The twenty lessons include a warning to be aware of how symbols used today could affect tomorrow (“4: Take responsibility for the face of the world”), an urgent reminder to research everything for yourself and to the fullest extent (“11: Investigate”), a point to use personalized and individualized speech rather than clichéd phrases for the sake of mass appeal (“9: Be kind to our language”), and more. Timothy Snyder’s New York Times bestseller On Tyranny uses the darkest moments in twentieth-century history, from Nazism to Communism, to teach twenty lessons on resisting modern-day authoritarianism. Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC.About “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century:” Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Century
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But then whose job is it?” See many more images from the illustrated On Tyranny at The New Yorker and purchase a copy of the book here.Ģ0 Lessons from the 20th Century About How to Defend Democracy from Authoritarianism, According to Yale Historian Timothy Snyder “It’s easy for historians to say, ‘It’s not our job to write the future,’” he told The New York Times in 2015. It’s an approach also favored by Snyder, who does not shy away, like many historians, from explicitly making connections between past, present, and possible future events. Krug’s choice of a variety of mediums and creative approaches “allows me to admit,” she says, “that we can only exist in relationship to the past, that everything we think and feel is thought and felt in reference to it, that our future is deeply rooted in our history, and that we will always be active contributors to shaping how the past is viewed and what our future will look like.” “I use a variety of visual styles and techniques to emphasize the fragmentary nature of memory and the emotive effects of historical events.” Krug worked from artifacts she found at flea markets and antique stores, “depositories of our collective consciousness,” as she writes in an introductory note to the new edition. “We don’t exist in a vacuum,” says artist Nora Krug, the designer and illustrator of a new, graphic edition of On Tyranny just released this month.
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Contextual details that can get lost in writing come to the fore in images - clothing, cars, the use of color or black and white: these all key us in to the historicity of his observations. It’s also important to remember that Snyder’s book dates from a particular moment in time and draws on a particular historical perspective.
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Ideas about how to combat anti-democratic movements remain relevant as ever. If you’ve paid any attention to the news lately, maybe you’ve noticed that the threat has not receded.
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Indeed, the problem with rigid conformity to populist ideas became the subject of Snyder’s 2017 bestseller, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, “a slim volume,” Mouly and Bormes note, “which interspersed maxims such as ‘Be kind to our language’ and ‘Defend institutions’ with biographical and historical sketches.” (We posted an abridged version of Snyder’s 20 lessons that year.) On Tyrannybecame an “instant best-seller… for those who were looking for ways to combat the insidious creep of authoritarianism at home.” These books include bestsellers like Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and the controversial Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, a book whose arguments, he said, “are clearly not my effort to win a popularity contest.”