Does This Yale Prof Actually Believe Hegseth Is Part of a ‘Decapitation Strike’ on America?

Y ale’s Timothy Snyder has a novel take on Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth: He believes that Hegseth intends to end the republic. On X yesterday, Snyder concluded a 13-part thread about Hegseth by proposing that he “represents a policy of regime change” whose “nomination” is “best understood as part of a decapitation strike against the republic” that will usher in a “Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans.”

Gosh.

Snyder’s suggestion was not offered frivolously or in jest. On November 24, he wrote exactly the same thing on his Substack, and, a week before that, he laid out the case that Trump’s appointments were part of a plan “to create American horror” that had been developed over “years” by Trump “and Musk and Putin.” Ours, Snyder concluded, is a “pre-catastrophic moment” that, unless halted, will swiftly result in “engineered regime change and deliberate state destruction.”

Okay. So now what? I ask that quite earnestly. Snyder says he believes that Trump’s cabinet could “bring an end to the United States of America,” and that his desired secretary of defense is a “Christian Reconstructionist” who wishes to help Donald Trump “build a kind of dictatorship,” effect “regime change,” stage a “decapitation strike,” and “break the United States.” So now what? This morning, I got out of bed, talked to my kids, made myself a coffee, read the news, replaced the batteries in a beeping smoke alarm, and then went to work. This was very normal, all things considered, but I had the luxury of behaving normally because, unlike Snyder, I do not consider our national circumstances to be “pre-catastrophic.” Rather, I believe that we are in for yet another four years in which the president of the United States often acts in violation of the constitutional order he swore to uphold, but that, as on other occasions, that constitutional order will prevail. I expect that, at times, I will be appalled by the spectacle, and that, on rare occasions, I may even grow cynical or morose. Nevertheless, I will happily pour my morning coffee and read the news and fix the smoke detectors and go to work, and where necessary, I will appeal to the institutions that Americans have enjoyed for 250 years, because, when it comes down it, I do not anticipate that the next four years will be particularly different from the last 20.

Timothy Snyder, by contrast, does think that. Reasonable people can argue over whether a given president was good or bad, and over whether a particular policy or court ruling or order was salutary or destructive, but, presumably, we can all agree that at no point in our lifetimes has the United States been subject to a fatal attack that brought the country’s history to a close. By definition, such an event would belong in a category wholly separate from anything to which we, or our ancestors, were accustomed. From time to time, critics of my strong Second Amendment advocacy will ask me a fair question: “You talk of the Second Amendment as a check against tyranny,” they inquire, “but how would you know when to invoke it?” My answer, typically, is to concede that there’s no hard and fast rule, to note that the threshold is extremely high, and to quote the Declaration of Independence, which, despite being a revolutionary document, observed that “governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” As go-to examples, I usually offer the reintroduction of slavery, or the development of WWII-style concentration camps, or . . . well, a “dictatorship,” the product of “regime change,” brought about by a “decapitation strike” that effectively brought “an end to the United States of America.” In those circumstances, my behavior would change dramatically.

Nor would I wait for my auguries to come to fruition. Snyder’s claim is that the plan he adumbrates will be executed if Donald Trump’s cabinet picks are confirmed. That, clearly, is going to happen soon — either in the most part, or in full. The supposed villains that Snyder feared on November 14 are probably all going to be elevated into their designated roles, and his chief villain, Pete Hegseth, is probably going to join them. What is Snyder going to do about this? You will forgive me, I hope, for insisting that if the answer is to stay at Yale and keep going about his daily life, then I must remain skeptical that he believes a word of what he is saying. The only concrete suggestion I can find him making amid all the drama is to engage in “simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America.” But that is not a scheme suited to the engineered downfall of the republic; it is a scheme suited to a stable system of government that relies on biennial election cycles. “A rhetoric of a better America” is a sentence that belongs in a presidential aspirant’s briefing book, not in an existential fight against a dastardly international conspiracy. Other than writing at his Substack, teaching at a university, and doom-posting on a social media platform that is owned by a man he suspects of being a collaborator, what’s the plan?

There are times that call for sprezzatura, and there are times that call for action. The inauguration of a disliked president allows the former; the inauguration of an ineluctable tyrant does not. In the coming months, we will see all manner of public figures casually talking as if America as we have known it is finished and a dark authoritarian nightmare has taken its place. If, having delivered this verdict, its authors then go about their days as if nothing had changed — speaking on panels or on TV, delivering copy to the usual outlets, enjoying dinners in New Haven and Cambridge, and tweeting to great acclaim — one would be forgiven for concluding that, actually, they don’t believe a word of it.