It's "On Tyranny" season!
-
Similar to Jingle Bells signaling Christmas season, Timothy Snyder on podcasts promoting his book On Tyranny, signals election season. Everybody has fond memories of listening to this world leading historian speak with the authority vested in him by his expertise, since 2015.
Link to videoCome for the heart felt pleas to listen to historians when deciding how to act as a citizen in a democracy, stay for the comparisons of Trump to Hitler. Soothing repetition. Podcasts to fall asleep to.
The #1 rule he proposes for citizens to follow in order to avoid tyranny is to "not agree in advance". This is similar in concept to "don't engage in group think", to hear him explain it. The host here, far-left Sam Seder, asks him for an example of what this would mean in practice. I had a hunch Mr Snyder would not be able to provide an interesting example. He gave two. One, anybody in Trump's cabinet who was asked to perform something that violated human rights, should not "agree in advance" to that. Powerful stuff, but practicable by almost nobody, as most of us are not in Trump's cabinet. Example two, back in 1930s Germany, those people shouldn't have agreed to hate Jews.
Enjoy the public intellectual, doing his duty to educate the public not to vote for Trump.
-
-
-
Snyder is a very good historian of modern Poland and Ukraine. His theories of what he calls Politics of the Inevitable and Politics of the Eternity are well conceived and not by any means some leftist gibberish. He is, in fact, every bit as critical of radical left populism as he is of right wing populism. While I do not agree with everything he says about Trump and company, his analysis of the populist trends in Europe are not off the mark.
