It can happen here. And because of this conscious awareness, I will continue to strongly recommend this vital book by Timothy Snyder (and others) to all of us regardless of where we believe we stand politically. We live in dangerous times and I agree with Timothy Snyder and other courageous and wise truth-tellers - historians, public intellectuals, investigative journalists, visionaries, teachers, authors, and other lifelong activists engaged in the work of healing and awakening our nation and planet - who are speaking up again and again to illuminate where we are today, how we got here, and the urgent need for us to unite to work together to heal and transform our nation and world. We're all in this together. Tag - we are all it! - Molly
From in History
Timothy Snyder,
Housum Professor of History at Yale University, is one of the foremost
scholars in the U.S. and Europe on the rise and fall of totalitarianism
during the 1930s and 40s. Among his long list of appointments and
publications, he has won multiple awards for his recent international
bestsellers Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin and last year’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. That
book in part makes the argument that Nazism wasn’t only a German
nationalist movement but had global colonialist origins---in Russia,
Africa, and in the U.S., the nation that pioneered so many methods of
human extermination, racist dehumanization, and ideologically-justified
land grabs.
The
hyper-capitalism portrayed in the U.S.---even during the
Depression---Snyder writes, fueled Hitler’s imagination, such that he
promised Germans “a life comparable to that of the American people,”
whose “racially pure and uncorrupted” German population he described as
“world class.” Snyder describes Hitler's ideology as
a myth of racialist struggle in which “there are really no values in
the world except for the stark reality that we are born in order to take
things from other people.” Or as we often hear these days, that acting
in accordance with this principle is the “smart” thing to do. Like many
far right figures before and after, Hitler aimed to restore a state of
nature that for him was a perpetual state of race war for imperial
dominance.
After the November election, Snyder wrote a profile of Hitler,
a short piece that made no direct comparisons to any contemporary
figure. But reading the facts of the historical case alarmed most
readers. A few days later, the historian appeared on a Slate podcast to
discuss the article, saying that after he submitted it, “I realized
there was more.... there are an awful lot of echoes.” Snyder admits that
history doesn’t actually repeat itself. But we’re far too quick, he
says, to dismiss that idea as a cliché “and not think about history at
all. History shows a range of possibilities.” Similar events occur
across time under similar kinds of conditions. And it is, of course,
possible to learn from the past.
If you’ve heard other informed analysis but haven’t read Snyder’s New York Review of Books columns on fascism in Putin’s Russia or the former Yanukovich’s Ukraine, or his long article “Hitler’s World May Not Be So Far Away,” you may have seen his widely-shared Facebook post making the rounds. As he argued in The Guardian last
September, today we may be “too certain we are ethically superior to
the Europeans of the 1940s.” On November, 15, Snyder wrote on Facebook that
“Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to
fascism, Nazism, or communism.” Snyder has been criticized for
conflating these regimes, and rising “into the top rungs of punditdom,”
but when it comes to body counts and levels of suppressive malignancy,
it’s hard to argue that Stalinist Russia, any more than Tsarist Russia,
was anyone’s idea of a democracy.
Rather
than making a historical case for viewing the U.S. as exactly like one
of the totalitarian regimes of WWII Europe, Snyder presents 20 lessons
we might learn from those times and use creatively in our own where they
apply. In my view, following his suggestions would make us wiser, more
self-aware, proactive, responsible citizens, whatever lies ahead. Read
Snyder’s lessons from his Facebook post below and consider pre-ordering his latest book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century:
1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of "terrorism" and "extremism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "exception" and "emergency." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
Please continue this article here: http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/20-lessons-from-the-20th-century-about-how-to-defend-democracies-from-authoritarianism.html
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