Good God.

On Tyranny — Prologue

This is a book by Timothy Snyder on recognizing the tools of tyranny, how they caused the downfall of democracy in other countries, and how we can resist these symptoms in our own countries. It was published in 2017 from an American perspective. I greatly enjoyed the reading and thought that it would be, perhaps, as constructive for others as it was to me. As such, I shall be posting sections from the book, starting with the prologue, and working my way through all 20 "lessons" included. Happy reading!

"Prologue: History and Tyranny"

"History does not repeat, but it does instruct. As the Founding Fathers debated our Constitution, they took instruction from the history they knew. Concerned that the democratic republic they envisioned would collapse, they contemplated the descent of ancient democracies and republics into oligarchy and empire. As they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants. In founding a democratic republic upon law and establishing a system of checks and balances, the Founding Fathers sought to avoid the evil that they, like the ancient philosophers, called tyranny. They had in mind the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit. Much of the succeeding political debate in the United States has concerned the problem of tyranny in American society: over slaves and women, for example.

It is thus a primary American tradition to consider history when our political order seems imperiled. If we worry today that the American experiment is threatened by tyranny, we can follow the example of the Founding Fathers and contemplate the history of other democracies and republics. The good news is that we can draw upon more recent and relevant examples than ancient Greece and Rome. The bad new is that the history of modern democracy is also one of decline and fall. Since the American colonies declared their independence from a British monarchy that the Founders deemed 'tyrannical,' European history has seen 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. Many of the democracies founded at these junctures failed, in circumstances that in some important respects resemble our own.

History can familiarize, and it can warn. In the late nineteenth century, just as in the late twentieth century, the expansion of global trade generated expectations of progress. In the early twentieth century, as in the early twenty-first, these hopes were challenged by new visions of mass politics in which a leader or a party claimed to directly represent the will of the people. European democracies collapsed into right-wing authoritarianism and fascism in the 1920s and '30s. The communist Soviet Union, established in 1922, extended its model into Europe in the 1940s. The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.

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 put a face on globalization, arguing that its complex challenges were the result of a conspiracy against the nation. Fascists ruled for a decade or two, leaving behind an intact intellectual legacy that grows more relevant by the day. Communists ruled for longer, for nearly seven decades in the Soviet Union, and more than four decades in much of eastern Europe. They proposed rule by a disciplined party elite with a monopoly on reason that would guide society toward a certain future according to supposedly fixed laws of history.

We might be tempted to thing that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. In fact, the precedent set by the Founders demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny, and to consider the proper responses to it. 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.

This book presents twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today."

In case it wasn't clear at the top, this section comes from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Any misuse of punctuation is probably Snyder's fault, as I just copied the text word for word, syntax and all. That being said, any typos are probably my fault. I'm too used to autocorrect. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the reading! I hope to post more soon!

That’s actually a really good point. For most of the discourse I hear about what one would do if they somehow magically gained a MILLION dollars, not to mention a BILLION, responses typically involve never having to work again.

What is this fuckery?? It doesn’t even matter whether or not this is true (I mean, it does but that’s not the point), the fact that this is believable says something about our society

Good for them

Holy fuck, is he serious???

I see myself in this comic, and I don’t like it

this is about procrastinating. or executive dysfunction. i think

Reblogging because this is LEGENDARY

Eat them. It’s what they would want

THEY GROUND UP THE TOUDENS