Thread by @Teri_Kanefield

1/

There are so many things wrong with this.

💠There's no evidence that Yovanovitch said anything bad about Trump. What was the GOP saying about hearsay?

💠There's no evidence that she had anything to do with a delay in the picture. Unfounded speculation?

💠Moreover . . .

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1197878059938013184

2/ Trump is that thin-skinned that he will recall a U.S. Ambassador who served for 33 years—including taking fire in countries he's afraid to visit— because of speculation that she didn't hang his picture up fast enough?

Or a rumor that she said something bad about him?

3/ This kind of thinking, "An ambassador may have said something bad about the president, so he recalls her and ruins her reputation," is what happens in what Hungarian scholar Bálint Magyar calls "mafia states."

4/ The way to understand what Trump and Giuliani were doing in Ukraine is that they were attempting to turn the US into a mafia state modeled on Putin's Russia.

More on that in my November 5, NBC News Opinion Piece ⤵️

nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

5/ Magyar's scholarship on post-Soviet Union mafia states explains what Trump and Giuliani were doing.

@TimothyDSnyder's work provides the historical background.

According to Magyar, Mafia states — like Putin’s Russia — develop as the government takes over businesses.

@TimothyDSnyder 6/ As the ruler consolidates power and wealth, both wealth and power come to be concentrated in one person. Eventually, the entire state comes under the control of the head of the family and expands across the entire country.

The ruler ends up literally owning the country.

@TimothyDSnyder 7/ The fact that there is no evidence to support Trump's accusation plays into this.

The truth is whatever the Leader says it is.

We learned how that works from George Orwell: Ignore any evidence of your eyes and ears.

The Leader said she is disloyal. That is enough.

@TimothyDSnyder 8/ In fact, the Orwellian methods work better when there is no evidence.

People must be conditioned into believing whatever the Leader says. The best way to do that is to insist on the truth of his utterances in the face of contrary evidence.

@TimothyDSnyder 9/ Here we are moving from autocracy into totalitarianism.

In an autocracy, the people obey.

Under totalitarianism, people must obey because they WANT to obey, because their minds can literally allow no contrary thought or idea.

@TimothyDSnyder 10/ Remember when Tim Morrison testified that after speaking to Trump, "Ambassador Sondland related that there was no quid pro quo but President Zelensky had to make the statement and he had to want to do it."

The quotation is given here: chicagotribune.com/sns-tns-bc-imp…

@TimothyDSnyder 11/ The "he had to want to do it" part smacks of totalitarianism, along with the idea that the Leader must not ever have reason to suspect that anyone is loyal, even in their hearts.

So that I don't end this thread on such a gloomy note . . .

@TimothyDSnyder 12/ . . . observe that Giuliani took steps to launch what we might call Operation Ukraine Shakedown in late 2018 and early 2019.

(They were building on false narratives planted earlier, but you can see on my timeline when Operation Shakedown was launched impeachment-trump.com)

@TimothyDSnyder 13/ The timing is significant because they launched their operation just after the midterms when the GOP suffered large losses.

It appears to me that Trump and Giuliani knew if they didn't pull off something big, Trump would go down in a landslide loss in 2020.

@TimothyDSnyder 14/ What we've learned from the testimony so far is how corrupt mafia states use corrupt prosecutions and investigations for political advantage.

Trump's plan (which we see in multiple places) is to try to repeat the "Her Emails" manufactured scandal . . .

@TimothyDSnyder 15/ . . . which resulted from a politically motivated investigation.

We know it was politically motivated because the same people who hounded Clinton didn't if Sondland and Trump talked about Zelenskiy loudly on a cell phone that the Russians were no doubt monitoring.

@TimothyDSnyder 16/ Politically motivated investigations enable corrupt leaders to create a situation where it appears that ALL politicians are corrupt.

This is the easiest way to kill democracy, because if all politicians are corrupt, it doesn't matter who wins an election.

@TimothyDSnyder 17/ It creates tribalism: "Trump is a lying crook, but he's our lying crook. Biden [or Clinton, or whoever] is the enemy lying crook. Let's stick with our own lying crook.]

It's a method copied directly from Putin.

But now we're on to it.

End
(I may add questions or comments)

@TimothyDSnyder Yes, I did. Tweet #11 was supposed to be "disloyal"

Supposed to be: "The Leader must not ever have reason to suspect that anyone is loyal, even in their hearts.!

https://twitter.com/JoZPina/status/1197917068546494464

It was those keyboard gremlins again 😡
(I promise I'm not yet confusing up with down)

@TimothyDSnyder I DID IT AGAIN.

I typed "loyal" for "disloyal"

Good grief.

Maybe I should take the rest of the day off.

@TimothyDSnyder All my threads are also blog posts. This one is here: terikanefield-blog.com/totalitarianis…