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" I thought I was going to grow up and become a diplomat and negotiate nuclear arms. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Thought
Going
Become
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" There's a basic problem with the history of the Holocaust. The people who do it don't know the necessary languages. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Problem
People
Know
" It is not hard to see why Trump might choose Putin as his fantasy friend. Putin is the real-world version of the person Trump pretends to be on television. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Friend
Choose
Fantasy
" Courage does not mean not fearing or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Courage
Moment
Difficult
" Fascism says what you and I experience as facts or what reporters experience as facts are irrelevant. All that matters are impressions and emotions and myths. "
Timothy D. Snyder
You
Experience
Emotions
" Most Americans are exceptionalists; we think we live outside of history. "
Timothy D. Snyder
History
Most
Live
" Mr. Trump is primarily a television personality. As such, he is judged by that standard. This means that a scandal does not call forth a response; it calls forth the desire for a bigger scandal. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Television
Personality
Desire
" If you want to avoid criticism, then you shouldn't be a historian, because historians are trying to understand and explain. If you're trying to please people, then you should go into the fashion business, or the candy business. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Fashion
People
Criticism
" Interestingly, a number of the people I know - probably you do, too - who predicted that Trump would win were precisely Russians and Ukrainians who found the political style familiar and just asked, 'Well, why couldn't it work there?' They were the ones who turned out to be right. "
Timothy D. Snyder
People
You
Work
" People in the West tend to identify with western victims. So even when they think about the Holocaust, they really think about the German or French victims; they're not thinking about the Polish, Hungarian, or Soviet victims. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Holocaust
People
Think
" I think, whatever ideological coloration we think actually applies to Trump, we can be pretty confident that he sees the American state as a mechanism to make sure that people called Trump are rich forever. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Rich
Think
People
" We can only see as much and we can only go as far as our languages take us. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Go
See
Take
" Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Possible
Obedience
Teaches
" In the descent from a world of factual discourse into a world of emotions and alternative realities, the first step you take, whether you're the Russian media, whether you're Breitbart, is that you manufacture lots of stuff that isn't true. The second step is that you claim that everyone is like this. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Media
Step
First Step
" Very often, when leaders repeat things over and over, they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Repeat
Things
You
" When a terrorist attack comes, you will not necessarily know who did it. What you can know is that certain kinds of leaders will use that to suspend your rights. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Know
Will
You
" Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history and can rise and fall. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Rise
History
Government
" Trump bankrupted six companies but succeeded on the biggest of stages. He is the champion of failures. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Six
Stages
He
" In rhetoric and action, the Trump administration has aggrandized 'radical Islamic terror,' thus making what Madison called a 'favorable emergency' more likely. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Action
Trump
Rhetoric
" Get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Surround Yourself
Books
Room
" Modern tyrants are terror managers. Do not allow your shock to be turned against your freedom. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Freedom
Modern
Tyrants
" If we don't have access to facts, we can't trust each other. Without trust, there's no law. Without law, there's no democracy. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Trust
Democracy
Facts
" We think about democracy, and that's the word that Americans love to use, 'democracy,' and that's how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it's pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Love
Democracy
Vote
" 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. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Listening
Words
Look
" Trump's Twitter flood of late-night mendacity is an unhindered celebration of fragile manhood, a ceaseless summons to the millions for affirmation, a proclamation to vulnerable men across the land that endless preening and stroking is a normal and imitable way of life. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Flood
Way
Normal
" Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Life
Private Life
Nowhere
" 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. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Democracy
Law
Lost
" 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. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Reality
Say
Action
" 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. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Media
Go
Beginning
" People who lived in the 1920s and '30s and '40s were not so different from us. In some ways, they were probably better citizens than we are. They had longer attention spans, for example. Educated people tended to read a bit more than we did. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Attention
Better
Educated
" The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror - real or fake, provoked or accidental - can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy. "
Timothy D. Snyder
Fake
Death
Democracy