Timothy Snyder: A dream of power, an awakening to destruction

[Nevilledog]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/a-dream-of-power-an-awakening-to

As we reach the first anniversary of Trump's failed coup attempt, the former president and his supporters are indulging in a pleasant dream of his return to power in 2025. An electoral victory seems unlikely: he lost last time as an incumbent by seven million votes. But the dream rests more on resentment than on procedures. If Trump is installed rather than elected in January 2025, it seems unlikely that he would lead the country we know now, since the United States would fall apart. That is where the pleasant dream becomes a real tragedy, for everyone, including the dreamers.

This pleasant dream takes shape within a big lie: that Trump won last time. This conviction suppresses the fact that he lost by rather a lot. The claim that the Democrats manipulated procedures overcomes the (still mounting) evidence that Mr. Trump conspired to destroy them. The big lie reverses perpetrator and victim, which makes plans to do evil a second time feel like justified revenge. The big lie enables a purge of the Republican Party and nourishes the safe space known as right-wing media. And it justifies legislation. It allows Republican state legislators who pass laws to subvert the next election to talk about how they only mean to secure it.

The big lie quiets doubts, generates resentments, and solidifies plots. It allows Republicans to cancel the uncomfortable realities about what happened a year ago: an electoral defeat followed by a failed coup. It allows them to mischaracterize the substance of their own actions, which is to put forth a losing candidate once again, but this time with a more solid plan to mount a successful coup after the electoral defeat. It is this promise of future potency that makes the big lie coherent. It will all seem true in 2025, after a losing presidential candidate is installed anyway. Then he can manufacture a new reality. All doubts will dissolve. The past can be corrected. That, anyway, is the dream.

Inside the dream, politics becomes a game, where all the matters is winning.

*snip*


Snyder also has a thread with the important stories

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1479219906965131266.html

A year ago and more, I wanted to explain how Trump’s big lie would shape our politics. Here is what I wrote then. And here we are.

Trump’s July 2020 "Delay the Election" tweet and the big lie: Trump both revived fascist propaganda and exploited a new age of Internet post-truth. He followed a trail blazed by fascists, but added a twist that is his own. washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…

"It is unusual for a plan for a coup d’état to be broadcast so clearly... By telling us in advance that he intends to stay in power regardless of the vote count, Trump is... making us understand that we are participants in the unravelling of US democracy."

By telling Americans in advance that he intends to stay in power regardless of the vote count, Trump implicates his supporters in his actions.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/not-normal-election
Trump lost the election and nevertheless tried to stay in power. It mattered that he failed, but it mattered just as much how he failed. What Americans did then and do now will shape our democracy for decades to come.

By telling Americans in advance that he intends to stay in power regardless of the vote count, Trump implicates his supporters in his actions.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/not-normal-election

21st century authoritarians are against counting votes, but they legitimate themselves through elections. Their big lie is that we would somehow be a better democracy if “the people” just meant the right people, and not all people. washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/1…
Trump’s lies about voting and counting will have lasting consequences. The lingering effect of a myth of victimhood, of the idea of a stab in the back, can be profound.

Trump’s big election lie pushes America toward autocracy - The Boston Globe
Clinging to power by claiming you are the victim of internal enemies is a very dangerous tactic. Don’t underestimate where this can go.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/11/11/opinion/trumps-big-election-lie-pushes-america-toward-autocracy/

"Members of Congress who sustained [Trump's] lie, despite the available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh."

The American Abyss
A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html?smid=tw-share
"Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not."

The American Abyss
A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html?smid=tw-share
"Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts... then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions."

The American Abyss
A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html?smid=tw-share
"The big lie reverses perpetrator and victim, which makes plans to do evil a second time feel like justified revenge. The big lie enables a purge of the Republican Party and nourishes the safe space known as right-wing media."

A dream of power, an awakening to destruction
How the events of last January 6 put the existence of the United States in question
https://snyder.substack.com/p/a-dream-of-power-an-awakening-to
• • •

[modrepub]

1. Great Writer

Black Earth is a hard but necessary read. It really helped me understand the inner workings of the Nazi's final solution where it was mainly focused, eastern Europe.

If anyone can explain how authoritarianism works and how it spreads, it's Timothy Snyder.

[Snarkoleptic]

2. Timothy Snyder is a national treasure and saw the fasciscts coming a mile away.

More from him "Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century".
Posting this here in case any happened to miss this 2018 piece.

https://scholars.org/contribution/twenty-lessons-fighting-tyranny-twentieth-century

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. From across the fearful twentieth century, here are twenty lessons about what it takes to oppose tyranny, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.

Complete list at the link.

[crickets]

3. K&R for visibility.