nothin Historian Pens Pocket-Sized Call To Arms | New Haven Independent

Historian Pens Pocket-Sized Call To Arms

Snyder & pamphlet, 2017; Paine & pamphlet, 1776.

If the Age of Trump produces a new Tom Paine, he might turn out to be New Haven’s Timothy Snyder.

Snyder, a Yale history professor specializing in the Holocaust, is having his McLuhanian 15 minutes of mass exposure thanks to a Facebook post that he has turned into a pocket-sized manifesto for the resistance.

Snyder titled the manifesto On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century. A division of Penguin Random House published it this week.

It fills a breezy 126 mini-pages. You can fit it in your pocket. You can read it in well less than an hour.

Wednesday found the author shuttling between interviews, on local radio and with CNN’s Christine Amanpour.

The title of the book is a take-off on John Stuart Mill’s philosophical text On Liberty. But in spirit and approach, the true model is Tom Paine’s bestselling 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, which inspired the masses to rise up against King George III.

Snyder, who also wrote the critically lauded Bloodlands, about Eastern Europe between 1930 and 1945 as it was caught between Hitler and Stalin, thought that this moment in American history called for an accessible guide to how everyday people can understand and respond to what he considers mortal threats to democracy, both here and abroad.

The 47-year-old scholar has spent most of his career looking at how tyranny bulldozed democracy in Europe, both in the early 20th century and again in former Soviet republics after 1989. He concludes that with the election of Donald Trump — whose name never appears in On Tyranny — Americans need to recognize that history is repeating itself and fight back.

Our big mistake as Americans after 1989 was to imagine that history was over, all that was possible was liberalism and democracy,” Snyder said Wednesday during an interview on WNHH radio’s Dateline New Haven.” Democracy is fragile. Republics are fragile. There aren’t that many ways to bring it back together. But there are many ways for it to fall apart.”

In Russia and other former Soviet republics, Snyder saw how elections failed to bring democracy and freedom. The lack of independent civic institutions enabled authoritarian leaders to centralize power.

Similarly, in the Trump era in America, he argued in the radio interview, we are facing the possibility of tyranny. We have pretty good institutions. But the institutions only exist in so far as people take risks for them, invest energy in them. The default reaction of a lot of Americans to Trump’s election was, Oh, it’s OK. The institutions will take care of it.’ But the institutions didn’t stop him from being elected. They’re only going to be active so far now in terms of how we’re going to be active.

It’s an ask what you can do for institutions’ moment; it’s not wait for what institutions can do for you.’ The little steps that we take at our local communities are going to make the difference.”

Fifth Avenue Hugs

Snyder Wednesday on CNN.

In pre-World War II Germany, Snyder found, even Jewish writers downplayed the Nazi threat: Fascism is a way of responding to globalization [by convincing people that] globalization has a face. Globalization means the Jews’ or it means our rivals.’ Therefore politics should not be about reasonably responding to globalization.… Politics is about persecuting the people who are the face of globalization. Fascism also means we reject truth, we reject reason…. We think in terms of myths and leaders and [the] imaginary greatness of our country.

That idea was very powerful in the 1920s and 1930s. Nazism arises from that idea. It leads to the worst atrocities of the history of the modern West…. We have to think about how we make sure the turn to fascism or something like it doesn’t turn out the way it did last time.”

That thought prompted Snyder to bang out a 20-point first draft of his history lessons” on Nov. 15. He posted it on Facebook. It went viral. Dozens of media outlets, like the Dallas Morning News, republished it. Millions of people read it. Walking down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Snyder had a stranger recognize him and give him a hug of thanks. More than once.

And that was before the publication this week of On Tyranny, along with the attendant reviews and interviews.

The book posits the idea that two years from now — with assaults on voting rights, on press freedoms, on Muslims and other religious and racial groups; with the rise of an authoritarian president — America won’t have free elections anymore. It happened in Germany, he argued. It can happen here. We can be sure that the elections of 2018, assuming that they take place, will be a test of American traditions,” he writes in the book. So there is much to do in the meantime.”

Stock Up On Books, Passports

On Tyranny details that much to do.” It largely involves citizenship and civic involvement: Investigate” false claims, defend” civic institutions like the press (by subscribing to print newspapers); contribute to good causes,” including through monthly auto-pay donations; meet up with other people who seek change (“practice corporeal politics”) and make eye contact and and small talk”; read books and long articles instead of staring at screens; be calm when the unthinkable” — like a terrorist attack — arrives”; and be prepared, if necessary, to die for freedom.”

Snyder was asked if it makes sense for people in true blue” communities like New Haven to march in the streets urging their Congressional representatives to take stands they’ve already taken.

Absolutely, he responded: You meet new people. It’s imoprtant for the media; it gives them something to put their cameras on…. In the long term, the way that politics of the kind we like survives is that people authentically do the things they want to do with other people who also care. They realize that this is a form of politics. This is a way of pushing back. This is a way of caring.”

In the meantime, the book recommends, keep your passport current.

Why?

Go to Canada and realize that stuff is possible,” Snyder responded. Go to Europe and talk to people who are in similar situations. Refresh yourself. My world is full of people who have been fighting what I’m calling tyranny for a long time. People who have been tortured. People who have been beaten. People who have been imprisoned. There have been moments when they just took a break. They went to other countries and hung out with people who were sympathetic to them…. You can’t just say, I’m going to struggle, struggle in America.’ It’s good to move around. Get input from other places. Get sympathy from other places. And then come back.”

If, in the end, all is lost?

You’ve got to understand that Canada is possible.”

Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the full interview with Timothy Snyder on WNHH radio’s Dateline New Haven.”

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