#timothysnyder — Public Fediverse posts

Hitler and Stalin Today (full lecture and readings)

Source:
https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/phl/hitler-and-stalin-today

All Lectures and Readings:
https://slrpnk.net/post/41032826

---

## Institution:
University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
## Lecturer
Timothy Snyder
## University Course Code
MUN180H1-S
## Syllabus
https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/phl/hitler-and-stalin-today
## Subject:
#authoritarianism #colonization #colonialism #communism #democracy #fascism #genocide #history #holocaust #politics #soviet #worldhistory
#20thcentury #democracyindanger #historymatters #hitler #hitlerandstalintoday #massatrocities #nazi #nazigermany #neveragain #riseofauthoritarianism #sovietunion #stalin #timothysnyder #totalitarianism #ukraine
## Year:
2024
## Description:
In **Hitler and Stalin Today (MUN180H1-S)**, Timothy Snyder examines the Nazi and Soviet responses to the new globalized world they shared. The course begins with the colonial background that made totalitarianism possible, and which remains an essential element of our politics now. Their ideologies are described as worldviews and as practical politics, with an emphasis on the reasons for their appeal. Attention to their policies of mass killing, essential events of twentieth-century history, instructs us about how "it" can happen here. The study of dissident thought helps us to see connections between historical predicaments and our own, and instructs us about possible reactions as individuals and as citizens. The course asks what we have learned from the twentieth century and what lessons we should carry forward.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/what-is-fascism

#fascism #history #lecture #MarciShore #TimothySnyder

”Widespread conspiracy theories are a sign of a very unequal society”

-Timothy Snyder

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ta5-TZ03O54

#conspiracytheories #critique #timothysnyder

Historiker Timothy Snyder: “Putin führt den Krieg nur mehr wegen Trump”

Der US-Präsident habe den Kreml-Chef mit seinen Zugeständnissen paradoxerweise in Bedrängnis gebracht. Putins Obsession mit der Ukraine sei jedoch zu groß, als dass er den Krieg freiwillig beenden würde.

Optimismus im Hinblick auf Russlands Krieg gegen die Ukraine sucht man bei Timothy Snyder vergeblich. Der US-Historiker sieht Kreml-Chef Wladimir Putin in einer politischen und ideologischen Sackgasse: Seine Fixierung auf die Ukraine sei mittlerweile so groß, dass er den Krieg nicht aus eigenem Antrieb beenden könne.

https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000332216/historiker-timothy-snyder-putin-fuehrt-den-krieg-nur-mehr-wegen-trump

#TimothySnyder

@timothysnyder.bsky.social

This is Russia’s crime — but it is partly our responsibility, in the United States. We are doing much less than we should, on the rationale that letting Russians kill Ukrainians will end the war. It won’t. That is wrong as strategy, and as ethics.

https://bsky.app/profile/timothysnyder.bsky.social/post/3mrftqo4vps24

Gerade in "Über Freiheit" von Timothy Snyder ein tolles neues Wort gelernt: Sadopopulismus.

(Aus dem gleichnamigen Abschnitt des Kapitels 'Mobilität') "Der Populismus offeriert eine gewisse Umverteilung, er bietet dem Volk etwas von Seiten des Staates; der Sadopopulismus bietet nur das Spektakel, dass andere noch mehr benachteiligt werden."

Es geht in dem Kapitel darum, wie durch Immobilisierung der Bevölkerung, also durch teuren und unzuverlässigen ÖP(N)V, marode Infrastruktur und den Zwang zum Individualverkehr, den sich viele nicht leisten können, Freiheit vernichtet oder zumindest stark (und immer stärker) eingeschränkt wird.

#Buchtipp
#Buchtipps
#BuchStattSmartphone
#TimothySnyder
#ÜberFreiheit
#Populismus
#Sadopopulismus
#ÖPNV
#Mobilität

New Lecture Series for the Public: "Hitler and Stalin Today" [Timothy Snyder]

Source:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/new-lecture-series-for-the-public

- **Institution:** University of Toronto
- **Lecturer:** [Timothy Snyder](https://substack.com/@snyder)
- **University Course Code:** [MUN180H1](https://artsci.calendar.utoronto.ca/course/mun180h1)
- **Subject:** #authoritarianism #colonization #communism #democracy #fascism #genocide #history #holocaust #politics #soviet #worldhistory
- **Year:** 2026
- **Description:**
> The first lecture in a ten-lecture series on Hitler and Stalin today.
>
> The first lecture (video above) is titled “What is history?” We speak often about history, but we are careless with the past. When we choose not to know what has happened before, we are also choosing not to influence what will happen after. If we don’t care about history, we find ourselves in an eternal present, denied any sort of imagination about the future, and nurtured on lies about a past in which we were innocent. History does not mean these misleading tales; it means a search for knowledge, using a certain set of tools; it means a process that enriches and humanizes, one that allows us to name things by their proper names.
>
> There are two readings to go along with this lecture:
>
> - [Tadeusz Borowski, Here in Our Auschwitz](https://librarysearch.library.utoronto.ca/nde/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=01UTORONTO_INST%3AUTORONTO_NDE&search_scope=UTL_AND_CI&docid=alma991107113412006196)
> - [The War on History is a War on Democracy](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/magazine/memory-laws.html)

---

#20thcentury #democracyindanger #freecourse #historymatters #hitler #hitlerandstalintoday #massatrocities #nazi #nazigermany #neveragain #riseofauthoritarianism #sovietunion #stalin #timothysnyder #totalitarianism #universityoftoronto #uoft #freecourse #opencourselectures

---

If it is inaccessible, here are other ways to read:
- [Tadeusz Borowski, Here in Our Auschwitz](https://annas-archive.gl/md5/34bf7861a9ee62b6a6bb2b82a6699ef7)
- [The War on History is a War on Democracy](http://web.archive.org/web/20260205233604if_/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/magazine/memory-laws.html)
- [Listen](https://static.nytimes.com/podcasts/2021/06/29/magazine/29audm-forced-forgetting-snyder/210629-forced-forgetting-snyder-nytmag-audm.mp3)

#OnTyranny — Special 250th Edition
With friends, on video, to recall and to rebel #timothySnyder with friends #Thinkingabout... #tyranny #freedom #liberty #democracy #readbooks #usa #independanceday #citizenship

https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny-special-250th-edition

On Tyranny 250th Edition Turns July Fourth Into a Fight Over What Patriotism Means

https://thedemocracyadvocate.com/news-to-know/u-s-politics/on-tyranny-250th-edition/

#TimothySnyder, historien : « La guerre menée par Trump contre l’Iran montre que le mal et la folie peuvent aller de pair » #lemonde #iran #donaldtrump #usa
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2026/07/03/timothy-snyder-historien-la-guerre-menee-par-trump-contre-l-iran-montre-que-le-mal-et-la-folie-peuvent-aller-de-pair_6718410_3232.html

“If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”*…

Stoicism is having a moment. The estimable Timothy Snyder considers the events of the day in the light of Marcus Aurelius‘ thoughts– and actions…

As Donald Trump announced his whimsy war in Iran, I was reading about another imperial campaign, long ago, against an Iranian people.

In the late second century AD, the Roman Empire confronted armies that had crossed the border at the Danube River and even broached the Alps in northern Italy. Among them were the Iazyges, speakers of an Iranian language, who hailed from the Ukrainian steppe.

In Ukraine this February, I was learning about an archaeological find which reveals the interactions of the Romans and the Iazyges, which included alliance as well as enmity. The Roman war against the Iazyges allies was commanded personally by Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who spent the years between 171 and 180 AD at the front. During that time he kept a philosophical diary, probably written at night in his tent. Discovered after his death, that text, known as the Meditations, is a great work of Stoic philosophy.

I turned to the Meditations to see if I could learn anything that would help me to understand the work of Ukrainian archaeologists about the interactions between Romans and Iazyges. I found something else: perspective on the wars of today, and a sense of why, beyond his obvious incompetence in military matters, Trump had to lose his.

It was shaming to read the bombast of Trump: (”no president was willing to do what I have done tonight”) alongside the reflections of Marcus (“when things have such a plausible appearance, show them naked, see their shoddiness, strip away their own boastful account of themselves.”) Trump broadcast his arrogance to millions of people; Marcus wrote for himself.

Despite the fact he was commanding an army at the front, Marcus never mentioned the war in his Meditations. War was simply something he had to do; he had no difficulty seeing the other side as people, or understanding their motivations. He mentions the Iazyges only once in the text: to make a broader point about hubris, to suggest that it was wrong for Romans to take pride in taking a prisoner of war.

Although Marcus did not broach the subject of my interest, I could not stop reading his Meditations. The contrast with Trump’s utterances was astounding, and vertiginous. The one could spend nine years in command and write a philosophical diary in which he did not even mention the war; the other immediately leapt to praise himself for a war he would lose in weeks…

[With an focus on the “adventure in Iran,” Snyder elaborates the (painfully unflattering) comparison…]

… The American leaders had no idea of who they were or what they wanted, aside from the satisfaction of their emotional needs by the killing of others. They were unable to imagine that people on the other side might have ideas about their own interests and plans for their own behavior. The could not see the world, even in its plainest representation as geography; whereas Marcus exploited a bend in the Danube River to tactical advantage to win a battle; Trump chose to ignore the physical limit the Straits of Hormuz can place on world trade. As soon as the war began, the Iranians did the obvious: they responded to American long-range attacks with the same; and they blocked the Straits.

Because the Americans were operating without a sense of themselves, of the world, or other people, this came as a surprise. Marcus Aurelius offers this mild comment: “How absurd — and a complete stranger to the world– is the man surprised at any aspect of his experience in life!”

The Americans, strangers to the world, reacted to their feelings of surprise with fantasies of destruction. The pleasure they took in killing became a vision of annihilation. Rather than confront the errors they made about war, the Americans leapt to visions of violence in which no one would ever have to think again. Trump lost control on Easter Sunday when he tweeted: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” He then promised that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age, where they belong” and said that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” In our modern legal and ethical language, this is of course genocidal language. The American bombast was followed by American surrender.

Marcus Aurelius won his war against the Iazyges. He combined victory and prudence, and for this he was and will be remembered. The defeated Iazyges returned to their previous role as Roman clients, offered thousands of cavalrymen as soldiers of Rome, and opened trade routes to the east. Marcus’s philosophical diary has been read for the better part of two millenia; so long as we are present as a literate civilization, it will be read. Despite Marcus’s certainty that we will all be forgotten, others built a victory column in his honor after his death; it still stands in Rome, more than one thousand eight hundred years later.

Another legacy of Marcus’s victory also touches the center of what we think of as Western culture. As part of the peace accord, he dispatched 5,500 Iazyges cavalrymen, taken into his service, to the north of what is now northern England, to defend the Roman border at Hadrian’s Wall. Their first commander was a man named Arthur, and it is possible that the Iazyges and some of their Iranian-speaking kin incorporated his name into stories of their own — of a lady in the lake, of a sword in a stone, of a quest for a golden cup — which, with time, became the legend of Christian chivalry. That is another story, and one worth telling.

But it is also part of the story of Marcus Aurelius, which, despite the fact that he chose not to tell it himself, or rather precisely for that reason, is instructive about our predicament today. Stoicism is a way not to be a stranger to the world; it can protect the powerful from vanity and folly. To fall into a stupor of self-absorption, as Trump has done, is to flee from reality. Few wars are worth fighting; those that are fought can only be won in the world, and not within the tortured confines of estranged minds. Trump hastens now towards our shared horizon of death, seeking honors that only posterity can accord and will not…

On what Trump could– and should– learn from Marcus Aurelius: “Of Stoicism and Stupor,” from @timothysnyder.bsky.social.

“We are the other of the other”

“Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?”

“Kindness is invincible.”

– Marcus Aurelius

(TotH to MKM)

* Marcus Aurelius

###

As we barrel back to basics, we might recall that it was on this date in 1956 that Elvis Presley, working for the first time with  backing vocal group the Jordanaires, recorded “Don’t Be Cruel,” which had been written by Otis Blackwell. 

The single was released on July 13, 1956, backed with “Hound Dog.”  Within a few weeks “Hound Dog” had risen to No. 2 on the Pop charts with sales of over one million. Soon after it was overtaken by “Don’t Be Cruel,” which took No. 1 on all three main charts; Pop, Country, and R&B. Between them, both songs remained at No. 1 on the Pop chart for a run of 11 weeks. “Don’t Be Cruel” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2004, it was ranked No. 197 in Rolling Stone’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

source

#TimothySnyder reports Ethnic cleansing has now been endorsed by the Supreme Court. They have green-lighted deporting Haitians in large numbers due to the end of Temporary Protected Status. Roughly twenty percent of the children in Springfield Public Schools do not have documentation that would establish their citizenship. All of these boys and girls, about fifteen hundred children, are vulnerable to the chaos and violence of Haiti.

#TemporaryProtectedStatus #EthnicCleansing #USPOL

#TimothySnyder

Something to think about...

#trump #iran #useofforce #timothysnyder

ZDF-Alarm!

Ihr kennt Sarah Tacke. Sie ist zuletzt mit einer "Dokumentation" über Bürgergeldempfänger aufgefallen, die nicht zuletzt auch erhebliche negative Reaktionen aus dem Journalismus selbst ausgelöst hat, weil sie nicht einmal grundlegenden journalistischen Standards entsprach.

Sarah soll jetzt eine eigene Talkshow bekommen.

Was kann da schon schiefgehen?

Geht mal bitte auf https://www.zdf.de/unternehmen/dein-zdf/mitreden-168.html und registriert euch dort. Die Show ist gerade Thema in einer Umfrage und das ZDF könnte gut ein bisschen Gegenwind vertragen.

Timothy Snyders erste Regel aus dem Buch "Über Tyrannei" lautet: Kein vorauseilender Gehorsam!

Was das ZDF hier gerade tut ist vorauseilender Gehorsam gegenüber einer AfD, die nicht an die Macht kommen darf.

#ZDF #AfdVerbotJetzt #SarahTacke #Beteiligung #TimothySnyder