Democracy and the rule of law in Western societies are under threat, according to Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, due to Vladimir Putin’s efforts to destabilize neighboring governments and to stir up dissent in countries from France to the United States.

The John Adams, in a collaboration with De Balie, brought Professor Timothy Snyder to Amsterdam in 2018 to discuss his new book The Road to Unfreedom. Snyder examines how Western societies left themselves open to anti-democratic forces after the Cold War, and how Russia fell into Putinism, and the rise of Donald Trump, which has become a major threat to democracy around the globe. Even though Donald Trump is gone now, the forces that got him into the oval office are still at work. Which is why Timothy Snyder’s  impassioned plea for the triumph of the truth is more relevant than ever. Because, to paraphrase him a bit,  without the truth in the present, you can’t start to imagine the future. 

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