#on tyranny: twenty lessons from the twentieth century

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The D-Day cover of the New Yorker from 1944 might be the best in the whole history of the magazine :: "Rea Irvin (August 26, 1881 – May 28, 1972), was an American graphic artist and cartoonist. Although never formally credited as such, he served de facto as the first art editor of The New Yorker. He created the Eustace Tilley cover portrait and the New Yorker typeface. He first drew Tilley for the cover of the magazine's first issue on February 21, 1925. Tilley appeared annually on the magazine's cover every February until 1994.[1][2] As one commentator has written, "a truly modern bon vivant, Irvin was also a keen appreciator of the century of his birth. His high regard for both the careful artistry of the past and the gleam of the modern metropolis shines from the very first issue of the magazine ..."[3]" :: [Robert Scott Horton]

+

« As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

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. […] Once truth [becomes] oracular rather than factual, evidence [is] irrelevant. At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that “understanding is useless, you have to have faith. […]”  

Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason. Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. One of his former students implored him to “abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Führer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort you are feeling at present.” »

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

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ A new ad by The Lincoln Project.

Trump doesn't even try to hide his Nazism any more. Pro-democracy Americans need to vigorously point out the parallels.

Not long after Trump took office, historian Timothy Snyder wrote a book called On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century. It became a national bestseller. More recently a graphic version was published. Whichever edition you choose, it's an excellent read by one of America's greatest living historians.

I have indeed read it. It's well written and it isn't long. Features of the rise of European fascism in the last century are described and related to the situation in the US in this century. It makes an excellent present – especially for people graduating this year.

[bottleofmalibu]

“History, which for a time seemed to be running from west to east, now seems to run from east to west. Everything that happens here seems to happen there first.” — Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

[dk-thrive]

“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 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."

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Crown; February 28, 2017) (via Wait-What)

[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

[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

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

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 reason 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 think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. Our own tradition demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny, and to consider the proper responses to it. We 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.

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

[cleverwordsandotherstuffilike]

"Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books." Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

[hug-your-face]

I've spent the morning on the news. I don't usually do that, but I don't make the rules about the hyperfixation and today was apparently Just That Day. After having read about Tim Snyder and his near-prescient predictions of the crazy shit in the world these days, found his Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century on Fighting Tyranny. They're oddly hope-inducing.

Please read the full text, because it gives much-needed context to the list:

Do not obey in advance. 

Defend institutions. 

Beware the one-party state. 

Take responsibility for the face of the world. 

Remember professional ethics. 

Be wary of paramilitaries. 

Be reflective if you must be armed. 

Stand out. 

Be kind to our language. 

Believe in truth. 

Investigate. 

Make eye contact and small talk. 

Practice corporeal politics.

Establish a private life. 

Contribute to good causes. 

Learn from peers in other countries.

Listen for dangerous words. 

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. 

Be a patriot. 

Be as courageous as you can. 

Again, the full list actually gives guidance and it's the guidance I found hopeful. But I'm putting this here as a reminder to me (and anyone else).

[rickladd]

Why Are People Giving In?

In his book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century”, the very first lesson Timothy Snyder presents us with is “Do not obey in advance”. Yet this is precisely what the mainstream media (including MSNBC and even Comedy Central) are doing wrt the “candidacy” of Rapey McEarGotNicked. They’re cravenly removing shows that might “offend” Trumplethinskin, ostensibly in the forlorn hope…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

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.

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

[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.

[bottleofmalibu]

“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… The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.” — Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

[dk-thrive]

Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Crown; February 28, 2017) (via Alive on all Channels)

[cass1x1]

💜🎉🔥

send me an emoji and i'll rec you a book

garden spells by sarah addison allen is sorta like practical magic a bit i guess? it's about a woman whose family has a magic-imbued garden and she's been using it for a chill life until her rebellious sister returns with a baby and upends her life.

the princess bride by william goldman is exactly like the movie but like...there's gags the movie didn't include. it's unbelievably funny and because the movie is such a fantastic adaptation, i think the book gets overlooked/forgotten. but it's an absolute banger, really easy to pick up and put down (because, even in sections the movie didn't include, the vibe of the movie is the same as the vibe of the book), and laugh-out-loud funny.

on tyranny: twenty lessons from the twentieth century by timothy snyder is super short and relatively light for how heavy the subject matter is. he talks about the facist/tyrannical movements of the 1900s and how to recognize/combat tyranny in your everyday life without being too doom-and-gloom-y or too naive. i read it originally in like 2016 or 2017 and still think back to it periodically.

[psychopomping]

Tag people you‘d like to know better

Tagged by @kyungsooinsweetlies (thank u !!!!!! love that your obsession is budget planning)

Last Song:

UN Village by Baekhyun because I heard the news that he moved

Currently watching:

Andor!

Currently Reading:

I tend to read a couple of books at once so that I can switch around when I'm bored but still feel like reading. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy D. Synder American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Current Obsession:

Currently trying to grow my hair out so really obsessed with things to make it healthy, right now it's rice water.

Tagging: anyone who wants to do it !!!