'The American Republic Is Hanging By A Thread:' Timothy Snyder, Fascism Historian, Yale Univ.

[appalachiablue]

*Start at 3:30 min mark, interview, Jan. 13. Professor Snyder, Yale University, historian & expert on fascism discusses the attempted coup- how race & white supremacism are key; extreme right wing paramilitaries were mixed with police in plotting the coup & participating in it; Americans need access to healthcare as a human right to have freedom. More from his recent essay, 'The American Abyss,' The New York Times Magazine. Democracy Now! news program.

'The American Abyss,' Timothy Snyder, The NY Times Magazine, Jan. 9, 2021: On Trump, The Coup, What Comes Next,
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html

[ancianita]

1. He helped prepare us to see what we have seen come to pass because he saw it here years ago.

And now the drive to naked authoritarian power reaches Republicans in Congress.

other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position.

Here they are. Telling us the abyss isn't the abyss. Now they want us to buy their twisted words of "unity" through their fake healing, posed as "rising above," "forgiving and forgetting," "both sides" -- all of which got us to the abyss.

[appalachiablue]

2. More from Professor Snyder's article about POST TRUTH:

"Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. 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 that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.

Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.

Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.

My own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a coup, and I said so in print; this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present"...

[cp]

3. Both article and interview are vital

Snyder is so clear and grounded in history. He is a national treasure.
Thank you for posting these.

[appalachiablue]

5. Absolutely, he's critical to understanding this horrid movement.

[JackHughes]

4. The full truth must be exposed

We must not allow the next right-wing demagogue to mythologize Trump's January 6 coup attempt like Hitler did with his failed Beer Hall Putsch.