Timothy Snyder's Double-Speak

Being a professor of history at Yale University, one would assume Timothy Snyder has some smarts. But as of late, particularly since the western backed a coup in Kiev last February, Snyder appears to be seeing and hear things in an imaginary world. Reading his thoughts on Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the mess in Ukraine, it would not be an exaggeration to make the claim Timothy Snyder is today the most powerful expression of George Orwell’s “double-speak" found in “1984.”

For example, let’s have a look at a piece he published in Politico Magazine:

“Oppression in Russia, war in Ukraine and the destabilization of the West are grotesquely high prices to pay for one man’s preferences. Rather then beginning from these, rather than staring into the troubled eyes of the doublethinker, we had better think instead about what we value and what we can do to protect it. If Ukraine becomes Novorossiya, Europe becomes Eurasia, and the West collapses, it will not be because if Russia’s physical strength, but because of our mental weakness.”

Snyder is obsessed with Putin. Historical events and trends brought a man like Putin to power in Russia. Not the other way around. Snyder simple doesn’t think historically. Putin’s Russia is logical and consistent, particularly in terms of foreign policy. It is laughable to speak of “one man’s preferences.” The crisis in Ukraine is the direct result of western meddling and not Putin’s design. Snyder and others can’t deal with the reality that Putin out-smarted the Victoria Nulands and Mike McFauls of this world. And the word “values?” The west helped to overthrow and democratically elected government and then supported some neo-Nazi and fascists Kiev.

Part of Ukraine is already Novorossiya in many ways. People like Snyder helped break Ukraine, but isn’t going away and certainly will not become part of Russia. Europe isn’t going to become Eurasia. Russia has only wanted to have a good trading relationship with Europe, development a customs union in the post-Soviet space, and keep NATO as far away as possible. Will the west collapse? In many ways it is happening before our eyes, but Russia has nothing to do with this. But people like Timothy Snyder do.