Editor’s note: this summary continues the series based on author and history professor Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny.” The goal is to pass on his insights, wisdom, and forecast to those who have not read his works.
BE CALM WHEN THE UNTHINKABLE ARRIVES
“Modern tyranny is terror management…” used with precision by Adolf Hitler. The German nation elected him and then created chaos and artificial threats to his nation to consolidate his power. He convinced his people this was “for their own good.”
Snyder states Hitler’s tactics were the “archetype of terror management.” In reaction to the Reichstag fires, the cause of which is still open to discussion, the new left-wing parliament gave him the power to ‘rule by decree,’ which he did with unimaginable brutality. The effects of these events can still be felt today.
Today’s authoritarians (in power and/or “wanna-be”) are “terror managers.” Snyder notes the “current Russian regime that backed an American candidate” and which came to power in very similar incidents that resembled the Reichstag fire to “…remove obstacles to total power in Russia and to assault democratic neighbors.”
Under his leadership, terror, primarily aimed at specific ethnic and religious groups, grew rapidly and successfully. He managed the elimination of private television and elections of regional governors. He gained the power to use terrorism.
After being returned as President in 2012, he began “rule by terror,” using regular Russian army units turned into terrorist units, “removing insignia from uniforms and denying all responsibility for the dreadful suffering they inflicted.” Episodes of “fake terror” in Germany, France, and involving Syria terrified the Russian public, mainly focusing on allegations of rape (most unfounded) of Russian women. We see these tactics still at work in Ukraine.
Snyder maintains that after 2016, these same tactics were brought to the United States in “staged crises” that took advantage of and heightened the fear from an “imagined wave of violence against the suburbs. A secure election became the occasion for a big lie about its results.”
While the Reichstag event created a shock that allowed horrific results lasting decades, Snyder states our grief, fear, and shock must not “enable the destruction of our institutions. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management” the moment it seems to appear.
Snyder notes James Madison stated, “Tyranny arises on some favorable emergency. After the Reichstag fire, Hannah Arendt wrote, “I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.”
Excepted from On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder, Crown Publishing, 36th printing.
Liz Moore, Editor