On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

History does not repeat, but it does instruct.

Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

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.

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

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.

Churchill said that history would be kind to him, because he intended to write it himself.

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

Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies, and the associated difficulties of thought.

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework.

To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this—but we still can.

Jesus preached that it “is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society.

Once we subliminally accept that we are watching a reality show rather than thinking about real life, no image can actually hurt the president politically.

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.

In the most dangerous of times, those who escape and survive generally know people whom they can trust. Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change.

Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.

For tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission.

Tried to do it with charlie kirk

Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one’s companies, or on legal fees, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property. It is not patriotic to compare one’s search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one’s own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one’s own companies.

It is not patriotic to take health care from families, nor to golf your way through a national epidemic in which half a million Americans die. It is not patriotic to try to sabotage an American election, nor to claim victory after defeat. It is not patriotic to try to end democracy.

If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

One thing is certain: If young people do not begin to make history, politicians of eternity and inevitability will destroy it. And to make history, young Americans will have to know some. This is not the end, but a beginning. “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!” Thus Hamlet. Yet he concludes: “Nay, come, let’s go together.”