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Timothy Snyder Spent Years Studying Fascists. He Thinks Trump Is One.
Historian Timothy Snyder is among the most well-known public intellectuals in the world—his career trajectory transformed by Donald Trump. (Yevhen Titov/Abaca Press via Reuters Connect)
Is the Yale historian a prophet, as his supporters say? Or is he stripping the word ‘fascism’ of its meaning?
By Peter Savodnik
05.14.25 — Education
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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.

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Peter Savodnik
Peter Savodnik is senior editor at The Free Press. Previously, he wrote for Vanity Fair as well as GQ, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wired, and other publications, reporting from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, South Asia, and across the United States. His book, The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union, was published in 2013.
Tags:
Donald Trump
History
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