On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

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.

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.

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

when the less popular of the two parties suppresses voting, claims fraud when it loses elections, and controls the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.

“where annual elections end, tyranny begins.” Will we come to see the elections of 2024 much as Russians see the elections of 1990, or Czechs the elections of 1946, or Germans the elections of 1932?

Terrifying

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

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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.

Pride flags!!

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.

apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader.

The insurrectionists

Because the American federal government uses mercenaries in warfare and American state governments pay corporations to run prisons and internment camps, the use of violence in the United States is already highly privatized.

What was novel in 2016 was a candidate who ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies and encouraged the audience itself to remove people who expressed different opinions.

Trmup

When that candidate lost the next election, he tried to falsify its results while his followers attacked our Capitol. Had that coup succeeded, our constitutional system would be no more.

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For violence to transform not just the atmosphere but also the system, the emotions of rallies and insurrections and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards. These first challenge the police and military, then penetrate the police and military, and finally transform the police and military.

But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

Yep!

Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (an American president said my people), encounters were always struggles (an American variant is winning), and any attempt to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as an American president put it, treason).

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.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being might suit our moment.

Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America is better. One novel known by millions of young Americans that offers an account of tyranny and resistance is J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (1946); The Language of the Third Reich by Victor Klemperer (1947); The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (1951); The Rebel by Albert Camus (1951); The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz (1953); “The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel (1978); “How to Be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist” by Leszek Kołakowski (1978); The Uses of Adversity by Timothy Garton Ash (1989); The Burden of Responsibility by Tony Judt (1998); Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning (1992); and Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev (2014).

The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. In 2017, the American president averaged six lies a day. The next year it was sixteen, the following year twenty-two. In 2020 he told on average about twenty-seven lies a day. This figure is so high that it makes the correct assertions seem like unintended oversights on the path toward total fiction.

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And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism.

In 2016, an American presidential candidate claimed on a Russian propaganda outlet that American “media has been unbelievably dishonest.” He banned many reporters from his rallies, and regularly elicited hatred of journalists from the public. Like the leaders of authoritarian regimes, he promised to suppress freedom of speech by laws that would prevent criticism. As president, he used the word lies to mean facts not to his liking, and called journalists enemies of the people (as Hitler and the Nazis had done). Where the Nazis said “Lügenpresse,” he said “Fake news.” That president was on friendlier terms with the internet, his source for erroneous information that he passed on to millions of people.

Trum

What does it mean, for example, when a president says that women belong “at home,” that pregnancy is an “inconvenience,” that mothers do not give “100 percent” at work, that women should be punished for having abortions, that women are “slobs,” “pigs,” or “dogs,” and that it is permissible to sexually assault them?

Assuming thinvs tru.mp has said

If we found a video of an American president performing Cossack dances while Vladimir Putin claps, we would probably just demand the same thing with him wearing a bear suit and holding rubles in his mouth.

We find it natural that we pay for a plumber or a mechanic, but demand our news for free. If we did not pay for plumbing or auto repair, we would not expect to drink water or drive cars. Why then should we form our political judgment on the basis of zero investment? We get what we pay for.

But i still feel like we should know the truth for free.. Idk how that would work though

“If the main pillar of the system is living a lie,” wrote Havel, “then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

We do not see the minds that we hurt when we publish falsehoods, but that does not mean we do no harm. Think of driving a car. We may not see the other driver, but we know not to run into their car. We know that the damage will be mutual. We protect the other person without seeing him, dozens of times every day. Likewise, although we may not see the other person in front of his or her computer, we have our share of responsibility for what is on the screen. If we can avoid doing violence to the minds of unseen others on the internet, others will learn to do the same. And then perhaps our internet traffic will cease to look like one great, bloody accident.

I feel like this applies to beyondd this too. Just because something isnt affecting you doesnt mean its not affecting someonee else you cant ssee or knoww.

Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets. If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.