America Is Entering a Dangerous Moment — with Timothy Snyder

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:30Speaker 04

  Episode 381. 381 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.

• 1:45Speaker 04

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• 1:57Speaker 04

  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 was 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.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  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, is that what it's called, have 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

• 3:22Speaker 04

  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...

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Something that I'm very good at, and specifically, the most radical act in capitalism is nonparticipation. And that's essentially, I'm trying to organize or thinking about how do I 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 the, just as we found that kind of online was a new innovation in voting, or podcasts were the 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.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  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'd 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 crashed, as they did this week when he announced sclerotic,

• 5:37Speaker 04

  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 US, is that the US 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 that

• 6:21Speaker 04

  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 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?

• 7:04Speaker 04

  I think it would be through a national economic strike that targets specific companies, specifically targets AI, which is now 40% of the S and 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 ChatGPT, 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

• 7:46Speaker 04

  first time in their history, their subscriber growth actually went negative in Q1 of 2026. That would send a chill through Nvidia, through Microsoft, through Anthropic. And if you send a chill through the AI backbone, or if AI sneezes, the entire economy, the S and 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, Sachin Adella.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  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 that would immediately have an impact on GDP and the S and 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.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  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 sum, 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 till November and recognize that protests are incredibly important, but they may not be the tipping point and are exceptionally disappointed in our elected leadership, who don't seem to be able to find their way past figuring out a way to push back here. In sum, in sum, one word gets this done: strike.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  So with that, here to talk about democracies and how democracies fail and the importance of citizenless protests 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.

• 10:21Scott Galloway?

  Very much appreciate your time in 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?

• 10:36Speaker 06

  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 are 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, occasional 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

• 11:21Speaker 06

  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 imminently beatable and who are essentially counting on us to be fooled over and over again.

• 11:39Scott Galloway?

  Well, you said something interesting there, can't take a punch. Say more about that?

• 11:43Speaker 06

  Um, 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 beginning 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.

• 12:26Scott Galloway?

  So just to set some context, and I realize this is probably obvious for most of our listeners, but two US citizens have been killed in Minneapolis this month during federal immigration operations, Renee Nicole Good on January the 7th and Alex Preddy 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 and an inflection point, and I keep being wrong. Does this feel to you like an actual inflection or a turning point?

• 12:55Speaker 06

  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. That reminds me of that a lot, and the Ukrainians were actually able to win in that situation.

• 13:37Speaker 06

  I mean, they had the, they had the bad 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, like, 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, you know, 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.

• 14:21Speaker 06

  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.

• 14:30Scott Galloway?

  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 Noem 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 federal agents. And I remember thinking, it reminded me of the Orwell 1984 book, or something along the lines of 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.

• 15:15Scott Galloway?

  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.

• 15:27Speaker 06

  I mean, I think our reactions were very, very similar. What I thought was, I can't, I mean, I just kind of start where you start, which is the respect for the dead. I mean, before you say anything about the dead, you should think, learn something about their lives.

• 15:46Speaker 06

  And, you know, that, like, that part where, I mean, this, like, you know, none of us is perfect, right? But the, 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.

• 16:26Speaker 06

  So, I mean, as horrible as these deaths are, the reaction to them is just as damning, I would say. Because if you're gonna 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, if they don't show up now, they're just never gonna show up. There's nothing which is gonna cause you to be a decent human being. If you can't be a decent human being when people under your orders kill someone.

• 17:00Scott Galloway?

  The thing that's different this time, and, or that I view as 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.

• 17:14Scott Galloway?

  And that is, if 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.

• 17:39Speaker 06

  If you think back to the seventies and eighties of the last century, the end of communism, which is one of the focuses of 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, 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 to try to keep track of

• 18:22Speaker 06

  in which, you know, in which facility in the Gulag those people were sent. They 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 those, you know, those, those 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

• 19:06Speaker 06

  I'm afraid you're right, that the conversation would then take a very different form. It would take an 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.

• 19:53Scott Galloway?

  You study authoritarian societies and governments and it feels as if the Trump administration is definitely taking notes from the playbook of authoritarians. 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 jockeying to be kind of the heir to MAGA, if you will. At the same time, trying to figure out if Secretary Noem should be the 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 scenes?

• 20:36Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm gonna, 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, you know, a slightly different quote unquote tone, and despite the fact that Bovino maybe has been sacrificed and maybe Noem 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, you know, he's basically running things as the president at this point. So having said that, I mean, I think.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  You're right that it's a struggle between, the struggle is between the, 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 MAGA world who's less popular than Vance. And what, 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 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.

• 22:02Speaker 06

  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 is 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, I agree with you. There is, there's, and there's another basic point here which is worth noting. These guys are old.

• 22:46Speaker 06

  I mean, Trump in particular is old, but if you compare this to the fascism of the past, in 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, which is new.

• 23:10Scott Galloway?

  You said something that caught my attention there that you think that Vance might turn to quote-unquote blaming the Jew or an element of that. A lot of my Jewish friends like Trump because they 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?

• 23:45Speaker 06

  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 antisemites, including fascists, who were 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, I worry that not all American Jews conflate 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 mean, not saying it's exactly the same, I'm just saying that history teaches

• 24:29Speaker 06

  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 antisemitic 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-antisemitic, in my view, it's clearly antisemitic because what it does is that it sets up this expectation, which the real antisemites immediately grasp, that the Jews are in charge, right? The Jews are in charge because they're able to do this on campuses.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  And I think that, I think many American Jews don't notice that dynamic, but the antisemites definitely notice that dynamic, right? I mean, so I think that whole thing has been, has been a trap, that the notion that... The government comes in and closes down, you know, 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, this is what they're doing. And I wish fewer people were, had been, 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, he follows people who are just unrebening American Nazis.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  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 a 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, if Vance is around long enough, right? Because in these like, 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, that kind of thing.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  Um, I think that would be a natural move for Vance to make.

• 26:44Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 26:52Scott Galloway?

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• 27:37Scott Galloway?

  You can download the Built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com/profg. That's J O I N B I L T dot com slash prop G. Use our link so they know we sent you.

• 27:52Scott Galloway?

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• 29:20Scott Galloway?

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• 30:08Scott Galloway?

  So I think a lot of us are inspired by the response of citizens in Minneapolis about trying to do their best. It's obviously a very incredibly difficult situation for them. You've said something that struck me, that political parties don't create political movements, 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.

• 30:42Speaker 06

  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 that you have to do unusual things. And part of that is saying, is understanding that although there will be elections, and

• 31:27Speaker 06

  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, but isn't necessarily leading, or pulling the wagon on. 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.

• 32:12Speaker 06

  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.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  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.

• 33:19Scott Galloway?

  I find that protest 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?

• 33:39Speaker 06

  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 may 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

• 34:21Speaker 06

  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.

• 34:40Scott Galloway?

  Create infrastructure. I hadn't thought of it that way.

• 34:41Speaker 06

  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 you protest is that it's like, it is the gateway to doing other things. Like, it opens the door to doing other things.

• 35:26Speaker 06

  It allows you to meet people you didn't know before and then to go on and do other things.

• 35:29Scott Galloway?

  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, I 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.

• 35:57Speaker 06

  You mean in Minnesota particularly?

• 35:59Scott Galloway?

  Governor Walz 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?

• 36:13Speaker 06

  I mean, the main advice, it's a little bit different for Walz or for the Senate. And but I think if you're in DC, 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, as some people did, of course, then you should make sure that you have meetings where you're bringing people in and actually listening, listening to them. Because there is a mood not in Minnesota, you know, in the country at large, not just in Minnesota, which is hard to pick up unless you actually

• 36:54Speaker 06

  have these meetings. And the, the, the second thing I think is to, is to recognize that since this is an exceptional moment, we're, we're not really in a polling universe. We're, we're more in a, we're more in, in the universe where you have to yourself frame what's going on, right? Because what, one of the many problems with polling is that the, it, it means that the people who are doing the polling frame, 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,

• 37:36Speaker 06

  you know, 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, by, by, by other people. And I mean, the third thing is that, you know, there are lots of things. And, and again, the situation of Governor Walz and the situation of senators is a bit different. And Governor Walz has, I think, been quite out front. But the other thing is to, is to think, you know, you have to aim for a big victory in 2628, 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.

• 38:20Speaker 06

  You have to use this as a way to talk about the kind of American public you would see, which would, which not only would lack these things, but which would, which would respect the dignity of people, of individuals, which would, which would, not only that it wouldn't take life, that it would respect people, that it would provide opportunity. So it says, people need to see that there's some kind of a future, not just that, you know, you, you, you're condemning this thing which is happening.

• 38:42Scott Galloway?

  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 that the administration and the instructions they've given to Secretary Noem and the Fid Bovino at ICE, this doesn't feel like it has much to do with immigration. Is this normalizing a military force to try and pervert or, 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 a strong? I'll go back to my initial question. What do you think is actually going on here?

• 39:23Speaker 06

  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 US today, was a federal system. And again, a bit like the US today, most policing was the responsibility of the states. And, 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 SA and then the SS, and the police force.

• 40:06Speaker 06

  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 is, 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, in every business, in 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 far as they see it, quote unquote, justify having an ICE agent in everybody's bedroom,

• 40:51Speaker 06

  right? Because there could be anywhere there could be an immigrant. And it's also, and I'm still on 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, they have a kind of push-button video game logic going as well, which is that we want to do something quick and get like, and get quick gratification out of it. And so, and you

• 41:36Speaker 06

  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, 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. 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, so

• 42:18Speaker 06

  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 Anti-Racism 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.

• 42:57Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

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• 45:13Scott Galloway?

  We're back with more from Timothy Snyder.

• 45:16Scott Galloway?

  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 is 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, history for dummies. But my understanding is that corporations non pushed back 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,

• 45:58Scott Galloway?

  not playing? Provide us with some historical context there.

• 46:03Speaker 06

  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, I don't want that to be forgotten. But I agree with you. It's not going well now.

• 46:28Scott Galloway?

  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.

• 46:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, very possibly. I'm just trying to, you know, but you know, Scott, when you're about to talk about Nazis, you try to be as fair as.

• 46:44Scott Galloway?

  You try to be a little more tempered.

• 46:46Speaker 06

  Because I'm about to talk about Nazis. So with Germany, the basic deal was the businesses hated the labor unions and therefore they didn't like democracy. And so they were, they, it's not that they were gung ho Nazis on an ideological level, most of them, but they thought Hitler and this government is going to do, 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 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, that's not a connection that people are making.

• 47:30Speaker 06

  Like in the long run, American business leads a labor movement, needs some 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, you know, they're going to cut down my profits. And I think that's, that's, 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 the leaders of the businesses one by one and took them to the 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?

• 48:15Speaker 06

  I mean, that, that moment in late, late last year and early this year, where our most, some of our most powerful oligarchs decided that they were going to essentially volunteer, that, that is really extraordinary. And that has made a huge negative difference, I think, because we had, we had people who really could have protected themselves and set an example, just decide to behave in, in exactly the way that history very clearly shows that you shouldn't.

• 48:40Scott Galloway?

  I see a stronger analogy in that. So my understanding is Hitler said to these industrialists in early 30s Germany, I'll crush the trade unions, which will, 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, 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 the table and prostrating yourself and saying, thank you for your leadership.

• 49:23Speaker 06

  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 the exact diagnosis that Marxists like Hilferding made was that when you get too much money in 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 an economy, you know, 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, that's what's happening.

• 50:03Speaker 06

  And a number of these characters have ambitious political or quasi-political notions themselves, and none of them are pro-democratic.

• 50:13Scott Galloway?

  So I'm trying to think of, I think anytime you have a movement, you always like to think what new technology might be helpful here. And the new technology again of camera phones is, is I think a bit of a game changer. 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, or from citizenship or citizenry. It's from markets. And that is he immediately pulls back when the market goes down, the S and P goes down, or even the Japanese bond market yields increase for fear that's about to happen to our treasury market.

• 50:55Scott Galloway?

  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 tech players because their valuations are so elevated right now that any sort of ding in signups could have a material impact on those companies, which would ultimately have a material impact on the S and 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?

• 51:33Speaker 06

  I think that's a good idea. I mean, I think it would have to be preceded and probably some good people are 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 boycott of some tech companies and not others, then the immediate interpretation will be, well, that's, I'm doing that on behalf of the ones that I'm not boycotting, right? And so you have to have, you have to have some, like some, like some bar graph, like something which shows, like a bar graph with footnotes, something which shows exactly what the companies that you're boycotting have, have done. So there, and there would have to be some, like, there are interesting

• 52:14Speaker 06

  investigations showing the connections between companies, for example, and ICE raids. And so you'd have to also evaluate, like, so Palantir is, 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, and make that clear. I think that would have to be, like, that'd 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 know that if they do anything that 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, 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

• 52:58Speaker 06

  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, you know, the dollar is weak, 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.

• 53:26Scott Galloway?

  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 try and understand it. And my two go-tos are you and Heather Cox Richardson. And Heather Cox Richardson said something, we've had her on the pod a couple of times,

• 54:09Scott Galloway?

  you're sort of my two, you're my go-tos, 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 internment of Japanese. Where do you put this in the context of real dark moments in the US? 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, 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?

• 54:51Speaker 06

  I was on a long trip on the west coast and 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, we think the system precisely because he's so indifferent to the United States. I think that's maybe the fundamental thing.

• 55:35Speaker 06

  Like, he, he doesn't care about the US or its sovereignty or anything. Like, those are just foreign concepts to him. Citizenship is a foreign concept. And so he, 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, a lot, an awful lot has changed. And as far as like what's dark, you know, what, what, 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 of people who are acting, but that we recognize

• 56:19Speaker 06

  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, there was, there was no, there were 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, and 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.

• 57:03Speaker 06

  Not just like, you know, an antidote or a cure, but a vision of how things can be much better.

• 57:09Scott Galloway?

  Well, as our last question, as I know, you've been very generous with your time and you need, you need to, 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?

• 57:35Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm going to just take advantage of that question to say something else before, before I say yes.

• 57:42Speaker 06

  We, where we are now, you know, it reveals some very fundamental problems that we were going to have to solve anyway. Like thi- 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, like these are things that if we are in that situation you're talking about, like we, if there's

• 58:27Speaker 06

  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

• 59:10Speaker 06

  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.

• 59:28Scott Galloway?

  Timothy Snyder is a leading historian on authoritarianism, Ukraine and 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 School of Global Affairs. He joins us from Toronto.

• 59:47Scott Galloway?

  Professor Snyder, whenever I speak to you, my friend Dan Harris at 10% Happier, he 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 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 always 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 get our arms around it, if you

• 1:00:28Scott Galloway?

  will. And it was very much appreciate how you've risen to this moment. Appreciate your time, Timothy.

• 1:00:35Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:01:02Scott Galloway?

  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.

• 1:01:09Speaker 06

  Thank you. It's been great.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Altru 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 in male 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's lives, complain more than they absorb complaints. And something you can do that gives, in a strange way, your parents something that they...

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  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 as 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 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 for advice. And she gave, not only she gave me really good advice, but more important than the

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  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 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, 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.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our associate producer is Laura De Nair. Kami Reek is our social producer. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.

• 1:04:55Speaker 08

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