Historian Timothy Snyder: Trump running US foreign policy 'as though he were an organized criminal'

As Americans head to the polls for the midterm elections, François Picard welcomes historian Timothy Snyder, professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, for a conversation about the future of American democracy, the growing political influence of technology billionaires and the dangers of a new Gilded Age. Who really holds power in Donald Trump's America: the president or the billionaires surrounding him?

Drawing parallels with the robber barons of nineteenth-century America, Snyder argues that the extraordinary wealth and influence of today's technology magnates risk turning democratic institutions into instruments of private power. But unlike the original Gilded Age, which eventually gave way to antitrust legislation and progressive reforms, there is no guarantee that history will repeat itself.

For Snyder, author of On Tyranny and On Freedom, the stakes of the midterms extend far beyond the political fortunes of Trump and the Republican Party. The election, he warns, is largely about "whether the faltering president, Donald Trump, will become a transition to more or less open rule by some of our tech oligarchs."

Snyder draws a striking contrast between the political economies of Vladimir Putin's Russia and contemporary America. While Putin sits at the apex of Russia's oligarchic hierarchy, Snyder suggests that in the United States, technology billionaires possess the financial power and political leverage to use Trump as a gateway to government influence.

Yet the danger, he argues, goes beyond the concentration of wealth and power. Equally corrosive is the normalization of corruption through political cynicism: persuading citizens that dishonesty is universal, that everyone cheats and that no meaningful alternative exists.

"Everybody is corrupt. Everybody just wants to be a billionaire. Everybody cheats. So you might as well vote for us because we're good at it."

This, Snyder suggests, is how authoritarian politics can take hold: not only by weakening democratic institutions, but by convincing citizens that democracy itself is little more than a contest between competing forms of corruption.

And yet, Snyder insists, the outcome is far from predetermined. Despite an electoral system distorted by money and unequal political influence, he sees signs of democratic resilience in grassroots organizing, public protests and the determination of Americans to exercise their right to vote.

"So of course it's not a fair election," he argues. "But it's a free election in the sense that people are persistent, struggle, support one another."

The question, then, is not simply whether Democrats can regain control of Congress. It is whether Americans still believe that democratic politics can make a difference, and whether collective action can counter the growing concentration of private power.

For Snyder, there is still reason for hope.

"The encouraging thing is that we're not there yet," he says. "I think people care."