Last Updated on February 18, 2020
Resident Ken Weeden will review On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century on Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 7 PM in the Auditorium.
“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” Thus begins Timothy Snyder’s short book on what the growth of Nazism in the late 1920s and ‘30s to, the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe after WWII and the democratic movements thereafter in the 1980s and 1990s can tell us about where our political system is headed in this decade. He is fearful that he sees warning signs that suggest our democracy is slipping away.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 and the emergence of democratic governments in Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and other former Soviet satellite states, many people thought democracy was inevitable and there could be no turning back. Snyder warns that such thoughts are mere wishes. The European wars and massacres of large numbers of innocent people in the 20th century often took place in democratic countries and regions that were undermined very quickly, in five years or less, and turned into dictatorial regimes.
And how does that happen? Snyder suggests that there are twenty red-flashing warning signs that a democracy is weak and headed toward dictatorial takeover. The first sign is when most people automatically follow orders, some even enthusiastically initiating expansion of what the leaders want of them. Hitler warned that Communists and Jews caused Germany’s woes and needed to be dealt with; Stalin warned that rich farmers were the enemy of the state and the “pigs” should be dealt with. People complied; they weren’t Jews or Communists or pigs.
Another sign of decay is professionals turning their backs on codes of ethics. Lawyers are to defend due process, journalists to seek the truth, doctors to do no harm, the military to follow lawful orders and not wage war against civilians. But what if they don’t? Then we can have show trials, doctors can perform horrible experiments, businesses can bid for slave labor and the military can slaughter noncombatants.
Although this book was written in 2017, the author’s warnings of the drift away from democratic principles began decades ago. His observations are worth pondering and discussing.
Dr. Timothy Snyder is an author and historian of Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust at Yale University. He is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and The Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has written over a dozen books.
Janet Neer and Jane Backstrom, Book Review Co-Chairs