On Tyranny

Under totalitarian rule, “truth dies in four modes” (66). The first is “presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts” (66), which the current president does at a high rate. Snyder contends that “[d]emeaning the world as it is begins the creation of a fictional counterworld” (66).

The second killer of truth is “endless repetition” (66) of stereotypes that mischaracterize others. The current president uses terms such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” (67) repeatedly to oversimplify and denigrate opponents.

The third killer of truth is magical thinking, by which a leader proposes mutually contradictory policies as if all can be achieved. The current president makes “promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense. These promises mutually contradict” (67).

 Snyder writes that “[t]he final mode is misplaced faith” (68). By this, a leader becomes an oracle. In Nazi Germany, once “truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant” (69). Lately in the US, “[i]t involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that ‘I alone can solve it’ or ‘I am your voice.’” (68).

It is hard to see “just how bizarre propaganda actually is, but how normal it seems to those who yield to it” (70). The “post-truth” (71) world of modern American politics, with its “scorn of everyday facts and its construction of alternative realities” (70), replicates a process perfected by the Nazis in Germany: “Post-truth is pre-fascism” (71). 

In the US, the current president makes war on journalism: “Like Hitler, the president used the word lies to mean statements of fact not to his liking, and presented journalism as a campaign against himself” (73). When we get news from the internet as if it were a form of reality TV, “no image can actually hurt the president politically” (76).

Good journalism, on the other hand, involves hard and thoughtful effort; “the work of people who adhere to journalistic ethics is of a different quality than the work of those who do not” (77). It is better to invest some money in good news reporting than merely to get, for free on the internet, the loud and colorful—and often wrong—pablum. This can help others as well: “If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others” (79).