On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

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The capacity for trust and learning can make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics more plausible and attractive.

The Ukrainians won, and the Americans lost, in the sense that Russia failed to get the regime it wanted in its neighbor, but did see its preferred candidate triumph in the United States. It supports him again in the 2024 elections. He is Putin’s great hope for the rise of a dictatorial world.

Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception. A Nazi leader outmaneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency.

When tyrants speak of extremists, they just mean people who are not in the mainstream—as the tyrants themselves are defining that mainstream at that particular moment.

Modern authoritarian regimes, such as Russia, use laws on extremism to punish those who criticize their policies. In this way the notion of extremism comes to mean virtually everything except what is, in fact, extreme: tyranny.

Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

The Reichstag fire was the moment when Hitler’s government, which came to power mainly through democratic means, became the menacingly permanent Nazi regime.

Whether or not the Nazis set the fire, Hitler saw the political opportunity: “There will be no mercy now. Anyone standing in our way will be cut down.” The next day a decree suspended the basic rights of all German citizens, allowing them to be “preventively detained” by the police.

Vladimir Putin not only came to power in an incident that strikingly resembled the Reichstag fire, he then used a series of terror attacks—real, questionable, and fake—to remove obstacles to total power in Russia and to assault democratic neighbors.

2002, after Russian security forces killed scores of Russian civilians while suppressing a real terrorist attack at a Moscow theater, Putin exploited the occasion to seize control of private television.

After a school in Beslan was besieged by terrorists in 2004 (in strange circumstances that suggested a provocation), Putin did away with the position of elected regional governors.

April 2015, Russian hackers took over the transmission of a French television station, pretended to be ISIS, and then broadcast material designed to terrorize France.

The aim was presumably to drive voters to the Far-Right National Front, a party financially supported by Russia.

In early 2016, Russia manufactured a moment of fake terror in Germany. While bombing Syrian civilians and thus driving Muslim refugees to Europe, Russia exploited a family drama to instruct Germans that Muslims were rapists of children. The aim, again, seems to have been to destabilize a democratic system and promote the parties of the extreme right.

After 2016, the United States became a country of staged crises, such as supposed refugee “invasions.” A real plague that killed became an opportunity for those who opposed health measures to “liberate” their states. A real murder of an African American became an imagined wave of violence against the suburbs. A secure election became the occasion for a big lie about its results. This took the form of the “stab in the back,” a betrayal by internal enemies: the founding myth of the Nazis.

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.

Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

What is patriotism? 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 admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Kim Jong Un; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon foreign leaders to intervene in American presidential elections. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies. It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs. It is not patriotic to appoint advisers with financial interests in Russian companies. It is not patriotic to appoint a National Security Advisor who likes to be called “General Misha,” nor to pardon him for his crimes. It is not patriotic when that pardoned official calls for martial law. It is not patriotic to refer to American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” It i...