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.

The bad news is that the history of modern democracy is also one of decline and fall.

three major democratic moments: after the First World War in 1918, after the Second World War in 1945, and after the end of communism in 1989.

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. They

the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change.

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency.

So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.

American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.

Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some time, but most did not.

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.

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? This, for now, depends upon us. Much

which forbids oath-breaking insurrectionists from running for office.

the Soviet Union under the rule of Joseph Stalin, prosperous farmers were portrayed on propaganda posters as pigs—a dehumanization that in a rural setting clearly suggests slaughter.

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

“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (1946);

The Rebel by Albert Camus (1951);

“The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel (1978);

The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

truth dies in four modes.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts.

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist style depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible.

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction.

The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims a president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your retribution.”

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. 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.

The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

He banned many reporters

regularly elicited hatred of journalists

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).

Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

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.

Citizens then trade real freedom for fake safety.

Modern tyranny is terror management.

The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances,

the suspension of freedom of expression,

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

The next day a decree suspended the basic rights of all German citizens, allowing them to be “preventively detained” by the police. On the strength of Hitler’s claim that the fire was the work of Germany’s enemies, the Nazi Party won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections on March 5.

On March 23 the new parliament passed an “enabling act,” which allowed Hitler to rule by decree.

Hitler had used an act of terror, an event of limited inherent significance, to institute a regime of terror that killed millions of people and changed the world.

Thus Putin’s rise to power and his elimination of two major institutions—private television and elected regional governorships—were enabled by the management of real, fake, and questionable terrorism.

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

For us, the lesson is that 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,

James Madison nicely made the point that tyranny arises “on some ...

It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes.

It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators.