I cannot recommend this article enough, especially to members of Congress on this important day. 1/9
https://twitter.com/timothydsnyder/status/1349049502766919680
“An elected institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow. Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie... betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh.” 2/9
“Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president... When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them.” 3/9
“Watching white supremacists among the people storming the Capitol, it was easy to yield to the feeling that something pure had been violated. It might be better to see the episode as part of a long American argument about who deserves representation.” 4/9
“The lie outlasts the liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?” 5/9
“Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress... By defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress.” 6/9
“Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics.” 7/9
“For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this.” 8/9
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