Kayla’s Reviews > On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century > Status Update

I had never heard about the Reichstag fire before now. Why do we study the Holocaust so hard but not how he came to power so that those things can never happen again?? We say it was the treaty from WWI and that’s all we learn but…! The gaps in US history and more will radicalize you.

“In the year before the president was elected, American journalists were often mistaken about his campaign. As he… accumulated victory after victory, our commentariat assured us that at the next stage he would be stopped… one group of observers who took a different position: east Europe. To them, much about the president’s campaign was familiar…”

This book was written right around Trump’s first presidency and I’m realizing now there’s a lot of stuff he did that I just completely forgot about. The man honestly does so much it’s all hard to keep track of.

“At the beginning, certainly they were not Nazis. About fifteen of us would get together to talk and to try to find arguments opposing theirs… From time to time, one of our friends said: “I don’t agree with them… but on certain points, nevertheless, I must admit, for example, the Jews…” etc… Three weeks later… would become a Nazi… Towards the end, only three or four of us were still resisting.”

10. Believe in Truth — “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case…truth dies in four modes…the first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts.”

“Forjust this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics. Such groupscan take the form of a paramilitary wing ofa political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician—or apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader.”

“We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos… They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check…” — Feb 2, 1933 newspaper