Trump & Musk’s actions speak louder than words.
If you pardon violent insurrectionists, you support violence.
If you don’t prosecute public corruption, you support corruption.
If you oppose vaccines, you support the spread of disease.
If you threaten lawyers & judges, you oppose the rule of law.
If you threaten democratic allies, you support #authoritarianism.
If you oppose #DEI, you oppose civil rights.
Timothy Snyder Has Seen Tyrants Like Trump Before. “For decades, he’s parsed the ins and outs of #authoritarianism—and the tyrants who weaponize it—both in his professorial post at Yale & in 16 books, including last September’s On Freedom and #OnTyranny, a 20-point guide to dictator-proofing yourself… Now on leave from Yale, Snyder was recently appointed director of the Public History Lab, a research hub at the University of Toronto…” | Macleans.ca https://macleans.ca/the-interview/timothy-snyder-has-seen-tyrants-like-trump-before/
Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Key selections from On #Tyranny, for viewing and sharing
#authoritarianism #TimothySnyder #OnTyranny #audio #books
https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-lithgow
Today's my birthday, my 75th—impossibly old!—and I'm receiving this wonderful video of John Lithgow reading Timothy Snyder's twenty lessons in tyranny as a birthday gift. Which I now offer to readers here….
#tyranny #authoritarianism #dictatorship #Trump #Musk #Republicans #TimothySnyder
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https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-lithgow
"Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
Not: Go home. Go home. Go home.
Yet their 'Christian' America turns people away.
No one is welcome here."
#Trump #authoritarianism #fascism #immigrants #WhiteChristianNationalism #welcome
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"The authoritarian horror show we are now living in has been, in considerable part, brought to us by Christian nationalists and those who want a 'Christian' America. But central to their project is exclusion — and exclusion based on racial or religious purity.
There’s nothing Christian about any of this."
~ Diana Butler Bass
#Trump #authoritarianism #fascism #immigrants #WhiteChristianNationalism #welcome
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Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing & sharing - Prof. Timothy Snyder
“Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago... They open the twenty chapters of On #Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
Above is his film. Below is the text, excerpted from the book. Do share this.”
Saturday 5 April. Nonviolent action.
Host an event or find an event to participate in.
most important: BE THERE FOR ALL OF US.
#protest #RESIST #HandsOff #politics #FascistAmeriKKKa #fascism #Nazis #Authoritarianism handsoff2025.com
I have lived in countries that have had hate-speech laws. I have lived in countries with highly restrictive speech laws.
It’s not unbearable. You are clear on what you cannot say.
What’s fascist and impossible is when you get told you have the right to free speech and then the administration decides to persecute you for exercising it, for no coherent reason.
That’s the terror that comes from the arbitrary application of power. #FreeSpeech #fascism #authoritarianism
#Trump takes aim at foreign-born college students, with 300 visas revoked
Some students have been picked up off the street by immigration agents and held in detention centers, sometimes a thousand miles away from their homes, with little warning
By Daniella Silva, Chloe Atkins, Julia Ainsley and Abigail Williams, March 27, 2025
"Secretary of State #MarcoRubio said Thursday the State Department has revoked 300 or more #StudentVisas, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students whose main transgression seems to be #activism.
"Rubio warned that the administration was looking out for 'these lunatics.' Around the country, #scholars have been picked up, in some cases by masked immigration agents, and held in #DetentionCenters, sometimes a thousand miles from their homes with little warning and often with few details about why they were being detained.
"'It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,' Rubio said at a news conference in Guyana, where he was meeting with leaders.
"Many of those rounded up by Trump officials attended or were part of the pro-Palestinian movement that swept college campuses last year, and while the administration hasn’t said publicly why these students are being singled out over others, at least one sought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared on lists made by far-right pro-Israel groups as targets for deportation.
"And Trump allies, many in government again, telegraphed for months before he took office that they’d seek to deport students who openly advocated for Hamas or other U.S.-designated terrorist groups or after they participated in an unauthorized campus #protest and were suspended, expelled or jailed.
"The detentions are a signal of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to clamp down on the actions of legal permanent residents, student visa holders and others who live and work legally in the United States, one that threatens to undermine a fundamental American right to #FreeSpeech and to assemble, experts and advocates said."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-administration-takes-aim-immigrant-students-rcna198346?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
#USPol #ThoughtPolice #Authoritarianism #Orwellian #CharacteristicsOfFascism #Clampdown #SilencingDissent #CriminalizingDissent #CriminalizingActivism #RightToAssemble #FirstAmendment #USPol
Trump attacks on the ‘Black Smithsonian’ as an effort to sanitize racism in US history
#BlackMastodon #Culture #Politics #Project2025 #Trump #TrumpRegime #Authoritarianism #whiteSupremacy
https://apnews.com/article/trump-black-history-smithsonian-dei-687fd306dc9c6d7611300d74fe49b8aa
ICYMI -
What to expect from a felon tyrant wannabe king who keeps getting stopped by a judiciary enforcing the #RuleOfLaw? That he continue to break laws and try to silence those who call it out and oppose him.
It’s also why he’s attacking law firms.
#UniversityOfToronto hires three prominent Yale #professors worried about Trump
#Fascism scholar #JasonStanley and #historians #TimothySnyder and #MarciShore have taken jobs at the University of Toronto amid concerns about the second #Trump administration
by Allison Smith, Mar 26, 2025
"U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection has spurred several high-profile Yale #professors to leave New Haven for jobs at the University of Toronto.
"Bestselling author Timothy Snyder and historian Marci Shore are on leave from Yale and joined UofT earlier this year.
"Snyder and Shore, who are married, will begin teaching courses at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy this fall.
"Shore told TorontoToday they plan to stay at UofT 'for the long-term.'
"Snyder is the New York Times bestselling author of #OnTyranny and The Road to #Unfreedom, and an outspoken critic of the #Trump administration.
"UofT began recruiting her and Snyder two years ago, Shore said, 'and we were seriously considering the offers long before the November 2024 presidential elections.'
"'Both Toronto and the Munk School were and are very attractive places unto themselves, even bracketing the American descent into fascism,' she said in an email.
"'All that said, yes, of course our #AmericanCatastrophe played a role in our final decision.'"
Rea more:
https://www.torontotoday.ca/local/education/university-toronto-hires-three-prominent-yale-professors-worried-about-trump-10433643
#UofT #Authoritarianism #BrainDrain #CharacteristicsOfFascism #USPol
Saturday 5 April. Nonviolent action. Host an event or find an event to participate in. most important: BE THERE FOR ALL OF US.
#protest #RESIST #HandsOff #politics #FascistAmeriKKKa #fascism #Nazis #Authoritarianism https://handsoff2025.com/
DICTATORSHIP:
"The video of Ozturk’s arrest reveals a violation of basic civil rights and decency that should sicken every American and frighten legal immigrants to their core. For the Trump administration, it’s another leverage point to bring universities into line while also throttling another avenue of legal immigration.
The scene itself resembles one out of a small paramilitary country. An unmarked vehicle pulls up. Masked agents in plainclothes emerge. They accost Ozturk, who utters a small scream. One agent wrests her cellphone out of her hand. With stunning swiftness, she is handcuffed and escorted away.
Ozturk, a former Fulbright scholar, has been charged with no crime so far, according to her lawyer. Her only infraction appears to be a fairly mild op-ed piece she co-wrote with several other students for the Tufts Daily, in which they urged the university to take seriously a student government resolution calling on the school to divest from companies dealing with Israel and recognize genocide of Palestinians.
In other words, a classic non-violent exercise of free speech.
Tufts President Sunil Kumar said in a statement that Ozturk’s student visa status had been terminated “and we seek to confirm whether that information is true.”"
When #DietrichBonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How #Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the #Nazis (1942)
in History, Politics | March 26th, 2025
"Two days after Adolf #Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer took to the airwaves. Before his radio broadcast was cut off, he warned his countrymen that their führer could well be a verführer, or misleader. Bonhoeffer’s anti-Nazism lasted until the end of his life in 1945, when he was executed by the regime for association with the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Even while imprisoned, he kept thinking about the origins of the political mania that had overtaken Germany. The force of central importance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he concluded, but stupidity.
"'Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice,' Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter to his co-conspirators on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship. 'One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.' When provoked, 'the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.'
"Fighting stupidity, to Bonhoeffer’s mind, first necessitates understanding it. 'In essence not an intellectual defect but a human one,' stupidity can descend upon practically anyone: 'under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.' And it happens most noticeably when a particular figure or movement seizes the attention of the public. 'Every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity,' he writes. Since such phenomena could hardly arise without blindly obedient masses, it seems that 'the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.'
"You can see Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity explained in the illustrated Sprouts video above, and you can learn more about the man himself from the documentary Bonhoeffer. Or, better yet, read his collection, Letters and Papers from Prison. Though rooted in his time, culture, and religion, his thought remains relevant wherever humans follow the crowd. 'The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent,' he writes, which held as true in the public squares of wartime Europe as it does on the social-media platforms of today. 'In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him.' Whatever would surprise Bonhoeffer about our time, he would know exactly what we mean when we call stupid people 'tools.'"
https://www.openculture.com/2025/03/when-dietrich-bonhoeffer-a-german-pastor-theorized-how-stupidity-enabled-the-rise-of-the-nazis-1942.html
#Histodon #History #USPol #WorldPol #Fascism #Authoritarianism #BalladOfTheLittleMan
very proud of this concentration camp, disappearing peace activists, and violating the constitution for Israeli war criminals.
As the #Trump admin escalates its attack on universities, three #fascism scholars & vocal Trump critics are leaving Yale University for the University of Toronto. But their given reasons for crossing the border vary.
#tyranny #authoritarianism #autocracy #ThoughtPolice #dissent #FreeSpeech #FreedomOfAssembly
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/03/26/fascism-scholars-trump-critics-leave-yale-canada
OMG
#TimothySnyder left the country for #Canada
Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley, along with Yale history professors Marci Shore & her husband Timothy Snyder, are taking their teaching to the University of Toronto to advocate for #democracy, speak out against #fascism & teach without fear of #academic capitulation to the #Trump White House, they say.
#tyranny #authoritarianism #autocracy #ThoughtPolice #dissent #FreeSpeech #FreedomOfAssembly
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/28/us/yale-university-scholars-toronto-trump/index.html
Whoa, yesterday, #Trump illegally stripped #CollectiveBargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of #FederalWorkers in 18 different departments across multiple #FederalAgencies.
The admin stated that “Certain Federal unions have declared *#war* on President Trump’s agenda.”
Is he going to use #wartime powers against #union members now?
#law #LaborLaw #labor #Musk #DOGE #authoritarianism #autocracy #tyranny #propaganda #Trumpaganda #gaslighting #NaziState #MafiaState
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-exempts-agencies-with-national-security-missions-from-federal-collective-bargaining-requirements/
