Foreign Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Professor Stanley.

We will move now straight to Professor Snyder, again, joining us from Vienna, Austria.

Please go ahead, Professor Snyder.

[Professor Timothy David Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify to this committee. I wish you all success as you begin this project.

What I would like to do is to make a very brief list in this initial set of remarks of seven areas that I, as a historian, believe are areas of concern, but then also areas of opportunity. That is to say, I think each of these areas demonstrates a risk to liberal democracy, but also an opportunity for liberal democracy to defend itself.

In my remarks, I'll be focusing on the history of the recent past, although I will range a bit into the earlier part of the 20th century. I presume that's where all of our minds go when we worry about the end of liberal democracy.

That is my first point, by the way. Liberal democracy is not a state of nature; it's not a feature of the way that the universe is. Liberal democracy is a set of institutions, values and practices in which people have to believe. There has never been a moment when liberal democracy was alone in the world and unchallenged. Liberal democracy only exists insofar as the people who are in favour of it are willing to make a case. Therefore, my first area of concern or first area of opportunity would be precisely that: ethics.

A great mistake that we have made in the western liberal democracies in the last 30 years is to fall into a kind of determinism, to believe that history had come to an end, to believe that there were no alternatives to liberal democracy. This is ironic, of course, because the problem with communism, before 1989, was precisely determinism: the certainty that one could deduce the future from the present.

We've fallen into that same trap. When you believe that there are no alternatives or if you say that history doesn't matter, what you're doing is depriving your own democratic society of a sense of responsibility. If democracy is going to happen regardless of what we do, then no particular citizen has to do a thing. That's the spirit in which democracy is going to die. Therefore, the first point is ethics.

The second point is time. This may seem like a strange one. You're probably looking at your watches, wondering how much longer I'm going to talk. Maybe your phone is itching in your pocket. Democracy requires a sense of time. For people to believe that their votes matter, they have to be reflecting on the past. They have to be thinking about the choices that are before them in the present, and they have to have a sense that the future is coming.

This may seem like a very simple point, but it's precisely this normal continuity, normal flow of time that the enemies of democracy attack. They attack it on two fronts. The first is that they use technology to get us all excited and obsessed about the emotions of any particular moment, so that the present seems to go on forever and we never think about the past or the future.

The second method, as Professor Stanley also observed, is to drive nations or formally dominant groups into a kind of mythical version of the past, where we were always right and they were always wrong, where we were always the victims and we therefore are always the deserving ones now. That kind of rhetoric, whether it's Mr. Putin or Mr. Trump or Mr. Orbán, is absolutely ubiquitous. It's one of the very few things that's absolutely common across all the people who are challenging democracy.

The third area of concern or opportunity—again, this is very big—is humanity. I'm going to be very literal here. Democracy means rule by the people, but in the 21st century, we've entered a moment where people are spending an awful lot of time on, and their brains are very often divided by, entities that are not human. The average American spends 11 hours a day in front of a screen. The way that we think is increasingly determined by the algorithms that have been designed to distract us or to draw us into particular directions. There's a very strong body of research showing that the behaviourist techniques used on the Internet, on social platforms in particular, tend to polarize us politically as well. That's a specific consequence of the world we're living in now.

This is a very basic point. There are digital beings in our lives. They don't function according to human laws; they function according to other laws. Neither they nor usually the people who program them have any affiliation whatsoever with the idea of democracy, so we need to be very sure that the people are in fact ruling.

To give a dramatic example, in the Russian intervention in American politics in 2016, the main agents that the Russian Federation used to try to determine the outcome of the presidential elections were, of course, digital beings. However, these were digital beings designed by American companies. The people who ran those companies generally favoured the other presidential candidate, that is to say Hillary Clinton. So there's a question here about who or what is really in charge.

The fourth and very much related point—and here I'd like to echo Professor Stanley's remarks—is factuality. Without factuality, a public sphere is impossible. If there isn't factuality, we have nothing to talk about. There's no common subject. There's no way for us to meet in the public sphere and share opinions, if there isn't a common body of facts.

The rule of law is also impossible without factuality. Court proceedings do not seem meaningful unless there can be findings of fact upon which there is general agreement. This has obvious policy implications, because despite what a very strong Anglo-Saxon tradition says, facts do not grow out of the ground. Facts actually require labour. Fiction is cheap. In fact, fiction is free, but facts require labour, which means that states that are interested in preserving democracy have to invest heavily in factuality, which is to say in journalism, and, in particular, in local journalism. It also means that countries like Canada, which are embattled regions but which speak an important language, might consider investing in a foreign policy that projects investigative journalism beyond its own borders.

The fifth point, the fifth area of concern, an area of opportunity, is mobility. It's very hard for people to take democracy seriously when they do not believe that their vote has some kind of an effect on their own ability to change their lives, to move forward in some sense towards something that they want. We know from history, from the history of the Great Depression, for example, that the sense of stasis, the sense that one cannot move forward, tends to radicalize people or lead them towards what we now call “protest votes”, as in the United States in 2016. Mr. Trump was correct, sociologically speaking, when he said that the American dream is dead. This is one reason why he did so much better than people expected.

This is connected to the sixth area of concern, one that Professor Stanley mentioned, which I would also like to highlight, which is equality. People can believe in democracy only if they believe that it's their vote that's making the difference, their participation as citizens, as opposed to, let's say, dark money, campaign contributions, or individuals who for reasons of wealth have qualitatively more influence than they do. When people believe that they're no longer living in an equal society, they're vulnerable to various temptations such as protest votes. They're also vulnerable, as we've seen in places as far afield as Ukraine or the United States, to the idea of voting for an oligarch on the logic that if the oligarchs are in charge anyway, you might as well vote for the oligarch who at least makes some attempt to appeal to us.

Another very important reason why equality is important is communication. If you allow inequalities of wealth and income to become too great in a democratic society, people no longer believe—and they're right—that they're living in the same world. They no longer believe they have things to say to one another. The people who are the wealthiest will also be tempted to escape with their resources and also with their minds.

This is connected to the seventh and final point that I want to make, which has to do with energy. It's interesting that when one tries to define what populism is, or when one is asked what all these various populist movements have in common, the two things that these various movements that we call populist tend to have in common are actually quite strange: They all like Mr. Putin and they all deny that global warming is happening. Those are two things that seem very far afield, I would venture, from normal democratic politics or the interests of the people, which are things that populism is supposed to be about, but nevertheless it's true. Every time a new so-called populist parliamentary party appears in a European parliament, whether it's AfD in Germany, or just yesterday Vox in Spain, those two things always hold. They always like Putin, and they always say that global warming is not happening.

I think this is very suggestive of where one needs to go in a democracy. In a democracy one needs to make sure that electoral proceedings are not influenced too much by hydrocarbon oligarchy. In a democracy one also needs to make sure that the problem with global warming is being taken care of, because, if it's not, then people lose their sense of the future, and democracy starts to seem senseless.

These are the seven areas of concern I wanted to highlight: ethics, time, humanity, factuality, mobility, equality and energy.

Thank you very much for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much to both of our witnesses.

We have a little housekeeping to do here, because a vote in Parliament has been called for 22 minutes from now. My suggestion is that we seek unanimous consent to go for another 10 minutes, and that each of the parties get two minutes or so just to get an initial question out, and then I would welcome any other members who have questions to submit them in writing and we can ask our two witnesses to provide answers in writing, if that's okay. This will allow us to at least proceed.

First of all, do we have unanimous consent to proceed?

Thank you.

With your two minutes, MP Kusie, please lead.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Professor Stanley, I'm a graduate of Rutgers. I'm sorry you downgraded to Yale.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

In your opening comments you said that “You can't have liberty without truth” and that “political equality is speaking truth to power.” Professor Stanley, I would suggest that you look into the recent happenings here in Canada in regard to the SNC-Lavalin scam, as well as the unfortunate resignation of the previous attorney general from cabinet as a result of these principles being compromised.

My question is actually in regard to your third major comment, which is that you perceive the main problem to be the existence of extreme rhetoric. I believe that where we've seen that played out significantly here in Canada is in the use of “Twitter-plomacy”. For example, our Minister of Foreign Affairs made comments on Twitter regarding a captive in Saudi Arabia, using a tweet as a potential means of diplomacy rather than the historical channels of diplomacy.

What would you say the effects of social media and social media diplomacy are for this problem that we're seeing within the world? What factor does that play, please?

[Prof. Jason Stanley]

Professor Snyder talked about machines taking the place of democratic deliberation. They impose a certain structure on us—a 280-character structure, or 130. In my country, of course, one sees the effects of that. One sees the effect of social media structuring discussion, and it's not how democratic deliberations should work.

I know Professor Snyder is writing a book on this, so I'd invite him to weigh in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

Can I comment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Yes. Take 30 seconds, please, sir. Go ahead.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

With Twitter in particular you have two problems. One is that Twitter ends up defining the problem. In American relations with North Korea, for example, it is what happens on Twitter rather than what happens in the real world that ends up mattering. The second problem is the constant diversion. That is, there are things actually happening in the real world that demand our attention, but because Twitter comes at us so fast we're unable to react to the things that actually exist.

It's a weird way to think about it, but Twitter is actually a way that we try to approach.... We act like machines. We're fast. We're senseless. We're going for yes or no. We're going for emotions. That is the kind of thing that draws us away from democracy. A charismatic, talented politician [Technical difficulty—Editor] is a perfect Twitter politician.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Professor Snyder.

MP Wrzesnewskyj, please.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Unfortunately, because of the time limitation, I will throw two questions out if there is time to answer either of them.

Professor Snyder, in the previous hour Professor Ignatieff stated that states that were under communist rule have been evolving to single-party states ratified by democracy. Ukraine appears to have bucked that trend. We've seen two pro-democracy revolutions in 15 years and a revolution at the ballot box just this past week. How does the history of the “Bloodlands” and time impact on Ukraine's democratic evolution?

Professor Stanley, in the epilogue to your book, How Fascism Works, you write at length of the dangers of the normalization of the fascist myth. How is normalization of ethnonationalism taking place today?

[Prof. Jason Stanley]

Do you want to start, Tim? I'll finish it off.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

Ukraine, perhaps more than other places in Europe and in the west, understands that one has to have a relationship with other democratic countries in order to be a democracy. That is what I take to be the central meaning of the Maidan.

Another central meaning of what you correctly call the pro-democratic revolutions in the Ukraine is to emphasize equality. In both cases—2004 and 2014— the problem was not only a neighbouring state—Russia—which opposes democracy, but also a threat that we face here as well, which is oligarchy.

Finally, Ukraine is the front line on the battleground for factuality. Many of the most courageous and interesting reporters who are working on issues not only of the war, but of inequality and tax evasion in general, are precisely Ukrainians. They're doing a service.

[Prof. Jason Stanley]

On ethnonationalism, as both Professor Snyder and I emphasize, a common theme everywhere is this idea that we once were great and we're going to return to it. We see that in Hungary, in the United States, and in Turkey. As our colleague, Greg Grandin, has argued, it particularly affects countries that are able to call back to some kind of imperial past, and then they say that they've lost their great past.

Maybe Canada's liberal democracy is so healthy because they don't face that issue. Turkey goes back to the Ottoman Empire. In the United States is the idea there has been this humiliation by the acceptance of the global world order. In the U.K., the idea the EU invaded the U.K. is promulgated among supporters of Brexit. That only makes sense if you think of the U.K. as an empire, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Professor Stanley.

This is like the rapid-fire round. It's not easy for academics or politicians.

With that, we're going to move to MP Caron for the final two minutes.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

Professor Stanley, in a Vox column, you were asked about the possibility that the current rise of fascism or authoritarianism is in fact a response. It can work, because it establishes another mythical reality that ultimately contrasts with the profound tediousness of how our policies work in a liberal democracy.

Our committee work is very boring for the average Canadian or the average citizen of a democracy. How can we deal with this? How can we promote our democracy, first of all, and make it attractive in order to find common ground against the rise of fascism or authoritarianism?

The question is also for Mr. Snyder.

[Prof. Jason Stanley]

It's the education system. You must preserve your pre-K and your university education humanities and history and not make them into job-training centres, and you must teach the history of gender.

You must teach the bad parts of history and what minority groups went through so that people value truth and recognize when they're being lied to. Also, there's journalism. You must fund journalism—alternative sources of journalism. These methods target the media and universities for a reason.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

I think people who believe in liberalism and democracy have to go on the offensive. They have to say “these are good things” as opposed to just saying “we're the normal people when everyone else is abnormal”. I think they also have to go on the offensive in the sense of [Technical difficulty—Editor] the problems of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is attractive now because people have forgotten what the bad parts of it are. As it stagnates and as leaders begin to die, it's going to look less attractive. The tragedy would be if the liberals of democracy give up before we reach that moment, but I think we have to be able to make a case that what we have is not just normal but that it's just really a whole lot better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

I want to thank all four witnesses from today's session for their testimony and particularly for their understanding. This is parliamentary democracy at work this morning: we have a vote right in the middle of testimony.

Thank you very much for joining us. We will be sending you some questions, I'm sure. Feel free to reply in writing, and we'll make sure they get entered as part of the testimony.

With that, we shall adjourn.