On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

Concerned that the democratic republic they envisioned would collapse, they contemplated the descent of ancient democracies and republics into oligarchy and empire.

Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants. In founding a democratic republic upon law and establishing a system of checks and balances, the Founding Fathers sought to avoid the evil that they, like the ancient philosophers, called tyranny.

the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit.

Well, this is off to a great start as I read this in 2024 😞

The good news is that we can draw upon more recent and relevant examples than ancient Greece and Rome. The bad news is that the history of modern democracy is also one of decline and fall.

European history has seen three major democratic moments: after the First World War in 1918, after the Second World War in 1945, and after the end of communism in 1989. Many of the democracies founded at these junctures failed, in circumstances that in some important respects resemble our own.

The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.

Both fascism and communism were responses to globalization: to the real and perceived inequalities it created, and the apparent helplessness of the democracies in addressing them. Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people.

put a face on globalization, arguing that its complex challenges were the result of a conspiracy against the nation.

Fascist put a face on globalization by exploiting social tensions and scapegoating minorities as that face that was a threat to the nation

They proposed rule by a disciplined party elite with a monopoly on reason that would guide society toward a certain future according to supposedly fixed laws of history.

Communism

In fact, the precedent set by the Founders demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny, and to consider the proper responses to it.

The importance of education and an understanding of history in protecting our democratic republic from tyranny. If we don’t know the patterns we won’t see them

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle.

The anticipatory obedience of the citizens

anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed.

After the Austrian chancellor conceded, it was the Austrians’ anticipatory obedience that decided the fate of Austrian Jews.

The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938 taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible.

At the very beginning, anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflecting, to a new situation.

Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting. They are surprisingly willing to harm and kill others in the service of some new purpose if they are so instructed by a new authority.

The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.

Revolutionaries sometimes do intend to destroy institutions all at once.

…Edelgard

A party emboldened by a favorable election result, or denying an unfavorable one, might change the system from within.

Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote.

The logic of the system they devised was to mitigate the consequences of our real imperfections, not to celebrate our imaginary perfection.

The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens.