Michael: Most of us think history moves forward. We see it as a line of progress. But what if the most powerful political strategy today is based on the idea that time is a flat circle, a loop of grievance and conflict? And what if that strategy is winning? Kevin: Whoa, that sounds like something out of a dark sci-fi novel, not geopolitics. A flat circle? That’s incredibly bleak. It suggests there’s no escape, just endless repetition of the worst moments. Michael: It is bleak. And that’s the terrifying question at the heart of Timothy Snyder's book, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. He argues this isn't just a philosophical thought experiment; it's a deliberate political project that is actively dismantling democracies from the inside out. Kevin: Timothy Snyder… I know that name. He’s a pretty heavy-hitter, right? Michael: Absolutely. And he’s the perfect person to tackle this. He's a renowned historian at Yale who specializes in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust. What’s crucial is that he reads Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish, so he's not just guessing—he's reading the primary sources, the speeches, the philosophical tracts that are driving this shift. Kevin: Okay, so he’s got the receipts. That’s good to know, because this "flat circle of time" idea sounds like it could easily veer into conspiracy theory territory. Michael: That's the tightrope the book walks. Snyder argues this isn't an accident. It's a deliberate strategy. Today, we'll unpack the ideology behind it, see how it was weaponized, and trace how it was exported to the West with shocking success.

Michael: It all begins with a clash between two fundamentally different ways of seeing the world, two clashing ideas about time. On one side, you have what Snyder calls the "politics of inevitability." Kevin: That sounds familiar. Is that the "end of history" idea that was so popular after the Cold War? The belief that liberal democracy and capitalism had won, and the future was just a matter of everyone else catching up? Michael: Precisely. It’s the optimistic, linear view of history. It assumes progress is natural, the future will be better than the past, and we're all on a steady march towards freedom and prosperity. It was the dominant operating system for the West for decades. Kevin: It’s a comforting thought. A bit arrogant, maybe, but comforting. What’s the alternative? Michael: The alternative is what Snyder calls the "politics of eternity." This is the flat circle. In this view, there is no progress. There is only a nation, imagined as an innocent, pure body, eternally beset by threats from the outside. History isn't a line of achievements; it's a cyclical pattern of victimhood, betrayal, and heroic defense. Kevin: That sounds exhausting. And dangerous. It’s a permanent state of crisis. Where did this idea even come from? Michael: Well, its modern resurgence has a specific, and chilling, source: a Russian fascist philosopher named Ivan Ilyin. Kevin: Hold on. A dead fascist philosopher? How does someone like that actually influence a modern, pragmatic leader like Vladimir Putin? That feels like a stretch. Michael: It would be, if it were just academic. But Putin has made Ilyin's revival a state project. In 2005, Putin personally arranged for Ilyin’s remains to be moved from Switzerland and reburied in a Moscow monastery as a national hero. He’s quoted Ilyin in major state addresses. And in 2014, the Kremlin distributed collections of Ilyin’s essays to governors and civil servants across Russia. Kevin: Wow. Okay, so this isn't just some obscure intellectual influence. This is required reading for the Russian state. What are Ilyin’s core ideas that are so appealing? Michael: Ilyin’s philosophy is essentially a blueprint for totalitarianism. He believed that individuality is the source of evil. The goal of life isn't personal freedom, but to dissolve yourself into the larger, mystical body of the nation. He rejected reason, law, and democracy in favor of a mystical leader—a "redeemer"—who has a direct, spiritual connection to the people and is above any law. Kevin: A redeemer, not a president. That’s a very different job description. Michael: Completely. For Ilyin, Russia is not a state among other states; it is a virginal organism, an innocent civilization that has never done anything wrong. All of its problems—poverty, violence, corruption—are caused by external enemies trying to penetrate and defile it. So, any action taken by the redeemer, no matter how violent or lawless, is justified as a defense of this innocence. Kevin: I think I get it now. The politics of eternity is like being in a relationship with a toxic narcissist. They have a list of every perceived wrong you’ve ever done them, they bring it up constantly to justify their current bad behavior, and they are always, always the victim. There's no moving forward, just re-litigating the past forever. Michael: That is a perfect analogy. And in this worldview, countries like Ukraine can't have their own history or desires. Their desire to join Europe, for example, isn't seen as a legitimate choice. In Ilyin's framework, which Putin adopted, it's a foreign plot to dismember the mystical Russian body. It’s an attack on innocence itself. Kevin: So when Putin talks about Russia and Ukraine being "one people," he’s not just making a historical argument. He’s invoking this quasi-religious, fascist idea of a single, indivisible entity. Michael: Exactly. He's operating entirely within the politics of eternity. And once you have that ideology, the next step is to turn it into a weapon.

Kevin: Okay, so you have this deeply cynical, paranoid ideology. How do you export it? How do you make other people believe in your flat circle of grievance? Michael: You don't make them believe in your story. You just make them stop believing in anything at all. Snyder calls this "strategic relativism." Russia knows it can't compete with the West economically or culturally on a level playing field. So, the strategy is to degrade the competition. If you can't win the game, break the board. Kevin: And the "board" in this case is the concept of objective truth itself. Michael: Precisely. The goal is to create an environment so saturated with lies, contradictions, and conspiracy theories that the average citizen becomes exhausted and cynical. They conclude that truth is unknowable, everyone is lying, and all politics is just a corrupt power game. In that state of mind, people don't organize for change. They retreat. Kevin: This is where the book gets really scary. It’s not just "fake news." It's an assault on the very possibility of a shared reality. Michael: And the 2014 invasion of Ukraine was the live-fire training exercise for this strategy. Remember the "little green men" who appeared in Crimea? They were obviously Russian special forces, with Russian weapons and uniforms. But Putin went on television and, with a straight face, said they were local self-defense groups who bought their uniforms at a surplus store. Kevin: That's just... brazen. To lie so openly when the evidence is right there. How does that even work as a strategy? Michael: The lie wasn't for the West, or even for Ukrainians. They knew it was a lie. The lie was for the Russian people. It was a loyalty test. By repeating the obvious lie, you signal your allegiance to the leader over your own senses. It creates a powerful, unifying bond of shared fiction. And for the West, it created chaos. Newsrooms were tied in knots trying to be "objective." They'd say, "Ukrainian officials claim Russian troops have invaded, but the Kremlin denies this." It puts a lie on the same level as a fact. Kevin: It’s a form of information warfare that exploits our own democratic norms—like journalistic balance—against us. Michael: Exactly. Snyder calls it "schizofascism." It's the practice of calling your enemies fascists while you yourself are behaving like a fascist. Russia invaded Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president, claiming it needed to "de-Nazify" it. At the same time, Russia was funding and supporting actual neo-Nazi and far-right parties all across Europe. The contradiction is the point. It’s meant to break your brain. Kevin: The downing of the Malaysian airliner, MH17, feels like the ultimate example of this. Michael: It was a masterclass. Within hours of a Russian missile system shooting down a civilian plane, killing 298 people, Russian state media unleashed a firehose of contradictory stories. It was the Ukrainians trying to shoot down Putin's plane. It was a CIA plot. The plane was already filled with dead bodies before it took off. The goal was never to present a single, believable alternative. The goal was to create so much noise that a simple, horrible truth—that Russian-backed forces shot down a passenger jet—became just one more theory among many. Kevin: This is where some of the book's critics chime in. They argue that Snyder's portrayal feels a bit like a new Cold War narrative, painting Russia as this perfectly coordinated, monolithic evil genius. Is it really that organized, or is it more chaotic? Michael: It's a fair question. And Snyder acknowledges the chaos. But he points to figures like Vladislav Surkov, Putin's former propaganda chief, who literally wrote a novel where the main character's job is to perpetuate a dream-state for the public, because if the sleeper awakens, the world ends. Surkov called this "non-linear warfare." It’s a strategy of managed chaos. The goal is to sponsor so many different groups—far-left, far-right, separatists, environmentalists—that the political center collapses. It's not about controlling everything, but about making sure nothing can be controlled. Kevin: So they perfected this playbook of weaponized truth and managed chaos in Ukraine. The terrifying part of the book is how it didn't stay there.

Michael: That’s the final, and most devastating, part of Snyder's argument. The tactics tested in Ukraine were an export model. And in 2016, Russia found its most valuable customer: the United States. Kevin: How did that happen? America is not Ukraine. We have stronger institutions, a free press... Michael: But we also have our own deep vulnerabilities. Snyder argues that Russia didn't create American divisions; it skillfully exploited them. The two biggest vulnerabilities he identifies are extreme economic inequality and the erosion of local journalism. When people feel the system is rigged and they no longer have trusted local sources of information, they become incredibly susceptible to disinformation. Kevin: And into that environment steps a character like Donald Trump. Michael: Snyder describes Trump as a kind of fictional character who was brought to life. First, he was a creation of American television. The Apprentice sold the fiction of a brilliant, decisive mogul, even when his actual business record was a string of bankruptcies and failures. Second, and crucially, he was a creation of Russian capital. After his bankruptcies, American banks wouldn't touch him. So where did the money come from? Snyder documents how, for decades, Russian oligarchs and mobsters used Trump's real estate to launder money, buying condos for cash at inflated prices. Kevin: So he was financially dependent on, or at least deeply entangled with, the very people who would later want to see him in the White House. Michael: Precisely. This made him the perfect vehicle. Russia then used the same cyber-warfare playbook from Ukraine. The Internet Research Agency, the same troll farm, created hundreds of fake American social media accounts. They didn't just push pro-Trump messages; they pushed anti-Hillary messages, Black Lives Matter messages, anti-immigrant messages. The goal was to inflame every existing division and suppress voter turnout. Kevin: And then there was the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta's emails. It was the MH17 strategy all over again. Michael: Exactly. The story became about the content of the emails, not the fact that a foreign adversary had committed a crime to steal them. It created a new crisis every day, distracting from Trump's own scandals. It was a brilliant, and devastating, application of strategic relativism. Kevin: There's another connection Snyder makes that is just chilling. He links Trump's rise to the opioid crisis. Michael: Yes. This is a profound point. He shows how the counties with the highest rates of "deaths of despair"—from opioids, alcohol, and suicide—swung most dramatically toward Trump. These were places where the "politics of inevitability" had completely failed. Life expectancy was going down. The future looked worse than the past. Kevin: Wow. So you're saying the opioid crisis wasn't just a health crisis, it was a national security vulnerability? Michael: Snyder argues it created the perfect 'attack surface' for the politics of eternity. When your life is collapsing, when time feels broken, you are uniquely vulnerable to a strongman who promises to "Make America Great Again"—to take you back to a mythical, innocent past. It’s the same promise of redemption that Ilyin wrote about a century ago. Kevin: It’s a horrifyingly perfect storm. A population in despair, a media ecosystem ripe for manipulation, and a political candidate who is a living embodiment of political fiction. What is the defense against this? If truth itself is the target, how do we possibly fight back?

Michael: The road to unfreedom is paved with the destruction of truth. It starts by making you feel like your vote doesn't matter, your voice is pointless, and facts are just opinions. It’s a politics of exhaustion, designed to make you give up. Kevin: That’s a feeling I think a lot of people can relate to. The sheer volume of noise is overwhelming. It’s easier to just tune out. Michael: And that's the win for authoritarianism. Snyder argues the defense is a "politics of responsibility." It’s not a simple fix. It requires work. It means taking individual responsibility for the facts we consume and share. It means consciously choosing to engage with reality, even when it's difficult. Kevin: He has a great line about journalism, doesn't he? Michael: He does. He calls investigative journalism the "white magic" that counters the "black magic" of political fiction. It's one of the few forces capable of establishing a baseline of fact that we can all agree on. That’s why he says supporting local, fact-based journalism is one of the most important civic duties we have right now. Kevin: It’s a call to be active citizens of reality, not just passive consumers of information. To value truth not as a partisan tool, but as the foundation of freedom itself. Michael: Exactly. The book is a warning, but it's not without hope. The road to unfreedom is a choice. And we can choose a different path. Kevin: And it makes you ask yourself: in your own life, where have you chosen a comforting fiction over a difficult truth? It’s a question that stays with you long after you finish the book. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.