Local Austrian Nazis captured Jews and forced them to scrub the streets to remove symbols of independent Austria. Snyder begins the book by illustrating one form of that endorsement through what he calls “anticipatory obedience.” By that term he means adapting to new circumstances without reflection or independent judgment, and later not merely adapting, but conforming to what is expected by the authorities before being commanded by them.įor instance, Snyder writes that in 1938 “it was the Austrians’ anticipatory obedience that decided the fate of Austrian Jews.” The book illustrates three vital aspects of tyrannical regimes: their need for moral endorsement their war on facts and truth and their exploitation of crises (imagined, real, or exaggerated) to expand power.īy far the most arresting point in Snyder’s book, threaded across several lessons, relates to a citizen’s moral endorsement of incipient, and eventually full, dictatorial rule. A limitation - reflecting an overall weakness in the book - is that it implies that all twenty lessons are equally important, when in fact some are truly profound and enlightening, while others are less so, or not at all.īut if you zoom out slightly from that flattened list, and notice certain overlaps among the lessons, then Snyder’s most instructive points come into focus. This list-driven format is digestible and impactful, up to a point. It is a list of twenty punchy, at times poignant, lessons from history, rather than a sustained argument. The book’s format seems designed to connect with readers habituated to skimming social media feeds and to ease them into engaging with serious issues. Where it falls short is mainly in its advice on opposing tyranny. Its strength is in highlighting important features and mechanisms of the move toward dictatorship. But no matter what you think of Trump, you can learn much from Snyder’s book.
Clearly Snyder, a historian at Yale, was impelled to write the book in the wake of Trump’s rise to power, a development he views as alarming. This short book is very much a product of the moment. Timothy Snyder’s incisive book, On Tyranny, aims to distill enduring lessons from the twentieth century on the rise and functioning of tyranny - and to help us preserve our freedom.
#On tyranny twenty lessons from the twentieth century how to#
Would you recognize the signs of an incipient tyranny? Would you know how to oppose it? By Timothy Snyder (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
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