Timothy Snyder Spent Years Studying Fascists. He Thinks Trump Is One.

TORONTO—“Is Donald Trump a fascist?” I asked the historian Timothy Snyder.

We were at a lovely restaurant on the campus of the University of Toronto, where Snyder had taken up residence after leaving Yale—and America—last August. I was in the middle of the grilled calamari. The professor—gray-haired, in a grayish-blue windbreaker and a checkered, button-down shirt—was poking at his salad.

He looked up after a moment, alternating between staring into the distance and staring at me.

He was no longer just an academic who wrote best-selling books about Eastern Europe. He was among the most well-known public intellectuals in the world—his career trajectory transformed by Donald Trump.