On Tyranny, Orbán, and Trump (with Timothy Snyder)

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A NOTE FROM THE PRODUCER

Torrey is a Producer for the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast.

This week on Stay Tuned, Preet sits down with historian Timothy Snyder, whose books On Tyranny and On Freedom are essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of our moment. Speaking the day after Viktor Orbán’s stunning defeat in the Hungarian elections, Snyder had a lot to say about its significance:

“I think folks in the U.S. who are centrist, who are liberal, who are on the left, may not understand that Orbán was the sun in the solar system of MAGA. Trump, Putin, Vance, Orbán, along with others, comprise a large network, which has been broadly documented, involving the transfer of Russian oil money, the sharing of political memes, the support of think tanks. The thing which passes for right-wing nationalism in the United States is largely a set of internationalists who are trading ideas, who are trading money, and who are learning from one another. And so the obvious significance of Orbán losing in Hungary is that it’s demoralizing for Trump and Vance. Because he’s basically their daddy. They learned from him, not the other way around.”

But the other reason Orbán’s defeat matters, Snyder says, is that it punctures the myth of inevitability. Trump and Vance believe that history is over, that their version has prevailed, Snyder argues. This is a familiar fallacy, he notes, and history inevitably issues a corrective—which, in this case, came in the form of the election results in Hungary. “The fact that at the center of their universe, which is Budapest, someone could get absolutely thumped like this in an election,” Snyder says, “that shows them that, hmm, maybe history isn’t on their side. Maybe God isn’t on their side.”

Preet presses Snyder on one of his more provocative recent claims: that “some variant of terrorism is Trump’s best bet” for holding onto power through the midterms. Snyder doesn’t back down. He points to what just happened in Hungary (Orbán’s last-ditch false-flag terrorism stunt, claiming Ukrainian sabotage of a pipeline) and to Putin’s rise, which was enabled by the Russian secret services bombing their own apartment buildings and blaming Chechens. We can no longer afford to be credulous at the prospect of such things happening here.

“This happens in the world,” Snyder says. “And it’s done by the people whom Trump admires. And we, as Americans, can’t do the thing we keep doing, which is saying, oh, there are some things that happen in history, or in foreign countries, but we’d like to reserve the right to be surprised when they happen in the United States.”

The reason Orbán’s stunt failed was because the Hungarian opposition was clear-eyed about the possibility and vigilant for signs of it. And there was another point on which the Hungarian opposition didn’t waver: their insistence that there would be legal consequences for abuse of power. “It’s one of the things that Magyar said in his victory speech,” Snyder tells Preet. “And I think the Democrats have to be ready to say it, too. There are people committing crimes in the United States right now who are not being prosecuted and who are not afraid of being prosecuted. And if you want to deter further abuse, especially around the November election, you do have to make it clear that on the other side, there will be prosecutions.”

Listen to the episode, and as always, comment below with your thoughts and questions.

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Become a paying member to get access to Preet and Joyce Vance’s weekly Insider podcast and more exclusive content. On this week’s Stay Tuned bonus, exclusively for paying subscribers, Preet breaks down conditions in state prisons and his experience working to reform New York City’s Rikers Island prison.