On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.

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.

No doubt the Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country’s history, which (thus far) it has been. Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote.

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.

We will have to take seriously our own Constitution, which forbids oath-breaking insurrectionists from running for office.

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.

If members of professions think of themselves as groups with common interests, with norms and rules that oblige them at all times, then they can gain confidence and indeed a certain kind of power.

Authoritarian regimes usually include a special riot police force whose task is to disperse citizens who seek to protest, and a secret state police force whose assignments include the murder of dissenters or others designated as enemies.

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

Each story on televised news is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.

In 1984, the language of visual media is highly constrained, to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the present, remember the past, and consider the future. One of the regime’s projects is to limit the language further by eliminating ever more words with each edition of the official dictionary.

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts.

The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

One coup has been attempted. A failed coup is usually practice for a successful one. The emergency might be more favorable next time, and we cannot afford to be surprised.

A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.

If you once did nothing because you thought progress is inevitable, then you can continue to do nothing because you think time moves in repeating cycles.

History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.