twenty lessons from the twentieth century

January 26, 2021 by achrilock

“We learned to say that there was ‘no alternative’ to the basic order of things, a sensibility that the Lithuanian political theorist Leonidas Donskis called ‘liquid evil.’”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2021/01/26/7062/

October 21, 2020 by achrilock

“13
Practice corporeal politics.
Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends. 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’

Pages: 1 2 3

https://achrilock.com/2020/10/21/4358/

September 26, 2020 by achrilock

“The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938 taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible. It was in Vienna that August that Adolf Eichmann established the Central Office of Jewish Emigration. In November 1938, following the Austrian example of March, German Nazis organized the national program known as Kristallnacht.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/09/26/3756/

September 24, 2020 by achrilock

“Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote. The Nazis remained in power until they lost a world war in 1945, the Czechoslovak communists until their system collapsed in 1989. The Russian oligarchy established after the 1990 elections continues to function, and promotes a foreign policy designed to destroy democracy elsewhere.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/09/24/3694/

September 17, 2020 by achrilock

“When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/09/17/3496/

September 13, 2020 by achrilock

“The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception. A Nazi leader outmaneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/09/13/3370/

September 7, 2020 by achrilock

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/09/07/3219/

August 22, 2020 by achrilock

“A nationalist will say that ‘it can’t happen here,’ which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/08/22/2705/

July 30, 2020 by achrilock

“Any future elections will be a test of American traditions.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/07/30/2014/

July 24, 2020 by achrilock

“As paramilitaries known as the SA and the SS, they created a climate of fear that helped the Nazi Party in the parliamentary elections of 1932 and 1933. In Austria in 1938 it was the local SA that quickly took advantage of the absence of the usual local authority to loot, beat, and humiliate Jews, thereby changing the rules of politics and preparing the way for the Nazi takeover of the country.”

— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/07/24/1852/

July 19, 2020 by achrilock

“When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/07/19/1673/

July 17, 2020 by achrilock

“‘If the main pillar of the system is living a lie,’ wrote Havel, ‘then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.’”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/07/17/1618/

July 4, 2020 by achrilock

“The second antihistorical way of considering the past is the politics of eternity. Like the politics of inevitability, the politics of eternity performs a masquerade of history, though a different one. It is concerned with the past, but in a self-absorbed way, free of any real concern with facts. Its mood is a longing for past moments that never really happened during epochs that were, in fact, disastrous.”
— Timothy Snyder, ‘On Tyranny’

Pages: 1 2

https://achrilock.com/2020/07/04/1265/