Anne Applebaum: “Tim wanted one last word, so I will give it to him.”
Timothy Snyder “I think that was a beautiful summation by Serhii, I just wanted to say what is new is often old, I mean, that the thing that we are seeing in the form of president Selenskyj, but not only, is the unashamed articulation of values - right? The unashamed articulation of values. And that is an ancient tradition. I mean, thats a classical tradition. To speak and to exemplify physical courage, and to associate taking risks with democracy, is a classical tradition. Its very old, but its new in the sense, that we’ve forgotten about it. It’s new in the sense, that the way the russians have treated everything as critique, everything as subject to be undermined, and how we have kind of gone for that too, we’ve come to accept, that maybe nothing is really true, and maybe nothing is worth sacrificing, and maybe ethics dont really matter - and so I think what is one of the things that is new in this war is something that is actually very old. The recognition, that some things are worth fighting for, and that while you are fighting for them its worth trying to say what they are.”
The thing that hits you right over the head here as soon as the talk starts is that the composition of the panel is off.
Because you have three historians who all do the same thing, and start layering their “arguments” with almost random emotionally charged phrases - all ending up in different places, giving different emotionally charged, constructed arguments, trying to pick up and establish different buzzwords, and the result is that you can easily clue in on what is happening here.
So if you ever wanted to know how mass propaganda is crafted, this is how. The entire event has the feeling of a sermon, half of the audience is clinked out after the first 20 minutes, but its mostly important that you film Wolfgang Ischinger parttaking in the event.
Just understand that this is prefaced by Applebaum to be a talk of three of the most important historians of our time -- and then try to pick up on what they argued this war is, or was about nine months ago, and how much is actually relevant now that you look at the video nine months later.
Its… Really something.
Of course - Victor Pinchuck foundation, YES conference.
It was a sign of Snyder’s standing that the YES conference was only the second-highest-profile stop on his Kyiv itinerary. The main reason for his trip, Snyder told me, during one of three long conversations we had recently, was a private meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
src: click
(Fluffpiece in the UK Guardian)
Just so you see what the prominent historians actual performance is, and how its portraied in the Guardian in this case.
Its… Really quite something.
Victor Pinchuck Foundation.
edit: Now all thats left to do is to hope for a Rauscher at the austrian newspaper Der Standard, to craft opinion pieces for three weeks in a row (1,2,3), that the austrian government, as well the austrian opposition listens to the wrong experts in the Ukraine case, and that they’d need to listen to Snyder, and Fiaona Hill (1,2) and Krastev (nothing against Krastev) instead.
After the opinion journalist has been invited to the IWMVienna, and then namedroped there from the stage.
And having a former US ambassador that himself namedrops Timothy Snyder at the Munk debates surely doesnt hurt either. He just read one of his books on the way to the debates btw. “And it explains every aspect of this war, …” (From memory, please doublecheck this statement.) Even though it was published before the war.
The audience starts clapping.
edit: And then of course state in the IWMVienna, that you (people who do perception centered focus group research on what messaging publicly works for the ukrainian side) have Snyder to explain to the public Ukraines past, but who will explain to them Ukraines future perspectives? Snyder thinks its him, of course - but then, thats probably not such a good idea…
