The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - America Is Entering a Dangerous Moment — with Timothy Snyder

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Historian Timothy Snyder joins Scott Galloway to put the current political moment in historical context — and to explain why it should not be dismissed as abstract or theoretical. They discuss recent killings during federal immigration operations, how propaganda attempts to overwrite reality, and why video evidence and “small truths” matter in resisting authoritarian power. Tim also examines the role of corporations, the limits of political parties, and what history shows about protest, coalition-building, and civic action. Algebra of Happiness: how to give your parents comfort. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 381. 301 is the country code for Serbia. 1981, NASA launched the first space shuttle. What did the vegetable fetishes say when they landed on Earth? We come in peas. Things are getting desperate here. Welcome to the 381st episode of the Prop G-Pod. What's happening?

I'm back from an exciting week in Davos. I'm kind of, you know, back in the swing of things, and then I get back, and what do we know? we encounter some pretty upsetting events in America that are sort of contrary to the reason that this country has founded. Specifically, America, people say it was founded because we didn't want taxes. Now, basically, America, this experiment was an attempt to reject the notion that we can be abused by a monarch, that there is co-equal branches of government, that everyone is accountable, and that people have certain rights. And we outlined those rights in this document called the

Constitution. And most recently, in like 15, 20, 30 seconds flat, we are violating people's First Amendment rights, rights to free speech, Second Amendment rights, rights to carry a gun, Fourth Amendment rights, search and see. I mean, we're just violating people's rights everywhere, and some of these killings have been just so brutal, and I don't have a lot to say that's not already been added about them except for a couple of things. One is an observation, and it seems as if ICE and our centers for border control, as that was called, having a unique ability to find and identify incredibly good people, whether it's or the future, a gay parent who,

after dropping their child off, who is agoraphobic or has social anxiety, circles the block a couple of times to wave goodbye to the kid or an ICU or a male ICU nurse. I feel as if literally the future, what do you want? you want more degendered or male nurses, caregivers, great parents who can find people they love, regardless of their sexual orientation, and raise healthy, loving families.

It feels like ICE and the president have figured out a way to identify and zero in on the future and try and push back on it. It's also something I'm thinking about. I'm kind of sick of bitching about shit. There's enough podcasters and outraged hosts on CNN. And I'm trying to figure out what to do about it. And I've been thinking about something that I'm very good at,

and specifically the most radical act in capitalism is non-participation. And that's essentially I'm trying to organize you're thinking about how to inspire an economic or a national economic strike. And that is, I think protests are really important. Timothy Snyder, our guest, who's coming on, correctly pointed out, that movements, political movements don't start with political parties. they start with people and protests are very visible and very powerful. Obviously, voting is very powerful, but I believe that just as we found that kind of online was a new innovation in voting

or podcasts with a new innovation in voting and door knocking was the old technology, I think we're going to find that potentially a new technology might be an economic strike, and what do I mean by that? So if you think about, all right, let's get to the center of the problem. How do we actually stop that? If we wanted a clear blue line path, not for what's symbolic or what's cinematic or what makes us feel good, it's not science, it's not protests, it's not television, it's not tributes. How do we actually get ICE out of these cities, right? How do we stay really focused on the prize? And in my view, it would be, okay, the current administration doesn't respond to citizens or outrage or indignance or any sort of morality or much less the Constitution or any other branch of government. What do they respond to?

The markets. the two times or the times that Trump has stepped back from the brink of really shitty decisions is one when the markets crash, as they did this week when he announced sclerotic, irrational tariffs on Europe, or when the Japanese bond market begins to fail and our 10-year bond starts to go up. That's when he has backtracked and pulled away from certain decisions. So, okay, if we want to affect change, we've got to affect the markets. Now, how do we affect the markets? I think the least taxing way to, or the clearest blue-line path to impacting the markets is you look to our strength, and that is the weapon we have in the U.S. is that the U.S. is a consumer-led economy. 70% of our spending is consumer spending, $27 trillion economy, GDP, $67 billion a day. If you think about the greatest and swiftest political action in history, it wasn't a long ago. We have the example to look to, and that was exactly six years ago in Q1 of 2020, when COVID hit, and that is almost overnight, we flushed the market with $7 trillion in stimulus,

a bunch of new laws, some that people agreed with others. People didn't. But government has never acted so boldly and so swiftly in Q1 of 2020. Now, why was it? It was because people are dying? No, it wasn't because of that. It was because GDP crashed 31%. So if we were to take GDP down just 2%, we would go from being in what's considered a robust economy

to being in a flat-out recession. So what would be the most targeted surgical strike sniper fire, if you will, to try and get ice out of these cities? I think it would be through a national economic strike. The target specific companies, specifically targets AI, which is now 40% of the S&P. And how do you do that? Basically, I think February should be resist and unsubscribe, just as they say, get it? Not like and subscribe. Resist and unsubscribe.

I believe that you could actually target one company. you could target OpenAI, and if you were to cancel all of your consumer subscriptions or a quarter of us that have subscriptions as I do to OpenAI, ChatGBTGBT, GBT, I think it's an incredible product and said, okay, I'm going to go with Anthropic and try and make a point. And OpenAI was forced, which they would be, to report to their investors that for the first time in their history, their subscriber growth actually went negative in Q1 of 2026. That would send a chill through Navidia, through Microsoft, through Anthropic, and if you send a chill through the AI backbone, or if AI sneezes,

the entire economy, the S&P is going to get a cold. I don't think it should be a one-company economic strike, but I think it should be focused on subscriptions, because subscriptions are generally how the tech economy rolls, and it should be around targeted to the sycophants, who are the most powerful people in our nation, specifically Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Satchin Adela, the people, Jeff Bezos, that basically Trump listens to and have shown no willingness to serve any stakeholder other than shareholders. So I think these folks are who Trump listens to. I think it's who the market listens to. And what do you want in an action? You'd rather have one precise weapon that debilitates the entire army. What is that precise weapon?

That is an attack or limited surgical strikes on certain parts of our economy. they would immediately have an impact on GDP and the S&P. And how do we do that? We go after subscription-based services specifically as they relate to AI and technology. We'll say, well, they tried that in Minneapolis for a day. It can't happen for a day. A day is an annoyance. It needs to be at least a week, I would say a month.

And it should be targeted on the most overvalued and sensitive part of our economy right now because America is essentially a giant bet on AI. In some, Trump doesn't listen to citizenry. He listens to the markets. This isn't about ideology. it's about mechanics and math. But if you like me, think what is going on here is totally unacceptable and don't want to wait until November and recognize that protests are incredibly important, but may not be the tipping

point and are exceptionally disappointed in our elected leadership, you don't seem to be able to find their way past, figuring out a way to push back here. In sum, in some, one word gets this done. Strike. So with that here to talk about democracies and how democracies fail in the importance of citizen unless protest is probably the top domain expert in the world right now, and really a key voice in this moment, that's Timothy Snyder, and we'll be right back with our conversation with him.

Very much appreciate your time and what must be a period where your time is in great demand. Let's start. Can you describe a little bit about the moment you believe we're in and any analogies to past historical events and how it informs the current moment? The moment that we're in, like all moments, is open. You know, I'm a historian. I'm not, like, I'm not a determinist social scientist. I don't think there are overarching laws of any of this stuff. And one thing you definitely learn from the history of authoritarianism is that there are conjunctures, like there are sets of circumstances where what people do matters a lot. So I guess I would say we were in one of those moments where if we choose to see it, it's clear that the people who are running the United States of America would be very happy to carry out by way of propaganda, occasionally. violence and threats, an authoritarian regime change. That's just totally obvious. And the question is whether one chooses to see that and to make preparations and to react accordingly. The moment we're

in is one where if we just let things go, we will get a change of kind of government or we'll get a breakup of the republic as people try to change the government if we do nothing. But we're also facing people who can't take a punch, who are eminently beatable, and who are essentially counting on us to be fooled over and over again. You said something interesting that. Can't take a punch. Say more about that? I mean, isn't it sort of self-evident? Like the 95% of what the Trump people do is based upon bluff and anticipatory obedience from our side. If so many of our plutocrats and oligarchs hadn't gone over at the end of last year and the gain of this year, we'd be in a completely different place. But if you push back a little bit, right? If you're Denmark,

and you push back a little bit, or if you're Minnesota and you push back a little bit, then they pull back because they're essentially counting on a lot of, a lot of verbiage and a little bit of violence to be enough to bully you. And if it's not, they're not quite sure what their next move is. So just to set some context, and I realize this is probably obvious for most of our listeners, but two U.S. citizens have been killed in Minneapolis this month during federal immigration operations. Renéyne Nicole Good on January 7th and Alex Prettie on January 24th. the videos have ignited a national argument about force, legality, and political violence. Timothy, when you zoom out, does this feel, I keep saying this is a red line in an inflection point,

and I keep being wrong. Does this feel to you like an actual inflection or a turning point? It does, and I will turn a little bit back to a part of your first question that I didn't answer, which is historical comparisons. It reminds me a lot personally of the moment in early 2014. when Ukrainian protesters were killed for the first time. And each time one person was killed, then the regime made this effort to describe this person as a horror, you know, as a terrorist, as an extremist, and so on and so forth. And then it would turn out that, very quickly,

it would turn out that, like, it was a mom or it was a dad or it was a student or it was somebody who was just trying to do the right thing. It reminds me of that a lot. And the Ukrainians were actually able to win in that situation. I mean, they had the, they have the bath, luck of being next to Russia and Russia could invade. We don't have that problem, right? Nobody's going to actually invade us. So that was a turning point. Because in this barrage of lies, in this attempt to create total unreality around us, most of us still recognize the difference

between life and death. And most of us are still capable of appreciating a human being in her or his particularity, rather than being immediately willing to accept that this person was, quote, unquote, a terrorist or quote unquote, an assassin. So it is a turning point. It's a turning point where it's not just that you say, okay, we can't have a republic if the federal government is going to gun people down on the street, which is true.

It's also a moment when you can be reminded of the very basic things, like the dignity of the individual, which are at the foundation of having something like a republic. I thought of you in a specific moment, and I want to get your reaction or understand your reaction in the moment.

I'm thinking of, and that is when Secretary Nome immediately went on air and described Mr. Preddy as a domestic terrorist and said that he was there brandishing a weapon and there to massacre federal agents. And I remember thinking, it reminded me of the Orwell 1984 book where something along the lines that I said, and their last, their final act was to ask us to not believe our eyes and ears. I don't think I'd ever seen something so brazen in terms of a lack of respect for the dead or an assumption that we were willing to ignore our powers of observation. And I really thought of it as, and I'm trying to separate my emotions, which is difficult from powers of observation,

but I had never seen anything like that from our government. I'd just be curious what Timothy Snyder thought when you saw that. I mean, I think our reactions were very, very similar. what I thought was, I mean, I just kind of start where you start, which is the respect for the dead. I mean, if when you say anything about the dead, you should learn something about their lives. And, you know, that, like that part where, I mean, this, like, you know, none of us is perfect, right? But when we die, like, that's a moment where those of us who know us and don't know us have a chance to, demonstrate what's good in them by finding something which is good in us, and to miss that chance

so completely and horribly, and to do the opposite and to consign, you know, one human being's very specific memory to a general category is terrible in itself, and for that general category to be something that's a lie is even worse, and for the lie to be a slander is even worse. So, I mean, as horrible as these deaths are, the reaction to them is just as damning, I would say, because if you're going to lie about things like this once, you'll lie about things like this over and over again. And it reveals that there are no restraints on you. Like, if there are any moral restraints on you in your pursuit of power or in your obedience

to those who are pursuing power, they would show up at a time like this. And if they don't show up now, they're just never going to show up. There's nothing which is going to cause you to be a decent human being. if you can't be a decent human being when people under your orders kill someone. The thing that's different this time or that I view is different,

and I'm curious how you've tried to incorporate it into why this might be a different moment, is quite frankly technology, specifically cameras on phones. And that is, if we didn't have video footage of both of these deaths from multiple angles, I think the conversation

or the opportunity for white space that might be filled by propaganda would be greater. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are about how this moment might be different because of the use and ubiquity of these camera phones. If you think back to the 70s and 80s of the last century, the end of communism, which is one of the focuses in my own research, you see that what the dissidents are trying to do is to answer big lies, not so much with big truths, but with little, truths. So there's no longer the confidence that there's one big truth, but there is the confidence that we know our friends, we know our colleagues, we know the other people who are taking risks for us, and we can make a record. And they had to make a record using typewriters and mimeograph machines and, you know, the tools that were at their disposal. And they took incredible risks, basically just

to type lists of people who had been arrested and that tried to keep track of in which, you know, in which facility in the gulag those people were sent. And then they went to prison for doing that. And I'm thinking about that just because my reaction is to say, we do have a technological advantage in this way, that we can create the small truths by way of camera shots from phones from all kinds of different angles. And enough of those from enough people can then dissolve or at least push back the attempt at a big lie. Because of course you've hit the nail on the head, if there was no evidence, and it was just like the word of a couple of citizens against the entire top of the federal government shamefully, you know, slandering and defaming this man, then I'm afraid you're right that the conversation would then take a very different form. It would take on the one hand, on the other hand, form. And let me just take this occasion to note that although major media are getting better at this, there is still a worrisome tendency to start every story with conflicting accounts. And like conflicting accounts is not news.

You know, like, that's like conflicting accounts is like the atmosphere is made of air, you know, or relationships are sometimes difficult. I mean, it's not news. Conflicting accounts are always there. What's news is what actually happened. And, I mean, we're making some progress on this, but news outlets have to try to start from what actually happened as opposed to the government has propaganda and we're going to repeat that propaganda. And then we're going to admit there might be another version. You study authoritarian societies and governments, and it feels as if the Trump administration is definitely taking notes from the playbook of authorities. Can you speculate what may be happening behind the scenes in the Trump administration right now as you have two different people, Secretary of State and the vice president? It feels like joccing to be kind of the air to MAGA, if you will, at the same time trying to figure out if Secretary Nome should be the fall gal. some Republican senators, it feels like for the first time,

are actually kind of finding their backbone. I mean, it definitely feels like things are beginning to crack. A, do you agree with that? And B, if so, what does history tell us about what might be going on behind the sands? I mean, I'm going to, I will happily do a little speculative, basically, sovietology about this. But before I do that, I just want to say that it's important to recognize

that despite the fact that people are now taking, a slightly different quote-unquote tone. And despite the fact that Bovino maybe has been sacrificed and maybe known will be, the basic policy is still the same. And ICE is still carrying out these raids. And the basic ideologist and practitioner of all of this is still Stephen Miller, who's essentially,

he's basically running things as the president at this point. So having said that, I mean, I think you're right that it's a struggle between the struggle is between the vice president and the deputy chief of staff, between Vance and Miller. And my basic take is that Miller is a convenient person for Vance because he's essentially the only person in MAGAR World who's less popular than Vance. And the way that Vance is going to play this is that after Trump goes down in some form or another, he's incapacitated, he dies, they make a move against him, whatever happens, Vance's obvious move is to say that all of the

the distortions are the fault of Miller, right? That, like, there was once a pure Maga, like, we have it all right, but then Miller came in and he messed things up. That's Vance's absolutely predictable play, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if there was an element of blaming the Jew in it, because that is the world in which Vance's mind seems to be. And so Vance, I think, wants to have Miller around until the right moment, right? And I'm not sure that moment has actually yet arrived. Rubio is sitting pretty because even though our foreign policy has a disaster, he's done a very good job at directing the most disastrous parts of that to Vance, who doesn't seem to be smart enough to notice that that's what's happening. So the

Greenland portfolio, which was obviously doomed, was given to Vance, and so Vance could make a mess of it. So I agree with you. There's, and there's another basic point here, which is worth noting, these guys are old. I mean, Trump in particular is old, but if you compare this to the fascism of the past, and the fascism of the past, you weren't worried about, you know, Mussolini having a stroke, right? You weren't worried about Hitler having a heart attack. Compared to our fascists, those guys were quite young. And so the fact that Trump is old and visibly declining adds a dimension to this, which is new. You said something that caught my attention there that you think that Vance might turn to, quote, blaming the Jew or an element of that.

A lot of my Jewish friends like Trump, because I see the Trump administration as being more resolute on Israel. And I've said, if you look at history, this feels to me like a perfect setup for an economic shock, mixed with some fascism, and then move to the oldest playbook in the world,

and that is start blaming the Jews. And the pushback is, well, no, Trump's been better on Israel than Biden was, which I don't agree with. But do you see the same sort of potential for another pretty dark moment with Jews as the target here? Being in favor of Israel does not mean that you're in favor of Jews. These are just

different issues. There have been all kinds of anti-Semites, including fascists who are in favor of Israel because they thought, well, that's a good place to have the Jews that are there than here. So there isn't an organic connection between being in favor of Israel and supporting Jews. It can overlap, but it doesn't necessarily overlap. And so I worry that not all American Jews can fly, that, of course, but I do worry that too many American Jews could conflate that, right? I mean, the Nazis themselves until 1937 or so thought that Israel was a great idea of that because that's a place that you could put the Jews. So like that, I'm not saying it's exactly the same. I'm just saying that history teaches us that being in favor of Israel is not the same thing as

caring about the rights or the dignity of the Jews. And as far as this administration, I mean, I think they've been anti-Semitic from the get-go. I think the way they treated Zelensky in the Oval Office is basically impossible. if Zelensky is not Jewish. It definitely had an element of making a circle around the Jewish guy and taunting him. And the whole thing against campuses, I mean, although it claims to be anti-Semitic,

in my view, it's clearly anti-Semitic, because what it does is that it sets up this expectation, which the real anti-Semites immediately grasp, that the Jews are in charge, right? The Jews are in charge because they're able to do this on campuses. And I think many American Jews don't notice that dynamic, but the anti-Semites definitely noticed that dynamic, right? I mean, so I think that whole thing has been a trap,

that the notion that the government comes in and closes down free speech on universities, which is what happened, then they do it on behalf of Israel. That tells the anti-Semites that, oh, look, the Jews really are in charge. And I think they know that. I mean, I think they're perfectly aware that this is what they're doing. And I wish fewer people were, had been taken in by this. So, yeah, I mean, getting to your question, I think it's very telling that Vance, you know, when he's basically, so first, I mean, look at who Vance

follows on social media. He follows people who are just unremitting American Nazis. And when he's asked about whether the Republican Party is a big enough tent for the Nazis, he says, well, you know, his response is basically, yeah, it has to be, it has to be big enough tent, both for people who are Nazis and who aren't Nazis, you know. And so that's really where we are, and they're not making too many bones about it. And so I think, you know, if, if Miller is around, long enough, it would be really surprising if Vance is around long enough, right? Because in these situations where it's a tiny number of people vying for power, it's all kind of unpredictable. But in that situation, it would be, I think it'd be very surprising if Vance didn't resort to

something like, you know, this guy's not really American or like this guy went too far or, you know, people like him always take things to extremes, you know, that kind of thing. I think that would be a natural move for Vance to make. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Grunes. The New Year always comes with resolutions, and that can be a lot of pressure to improve yourself. That's all well and good,

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People do. And you talk about the power of protest. Talk a little bit specifically about Minneapolis, the response of the citizenry there, and if there's any historical context and how it might help us understand what might happen there or happen next. That's a beautifully framed question because it gets at something very important, and that is that in an unusual situation, you can't count on the political parties to be the solution. And we are definitely, however you want to characterize it, we are in an unusual situation. I mean, we're in a place that a number of political scientists, I think wisely would call competitive authoritarianism, where there are going to be elections, but the elections are going to be an uphill struggle.

And you can win, but the way that you win is by recognizing that it's an uphill struggle and you have to do unusual things. And part of that is saying, is understanding that all those. there will be in elections and the opposition party has to win those elections, it's not going to do it on its own and that you don't wait for the opposition party. Instead, you have to push out ahead as the opposition yourself or as the resistance. You have to set the moral terms. You have to take the risks and you have to build a coalition of which the opposition political party is a part that isn't necessarily leading or pulling the wagon on. So, and the examples of this, I mean,

the scholars who work on nonviolent resistance and who work on authoritarianism and pulling back authoritarianism, I think the consensus is pretty clear on this, that the way that you win is with a coalition, but it's not just, so to speak, a cool, calm, calculated coalition. It's a coalition that emerges because people have had experiences and are willing to do new things and get out and take some risks and show themselves. So the coalition, like there's a mathematical logic. to the coalition. You've got to get above, you have to win elections by a meaningful margin. But there's also an emotional or subjective logic to the coalition, which is that you care enough at this specific moment to open yourself, to cooperating with people with whom you don't agree on every single

issue. Now, historically, we know that that works. It has worked over and over and over again. Competitive authoritarianism is a bad situation to be in, but it's not an insurmountable situation if you recognize it for what it is. And so taking Minneapolis in context, and I can't say anything terribly smart about it because I was in Europe for the whole time. But taking Minneapolis in context, that's a moment where people took risks,

they did the right thing, they self-organized, they set an example, they responded to a particular wrong in a way which enables coalition building and which enables people to formulate the stakes of what's going on. I find the protests in the eyes of President Trump, in a weird way, I think he almost enjoys the outrage. And I worry that they're not, that they make us feel good, they're cinematic, they're great on CNN, and then they just sort of

dissipate and melt away. Your thoughts? I don't think that's how it works. So, I mean, I think I disagree with every part of the premise. I don't think Trump actually enjoys it. I mean, if you look at the social media response, I mean, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, take pleasure in attacking people in a kind of generic way, but I don't think he was happy that, for example, his presidential self-parade, you know, that military march, which one can only remember for like the pathos of it all, that that was so wildly outclassed by the protests. He didn't seem to be happy about that. But, I mean, getting beyond his personal reactions, it is my experience, and there are many people

more experienced than me, but it's my experience as someone who helps to organize some things and as someone who takes part in public protest, that one of the effects of public protest is that it enables people to go back and organize on a smaller scale. So I don't think it dissipates. I think what happens is that people realize that these protests were organized by somebody,

and maybe they could join those people who are doing this organization. Create infrastructure. I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's like, that's invisible, right? Like, I mean, I think the media hasn't actually done a great job of covering these things.

I think they've been much more sick. I mean, I think these are the biggest protests in the history of the country, and they have not really gotten the media attention they deserve. I think partly because our media is still too much in the notion that politics is a game and it's played behind closed doors and what you're supposed to report on is what somebody leaks when they, like, you know, crack the door open a moment. I don't think they've gotten the attention they deserve. But yeah, I disagree with the premise because I think that one of the main reasons you protest, and the main reason you protest is to tell the rest of the people who are watching you that this is what's normal and that going along isn't normal. But I think the second reason, reason you protest is that it's like it is the gateway to doing other things like it opens the door to doing other things it allows you to meet people you didn't know before and then to go on and do other things there's such a frustration around what to do if local officials or state officials from minnesota call you and as far as i know they have or the federal government specifically democrats in the senate think that they're getting a lot of calls that basically can be distilled down to well for god's sakes do something

or do more to push back. How would you advise them on what to do? You mean in Minnesota particularly? Governor Walsh calls you, and then the head of the Senate Democratic Caucus calls you and says, we're absolutely outraged. And as a historian who's seen these things play out, what advice would you have for us?

I mean, the main advice, it's a little bit different for Walsh or for the Senate. But I think if you're in D.C., the main advice is to make sure that you're having meetings or you're listening to people who were on the ground because as sympathetic as you might be, there's a reality out there that it's hard to get from your staffers or from the media. So that if you didn't go to Minnesota, some people did, of course, then you should make sure that you have meetings where you're bringing people in and actually listening to them. Because there is a mood not in the country at large, not just in Minnesota, which is hard to pick up unless you actually have these meetings. And the second thing, I think, is to recognize that since this is an exceptional moment, we're not really in a polling universe, we're more in a, we're more in the universe where you have to yourself frame what's going on, right? because one of the many problems with polling is that it means that the people who are doing the polling frame reality by how they frame their questions. And then you get the answers to the questions

and that there's a number and then you react to that. But at this moment, the reality that you have is that we have a quasi-secret police, which is shooting people in the streets. And that as a politician, whether you're a senator or a governor, it's your job to, it's your job to frame that rather than to wait and to see how it gets framed by other people. And, I mean, the third thing is that, you know, there are lots of things. And, again, the situation of Governor Walsh and the situation of senators is a bit different. And Governor Walsh has, I think, been quite out front. But the other thing is to think, you know, you have to aim for a big victory in 26, 28,

which affirms values, right? Like, you take this as an opportunity to talk about what you think is good and what you think is right and what you think the American Republic should be, because at the end of the day, you're not going to get big victories just by being against bad things, no matter how bad they are. You have to use this as a way to talk about

the kind of American public you would see, which not only would lack these things, but which would respect the dignity of individuals, which would not only that it wouldn't take life, that it would respect people, that would provide opportunity. So it says people need to see that there's some kind of a future,

not just that, you know, you're condemning this thing which is happening. What do you think is really going on here? And what I mean is this doesn't feel to me in terms of the tone, the administration and the instructions they've given to Secretary Nome and the Fibuvino and ICE, this doesn't feel like it has much to do with immigration. Is this normalizing a military force to try and pervert or arrest? free and fair elections, is this about an exhibition of strength that they feel shows up at the ballot box, that people like us drawn? I'll go back to my initial question. What do you think is actually going on here?

I think there's a strategic level to it, and then there's also an emotive level to it. So the strategic level, let me try to use history again. One of the problems that the Nazis had in the 30s was that there was no centralized police force, Germany in the 30s. a bit like the U.S. today was a federal system. And again, a bit like the U.S. today, most policing was the responsibility of the states. And so the Nazis over the course of, from 1933 to early 1939, they managed to centralize the police forces. They managed to blur the line between their own paramilitary, the SIA and then the SS and the police force. And then by early 1939, they had the whole thing under one command where the SS and the SA had been merged with, had been merged with the regular police forces. And it was all centralized and there was one pyramid of command.

It's not that we're doing exactly the same thing. I just set that up as a kind of generic problem that you have. And the way that Trump is solving this problem is by treating ICE as a national police force. And this works because the problem of migration, they can say is a problem which is everywhere. and so therefore there's a license for ICE to be everywhere in every home and every business and every state. That's how they're jumping over this problem. They're treating immigration as a national issue which could potentially, you know, as friends, they see it, quote unquote, justify having an ice agent in everybody's bedroom, right, because there could be anywhere there could be an immigrant.

And it's also, and I'm still in the strategic logic, it's also helpful because the border is a place where exceptional things happen. And so if you get people thinking that the border is everywhere, that means that you get people thinking, well, the law doesn't really apply anywhere, right? Because the law doesn't apply at the border. The country ends and another country starts. And so if you can get people thinking that a border issue can be anywhere, then you can get people thinking that the law doesn't really apply anywhere.

So that's the strategy, okay? And I believe in that. But there's also no motive level, which is that these guys do have a kind of, they have a kind of push-button video game logic going as well, which is that we want to do something quick and get quick gratification. out of it. And so, and you see this in the way, like, that they whirl from one country to another

in their foreign policy. But with ICE, I think it's like, okay, in Minnesota, they're doing stuff we don't like. Let's just pound them. You know, let's just hit them. Let's just, like, I mean, like imagining it's some kind of first person, you know, a video game, let's just send our guys over there. Let's just flood them. And that's going to get the reaction we want. And it's going to happen quickly. So I think that's it as well, like this desire for a quick gratification. and this belief, which of course proves to be wrong, that violence automatically changes the game. It doesn't, or it doesn't necessarily change the game

in the way that you want. It leads to unpredictable things. And this, by the way, just, you know, raising up the question to a slightly more abstract form, people talk about the Insurrection Act or martial law as though those things, you know, whether they're for it or against it, those things would automatically change.

But, you know, if they try martial law, It's still the same guys. It's still the same ice. It's still the same set of problems. People aren't going to like it. You know, a few more people will get shot. Americans won't like that the least tiny bit, right? And so people talk a little bit about martial law and the Interaction Act as though, like, it's a video game and now you just go up a level.

But it's not like that. It's still humans with uniforms and weapons and unpredictable bad stuff happens. It doesn't make politics go away. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Nutraful. Each new year seems to come with the message that who we are isn't enough that we're supposed to dramatically rebrand ourselves as someone new. But what if growth doesn't come from quick fixes,

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That's Nutraful.com, promo code Prop G. Support for the show comes from Boot.Dev. So you want to learn code? The good news is that there are endless tutorials and classes that'll teach you. The bad news is that a lot of them can be pretty boring. And when you're bored, chances are you're not going to retain the information being thrown at you. Boot.D-D-D-D-D-D-Ev teaches you to code through gameplay. Quite literally, it's an actual game.

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One, the technology is getting better fast. People are finding new uses for it. It's more popular than ever. And two, every company that makes AI is absolutely hemorrhaging cash. On the Vergecast this week, we're talking about what OpenAI and other companies are doing to try to finally figure out how to make some money off of this technology. Spoilerlerler, it's mostly ads. And we're talking about whether any of it's actually going to work.

All that, plus some stories about the Chinese company that appears to be beating Tesla on the Vergecast wherever you get podcasts. We're back with more from Timothy Snyder. I heard you on another podcast say that they're basically trying to convince people they're bringing the border to them. They're saying the border's everywhere. And I found that just so insightful and chilling at the same time. And I was trying to discuss or trying to bring to life that in early 30s Germany, I would like you to refine and calibrate my, you know, history for dummies. But my understanding is that corporations non-pushback early in that era was instrumental to Hitler's rise,

that they sort of had this, I'll do what you need to make more money if you ignore, and don't speak up. Can you speak to the role that corporations and corporate leaders or business leaders playing, or in this case, not playing, provides us with some historical context there. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say it's an exact fit, and I don't want to be unfair to people,

especially because I want to remember that in, there have been, like, there have been some good moments. Like, when Trump tried to steal the election, there was actually quite a good and unified reaction from a lot of the same folks that we're talking about. So I don't want to be forgotten. But I agree with you, it's not going well now. There wasn't a lot of downside then, though, right?

They knew eventually Trump, Biden would be inaugurated. I don't think they took much risk there. I think you're giving them more credit than they deserve. Yeah, very possibly. I'm just trying to say, you know, you know, Scott, when you're about to talk about Nazis, you try to be as fair as you try to be a little more tempered. Because I'm about talking about Nazis.

With Germany, the basic deal was the businesses hated the labor unions, and therefore they didn't like democracy. And so it's not that they were gung-ho Nazis on an ideological level, most of them, but they thought, you know, Hitler and this government is going to, they're going to just crush the labor unions for us. And we don't like democracy either because democracy allows those labor unions to have some power. And so there you do see a little bit of overlap, right, where a lot of our leading C. CEOs are quite hostile to the labor movement and in that way are happy to have this guy. And you can't do proper resistance without the labor movement. And that's not a connection that people are making. Like in the long run, American business leads a labor movement, needs the labor movement because the labor movement will help you preserve rule of law and you need

rule of law. But in the short run, like your quarterly report or whatever, you're thinking, I don't want the labor movement. They're going to cut down my profits. And I think that's a bit of a moral or practical trap that people are in. And then, of course, I mean, the second step in the, in the Nazi history is that then, you know, once they were in power, the Germans brought in the CEOs or, you know, the leaders of the businesses one by one and took them to Woodshed because they could at that point, you know, and that's, again, that's a little bit repeating now. Some of our guys, you know, like some of our guys went to the woodshed on their own even before Trump was in power and, you know, kind of asked for it. And that is a difference, right? I mean, that moment in late

late last year and early this year, where some of our most powerful oligarchs decided that they were going to essentially volunteer, that is really extraordinary. And that has made a huge negative difference, I think, because we had people who really could have protected themselves and set an example, just decide to behave in exactly the way that history

very clearly shows that you shouldn't. I see a stronger analogy in that, so my understanding, as Hitler said to these industrialists in early 30s Germany, I'll crush the trade unions, which is essentially giving you money. And I see similarities today where the most powerful business leaders who control our information are looked up to as icons of business. And icons of business become kind of our de facto heroes in a capitalist society, or at least that's what I see.

And he's essentially said to them, no regulation on AI, carve out some tariffs. He's giving them tens, hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder value in exchange for coming to the Melania documentary or saying getting around a table and prostrating yourself and saying thank you for your leadership in the 20s and 30s the anti-fascists the Marxists like they made the argument that fascism was all about finance capitalism it was about like extreme concentration of wealth and I don't think that was true then but I think it's true now right because I mean the exact diagnosis that Marxists like Hilfording made was that when you get too much money and too few hands and it's all about finance and it's all about symbols.

It's not even about industry anymore. It's all about like the kind of neurological economy that we have where it's all speculative. That's the danger because then the state takes over those guys or those guys take over the state or they merge with the state. And that's what you're describing. That's what's happening. And a number of these characters have ambitious political

or quasi-political notions themselves and none of them are pro-democratic. So I'm trying to think of, I think, anytime you have a movie, You always like to think what new technology might be helpful here. And the new technology, again, of camera phones is, I think, a bit of a game changer. It definitely puts a wrinkle in all of this. What do you think of the idea?

And I've been thinking a lot about this, and I'm actually starting to get involved in organizing. What do you think of the idea? My sense is Trump doesn't, where we've seen really quick political action on the part of Trump is not from a movement or from citizenship or citizenry. It's from markets. and that is he immediately pulls back when the market goes down, the S&P goes down, or even the Japanese bond market yields increased for fear. That's about to happen to our treasury market.

That's where I have seen him pull back is when the market responds. What do you think of the idea of a targeted surgical national economic strike, targeting some of the individual companies we just referenced unsubscribing from some AI platforms, streaming media of the big tag players, because their valuations are so eligible. elevated right now that any sort of ding in sign-ups could have a material impact on those companies, which would ultimately have a material impact on the S&P. And it was your thoughts on the notion of some sort of a targeted national economic strike against some of the bigger players

in tech? I think that's a good idea. I mean, I think it would have to be preceded, and probably some good people already doing this, but I think it would have to be preceded by some kind of visual tool which rates companies and shows you exactly how they have been complicit, because the danger is that if I call for a boycott of some tech companies and not others, then an immediate interpretation will be, well, I'm doing it on behalf of the ones that I'm not boycotting, right? And so you have to have some, like some bar graph, like something which shows, like a bar graph with footnote, something which shows exactly what the companies that you're boycotting have done. And there would have to be some, like, there are an interesting investigation showing the connections between companies, for example, and ice raids.

And so you'd have to also evaluate, like, so Palantir is being used for ice raids. So you'd have to evaluate, like, what exactly is the bad thing that you're, you know, you're measuring. And make that clear. I think that would have to be, like, that would be, like, real transparency and clarity about why you're doing what, to whom. But, yeah, I think that's a good idea. And I would, I mean, I would take the idea more broadly, too, if, like, I think there has to be, they have to, they have to, know that if they do anything it looks like stealing the election in November, that there'll be a general strike. They have to know that. Like, they have to know that if they do that, they're going

to cave the economy. They have to know that there's going to be something coming. If they, if they try, if they do anything which is vaguely like trying to steal the election in November, because that has to be deterred. And I think you're, I think you're right that the thing which gets attention domestically, but also gets attention from them is the threat that, and you know what, it's a plausible threat because the dollar is weak. The, the, the, the, the, the, the The stock market is a really bubbly, speculative, frothy sort of form. Our major trade partners have kind of had it with us. You know, like they are really vulnerable on the score in general.

I find all of this, we're of a similar generation. And when there's been political unrest in the past, although I don't think anything rivals this, at least in my lifetime, I've always been able to disassociate. And I'm, quite frankly, Timothy, I'm having a difficult time disassociating here. I find this emotionally and mentally just very rattling. It is really upsetting, and I know a lot of my friends are physically upset by it.

And whenever I try to soothe that upset, I try to wrestle it to the ground and understand it more, put it in the context of history and trying to understand it. And my two go-toes are you and Heather Cox Richardson. And Heather Cox-Richson said something. We've had her on the pot a couple times. you're sort of my two, you're my go-toes, if you will. And she said something that was actually quite hopeful that America has endured much darker times,

whether it was slave owners controlling politics or interminative Japanese. Where do you put this in the context of real dark moments in the U.S.? Do you see this on the same level, less serious, more serious? And how, as someone, I identify you as a real patriot, you know, how, looking forward, how, is this darkest before the dawn or darkest before it's

pitch black? How are you feeling about the current state of affairs in the United States? I was on a long trip on the, on the west coast, in the Midwest, in the fall. And when folks asked me a similar question, I said, there's going to be a winter of discontent and bad things are going to happen. Probably some people are going to get killed. And it's going to then be a matter of how we react. And that's basically how I feel about all this. It's, I don't find an exact analog, partly because Trump is an unusual figure. It's unusual to have somebody in power who is so unconcerned about anything except himself, to put it like that. I mean, it's, things can stop and change on a dime, you know, like he, the system, precisely because he's so indifferent to

the United States, I think that's maybe the fundamental thing. Like, he, he doesn't care about the or at sovereignty or anything. Like, those are just foreign concepts to him. Citizenry is a foreign concept. And so because he's not really committed to anything except his absence of commitment, he can move really quickly. And he has moved really quickly.

Like, this first year has been quite dramatic. There's been a lot, an awful lot has changed. And as far as, like, what's dark, you know, what kind of darkness this is, I agree with Heather that there have been worse moments where my concern is that we recognize, and I think, and a lot of good people do recognize this, and there are millions and millions people are acting, but that we recognize that the way we got out of those moments was by acting. You know, like America exists, exists as a

republic because people acted, because one side won the Civil War and not another side, for example, right? Because abolitionists took risks, right? Because, you know, because people, in the civil rights movement engaged in massive nonviolent action. Like there was a, there was no, there was no, there's no automatic process inside America. And as soon as you believe in the automatic process, I think you lose America.

So I don't mean to dodge the question. I just think it really does depend upon how we react to this winter of discontent and like what kind of, what kind of spring we have. And then to just repeat a point, I think to get out of it, we have to have a vision of how things can be much better than they are.

Not just like, you know, an antidote or a cure, but a vision of how things can be much better. Well, as our last question, as I know, you've been very generous with your time and you need to hop. But let's talk about, let's assume, let's be hopeful that this administration pays a price and a new administration and people with different political views

are very successful in 26 and the White House changes hands in 28. Do you think post that in order to move on, do you think there needs to be some sort of reckoning or something resembling some sort of trials here? I'm going to just take advantage of that question to say something else before I say yes. Where we are now, it reveals some very fundamental problems that we were going to have to solve anyway. Like, this took a certain form with Trump and that crew, but it could have taken another

form. And the basic problems are the gray zones in our democracy, the dark money, the gerrymandering, all that. the overall inequality of income and especially wealth, the weirdly unregulated state of our social media and relatedly the absence of reporting, which can be fixed, the weakness of public education. These are things that if we are in that situation you're talking about, if there's a majority in Congress and a president that want to change things, yeah, I think crimes have obviously been committed. I mean, that make Nixon, you know, look like a fairy princess. Like, crimes have

been committed, and people who have committed crimes should be investigated fairly and then brought before a judge and jury. Yes. And that's really, I mean, from the history of communism and the history of fascism, I think you can say pretty unambiguously, that it is important to have some kind of reckoning, also from our history, right, where we essentially blew it after the Civil War, and that's one reason we are where we are. But that said, it's also, if there is such a moment, then in the first few weeks of that situation where there's a majority and a willing president, there has to be some really fundamental legislation about those issues that I described. Mass incarceration, by the way, is another one. There has to be some really fundamental legislation, or we're going to be repeating

this in some form again before too long. Timothy Snyder is a leading historian on authoritarianism, in Eastern Europe. He's the author of various books, including On Freedom, on Tyranny, the Road to Unfreedom and Bloodlands. After two decades at Yale, he's now at the University of Toronto Months School of Global Affairs. He joins us from Toronto. Professor Snyder, whenever I speak to you, my friend Dan Harris, at 10% Happier, said something really powerful in that is action absorbs anxiety. And whenever I'm feeling sort of out of control about this and bereft, I tune into you and Heather Cox-W Richardson, and you don't make me feel better, but you make me feel more in control, putting this in a historical context and realizing that we do have agency and that,

you know, other nations have been here before. Some have worked it out. Others have not. But I find it's actually quite soothing to hear from people like yourself that understand this moment and, you know, can kind of break it down and make a get our arms around it, if you will. And it was very much appreciate how you've risen to this moment. Appreciate your time, Timothy. That's very kind of you. And just going back to what you said about being upset, I mean, it would be, this is really upsetting. And we should be upset.

But when you do something, you know, when you do something, even a little thing. You know, if you do something with other people, you always feel better. And that's, you know, you've already, you just said it, you know, when you're sending me off. But that's the thing. If you are active with other people, you're not only effective, but also you end up feeling better. I love that. When you do something with other people, you feel better. I think that's true across a lot of dimensions. Thanks very much, Professor. Thank you. It's been great. Algebra of happiness, giving your parents comfort, how do you do that? As you get older, one of the things I talk about in terms of being a man is adding surplus value. And that is at some point, there's a lot of people more than men.

that never become men, and that is they take more tax revenue and more government services than they ever provide back in the form of new jobs or taxes they pay. They absorb more love from partners than they get, get more from friendships than they provide, you know, provide more people notice their lives, and they notice other people who always complain more than they absorb complaints. And something you can do that gives, in a strange way, your parents, something that they would really treasure, and I didn't learn this until I was older, and I want you to think about this if you're a young adult,

and that is, and I can say this is someone who's now raising young men, 18 and 15, it sounds weird, but I can tell my kids aren't doing well sometimes, and I ask them what's going on, and most of the time they say nothing, and they don't open up to me. And even as a young man, I never really want to, went to my parents with my problems. And one time I came to my mom with, I came to my mom with a problem I was having.

I was really heartbroken over this girl, and I asked her advice. And not only she gave me really good advice, but more important than the advice was I could tell it just was so rewarding for her that I would think as a young man to ask her for advice. And I remember when my mom was sick and dying, I called her,

and I called her, and, I said, I'm just so upset. And she said, what's it about? And I said, oh, I want to talk to you about it in person. And my mom was living in Vegas, and I was living with her from Sunday to Thursday. When I got there, we went outside. And I just held her hand, and I sobbed.

And I was just very honest with her. I was just like, I'm just devastated that you're dying. And I just can't express. I knew in that moment how meaningful that was for her. In sum, One of the greatest gifts you can provide, a parent, is to give them the gift of letting them comfort you. That's what they want. They want to know they have purpose, and they want to comfort you.

That's a gift for your parents. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our associate producer is Laura Gennar. Camille Rieke is our social producer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from PropG Media.