Historian Timothy Snyder warns US midterms could open door to rule by tech oligarchs

As Americans cast their ballots in the midterm elections, historian Timothy Snyder told France 24 that the vote carries stakes far beyond the political fortunes of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. In a conversation with François Picard, Snyder, a professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and author of On Tyranny and On Freedom, framed the election as a test of who truly holds power in the United States: the president or the billionaires around him.

Snyder warned that the election is largely about "whether the faltering president, Donald Trump, will become a transition to more or less open rule by some of our tech oligarchs." He drew parallels between today's technology magnates and the robber barons of nineteenth century America, arguing that their extraordinary wealth and influence risk converting democratic institutions into tools of private power.

Unlike the original Gilded Age, which eventually produced antitrust legislation and progressive reforms, Snyder cautioned that there is no guarantee history will repeat itself this time. The concentration of money and political leverage, he suggested, may not correct course on its own.

The historian also contrasted the political economies of Vladimir Putin's Russia and the contemporary United States. While Putin sits at the top of Russia's oligarchic hierarchy, Snyder argued that in America the relationship runs in the other direction: technology billionaires hold the financial power and political leverage to use Trump as a gateway to government influence.

Beyond the accumulation of wealth, Snyder identified a second danger he described as equally corrosive: the normalization of corruption through political cynicism. He characterized the underlying message to voters as: "Everybody is corrupt. Everybody just wants to be a billionaire. Everybody cheats. So you might as well vote for us because we're good at it." In his view, authoritarian politics takes hold not only by weakening democratic institutions but by persuading citizens that democracy is merely a contest between competing forms of corruption.

Despite those warnings, Snyder stressed that the outcome remains far from predetermined. He pointed to signs of democratic resilience in grassroots organizing, public protests and the determination of Americans to exercise their right to vote, even within an electoral system distorted by money and unequal political influence.

"So of course it's not a fair election," he said. "But it's a free election in the sense that people are persistent, struggle, support one another."

For Snyder, the central question raised by the midterms is not simply whether Democrats can regain control of Congress. It is whether Americans still believe democratic politics can make a difference, and whether collective action can counter the growing concentration of private power.

On that point, he said, there is still reason for hope. "The encouraging thing is that we're not there yet," Snyder said. "I think people care."