Thinking about...

Greetings all! These past few days were some of the weirdest in American diplomatic history, and I was lucky to have a special guest to help explain what happened and why it matters.

This was a wonderful and timely conversation with the reporter Michael Weiss on the diplomatic imbroglio that followed when the United States allowed its position on Ukrainian to be dictated by a Russian leaker who happens to be a rather singular figure in Russian politics. There are facts, contexts and analysis here you will not find elsewhere. The conversation helps us to consider about all that would be lost if Ukraine were lost, and about just how American foreign policy is and should be made.

Reading:

Please support Michael Weiss and his colleagues at The Insider: Michael Weiss on the origins of the leak here; the home page of The Insider here.

Here also is my post from yesterday where I analyse at some length the 28 points of the Russian wish list that suddenly became the official American position.

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Among all the other things that are happening, we have a US administration trying to bully Ukrainians into accepting Russia’s proposal that their sovereignty be undone. Aside from the naked injustice of this, there are five basic practical reasons why it would make the world far more dangerous. I summarize them here; you will find more writing on this subject elsewhere on my Substack, “Thinking about…”

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit snyder.substack.com/subscribe

Cincinnati was where I wanted to be for No Kings, and I was so glad to be there. We have dozens of civic groups signing people up to work together, and tens of thousands of people down by the river for hours. I was proud to be there and proud to open the rally with this speech. Thanks to everyone who answered and went to work. And thanks above all to the local organizers from 50501 and the good people at Indivisible who made it possible for us to come together. Please listen and please find your way to work with others. And please share this video.

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Five reasons to rally! Another one I didn’t mention — it’s fun and it makes you feel better. Thanks to everyone who is already out there. I’ll be at No Kings in Cincinnati.

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The Trump administration is trying to seed a panic about «antifa,» one which, if it succeeds, brings the media and the result of us along as collaborators in authoritarian regime change. So let’s be thoughtful.

It is not good practice to just repeat the words of those who are trying to manufacture a panic. Nor is it it good practice to juxtapose malicious fantasy with known reality and imagine or pretend that somehow the truth is in between. That just helps those who are seeding panic by providing an admixture that they cannot create themselves.

The way forward is to recognize that it is a fact that people in power sometimes try to sow and that they do so by patterns of lies. That is the fact that can be known and reported on.

The current « antifa » scare is an attempt at generating a panic, by people who do panic for a living and who have, unfortunately, succeeded before, at great cost to the rest of us. The price of an « antifa » panic is likely more than we can bear.

We need the truth about panics: that they are a form of deliberate politics based upon scripted lies. And we need this truth now. My thought about all this are in the video—please share.

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Today the president is taking credit for a cease-fire in Gaza. But who, in America, was first in calling for that exact thing?

Students on campuses.

And what happened to them? They were banned from their own public spaces, all over the country.

So the president should be thanking them for their foresight. And he and all of his supporters should naturally be calling for campus bans on public assembly to be lifted.

I would be very happy to hear such voices! But I fear we won’t.

If we don’t, we will see that those bans were never about Gaza or Israel or any one issue. They are about silencing young people, in general, as a first step toward silencing the rest of us.

I recognize that things were said and done on campuses (often by people from outside the schools) that should not have been said and done. Antisemitism is a very real and sadly a growing problem in the US and around the world.

But the presence of individual actors and of undesirable acts was never a good reason for broad bans on freedom of speech and assembly on campuses.

Freedom of speech has a point. It is there so people can speak truth to power. Often that truth is spoken first by young people. What student protestors said about a cease-fire early became the mainstream about eighteen months later.

And what if they hadn’t been silenced? More freedom of speech on this issue would have been healthy for everyone — including Israel, whose image has suffered hugely. And it would have saved many, many lives in Gaza.

When we as Americans are trained to think that suppression of speech is normal once, in a major area of life such as college campuses, we take a step towards agreeing with authoritarianism in general.

So for those who support the president, a challenge: thank the students and give them back their freedom to express themselves.

For the rest of us, another challenge: gather to speak about all of our freedoms.

(This is not a transcript of the video— just me quickly putting together the thought in a different way. Please share this.)

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A week from today, on October 18th, millions of Americans will gather in thousands of places to protest the countless ways our current administration is attacking our freedoms. Some elected officials — details in the video — cannot even bear to say the name of the protests out loud « No Kings ». Instead they are trying to message-discipline themselves into the propaganda line that protestors hate their country. Ha! It’s exactly the opposite. Protestors believe that action has meaning. Protestors are exercising the rights enshrined in the Constitution. For me, protest is about love of country, where love means wanting my country to survive and thrive and be the best version of itself. I will be there on October 18th, and I hope you wil be too. The video has the thoughts about why lying about protest is harmful and why getting out in public with others is helpful. Thanks for being with me.

TS CT October 11th

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At Tuesday’s presidential “roundtable” on “antifa,” the villain du jour, one of the speakers said that its origins were to be found in Weimar Germany.

The wrongdoers of history, we are instructed from the White House, were those who tried to prevent Hitler from coming to power.

In a busy week, this is a statement worth noting — not just for its shocking character, but for what it reveals about the manufactured “antifa” panic: that the true target is American constitutionalism, American law, and American liberties.

Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit snyder.substack.com/subscribe

Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit snyder.substack.com/subscribe