Timothy Snyder: On Tyranny - Twenty lessons from the 20th century

Status
Not open for further replies.
Snejdarek

Snejdarek

Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2014
Messages
735
Location
Czech Republic, EU
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

51Ug6cEIqkL._SY346_.jpg


Let me start by admitting that after reading Black Eart and Bloodlands, I am a fan of Snyder's. His work on the topic of mass murder in Eastern Europe in 1930s and 1940s really sheds a new light on the era.

Now, I got his latest book - On Tyranny, as a present. I read it rather quickly during a train ride and I will surely give it another look, but still, there is one topic, or lack thereof, that stands out in the book - issue of private firearms ownership as the most effective tool of resistance to any form of tyranny, one that all 20th century tyrants aimed to suppress before getting on with their further crimes.

Firearms are mentioned only briefly in part 6 "Be wary of paramilitaries": quote: "When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. (...) Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it."

The other instance does not include firearms, but their lack in the given part is just striking. Part 20 "Be as courageous as you can": quote: "If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny."

This should probably be understood as a call to arms for the book reading freedom lovers, but it is still far cry from "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." I will actually go even further and say: the way Snyder puts it down is akin to Jefferson writing his sentence down with omission of "and tyrants".

Has anyone read it? Did you too have feeling that the book was re-edited to be more "suitable" for US left wing reader by leaving private firearms possession out?

Or is there something else that I am missing, being a Czech with only vague understanding of American culture, politics and bookwriting?
 
if the armed men wear black and carry the flag of ISIS they are clearly in need of meeting up with hard men with guns.

if the 'armed men ' are just hoodie wearing "antifa" hipsters, what they need are baths and applying themselves jobs requiring labor.

If the 'armed men' are the ones paid to protect the 1%, and their 2% minions in politics, then, I'm not so sure. The riche are oft stingy when they ought be generous, mistaking false economy for thrift. Machiavelli long ago told of the problems princes have with mercenaries--it ones jannisaries are incompetent they will ruin the prince; if talented they will usurp the prince.

The US has some advantage, we have 'a rifle behind every blade of grass," which makes poor ground upon which to foment tyranny.
 
Snejdarek wrote:
Has anyone read it?
Click to expand...

No.

But nearly 10% of the comments on Amazon say that a key premise of the book is analogizing Trump to Hitler.

A little more tempered comment said, "Thought provoking chapter headings but while the supporting followup and evidence was historically true it was uninspired, generally known and from a modern point of view exceptionally one-sided. To read and believe this book would be to believe Trump was the only candidate"​

Even though the Kindle edition is only $3.99, that will buy me 200 rounds of 9mm brass. Since I have a fairly good grasp on both United States and World History for at least the second-half of the 20th Century and was blessed by God with the intellectual equipment to be able to think for myself and make up my own mind, I think buying the brass is probably a better use of my money.
 
Too bad Bloodlands is so expensive, even for Kindle. I put it on my watchlist to be notified if the price comes down. That sounds like a fascinating book.
 
Here's a review from the site written by Amazon Customer two days ago.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I honestly bought “On Tyranny” to try and get a progressive’s view on Tyranny. I was hoping it would be an intellectual discourse with well supported historical facts and arguments. Instead, I got revisionist history, and anti-Trump propaganda that Joseph Goebbels could not have written better. I knew I was in trouble when he, Mr. Snyder (Aka, Reich Minister of Propaganda), in the opening pages of his booklet suggested that Communism and Socialism were on the political right (that is embarrassing for both him and Yale).

If you have ever wondered why the alt left have become violent (e.g., the shooting of Senator Steve Scalise, Antonio Foreman was stabbed 9 times because he supported President Trump, Some B list comedian takes photos of her holding Trump’s severed head, Johnny Depp says he wants to assassinate President Trump, Madonna wishing to blow up the White House, etc.) here is your answer. Let’s be very clear, the purpose of the drivel is to label the President a Nazi. If you label him and his supporters Nazis, you dehumanize them with the purpose of getting others to use violence against them, to silence them (like the Democrats tried to use the KKK to silence Republicans that were against slavery). If Mr. Snyder dehumanizes Trump and his supporters enough, the violence used against them can be rationalized and justified (like Hitler labeled the Jews to dehumanize them, or like Stalin did to the farmers (he called Kulaks) in Russia to gain control of the farms).

The irony here is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Mr. Snyder is a useful idiot in the truest sense of the definition and unwittingly ( I am not sure about the unwittingly part) is on the side of despotism. This book is perfect for the mindless sheep being pumped in and out of academia today. Yale should be ashamed, once a great institution, now a pitiable propaganda arm for the radical anti-American left. I wonder if “Shrieking Girl” loved this pamphlet?

And another, by Anthony J.
>>>>>>>>>
This book is leftist garbage - period! Snyder attempts to come off as a conservative who thinks it vital to not to understand WHAT has happened to our country because of tyranny, but to cast President Trump as "the" tyrant. While he mixes certain legitimate views of political philosophy with tyranny, he does so only to trash President Trump. Not once does he submit any notion of the obvious tyranny of the last president who just happened to use the FBI, the EPA, the IRS, to name a few, to spy on Americans, not to mention his spying on President Trump and lying about a Russian connection to the outcome of the election to explain why the pathetic Hillary Clinton lost the election - and did so after more deception and cheating than ever entered the mind of even so unethical a person as LBJ! Snyder uses bogus examples like Trump rallies to engender a false narrative about tyranny citing the typical business of any rally as proof of tyranny. Snyder is a leftist, a full-blown, dishonest leftist who, like all leftists, coerces the mind through misinformation.
 
Last edited:
IMHO, an armed civilian population can only present an effective resistance to the paramilitary force of a tyrannical police state if they are (1.) well trained and organized into units of company size (2.) equipped to stop armored vehicles... i.e. IEDs and RPGs (3.) imbedded within the unarmed civilian population and willing to use them as human shields (4.) willing to do extreme violence against all who oppose them....

In short... they would have to become just like ISIS.

Any non-Muslims out there willing to sign up for that gig?

If not, the "battles" must continue to revolve around the political theatre and influence over the "programing" of public education.
 
SSN Vet said:
IMHO, an armed civilian population can only present an effective resistance to the paramilitary force of a tyrannical police state if they are (1.) well trained and organized into units of company size (2.) equipped to stop armored vehicles... i.e. IEDs and RPGs (3.) imbedded within the unarmed civilian population and willing to use them as human shields (4.) willing to do extreme violence against all who oppose them....
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. It is enough to have numbers that allow for tangible impact (death by thousand needles) and popular support that allows for blending with population. You don't need to take out the tank if you are able to sufficiently frustrate supply delivery lines to the point that the said tank will be nonoperational due to lack of fuel.

For example in Operation Grouse, the German Army and SS fielded 10.000 men in order to hunt down some 200 Czech partisans. They were able to get just 8, the rest disappeared in the thin air only to reach the same operational level a month later 60 kms to the South.
 
Snejdarek said:
Not necessarily. It is enough to have numbers that allow for tangible impact (death by thousand needles) and popular support that allows for blending with population. You don't need to take out the tank if you are able to sufficiently frustrate supply delivery lines to the point that the said tank will be nonoperational due to lack of fuel.

For example in Operation Grouse, the German Army and SS fielded 10.000 men in order to hunt down some 200 Czech partisans. They were able to get just 8, the rest disappeared in the thin air only to reach the same operational level a month later 60 kms to the South.
Click to expand...

You may be right... but I suspect that in the information age, it would be a lot easier to ferret out those 200 men. And when the SWAT team shows up with their armored car and drone surveilance, you'll be toast
 
SSN Vet wrote:
Any non-Muslims out there willing to sign up for that gig?
Click to expand...

Not as long as I've got cheap food at the drive-through and cheap gas for my SUV. :eek:

That's why I said in post #5 that "the subversion of America has to take a different form than military conquest."
 
SSN Vet wrote:
...an armed civilian population can only present an effective resistance to the paramilitary force of a tyrannical police state if they are (1.) well trained and organized into units of company size (2.) equipped to stop armored vehicles... i.e. IEDs and RPGs (3.) imbedded within the unarmed civilian population and willing to use them as human shields (4.) willing to do extreme violence against all who oppose them....
Click to expand...

You must have been reading Mao Tse-Tung's book on Guerilla Warfare. If not, you must have been channeling his departed spirit. The only divergence is on point #3, since if you have small arms, you ambush vulnerable elements of the police state and appropriate their weapons.

As Mao once said: "We have claim on the arsenals of London as well as Hanyang, and what is more, it is to be delivered to us by the enemy's own transport corps. This is the sober truth, not a joke." General Griffith who translated that passage noted, "If it is a joke, it is a macabre one as far as the American taxpayers are concened. Defectors to the Communist from Chiang Kai-shek's American-equipped divisions numbered in the tens of thousands. When they surrendered, they turned in mountains of American-made [weapons]".​

The truth is that a guerilla force can destabilize an occupying force and prevent it from establishing and maintaining the occupier's authority, but it cannot seize and control territory; for that you need conventionally trained, organized, armed and equipped troops capable of taking the battlefield against the occupier (your points 1, 2 and 4).
 
Mist Wolf worte:
George Washington resisted the military of a tyrannical government without resorting to human shields
Click to expand...

George Washington also had at the nucleus of the Continental Army, state militias - particularly that of Virginia - that had been organized, trained and equipped by the British as conventional troops.

Where the revolution was fought on a guerilla basis, the local populace was used to shield the guerillas. In his introduction to his translation of Mao Tse-Tung's book on Guerilla Warfare, General Griffith specifically notes the exploits of Francis Marion (a/k/a the Swamp Fox).
 
Snejdarek wrote:
For example in Operation Grouse,...
Click to expand...

It is true that only 8 of approximately 200 men were captured, but the operation saw the Czech Partisan commander killed, the partisans were driven from their bases, their provisions, along with much of their ammunition and arms were lost and their communication equipment was seized. And when they reached their new operational area, they had lost their trustworthy contacts amongst the civilian population so they had to be regularly on the move.

I would not describe Murzin's Partisan band as having had "tangible impact" beyond the impact that all guerillas - effective or not - have and that is by their very existence, they tie up troops that could be deployed on the front line.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top