Name: The Road to Unfreedom
ISBN: 9780525574460

The Road to Unfreedom

With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

What Hacker News says

kstenerudJun 2024

Of you want to understand why this is happening, read "The Road to Unfreedom" by Prof Timothy Snyder.

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Unfreedom-Russia-Europe-America/...

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hayst4ckApr 2023

I would go spend a couple of days on Yale history professor Timothy Snyder reading his books and then watch him on YouTube. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig is also a major academic in this area. Their respective relevant books are "The Road to Unfreedom" and "They Don't Represent Us." Timothy Snyder also wrote "On Tyranny," which is a very quick read which is directly applicable to the question you are asking, he also narrated it in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tocssf3w80

Timothy Snyder is more about understanding and fighting the forces of tyranny while Lawrence Lessig focuses more on the mechanics of our democracy and the consequences of our current implementation.

I promise you will love Timothy Snyder.

My personal take is "democracy" the word has been hijacked and it's probably time to stop using it casually. The core idea and foundation of liberal democracy and what you feel is being eroded and needs strengthening is rule of law. Russia tried to privatize and democratize but failed because they did not have rule of law. Rule of law is where all the good stuff comes from. So what you really want an answer for is "how do I use my technical skills to promote rule of law?"

Supporting rule of law means supporting a fact based world, supporting institutions that do investigative research, and promoting empathy for the oppressed. Supporting rule of law means empowering the un-empowered by, for example, supporting unions.

Snyder would say: So choose an institution you care about – a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union – and take its side.

FedSoc/Fox/Heritage Foundation/Cato/Cambridge Analytica/CPAC are the exact opposite of what you want to invest in. I am not sure there are good examples on the pro rule of law side of the aisle.

One of the problems of supporting rule of law is that law has always bound the poor and powerless, but often does not bind the rich and powerful. The consequence of this is that powerful people will defend their ability to arbitrarily use their power without consequence. This makes supporting rule of law something that puts a person in real personal risk proportional to how effective they are in their support. I imagine as a consequence it's harder to find the forceful efforts to support it.

How you contribute depends on how far long you think America is. If you think we've passed the precipice, then the correct investments are ones that help people fight to reform the republic, specifically helping people organize and fight. If you think we are still redeemable, then investment in our institutions (media, legal, educational) is the way.

Here is kind of what I would expect the answers would be:

The USDS is probably the most directly applicable organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service

I can't vouch for ACS, but they seem opposed to fedsoc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Constitution_Society

I can't vouch for this either, but here's a list of think tanks: https://academicinfluence.com/inflection/study-guides/influe...

PBS/NPR are generally good media.

Might be good to look into what Stacy Abrams is doing.

I'm not sure how to support unions or unionization efforts.

I probably feel quite similarly to you, but haven't put in the hard research myself, so this is where I'm at. I was hoping for better answers here too.

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jadboxApr 2022

On the topid of neo contemptory fascism, I'd highly recommend reading Timothy David Snyder's works. Particularly these two:

- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

- Road To Unfreedom

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malloryerikApr 2023

This is the way of Russian misinformation and propaganda. Timothy Snyder discusses at length in The Road to Unfreedom. And it has spread. Witness U.S. hard-right politics. Eventually the "Gish Gallop" becomes an assault on factuality itself. As Jason Stanley says, they goal of ending factuality is to "smash truth and replace it with power." You can hear it in such statements as the one a right-wing lawyer friend made: "There is no truth in politics."

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soledadesNov 2022

Timothy Snyder is a historian who has written on extensively on the history of Ukraine (Bloodlands) and Putin (The Road to Unfreedom).

I'm not familiar with The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, but Dr. Snyder makes some strong counterpoints to the Mearsheimer way of thinking on Ukraine in this [1] podcast and others.

He has also given a timely history on modern Ukraine [2], but I have not got around to listening to it.

[1] https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/10/25/historian-timothy-sn...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz...

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throw0101aNov 2020

> I don’t know. What I can say for certain is that I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind.

A point made in The Road to Unfreedom by Snyder is that one reason Russia is going after America is for domestic political reasons:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Unfreedom

Specifically if the Russian public can be shown that America, the supposed shining City on the Hill, is no better than Russia, then the Kremlin will not have to bother improving life for its citizens, and the oligarchs can continue on doing whatever they want to.

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