> The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. what tyranny?
The tyranny he’s referring to is Julius Caesar, not England.
On Tyranny [book]
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#12I'm intrigued. I'm currently working on some research into the same topic, but mostly through the lens of the concessions made by these "new" ways of thought (Communism/Bolshevism and Nazism/Volkism) to older systems of power. For example, Nazis abandoned all semblance of "socialism" by essentially handing Germany over to industrialists as a means to save the then-struggling economy. On the other side, Bolsheviks res…
You will love Snyder. He has hours of talks/lectures on youtube that are all worth watching.
One talk he gave was on How could the holocaust have happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKrWLf7Kg4
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#13[deleted]
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#14I thought this was the actual book, not just a marketing page for a book. Seems kind of off brand for a hacker news post
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#15Timothy Snyder is leaving the US for Canada: https://archive.ph/2025.03.28-120413/https://www.thestar.com...
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#16I thought this was the actual book, not just a marketing page for a book. Seems kind of off brand for a hacker news post
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#17I'm intrigued. I'm currently working on some research into the same topic, but mostly through the lens of the concessions made by these "new" ways of thought (Communism/Bolshevism and Nazism/Volkism) to older systems of power. For example, Nazis abandoned all semblance of "socialism" by essentially handing Germany over to industrialists as a means to save the then-struggling economy. On the other side, Bolsheviks res…
>These two populist movements were meant to deconstruct power, but instead gave way to even more terrifying tyranny Where they truly populist and where they about deconstructing power? soviet communists where about radical transformative changes to all of the societies and explicitly accepted that violence is necessary to perform those transformations (i.e. goals justify the means). If your agenda is deeply transform…
Bolshevism and Volkism indeed have roots in populism, though, to your point, their institutional counterparts arguably were the exact opposite.
Bolshevism is only one prevailing school of thought from late 19th/early 20th century Russia, but walking back through Narodnaya Volya and the Narodniks will lead you back to Going to the People.
Volkism itself may be one of the best examples of unbridled populism ever, having posited that "true" Germans were being overrun by alien elites (Jewish folk and the like). The fact that the movement was leveraged by neo-pagan Bavarian aristocrats doesn't nullify the ideas that rallied the public behind them in the first place (especially when those ideas persist today).
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#18I'm intrigued. I'm currently working on some research into the same topic, but mostly through the lens of the concessions made by these "new" ways of thought (Communism/Bolshevism and Nazism/Volkism) to older systems of power. For example, Nazis abandoned all semblance of "socialism" by essentially handing Germany over to industrialists as a means to save the then-struggling economy. On the other side, Bolsheviks res…
You will love Snyder. He has hours of talks/lectures on youtube that are all worth watching. One talk he gave was on How could the holocaust have happened : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKrWLf7Kg4
This is exactly what I was hoping to find in this thread. Thanks for the additional content.
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#19> The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. what tyranny?
The one from the Imperial rule from the King of England (King George III), right before the American Revolution was won, in 1776.
Modern day historians (the good ones) recognize George III wasn't a tyrant at all.
The revolutionaries just found it to be a useful story to tell to gain support.
They wanted independence to avoid helping Britain pay off the debts it accrued protecting the colonies from the French.
It's funny that Americans still buy the story that he was a tyrant.
Re: On Tyranny [book]
#20It's short.
From dictatorship to democracy : a conceptual framework for liberation
by Gene Sharp is the "tell me more" version, 138 pages. Includes non-violent ways to gum up the progress of tyranny.