On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.”
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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 f
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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.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
When we take an active interest in matters of doubtful relevance at moments that are chosen by tyrants, oligarchs and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own political order.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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 within American society: over slaves and women, for example.