried to make a study not only of American history, but also our public history. From Charlottesville to Emmett Till, Boston’s Faneuil Hall to Utah’s Promontory Point, how do our fellow citizens confront, hide, re-tell and wield history in the present day?

Nothing prepared us for the conversation we’ve had to take up this week, about whether we are equal citizens in the United States.

My students and I are Jews at a Jewish academy. This week, at the request of a student, I gave over a class to discussing and understanding President Trump’s new executive order, which reclassifies being Jewish as one of three things — "a race, color, or national origin”-- under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to the White House, the purpose of this order is to put an end to debates about Israel on college campuses that the administration sees as anti-Semitic. If found to be anti-Semitic, schools’ federal funding will be in jeopardy. To define anti-Semitism, the order uses a debated definition issued in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

The order was first announced in a New York Times piece that quickly became the subject of debate because of its focus on the national origin component of the order. Responses from President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and many Jewish groups have made the argument that this reporting ignores the Obama administration’s consideration of a similar action, while also arguing that detractors of the order are being simplistic. The issue, they say, is more nuanced and related specifically to speech on campuses.

However, all of this dances around the key problem raised by the president’s order. American Jews are not, and have never been, a nation unto ourselves. We are an ethnic group within this republic. But make no mistake, our nationality is American. We do not come from the country of Jew.

Now we are encircled by arguments claiming that this issue is more nuanced and complex than we think, that the order doesn’t really classify us incorrectly, and that this is nothing to be worried about. Those kinds of arguments rarely work with teenagers. They are a red flag that typically indicate that adults are telling them the opposite of what is true.

In our class, we looked at the language of the Civil Rights Act and quickly dispatched with the idea that we fit the definition of a race or a color. As Jews we are neither, and the racial classification of Jews has a horrible history of being wielded against us. Instead, we focused on the pros and cons of this order, and the question of whether Jews can be classified by national origin.

Right away — even among students who may support aspects of this order — the idea of classifying us according to national origin stood out as “confusing” “unclear” and potentially “really scary.” Why scary? Some argued that it’s perhaps because the president himself appears to have little understanding that being against a policy of the Israeli government is not de facto anti-Semitism.

This is the very problem that the president is trying to address with college campuses, and it is certainly true that discourse at universities on the issue of Israel today — especially by critics — ranges from imperfect to coarse and sloppy. If changing this rhetoric is the goal, then threatening funding at universities may be a potent way get people’s attention. But doing it this way could also backfire terribly, leading to old anti-Semitic tropes about Jews secretly influencing people in power in order to get what we want. This is no abstract argument given the violent attacks against Jews in New Jersey just this week.

Of course it is true that the president says he is issuing this order to help us, so, his imperfections aside, why be concerned? The reasons are many.

It is easy to envision a situation in which legitimate criticism of Israel, including criticism by Jews, is determined to be anti-Semitic, and could risk the funding of the very institutions we need in order to foster productive discourse. The approach attacks symptoms, not causes. Nowhere does this enhance the quality of debate. It threatens those who dare to do it. Colleges that do continue to have these conversations are likely destined to have one-sided pro-Israel conversations.

It is also possible to envision Israelis being concerned about Trump’s methods. The Israeli government may want American Jews to become Israeli ones, but making Jews a separate nationality in our own nation doesn’t help that cause.

This is perhaps the most concerning point. Grouping us as no other religious group has been in this country, and making us clearly “dual citizens,” raises the trope of dual loyalty that has been a source of segregating, ghettoizing, and murdering Jews for centuries.

Why does the president have the right to do this? Does he plan to furnish us with passports in our own nation? Do the Jews who purportedly urged him to do this get to decide for us, their fellow Americans, what our status in this nation is? Perhaps this is an overreaction and the scope of this order is as limited as its supporters say, but given the history of persecution against Jews, we are well-founded in being suspicious of actions that start small and get big, and don’t do so in our favor.

That is the context in which our discussion will continue on in our classroom. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. The very man who issued this order makes such comments all the time. Just this week he told the American Israeli Council:

A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me — you have no choice. You’re not gonna vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away!

We need to fight this hate in all its forms, wherever it appears, even if in the guise that it is here to help us. But all of that rests on the answer to a crucial question raised by one of my students in the midst of our discussion. Are we still Americans?

Fact Checking The President's Letter to Pelosi

Earlier today, the president sent a scathing letter to House majority leader Nancy Pelosi attacking the impeachment process. The letter contains false, misleading or exaggerated statements. The New York Times fact checked the 5-page latter and found 19 such statements. The NYT did not comment on many other statements such as "Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt" on page 4 of the letter. Both assertions in that statement are false: If the House votes to impeach, it will be legal, and solid evidence shows that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections. Such deceitful comments directly undermine democracy and the rule of law, which is the president's obvious intent.

NYT fact check of page 1

NYT fact check of page 2

NYT fact check of page 3

NYT fact check of part of page 4

NYT fact check of part of page 5

The president's unhinged, deceitful letter is likely to further divide and inflame American politics. Few or no minds will change based in this, but attitudes of some are likely to harden more. The letter further undermines democratic institutions, and respect for the constitution and the rule of law.

Ideological Susceptibility to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

Researchers in Sweden have looked at susceptibility of liberal and conservative people to pseudo-profound bullshit, which are statements and arguments that seem to be insightful or meaningful but are meaningless. An example is the statement “we are in the midst of a high-frequency blossoming of interconnectedness that will give us access to the quantum soup itself.” That's definitely meaningless.

The researchers write for the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin journal: “This research systematically mapped the relationship between political ideology and receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit—that is, obscure sentences constructed to impress others rather than convey truth. Among Swedish adults (N = 985), bullshit receptivity was (a) robustly positively associated with socially conservative (vs. liberal) self-placement, resistance to change, and particularly binding moral intuitions (loyalty, authority, purity); (b) associated with centrism on preference for equality and even leftism (when controlling for other aspects of ideology) on economic ideology self-placement; and (c) lowest among right-of-center social liberal voters and highest among left-wing green voters. Most of the results held up when we controlled for the perceived profundity of genuine aphorisms, cognitive reflection, numeracy, information processing bias, gender, age, education, religiosity, and spirituality. The results are supportive of theoretical accounts that posit ideological asymmetries in cognitive orientation, while also pointing to the existence of bullshit receptivity among both right- and left-wingers.”

A prior discussion here pointed out that political ideology tends to lead people to false beliefs and unsound reasoning or logic. The cause and effect relationship isn't clear, but there is a correlation between strong ideological beliefs and a tendency to read into rhetoric, facts and truths realities that accord with the ideology even if that leads to distortion and false beliefs.

One of the authors of the research commented: “I think that the notion of pseudo-profound bullshit specifically caught my attention because I have a background in philosophy and an aversion to unclear statements. Understanding how bullshit operates also struck me as particularly urgent in our current digital age, in which fake news, conspiracy theories, and ‘alternative facts’ may have greater destructive potential than ever — although people have probably engaged in bullshitting for thousands of years.” The researcher also commented that “on the left, it may stem from an uncritical openness to ideas that sound ideologically appealing or familiar; on the right, it may stem from a disinclination to critically engage with information and its sources.”

It is probably true that people have engaged in BSing for thousands of years. The historical record and modern times are full of examples. The researcher noted that his interest was in trying to promote scientific thinking regardless of differences in worldview. The research was conducted among Swedes, but presumably the data can be extrapolated at least to Westerners, if not everyone. Follow-up studies will be needed to confirm these findings and further explain the situation.