![]() ![]() Mike Godwin, who formulated his “law” in 1994 for a sardonic essay in Wired, originally claimed that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Snyder is not the kind of angry online troll that Godwin had in mind. That’s a misreading of Godwin as well as of Snyder. Michael Gove, the perpetually rising star of Britain’s Conservative Party, characterized On Tyranny as an instance of “Godwin’s law… the principle that, sooner or later in any argument, someone will invoke the Nazis to make their point.” Still, Snyder has left some reviewers cold. However, 2016 is a symptom of a broader and recurrent malaise. Trump is not Hitler, and the Left is quite as capable of destroying democratic institutions as the Right (a point Nicolas Maduro has made again this week in Venezuela). The rise of Donald Trump and the disastrous 2016 election prompted Snyder to undertake this project. ![]() It’s by far the most useful and engaging examination I’ve read of democratic decline and of the need for resolute resistance against its collapse. Snyder draws his lessons from deep study of the European catastrophes that piled, one atop the other, from 1914 to 1991, a scholarly career that culminated, in 2010, with Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Yesterday, in a single sitting, I read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. ![]()
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