Editor’s note: this is the twelfth in a series of summaries based on author and professor of history, 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.

PROTECT YOUR COMPUTER

Remember that email is skywriting. Snyder urges us to use alternate forms of the internet (like this Newsletter). Tyrants, he states, seek the hook on which to hang you – so try not to have hooks.

He notes political thinker Hannah Arendt defined totalitarianism as “erasure of the difference between private and public life.” As we think back on the daily assault on our privacy since the 2016 political campaign, he reminds us …whoever can pierce your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will.” Our “private” lives have been opened to others in ways that disrupt and threaten privacy.

The ‘timed email bombs’ we experienced during that campaign became a powerful form of disinformation. He blames the news media for following the “email bombs as if they were news” stating they “betrayed their own mission.” In treating email bombs as news, the media “allowed themselves to be distracted from the actual events of the day.”

By “sharing our secrets” the goal is to draw the target’s (your) attention and actions away from normal life and politics toward conspiracy theories. We’re asked to believe ‘hidden realities’ and ‘dark conspiracies’ that are supposed to explain everything. The result, he states, is millions of Americans have learned to substitute sinking into the depths for thinking about the facts.

When we let “others” distract our interest to ideas “chosen by tyrants, oligarchs and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own political order.” Society is reduced to a “mob.”

He urges each of us to secure our own computers and support organizations who, are concerned with human rights. I believe the Democratic Party meets his criteria and provides alternate forms of the internet experience.

Liz Moore, Editor