Timothy Snyder is a Yale history professor whose pamphlet, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, provided progressives a historical road map for resisting the abuses of the first Trump administration. (First lesson: “Do not obey in advance.”)
Snyder predicted that Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss could lead to a coup attempt. And the professor of totalitarian history in Europe warns that Trump will, again, seek to use violence and intimidation to return to the White House, if the votes don’t go his way.
Trump’s dictatorial incentives — which led to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — are only more acute in 2024, Snyder insists. And Trump and his allies are only more experienced in riling up the anger and paranoia that can animate post-election violence.
“We have to talk about it as though it’s going to happen,” Snyder says. “Because that also prepares us. We’re not allowed to get shocked.”
Snyder, who has a new volume out, On Freedom, spoke to Rolling Stone shortly after Trump’s menacing, racist MAGA spectacle at Madison Square Garden. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
This is our third Trump presidential election rodeo. What have you observed?
Trump in 2016, he thought he was going to lose, right? And it wasn’t so bad for him if he lost it.
But by 2020 he’s thinking, ‘I’ve done lots of terrible things as president. And, I could well be prosecuted. And, I like being president.’ So in 2020 he has the standard dictatorial incentives [to try to hold power]. That’s why in 2020 I confidently predicted that he would carry out some kind of coup attempt if he lost. Because the incentives were so obvious — and the guy is so obviously ruthless and without scruple.
In 2024, it’s even more obvious. He actually is facing criminal charges now, even with the Supreme Court coming up with new superpowers every few weeks to protect him. He’s already been convicted. It is a pretty decent chance that he will be sentenced in some way if he’s not president.
He’s now in complete “dictatorial life mode” — where what he wants is to die in a nice, soft, comfortable bed inside the White House. This structural part, his incentives, are more important than the facts of what happens [on Election Day]. The structural part says that Donald Trump will indeed attempt a second time to come to power, regardless of what the electoral results are. And that’s the through-line.
What is your forecast for Election Day?
It’s important for people to understand that — regardless of what happens — Trump is going to say he won. Given past behavior, it seems all but certain that he’s going to do this.
It’s an important point, because we always take this pose: “Oh, let’s wait and see what he’s going to do.” And there’s a perversity to that. Because if you wait to see if he does it, then you don’t make the plan. That’s something that worries me about Americans. We’re constantly giving Trump a second chance, a third chance, a 500th chance, a 1,000th chance. Instead of thinking: “OK, the guy always does certain things.”
Let’s make a plan based on the fact that he’s going to do it. We have to be planting the idea in people’s minds that if he says he won early, that’s a sign that he lost. Because that’s the way it played out last time. That’s a strategy for what you do when you’ve lost.
I was struck that Trump’s massive Madison Square Garden rally didn’t seem geared toward turning folks out on Election Day. It appeared pitched at riling up the base for the day after.
Madison Square Garden was not about getting the vote out. It was about priming people for the notion that [Kamala] Harris can’t win. When Tucker Carlson gets out there and says, basically, she can’t possibly get 85 million votes because she’s biracial and an idiot, he’s priming people for the idea that if she does get 85 million votes, it didn’t really happen.
Of course, she could very well get 85 million votes or more.
But for MAGA people, that’s supposed to trigger in them the notion that the “Democratic conspiracy” has been activated. And therefore we have no choice but to take drastic measures. And therefore, whatever I’m about to do is OK, because they’ve already cheated. That’s the whole logic of Madison Square Garden.
That’s the psychological front: the notion that the other side started it. The Big Lie is important here, because if you believe that lie — and roughly half of the people who vote for Trump do, in strong form — then you already believe that the other side started it, because they “stole” the election in 2020. And if they “do it again”? Well, now they’ve done it to our guy twice in a row. And, this is completely outrageous. That’s the psychological prep which is taking place.
You see this as calculated.
Trump, and the people around Trump, are very smart at these politics — and we underestimate them at our peril. They know that they need a frothing of violence around this election, so the rest of us can be afraid of what might happen unless the chaos stops.
If you think about what happened in 2000 when Gore won and the Supreme Court gave it to Bush. Why did anybody accept that? We accepted it because of the anxiety of counting the votes for longer. This is very stressful. We need an end to this, right?
Trump understands that dynamic of violence and fear. What they’re going to go for is violence to frighten everybody.
This time, you’ll have people who sincerely believe that something wrong has happened, and that therefore you can’t trust normal channels of law — because they’re all part of the conspiracy against our guy Trump. Those people really are going to carry out acts of violence.
And if you have violence, in say Arkansas and North Dakota or whatever, the notion is to create the same [2000] feeling: “So long as this isn’t settled, then there’s going to be terrible [consequences]. We need to get it settled in a way that this terrible stuff stops.” So that we all think, well, maybe it would be better if we let Trump win, because that will at least stop the violence.
Why are you sounding this alarm before the election?
We have to factor this in. It would be strange to me if there were not acts of violence. It’s totally predictable. And we have to talk about it. We have to talk about it as though it’s going to happen, because that also prepares us. It was part of a plan for it to happen, and therefore we’re not allowed to get all shocked.
Because we get shocked, that allows us to be afraid, and if we’re all afraid, that allows us to be manipulated. Which is what can’t happen.
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