Yale Historian Timothy Snyder on How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism

2017-06-02T13:08:07.130Z

Is the United States sliding toward tyranny? That is the question posed by Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder. He explains how things can go very wrong when people "lean backwards" and give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

DemocracyNow hosts this 30-minute interview with an expert in the rise of fascism in the 1930s. From the rush transcript:

"The temptation [to wait and see] generates normalization, which is already happening in the United States. ... [T]he lesson of 1933 is that consent from below matters a lot, not consent necessarily in the sense of voting or marching or anything active, but consent in the sense of by-standing, going along, making mental adjustments. ... But when we lean towards what they think they —[the authoritarians]— want then we give them ideas. We teach them what they can do. So, in our real lives and in social media, it’s very important not to obey in advance."

When the paramilitary violence starts to happen --outside the limits of the law, for partisan advantage-- those who were learning backwards suddenly find themselves suffering from "bystander syndrome".

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Yale Historian Timothy Snyder on How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism