#On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

[clovencraft]

'til the day I die

[porterdavis]

We have met the enemy...

How to destroy the US:

"The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective, Trump's proposed appointments—Kennedy, Jr.; Gaetz; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard—are perfect instruments. 

"They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done.”

Timothy Snyder, author - On Tyranny

[sigridstumb]

Do Not Comply In Advance

We humans, we protect ourselves.

We protect ourselves, our families, and our communities.

We protect what we had built, what we have collected, what we have made, what we have nurtured.

We do this in a variety of ways. One way we protect ourselves, our people, and our works is by getting along with others.

A part of getting along with others is ... well, it's doing what you need to do so that you remain unremarkable. Unnoticed. We live in societies, in communities, and we on the whole try to live in accordance with the rules and unspoken expectations of that society.

Compliance is one of the cornerstones of protection.

However.

However.

Do not do the work of those who would see you broken and battered for them.

Okay, listen.

I'm talking about the U.S., here, the U.S.A. in the bitter end of 2024. As I type this, I cannot forsee the future. I am, thank the uncaring void, not a Cassandra. But it would be abject foolishness to not know that turmoil is coming from sea to shining sea. What manner of harms will befall us are as yet unknown.

But harm will come.

Harm will come. We will be threatened. And in the face of that threat we will want to protect ourselves, our people, and our works. Most of us, the vast, vast majority of us, will be compliant most of the time.

This isn't stupid. This isn't evil. This is one tool in the toolbox of the occupied, invaded, and oppressed. Keep your head down. Go along to get along.

Every marginalized community in the U.S. already knows this. This isn't new and it's not news. But a lot more people are going to abruptly find themselves in this position, and it will be very unnerving.

Compliance to protect you and yours isn't wrong. It's not a failing. It's just what you have to do.

However.

However.

Do. Not. Comply. In. Advance.

What does that mean? That means, do not try to guess what the oppressor wants so you can do it without being asked. It means do not imagine what will make the autocrat happy and do it as a little present. It means do not suck up to the oligarchs by hanging on their every word and doing what they hint at.

Do not, in short, 'rid him of this turbulent priest.'

Do not call ICE on anyone. Do not ask anyone for their documentation. In fact, don't keep very good records. Forget to do your paperwork. Lose files. Corrupt a database here and there. The oligarchy can't deport who they can't find.

Do not be a snitch, period. However you feel about your neighbor's lawn signs/car on blocks/late night weed smoking you do everything you can to handle it yourselves. It is important to try to establish good relationships with your neighbors, your coworkers, your medical provider, anybody you have regular dealings with. You help them out, they'll help you out.

Do not do the work of the oppressor for them. Do what you need to do to get by, but remember that everyone else is also trying to get by - leave them be.

Do not do the work of people who want to see you dead for them.

Do not comply in advance.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Trump's press conference on Monday

Trump gave a meandering press conference in which he said many stupid things because he was asked questions by the media that baited him into making stupid statements.

Trump said the following:

He would consider privatizing the US Postal Service.

Regarding the disproven link between vaccines and autism, Trump said, “There’s something wrong and we’re going to find out about it.”

Republican Senators who oppose Trump's nominees would find themselves with a Republican primary opponent.

Hamas must release all hostages before January 20, 2025, or “all hell is going to break out.”

Trump suggested the Biden knew the nature and purpose of the drones sighted on the East Coast but wasn’t sharing the information with the public.

Trump claimed that Elon Musk would be able to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget “with no impact on people.”

But among the most idiotic statements Trump made during the press conference were three threats against the press:

He threatened to sue the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll before the election that showed him losing the state to Kamala Harris. See HuffPo, 'Election Interference': Trump Threatens To Sue Des Moines Register Over Poll.

He also threatened to sue CBS 60 Minutes for editing its interview with Kamala Harris. Emboldened by ABC settlement, Trump threatens more lawsuits against the press | CNN Business

And he threatened to sue the Pulitzer Foundation for awarding the NYTimes a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump's 2016 campaign.

Trump's threats are apparently motivated by ABC’s $15 million settlement payment in his defamation suit against George Stephanopoulos. In Trump's reptilian mind, “Lawsuit = $15 million, therefore repeat.” See Harry Litman on Substack, Talking Feds, Et Tu, ABC?

ABC’s surrender taught Trump that “threats work.” That is why “obeying in advance” harms democracy—and why the collapse of the billionaire class and corporate leaders has been disheartening. We must not make the same mistake. Do not “obey in advance.” Resist. Oppose. Speak the truth. Never surrender.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[laugier]

[tomorrowusa]

« Trump and his highest-profile allies have plainly embarked on a broader related project—one that seeks to acclimatize the American electorate to fascistic language and far-reaching authoritarian policy “solutions.” They are slowly edging the discourse deeper into that fraught territory, as if painstakingly testing how far they can take this without provoking too much public discomfort over it. »

— Greg Sargent at The New Republic.

All those references to fascism and Hitler love have been part of MAGA since the start. They form a pattern. Blaming them on staffers only draws attention to the more senior people who hired those Nazi-friendly staffers in the first place.

Trump speaks lovingly of dictators and dictatorship. It's time for us to speak more lovingly about democracy and not to be reticent about giving pushback – especially in person – to those who make excuses for Trump's semi-coherent anti-democratic diatribes.

Trump won't be defeated without extra effort from all of us. Slackerism only gave us Trump in the first place in 2016.

BTW: If you're looking for a thoughtful but not expensive graduation gift, here's a book by historian Timothy Snyder which was a bestseller during the Trump presidency.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century

And yes, I did read it – it took less than two days.

[yikesforever]

Just a reminder for this lovely Sunday 🥰

[laissezferre]

"What is the truth?" Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing. Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference. It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

-Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

[laughing-cossack]

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

"The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don’t know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. 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, but some did not."---

"On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century," by Timothy Snyder

[thesewildreams]

from On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder

Highly recommend this little book, just 126 pages, pocket-sized and full of wisdom.

[jacensolodjo]

Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much. A few extreme (and less extreme) examples from the twentieth century can show us how.

In 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. This was in the early 1930s, as the Soviet state tried to master the countryside and extract capital for crash industrialization. The peasants who had more land or livestock than others were the first to lose what they had. A neighbor portrayed as a pig is someone whose land you can take. But those who followed the symbolic logic became victims in their turn. Having turned the poorer peasants against the richer, Soviet power then seized everyone’s land for the new collective farms. Collectivization, when completed, brought starvation to much of the Soviet peasantry. Millions of people in Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Kazakhstan, and Soviet Russia died horrible and humiliating deaths between 1930 and 1933. Before it was over, Soviet citizens were butchering corpses for human meat.

In 1933, as the starvation in the USSR reached its height, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. In the euphoria of victory, Nazis tried to organize a boycott of Jewish shops. This was not very successful at first. But the practice of marking one firm as “Jewish” and another as “Aryan” with paint on the windows or walls did affect the way Germans thought about household economics. A shop marked “Jewish” had no future. It became an object of covetous plans. As property was marked as ethnic, envy transformed ethics. If shops could be “Jewish,” what about other companies and properties? The wish that Jews might disappear, perhaps suppressed at first, rose as it was leavened by greed. Thus the Germans who marked shops as “Jewish” participated in the process by which Jews really did disappear—as did people who simply looked on. Accepting the markings as a natural part of the urban landscape was already a compromise with a murderous future.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

[porterdavis]

Cliff Notes for fighting tyranny

Timothy Snyder -- "20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America."

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/is-trump-more-to-be-pitied/

Is Trump More To Be Pitied?

Watching a reporter interview historian Timothy Snyder one evening, I sat up in my chair when he laid out his thoughts about  Donald Trump’s strategy for the current 2024 Presidential election.  Snyder presumed the former president knew he would lose the contest and was taking unpopular positions against Social Security and the Affordable Care Act not to secure victory but to lay the groundwork for a second insurrection. Insane as the idea sounded, I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand.  A distorted mind might seize upon the claim of being victorious in defeat. Trump had tried it before.  The fear that history might repeat itself set my little grey cells spinning.  The media has paid little attention to the state of Trump’s mind, choosing to focus on the age of his opponent, Joe Biden. Those who speculate that the incumbent is too old to run for a second term forget that a scant three-year difference lies between the two contenders.  Reporters would serve the public better by exploring the difference between an aging brain and a demented one. Biden’s speech gaffs, which many hold against him, aren’t entirely due to his age.  As a child, he stuttered. The impediment reasserts itself on occasion. But it is also true that as a man of 81 years, he speaks slowly and takes mental pauses. These are signs of a brain aging normally, not evidence of one that has lost its reason. Bidne’s verbal mistakes are a far cry from Trump’s failure to distinguish Nikki Haley from Nancy Pelosi or for him to speak as though he were running against Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan’s conduct during his final years in office might be a better measuring stick with which to compare  Trump’s behavior.  The  40th U. S. President also exhibited memory gaps and confusion during public appearances.  Alzheimer’s was never confirmed during his time in office, but members of his staff did report they saw signs of the disease before he returned to private life.    Psychologist, Dr. John Gartner makes no bones about Trump’s mental illness.  He warns that the former president’s outbursts aren’t those of a strong leader flexing his muscles.  They are the tantrums of a diseased brain.    Though he was never Trump’s doctor, Gartner insists what he offers is not an opinion but a diagnosis based on reality.  Others in his field agree but few have spoken out so publically. Gartner believes his colleagues have failed to do so because they are intimidated. Like physicians practicing in anti-abortion states, they��ve come to fear there is a good chance they would lose their jobs if they went on the record, not to mention other forms of retaliation… Some journalists may have remained silent for the same reason. Gartner points out that they make little of Trump’s slurred words, invented words, unfinished sentences, and blank, expressionless pauses. Instead, they characterize the Presidential election as a competition between two old men.  When Regan took office at the age of 73, he was the oldest President to that date. Whether the early stages of Alzheimer’s had set in, we shall never know, but he was wise enough to surround himself with honorable men and women. By contrast, the roll-call of Trump’s many cohorts is a list of disreputables. Should Trump return to power, that number is likely to grow, boding ill for the country. Nor can we overlook the many felony counts against the former president. His legal woes have left him strapped for funds. Winning re-election, he could erase the federal charges against him with a presidential pardon, but he has no power to absolve himself from state charges.  Without sufficient funds to defend himself, Trump is vulnerable to opportunists who are ready to give him cash in exchange for undue influence.    Opportunists are the people we should fear, not members of the Christian Right as many have assumed.  The latter’s objectives are too out of step with the majority of voters.  Their brief hour on the stage will be less than a hiccup in the course of history.    When money and the levers of government become too cozy, says John Grey in his book The New Leviathans, it threatens democracy and encourages the rise of more and not less totalitarianism.   ( “Who’s Afraid of Freedom?” by Helena Rosenblatt, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2024, pg. 154.) The dynamic is simple, the author explains.  Like other animals, humans are addicted to pleasure. Money satisfies that addiction but the pursuit of it has consequences. Those with the most wealth imagine they are better than others–a perspective that encourages them to imagine people in lower economic circumstances are less human. From there, Grey posits, it’s a short hop to inhumanity, a place where the poverty of others is a justification for eliminating them.   (Ibid, pg. 154)  Whether that causal connection between money and tyranny is direct, I don’t know.  But, science has affirmed that wealth and compassion exist in an inverse ratio.  In a capitalist society, greed, if left unchecked, could end in a tug-of-war between those with enough money to influence the government and the majority who are governed by it. A 2019  Gallop Poll confirmed that dynamic.  Concerning the federal budget, the wealthy preferred to see service cuts to social security to sustain it.  A majority of Americans disagreed. Money has a loud voice in politics, though most of us wish it weren’t true.  Nonetheless, we must accept that Trump’s financial setbacks put him at the mercy of oligarchs. No longer able to pose as one of them, he suffers the humiliation of a man stripped of his theater.  His delusions are exposed, and he stands naked before us.  The only words to suit the occasion are these. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hast been wise.   (King Lear, 1, v.)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

This is so important.

@TimothyDSnyder, author of On Tyranny. I wanted to know how to live our best lives in opposition to an authoritarian regime Here's what he told me :: [Will Bunch]

[geneeste]

“The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naive and flawed sort of democratic republic to a confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy. The politics of inevitability is terribly vulnerable to the kind of shock it has just received. When something shatters the myth, when our time falls out of joint, we scramble to find some other way to organize what we experience. The path of least resistance leads directly from inevitability to eternity. If you once believed that everything always turns out well in the end, you can be persuaded that nothing turns out well in the end. 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.

Both of these positions, inevitability and eternity, are antihistorical. The only thing that stands between them is history itself. History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, each one of them different, none entirely unique. To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.”

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

~ Howard Zinn