Trapped in False Antitheses

Abstract

This paper critically scrutinizes Timothy Snyder’s book The Road toUnfreedom. Russia, Europe, America (The Bodley Head, Vintage, London2018). It claims that the main reason for his failure to present a convincingaccount of the current neo-nationalist and authoritarian turn and outline anadequate intellectual and political response to it is his clinging to an anti-totalitarian framework which he had applied to Eastern Europe in some ofhis previous historical works (Snyder 2003, 2010). The framework reducesthree main ideological alternatives that fought with each other in the lastcentury into two: liberalism was supposedly challenged by totalitarianism.Since Snyder reduces the present crisis to the threat of the return oftotalitarianism, he sees an appropriate response in the revival of the humanand civic solidarity associated with the anti-totalitarian movements of thelast century. The essay outlines an alternative view: it links the present crisisof democracy to the ravaging e!ects of neo-liberal globalization and,accordingly, suggests combining anti-authoritarianism with anti-capitalism– or human and civic solidarity with social solidarity.