What Russian information agents have done is treat the internet like the great big psychological vulnerability that it is. There’s a lot of great research on how the internet distracts people. Snyder: In my book, I wanted to show how an old idea in intelligence- turn the enemy against himself-had been made much easier by a new technology. The politics of eternity are a more potent threat to Russia and the U.S. Totalitarian control over the public's sources of information makes that assault on facts easier. Adapting to and accepting his rhetoric means the ability to change your mind all the time without recognizing that you are doing so.Īuthoritarians stoke fear by dismantling factuality, or trust in truth. He gestures at big stories, but mostly he pokes at rapid media. President Donald Trump relies more on skepticism about various facts, and people’s need to hear what they want to hear. What happened was that people shifted from a pluralistic media landscape to a monoculture with a big lie. That story was more tempting to many Germans during wartime chaos. Snyder: In Germany, one of the ways by which National Socialism was able to rise was its clearing out of the facts of the moment in favor of one big story that made sense of everything. “Eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion,” writes Snyder, but ordinary people invite that persuasion, too. The “politics of eternity,” as Snyder terms it, is an authoritarian narrative that convinces people they are powerless to take on a timeless threat. That’s the next figure we might want to pay attention to. I start with Russia because it seems to me that Russia has reached a certain mature place where ideology is used to defend radical inequality-what I call the “politics of eternity.” Ilyin’s philosophy recalls an international revival of the political theorist and Nazi-associated German jurist Carl Schmitt’s thinking as well. I believe that we need to think through ideas from the 20th century again, rather than imagine that they have all somehow vanished. In the book, I wanted to come across very clearly with the claim that ideas do matter in shaping a nation. I focus on Ilyin because, as a specific philosopher, he was important to specific people at a critical time. Timothy Snyder: It’s striking how many times Putin quotes Ilyin in his writing, and in important circumstances. Putin’s ideology draws on Ilyin’s thinking. Ivan Ilyin, a Mussolini supporter exiled to Germany during World War II, morally justified totalitarianism. An obscure Russian philosopher is essential to understanding Vladimir Putin.
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