Here are 20 lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the

circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Much 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 start to do it without being asked. You've already
done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is
possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a

newspaper. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you are making them yours by
acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like
dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example,
professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to
break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials
without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the
expansive use of "terrorism" and "extremism." Be alive to the fatal notions of
"exception" and "emergency." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic
vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember
that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to
consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires
the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the
oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it.

6. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think
up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone
is saying. (Don't use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your
bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps "The Power of the Powerless" by Václav
Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mindby Czeslaw Milosz, The Rebel by
Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True
and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It
can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there
is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is
broken, and others will follow.

8. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true,

then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If
nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most
blinding lights.

9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles.
Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some
of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot or other sites
that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.

10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and
your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar
places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay
in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come
to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of
denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world.Notice the swastikas and the
other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them
yourself and set an example for others to do so.

13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once
something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life
impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can.Pick a charity and set up autopay.
Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil
society helping others doing something good.

15. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to
push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting.
Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have
personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble.
Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang
you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make
new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general
trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your
family have passports.

17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always
claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with
torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary
and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

18. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service,
God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and
soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.
(If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)

19. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then
all of us will die in unfreedom.

20. Be a patriot. The incoming president [Trump] is not. Set a good example of what
America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of

numerous books of European history, including „Bloodlands“ and „Black Earth“. His
most recent book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century“, will be
published at the end of the month. This is the English version of an interview
published in Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 7, with some additional information
due to current developments.

SZ: Donald Trump has been president for three weeks. How would you describe his
start?
Timothy Snyder: The first thing that we have to notice is that the institutions
have not thus far restrained him. He never took them seriously, acts as if they
don’t exist, and clearly wishes they didn’t. The story that Americans have told
themselves from the moment he declared his candidacy for president, was that one
institution or another would defeat him or at least change his behavior – he won’t
get the nomination; if he gets the nomination, he will be a normal Republican; he
will get defeated in the general election; if he wins the presidency will mature
him (that was what Obama said). I never thought any of that was true. He doesn’t
seem to care about the institutions and the laws except insofar as they appear as
barriers to the goal of permanent kleptocratic authoritarianism and immediate
personal gratification. It is all about him all of time, it is not about the
citizens and our political traditions.

You wrote an article for Slate in November, comparing the rise of Donald Trump with
the rise of Adolf Hitler. Why did you feel the need to publish such a piece?

It’s very important that we use history to our advantage now, rather than finding
in history taboos and ways to silence one another. The history of the 1930s is
terribly important to Americans (and Europeans) right now, just as it is slipping
from our memories. I was not trying to provoke one more fruitless series of
conversations about comparability. I was trying to help Americans who were
generally either shocked (people who voted against Trump) or surprised (people who
voted for him, who generally thought he would lose) find their bearings in a new
situation. The temptation in a new situation is to imagine that nothing has
changed. That is a choice that has political consequences: self-delusion leads to
half-conscious anticipatory obedience and then to regime change. Anyway, I didn’t
actually compare Trump to Hitler, I didn’t use these two names. What I did was to
write a very short history of the rise of Adolf Hitler to power without using his
name, which might allow Americans to recognize certain similarities to the moment
they themselves were living through. I know that these comparisons are a national
taboo in Germany, but at the moment its rather important that Germans be generous
with their history and help others to learn how republics collapse. Most Americans
are exceptionalists, we think we live outside of history. Americans tend to think:
“We have freedom because we love freedom, we love freedom because we are free.” It
is a bit circular and doesn’t acknowledge the historical structures that can favor
or weaken democratic republics. We don’t realize how similar our predicaments are
to those of other people.

You use the Weimar Republic as a warning example.

I wanted to remind my fellow Americans that intelligent people, not so different

from ourselves, have experienced the collapse of a republic before. It is one
example among many. Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history
and can rise and fall. The American Founding Fathers knew this, which is why there
were obsessed with the history of classical republics and their decline into
oligarchy and empire. We seem to have lost that tradition of learning from others,
and we need it back. A quarter century ago, after the collapse of communism, we
declared that history was over – and in an amazing way we forgot everything we once
knew about communism, fascism and National Socialism. In this little article for
Slate, I was trying to remind us about things that we once knew.

How similar is the situation between Germany of the 1930s and today’s United
States?

Of course, not everything is similar. Some things are better now than they were in
the 1930s but some things are worse. The media is worse, I would say. It is very
polarized and it is very concentrated. In Germany before the state shut down German
newspapers, there was authentic variety that we don’t have now. People in the 1930s
generally had longer attention spans than we do. On the other side, the United
States is a larger country, with pockets of wealth distributed widely, and it is
more connected to the world. The main advantage that we have is that we can learn
from the 1930s. Again, it’s very important to stress that history does not repeat.
But it does offer us examples and patterns, and thereby enlarges our imaginations
and creates more possibilities for anticipation and resistance.

When did you realize this lack of knowledge about 20th century history here in the
US?

I got an early hint of that when I was touring the United States for my book
“Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin”. This was in 2011 and I realized
that Americans had really forgotten about the crimes of Stalin – which is strange
because we were educated, during the Cold War about Stalinist terror. I thought
that Americans would be surprised because I was saying that number of Soviet
citizens killed (although still horrifyingly large) was much smaller than we had
been taught. Instead I realized that Americans had simply forgotten that there was
Stalinism and terror. That struck me: What else could we forget? The idea of the
Holocaust is certainly present, but it is almost totally lacking in context. And
without context it is hard to see resemblance. A Holocaust that is reduced to a few
images or facts cannot teach about larger patterns. And Americans risk of
stressing its uniqueness is that it allows people to dismiss any learning from
history. People will ask: Is he wearing a Hakenkreuz, did he kill six million
Jews? if the answer is in the negative, then they will reply: then history has
nothing to do with the present. Over the last 25 years, we have not only forgotten
much of what we once knew but we have raised a whole generation which doesn’t have
these reference points.

You would argue that this knowledge had existed before but it was forgotten.

Scholars knew much more know about the 1930s – whether we are speaking of National
Socialism, fascism, or Stalinism. But publics are much less interested. And we
lack, for whatever reason, the concepts that we used to have that allowed us to
connect ideas and political processes. When an American president says “America
First” or proposes a political system without the two parties or attacks
journalists or denies the existence of facts, that should set of a series of
associations with other political systems. We need people who can help translate
ideological utterances into political warnings. Thinkers of the middle of
twentieth century are now being read again, and for good reason. The American canon
included native and refugee ex-communists who came to this country of the 1930s,
refugees from fascism and National Socialism in the 40s, and the Cold War liberals
of the 1950s. There was this time where we engaged in political theory and history,
where people thought about what fascism and communism meant for democracy. Now, one
reason why we cannot forget the 1930s is that the presidential administration is
clearly thinking about them – but in a positive sense. They seem to be after a kind
of redo of the 1930s with Roosevelt where the Americans take a different course.
where we don’t build a welfare state and don’t intervene in Europe to stop fascism.
Lindbergh instead of FDR. That is their notion. Something went wrong with
Roosevelt and now they want to go back and reverse it.

President Trump’s political strategist, Steve Bannon, has said that he wants to
„make life as exciting as it was in the 1930s“. The first two weeks have shown how
big his influence is, it seems much bigger than Reince Priebus’s or Jared
Kushner’s.

I can’t speak to intra-White House conflicts. I can only say that Mr. Trump’s
inaugural address was extremely ideological. During the campaign he used the slogan
“America First” and then was informed that this was the name of a movement that
tried to prevent the United States from fighting Nazi Germany and was associated
with nativists and white supremacists. He claimed then not to have known that. But
in the inaugural address he made “America First” his central them, and now he can’t
say that he doesn’t know what it means. And of course Bannon knows what it means.
America First is precisely the conjuration of this alternative America of the 1930s
where Charles Lindbergh is the hero. This inaugural address reeked of the 1930s.

image
Timothy Snyder

When Bannon calls himself a „Leninist“, do Americans know what is he talking about?

No, they usually have no idea. It is a good question. Americans have this idea that
comes from Jefferson and the American Revolution that you have to rebel every so
often. And they sometimes don’t make the distinction between a rebellion against
injustice and the extinction of the whole political system, which is what Bannon
says that he is after. The American Revolution actually preserved ideas from
Britain: the rule of law being the most important. The whole justification of the
American Revolution was that the British were not living up to their own
principles, were not including Americans in their own system. In a broad way that
that was also the argument of the civil rights movement: the system fails itself
when it does not extend equal rights to all citizens. So there can be resistance
and even revolution which is about meeting standards rather than about simple
destruction. What Bannon says correctly about the Bolsheviks was that they aimed to
completely destroy an old regime. We can slip from one to the other very easily,
from rebelliousness to a complete negation of the system. Most Americans had a rule
of law state for most of their lives, African Americans are an exception, and so
most Americans think this will be there forever. They don’t get that a “disruption”
can actually destroy much of what they take for granted. They have no notion what
it means to destroy the state and how their lives would look like if the rule of
law would no longer exist. I find it frightening that people who talk about the
destruction of the American state are now in charge of the American state.

Trump put a portrait of Andrew Jackson on the wall of the Oval Office, another
president that was a populist. But people around him seem to have a wider agenda.

In the same interview with the Hollywood Reporter in which Bannon talks about the
“exciting 1930s”, he talks about how he is operating in the darkness. He compares
himself with Satan and Darth Vader and says in essence that he misleads the public
and the media deliberately.

The White House statement for the Holocaust Day on January 27 didn’t mention Jews.
At first it looked like a mistake but now it is official that it was intentional.

The Holocaust reference is very important on our side of the Atlantic. If Americans
have a reference point in world history, it is precisely the Holocaust, the
Holocaust and let’s say Normandy, the Second World War, are the one aperture into a
broader history, one where republics fall and extremes triumph. So if Steve Bannon
turns the Holocaust into talk about “A lot of people have suffered” what is
happening is that he is closing that aperture. The next step is to say that mainly
Americans are the victims. History then dies completely and we are trapped in
myth.

Which are the differences in how Germans and Americans remember the Holocaust?

Let me answer this in a different way. Normally when I speak to German journalists,
I try to emphasize parts of the history of the Holocaust that Germans overlook or
minimize, and how those can allow Germans to overlook certain kinds of historical
responsibility or draw lessons that are too narrow. In the United States it is
obviously very different. It is not a matter of taking a debate about national
responsibility and try to make it broader by making it more inclusive of what we
know about the historical Holocaust. It is rather a matter of how a distant non-
German nation can try to see patterns, analogies, political lessons. And right now
the comparison we need to ponder is between the treatment of Muslims and the
treatment of Jews. It is obviously the case that the point of the Muslim ban is to
instruct Americans that Muslims are an enemy: a small, well-assimilated minority
that we are supposed to see not as our neighbors or as fellow citizens but as
elements of an international threat. More than that, Trump’s policy is a
provocation, which is probably meant to provoke an event like the assassination of
the German diplomat Ernst Eduard vom Rath on November 7 1938.

When Bannon calls the press the main „opposition party“ that should make everyone
concerned. This is not only intended to cheer up Trump supporters.

When you say that the press is the opposition, than you are advocating a regime
change in the United States. When I am a Republican and say the Democrats are the
opposition, we talk about our system. If I say the government is one party and the
press is the opposition, then I talk about an authoritarian state. This is regime
change.

Last week Trump called those who take part in demonstrations “thugs” and “paid
protestors”. This doesn’t show respect for First Amendment right, it sounds more
like Putin.

That is exactly what the Russian leadership does. The idea is to marginalize the
people who actually represent the core values of the Republic. The point is to
bring down the Republic. You can disagree with them. but once you say they have no
right to protest or start lying about them, you are in effect saying: „We want a
regime where this is not possible anymore.“ When the president says that it means
that the executive branch is engaged in regime change towards an authoritarian
regime without the rule of law. You are getting people used to this transition, you
are inviting them into the process by asking them to have contempt for their fellow
citizens who are defending the Republic. You are also seducing people into a world
of permanent internet lying and way from their own experiences with other people.
Getting out to protest, this is something real and I would say something patriotic.
Part of the new authoritarianism is to get people to prefer fiction and inaction to
reality and action. People sit in their chairs, read the tweet and repeat the
clichés: “yes, they are thugs” instead of “it is normal to get out in the streets
for what you believe.” He is trying to teach people a new behavior: You just sit
right where you are, read what I say and nod your head. That is the psychology of
regime change.

Today’s media environment is very different from the 1930s, everything happens so
fast.

This is part of what contemporary authoritarians do: They overwhelm you with bad
news and try to make you depressed and say with resignation: “Well, what can I
do?”. I think it is better to limit yourself. Read the news for half an hour a day,
but don’t spend the whole day obsessing about it. Americans have to pick one thing
to be confident about, and then act on it. If you care about and know about
refugees, the press, global warming – choose one and talk with people around you
about it. Nobody can do everything but everyone can do a little bit. And people
doing their little bit will meet others doing the same, and the depression lifts.

You posted „20 lessons from the 20th century“ on your Facebook page in November.
Did your students here at Yale ask for advice?

No, that wasn’t it. It was unprompted, I was in Scandinavia during the election. I
thought Trump would lose, that it would be close but he would lose. On the plane on
the way back I started thinking about what we could learn from history. When I had
written about Trump earlier in 2016, it was about his connections to Russia. The
twenty lessons was the first attempt to bring something I understand about European
history to my fellow Americans in a way that is politically salient. I don’t
usually write directly about American politics; I am an American but insofar as I
have something to offer it is rather because I know something about contemporary
and historical Eastern and Central Europe. Nobody asked me, but this was a way for
me to start acting. We have to do something. This is what I can do.

„Do not obey in advance“ is the first recommendation in this Facebook post. You
also reference the „Reichstagsbrand“ as a warning sign. How should the American
public react?

Americans love to use the word “playbook” which is a metaphor from sports. There is
a playbook from the 1930s that some people in the presidential administration are
following. This includes picking a minority in your country, associate it with a
global threat and use the notion of a global struggle as a way to create national
solidarity while neglecting the nation’s actual problems. The Reichstag Fire is
the crucial moment when Hitler’s government becomes a Nazi regime. An event of that
type, whether unexpected, provoked, or planned by the government, can be a turning
point in the United States today. This goes back to the beginning of our
conversation: if we think about the 1930s, then we can be aware of events, and of
certain forks in the road. If a terror attack happens in the United States, that
is simply the Trump administration failing to keep its most basic promise. It is
not a reason to suspend the rights of Americans or declare have a state of
emergency. History teaches us the tricks of authoritarians. We can’t allow
ourselves to fall for them.

There were a lot of demonstrations in hundreds of cities, but the opinion of Trump
supporters haven’t changed. They are not moved by the huge crowds. Would this be
too early to expect?

These are two different things. With something like the Muslim ban, it is important
a lot of people react very quickly because if the government can slice off one
group, it can do the same to others. This is a political logic that requires quick
action rather than waiting for public opinion polls. Americans were actually
better than Germans, they got out right away. Some Americans do seem understand the
logic, they move quickly. So the airport protests are not in the first instance
about communicating with the Trump supporters; they about making clear to the
administration that we recognize what you are doing and that we oppose this logic.
Indirectly, the protests communicate to the majority that there are two siides t
the issue, and that they should think for themselves. Communicating with Trump
supporters is different. You have to have people out, waving flags and describing
themselves as patriots, even as they decry and resist particular policies. It is
important for people to consider that authoritarianism, though it claims all the
national symbols, is not patriotism. Over time, protests that are for a better
America are important to change minds and swing over Republicans – and I should say
that I have already seen a number of Republicans whom I know personally in the
protests. It needs time, this is more about six months or one year. They just
elected him three months ago, for now there is still the frame in place that that
he will change everything and improve their lives, other things can seem like
details so long as this basic hope remains. It might take a while for people to
realize that making America into a Trump family welfare state is not in the
interest of Americans whose name is not Trump. One of the main problems is the
internet and the polarization and simple unreality that it generates. it is
important to talk about these issues in person, I have a little book called “On
tyranny” and I will do my best to talk about it with people who think in various
ways about politics.

We are here in New Haven, a liberal bubble. Do you encourage your students to do
that?

They are doing it. An undergraduate who is from New York took the train all they
way to the southwest, just to talk to passengers. Young people have to do that. The
risk is that they shift from taking freedom for granted to taking unfreedom for
granted, without realizing that it is precisely their choice and their voice that
can make the difference. And keep in mind that these conversations can create
common ground. Some of the reasons some people voted for Trump make sense. You
simply dismiss all of them according to your own stereotypes. It is not always as
simple as the East Coast people will tell you. Trump has unleashed public racism of
a kind we have not seen for decades. That is true. This racism in turn releases
energies that can change the whole system. Also true. But at the same time, he
would not be president without white people in crucial states who voted for Obama
twice. So you can’t simply dismiss all of these people as racists, because in some
cases their votes also brought us our first black president. A lot of Trump voters
would have voted for Bernie Sanders, who is a Jewish socialist. There are problems
and that have to do with globalization and inequality that can’t be wished away.
Maybe not every citizen can articulate these problems in the best way, but many
voters have good reasons to be worried about globalization. Hillary Clinton did
have actual policies that would have helped – that’s the tragedy. But she wasn’t
able to communicate that she understood the problem.

On Facebook there are a lot of countdowns: 3 years, 11 months, 1 week until

President Trump’s first term is over. How is your mood, do you see hope?

The marches were very encouraging. These were quite possibly the largest
demonstrations in the history of the US, just in sheer numbers on one single day.
That sort of initiative has to continue. The constitution is worth saving, the
rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and
will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else. If we want encouragement
out of the Oval Office, we will not get it. We are not getting encouragement thus
far from Republicans. They have good reasons to defend the republic but thus far
they are not doing so, with a few exceptions. You want to end on a positive note,
I know; but I think things have tightened up very fast, we have at most a year to
defend the Republic, perhaps less. What happens in the next few weeks is very
important.