On Tyranny

Please give my review a helpful vote on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/review/R3PWF91AJ7FK9G/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Post-script: January 20, 2020 - The transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration occurred - as I predicted - without the imposition of a dictatorship - as I predicted.

Snyder's book now stands proven by history as an exercise in hysteria.

On the other hand, given the statements by those with power and influence over the new administration about purging, re-education camps and truth commissions and the economic assaults on free speech platforms and Trump supporters, Snyder's hysteria certainly fit in with or channeled the authoritarian tendencies of the left circa 2016-2021.

The book seems timely today, unlike 2016.
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A sad example of how ideology distorts scholarship.

I purchased this expecting a thoughtful discussion about the lessons that an academic can draw from 20th-century totalitarianism. I was hopeful about something insight and depth from the author of Bloodlands, which did a really good job of bracketing Nazism and Communism into a coherent narrative.

This is not that book. To save those who might not know, author Timothy Snyder's central thesis is that the current Republican President is Literally Hitler. Of course, this should probably not come as a surprise. Every Republican president is Literally Hitler during their tenure, and then they are rehabilitated as the Model of Bipartisanship to be used against the next Republican President who is Literally Hitler. George Bush is now in the middle of rehabilitation as the Model of Bipartisanship, but there are those of us who remember that not so long he was Bushitler.

I expected better.

I wanted to give Snyder some credit for some his observations. Some of his points about tyranny are classic and memorable.

Unfortunately, I have to wonder where he was for the last eight years. During the last eight years, many people of faith have felt that they were under the heels of a tyranny that threatened to divide us from the rest of America and make us give up our freedom of conscience in order to avoid governmental oppression. The 2016 presidential campaign began, let us remember, with the perennial Democrat shill George Stephanopolous asking an off-the-wall question about contraception. Pretty soon, we saw a presidential campaign largely framed around the idea that Catholics were UnAmerican dissenters who irrationally refused to pay for contraception. The Little Sisters of Poor were required to toss a pinch of incense to appease abortion lest they face draconian penalties that would end their historic mission of caring for the poor. Likewise, we saw the government centralize and make a grab for a substantial part of the economy with that mis-named Affordable Health Care Act, which carried with the unprecedented intrusion into personal life and personal decision-making by requiring that Americans divert upwards of 20% of their income into the purchase of health insurance to the enrichment of insurance companies.

Although any of this could be described quite easily as “fascist”, we heard nothing from Snyder.

Likewise, the last eight years have seen an unprecedented normalization of hostility to free speech, as colleges have instituted speech codes and rules against triggering and have assaulted and intimidated people who didn't adhere to the progressive line.

But, again, nothing from Snyder.

During the last presidential campaign, we saw videos of the loser's side attacking, hitting, punching throwing things at, and assaulting those on the president's side. We've seen riots in the aftermath of an election and attempt to get Electors to violate their oaths.

One might have seen in this the image of Brownshirts and the destruction of democracy by ignoring the spirit of the law, but, again, nothing from Snyder.

Similarly, we remember that under the former president, the IRS was used in an unprecedented way to harass and target conservatives. One might view this as an unhealthy fascist tendency.

But, again, crickets from Snyder.

It is an interesting feature of Snyder's slim book - which is easily read in a single sitting - that it is so conservative. For example, Snyder gives the very good advice that “institutions should be defended.” Quite right, but notice this from his book:

“It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.”

That is good advice, but I was amused at what his advice omitted. My amusement stemmed from my lengthy reading into the Kirchenkampfe. Snyder omits “churches.” Obviously, churches were a major institution in the resistance against totalitarianism, although Snyder seems to omit this point. In a later section, he manages to explain how Polish workers allied with atheist scholars to bring down Polish Communism without mentioning John Paul II or the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church gets one reference here when Snyder observes:

“The one example of successful resistance to communism was the Solidarity labor movement in Poland in 1980–81: a coalition of workers and professionals, elements of the Roman Catholic Church, and secular groups.”

“Elements.” As if the Primate of Poland, the Bishops of Poland, and the Pope were just “elements.” And this is from a history professor.

I have to wonder about this. Is it just the case that a Yale professor lives in such a secular bubble that he edits the data to form his arguments? Or is it the case, that he wanted to stay away from the tyranny of the prior eight years? Or is he simply an urban elite entirely out of touch with the country that voted for the president? I found this to be a not very edifying example of scholarship.

So, Snyder is strangely quiet about one kind of institution, but he is very conservative in his demand that everyone pay proper deference to the press and support it with money and loyalty.

And here again one wonders where Snyder has been for the last sixteen years. It has come to the point where everyone knows that the mainstream press is an arm of one political party, which isn't that of the current president. Even Communist China has pointed out that the media was biased in favor the loser. The press has an approval rating lower than that of a cold sore because people have seen the press blatantly misrepresent facts. The time is long gone when the press can't be fact-checked in real-time and stories that were run during the prior administration can't be found by a simple internet search and set against current stories to show the slanting and bias of press coverage.

On the other hand, the most independent and professional reporting is often found among amateur bloggers who have real experience, and, while they may have a bias, are not pretending that they don't.

Snyder would properly have compared the modern mainstream press to the Gleischaltung version of the press that existed in 1933 Germany if he wanted to make a fair comparison.(Given the revelation through Wiki leaks that there were media members who running their stories past the Clinton campaign, Gleischaltung is not too strong a word.)

Here is another example:

“17 Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.”

How about “racist”? Or homophobe? Or Islamaphobe?

Such things do exist, but it seems to me that Snyder is entirely unaware of how “dangerous words” are used by his tribe to stifle speech and mark people as “outcasts.”

Here is an example where Snyder goes unhinged:

“14 Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.”

This may be good advice, but Snyder is injecting poison into the body politic by teaching people that they are presently at risk.

Of course, those who are not on the left have known this for a while. Brandon Eich was fired by Mozilla because of a progressive campaign that was manufactured on the outrage that Eich had dared to participate in politics by donating to one side of a California Initiative that was passed.

Sadly, we are at a point where private citizens are targeted for things they say on Facebook, and the people who target - on both sides - justify their mean-spirited actions by saying that their target was a bad person because the person voted this way or that or violated some piety or other.

I was disappointed in some rules that Snyder didn't offer. Here are a few:

1. Beware of those occasions when someone you like begins to cut away at the spirit of restraint that previously existed. Hitler might not have been able to get his Enabling Act if Kurt von Schleicher had not led the way with his own efforts to circumvent the Reichstag. Likewise, although Democrats cheered, and the media was silent, when Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option, it did set a precedent now that the Fascists control Congress. Similarly, there was loud cheering for the former president's use of executive decrees, but what precedent did unilaterally changing immigration law set for the new president?

At various times during the former president's administration, I was put in mind of the dangerous precedents he was setting, not unlike that of Schleicher. See

2. Beware of the Coordinated Press. The press has to be truly independent. If it becomes a lapdog for one party, it cannot fulfill its job of being a watchdog. A population that has seen it be a lapdog for eight years will probably not pay it much attention when it continues to serve the interest of the party that is out of power.

3.Beware of Charismatic Leaders who are called the Lightworker and make vapid claims about “Hope and Change” and being able to stop the rise of the oceans.

4. Beware of opponents of federalism and advocates of centralizations. Hitler eliminated the federal states and centralized power, such as coordinating political and economic power, such as creating a centralized health insurance system.

Snyder is histrionic. The former president may not have seemed like an authoritarian, but to those who were put to the choice of religious convictions or penalties, the former president was very authoritarian. Nonetheless, only those on the fever-swamp did not believe that the former president was not going to surrender power to his successor. The current president seems to have an authoritarian personality - some might say New Yor personality - but his policies tend away from authoritarianism. Eliminating the ACA is a pro-federalist position. Reducing the size of government is anti-authoritarian.

Certainly, the media will be there to expose him.

And does any sane person really think that the president will not surrender power to his successor exactly the same way that the former president gave up power?

Snyder is doing no one any good with this paranoid fantasy.

We survived the former president as a democracy. We will survive the current president as a democracy.