Thread on how authoritarians use the power of threat. A few testimonies, from my 2020 book #Strongmen: wwnorton.com/books/97813240…
A culture of threat fosters silence & self-policing. Non-action from political opponents & critics gives appearance of consent for illegal action.
A culture of threat fosters silence & self-policing. Non-action from political opponents & critics gives appearance of consent for illegal action.
Franco’s Spain: the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset reflected on how “the threat in my mind of an eventual violence, coercion, or sanction that other people are going to exercise against me” bred conformity. 2/
Hitler's Germany: the historian George Mosse, who fled the Nazis, never forgot the low-level “terror” and hyper-vigilance. “You sit in bed, listen to the night/…Will they come today to get me?” the German leftist Eugen Nerdinger wrote, after receiving death threats. 3/
Television & video are highly effective, like forced confessionals of "traitors." Lukashenko is in tradition of Gaddafi in staging shows that need "a live body – ideally one already half dead - to instill maximum fear." Everyone watching knows they could be next.
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