On Tyranny [book]
timothysnyder.org
timothysnyder.org
Edit: in a similar vein, I also enjoyed this reddit comment https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1jkw53n/comment/mjy...
Lesson 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tocssf3w80&list=PLhZxrogyTo...
Full Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhZxrogyToZsllfRqQlly...
A ten minute video: "Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow":
* https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-li...
From dictatorship to democracy : a conceptual framework for liberation
by Gene Sharp is the "tell me more" version, 138 pages. Includes non-violent ways to gum up the progress of tyranny.
For example, Nazis abandoned all semblance of "socialism" by essentially handing Germany over to industrialists as a means to save the then-struggling economy.
On the other side, Bolsheviks resurrected the practices of the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, as a means of stomping out dissent. This would give way to organizations like the KGB.
These two populist movements were meant to deconstruct power, but instead gave way to even more terrifying tyranny. The more I study the continuous reform/reaction that occurred in the last years of Tsarist Russia, I can't help but notice how hard the pendulum is beginning to swing here in the States.
Where they truly populist and where they about deconstructing power? soviet communists where about radical transformative changes to all of the societies and explicitly accepted that violence is necessary to perform those transformations (i.e. goals justify the means).
If your agenda is deeply transformative and you have vocal oppositions you either abandon the agenda (soften it, extend the timeframe, etc) or force this through. That's what is scary about all the politicians with grand designs -- them turning out to be corrupt schmuk is the best outcome. Actually following through on all of that is scary.
Bolshevism is only one prevailing school of thought from late 19th/early 20th century Russia, but walking back through Narodnaya Volya and the Narodniks will lead you back to Going to the People.
Volkism itself may be one of the best examples of unbridled populism ever, having posited that "true" Germans were being overrun by alien elites (Jewish folk and the like). The fact that the movement was leveraged by neo-pagan Bavarian aristocrats doesn't nullify the ideas that rallied the public behind them in the first place (especially when those ideas persist today).
One talk he gave was on How could the holocaust have happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKrWLf7Kg4
I believe his core thesis in On Freedom is that America has focused on negative freedom, when what really matters is positive freedom.
"Negative freedom" is the idea that no government should interfere with your life. Authoritarian regimes arbitrarily exercise power, and that results in people being prevented from doing things or forced to do things. Maybe that's restrictions on speech or protest. Focusing on "negative freedom" turns people against their governments, which creates a sort of power vacuum anyone with resources is happy to fill. Negative freedom is good, nobody should want the government interfering with their lives, but focusing solely on negative freedom leads to authoritarianism. We can see this effect right now with "free speech absolutists" functionally becoming oligarchs.
He says what people should focus on instead is "positive freedom" -- The idea that you have the freedom to do what you want. If you don't have health, money, or education, you can't really be free. There is no freedom in a hospital bed. So healthcare creates positive freedom. Building housing lets you spend more money on things you want to do instead of rent, that's positive freedom. Without education, you are more easily victimized by those who wish to manipulate you and you are less capable of producing things of value. So education is freeing.
He also has two major series of talks.
One, I believe, touches on his book The Road to Unfreedom and is absolutely worth watching if you have any interest in politics.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej_D0YkDjy8
The other is a reading of On Tyranny as well as discussion of each chapter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tocssf3w80&list=PLhZxrogyTo...
He also has a substack with quality information and analysis: https://snyder.substack.com/
He says from a historian's perspective what is happening is a coup and it is also very likely a decapitation strike, particularly if we imagine what is happening here were happening to a foreign country: https://archive.is/fNpSS https://archive.is/1xkxK
what tyranny?
The revolutionaries just found it to be a useful story to tell to gain support.
They wanted independence to avoid helping Britain pay off the debts it accrued protecting the colonies from the French.
It's funny that Americans still buy the story that he was a tyrant.