twitter thread, by timothy synder [author of "on tyranny" and "road to unfreedom"]

1/20. Democracy is precious and exceptional.

 

2/20. Democracy is undone from within rather than from without.

 

3/20. The occasion to undo democracy is often an election.

 

4/20. The mechanism to undo democracy is usually a fake emergency, a claim that internal enemies have done something outrageous.

 

5/20. A tyrant cares about his person, not the Republic.

 

6/20. A tyrant fears prosecution and poverty after leaving office.

 

7/20. Donald Trump faces criminal investigations and owes a billion dollars to creditors.

 

8/20. Donald Trump has said all along that he would ignore the vote count.

 

9/20. What Donald Trump is attempting to do has a name: coup d'état. Poorly organized though it might seem, it is not bound to fail. It must be made to fail.

 

10/20. Coups are defeated quickly or not at all. While they take place we are meant to look away, as many of us are doing. When they are complete we are powerless.

 

11/20. American exceptionalism prevents us from seeing basic truths.

12/20. Biden voters are wrong to see a Biden administration as inevitable. Take responsibility, Democrats.

 

13/20. In an authoritarian situation, the election is only round one. You don't win by winning round one.

 

14/20. Peaceful demonstrations after elections are necessary for transitions away from authoritarianism, as in Poland in 1989, Serbia in 1999, or Belarus right now.

 

15/20. It is up to civil society, organized citizens, to defend the vote and to peacefully defend democracy.

 

16/20. Dance after the wedding, not before. Take responsibility, Americans.

 

17/20. Republicans endorsing the claim of fraud endanger the Republic.

18/20. Calling an opponent's victory fraudulent risks assassination, as in Poland in 1922.

 

19/20. Creating a myth of a "stab in the back" by internal enemies, as Republicans are helping Trump to do, justifies violence against other citizens, as in interwar Germany.

 

20/20. Persuading your voters that the other side cheated starts a downward spiral. Your voters will expect you to cheat next time. Take responsibility, Republicans.

notes and quotes from various sources

“rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed or ignored.” — chris hedges [“the greatest evil is war”]

"familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behaviour, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability." -- john kenneth galbraith

“The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.”  -- john scalzi ["old man's war"]

"we live in capitalism. its power seems inescapable. so did the divine right of kings. any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." -- ursula k. le guin

“… NIST databases foreshadow the emergence of a logic that that has now thoroughly pervaded the tech sector: the unswerving belief that everything is data and is there for the taking.” — kate crawford [“atlas of AI”]

"As someone raised to respect self-education, I find it sad that I now shudder when people tell me they have done their “own research,” a sure sign they’ve been sucked through a conspiratorial pipeline and come out the other side covered in hogwash.” — Astra Taylor

 "Gender marketing reinforces limitations.” — terry o’reilly [“under the influence“]  

"That little bit of a thing that you read through and say "I know all that" and throw on a shelf. It's the thing that the visiting sensei refers to when he says "have you read the book?" about two minutes into the seminar. Don't read it, study it." -- Kim Taylor Sensei

"Error, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said, is the site of truth far more than correctness. We are never closer to the real than when we are making mistakes, sometimes especially when we realize we are making them." -- Mark Kingwell 

"All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore."

—Ray Bradbury