On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

others who were not Nazis joined in the theft.

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

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.

human nature is such that American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.

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

The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do.

In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.

Accepting the markings as a natural part of the urban landscape was already a compromise with a murderous future.

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them.

Even when citizens are demoralized and wish only to be left alone, public markers can still sustain a tyrannical regime.

He places the sign in his window so that he can withdraw into daily life without trouble from the authorities.

We have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocer’s slogan has nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so, the real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer declares his loyalty in the only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place.

When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important.

If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.

Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.” If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable.

without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible.

The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

Today what Churchill did seems normal, and right. But at the time he had to stand out.

The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli.

Followers did not want to believe that they could be deceived on such a scale, and took comfort in the repetition. The Big Lie created its own world, where anyone who pointed to simple truths was the enemy.

The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

In 1971, contemplating the lies told in the United States about the Vietnam War, the political theorist Hannah Arendt took comfort in the inherent power of facts to overcome falsehoods in a free society: “Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality.” The part about computers is no longer true.

Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public’s sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others.

We do not see the minds that we hurt when we publish falsehoods, but that does not mean we do no harm.

The choice to be in public depends on the ability to maintain a private sphere of life. We are free only when it is we ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen.

one element of freedom is the choice of associates, and one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to sustain their members.

The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception.

our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions. Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.