On the point of deporting people who think they are US citizens,, I set myself forth as an example. The child of divorce, I cannot prove that my biological father was a US citizen, and although I have my mother's birth certificate as well as my own, per the proposals of Mr. Miller that does nothing to prove that I am a US citizen. To really establish that I am, it would be necessary for me to prove that all my grandparents or great grand parents, as the case may be, had naturalization papers. This I cannot do.
The fact that I was in the US military and both then and subsequently held multiple security clearances is irrelevant, first because foreigners have frequently served in the US military and second because the investigations for security clearances do not delve deeply into the matter of citizenship, assuming, as it were, that if you were born here you are a citizen.
I raise this point to remind everyone that in MAGA Amerika you cannot count on the color of your skin or your perception of belonging here to protect you from the evil afoot.
In the archives of my family we have a government issued booklet of my great-grandmother from the Nazi era recording (or leaving blank) ancestry, with which people had to demonstrate that they were Aryan (Arier Nachweis), going back 4 generations from their birth, which was 1904 in the case of the great-grandmotehr and 1925 in the case of my grandmother. This particular book has blanks, they could not trace everybody back then I suppose.
To think that a Nation formed by immigrants who escaped a tyrannical King to form something new and more just (committing a lot of injustices and crimes in the process, for sure) is on the brink of getting a government that threatens to resort to Nazi crimes is unfathomable and scary to the bone.
There is one more point: Latinos will be the first targets, but as always, there will be others. Other immigrants, Jews of course, progressives, and anyone else that Trump or Stephen Miller or Thomas Homans or other sycophants decide are their enemies. Trump said he'd be a "dictator on day one" - but of course I cannot remember ANY dictator for only one day in world history. It's too intoxicating to continue getting rid of people. So anyone who believes that "it won't happen to me" is dreaming.
They have been talking about denationalizing people-taking away citizenship from legally naturalized citizens. I am absolutely terrified-they will not stop with undocumented people. And they will punish anyone who tries to help or hide targeted people. I’m nauseous just typing this.
People may have forgotten the China Initiative that allowed the arrest of Chinese Americans on suspicion of spying without any credible evidence during the Trump Administration. Dr. Gang Chen was abruptly arrested at his home and incarcerated on the allegation of spying, but later all charges were dropped on lack of evidence. This kind of terrorism will be rampant. Non-Christians will also be targets.
Trump & MAGA whine about booming Bidenomics: 98% of jobs created since 1989 were created during Democratic administrations. Republicans have lost jobs while ballooning the deficit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbPBuk5QoV8 Trump's top general calls Trump "a fascist to the core...the most dangerous person to this country” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98OkyUCJ6V0” MSNBC
It may NOT be. It's corporate media and pundits of every stripe telling us it is. Observation on the ground suggests otherwise. One glaring problem is how questions are asked, often leading to ambiguous answers that then get interpreted! JMO
How is it that Biden sends bombs to help PM Netanyahu kill innocent civilians, in Gaza and Lebanon? I worry about us. isn't silence complicity? And I'm a Harris/Walz voter unhappy about the Biden policy of unconditional support for a leader who uses our bombs to kill innocent Gazan civilians.
How is it that Gazans offer themselves as human shields and die? Seems to me their lives are better spent to fight and die, if needs be, for their future, a Country called Palestine. As it stands, they don't fight for anything. They go along to get along with Hamas that has no vision of a Country called Palestine, while the West, the UN pours money at them.
Fight for something if you're going to die anyway, because Hamas is making sure you do. Using you as human shields - your schools, your places of worship, your hospitals, the apartment buildings you live in. Did Hamas tell/warn you that Israel isn't playing that game anymore after October 7?
I spoke yesterday to a young man from Michigan, a progressive Jew, who feared that in his Michigan district BOTH the Arab and the Jewish vote will break for tRump because of this conflict, which seems "insane" to me.
I have been thinking about this a lot because what is happening in Gaza to so many innocent people makes me sick and points out I can do nothing. There is nothing I or any group can say to persuade any elected representatives to suspend supporting Israel until they stop the murder of innocent people. I know the U.S. will not alter its policy. How can that be? I think we continue helping Israel so Russia does not. I think we have painted ourselves in the proverbial corner. We have this huge weapons industry (for profit and privatized of course) that has created billionaires and probably props up the economies of other countries. We created the monster world-destroying nuclear weapons. Both Russia and Israel possess nuclear weapons. A chess game imperiling the whole of humanity. Now what? We pick DJT and we give up our Democray, Russia is given a green light and Europe is left in the lurch or we pick Harris and pray!
This is the attitude of helplessness that Strongman autocratic oligarchs cultivate and love in the governed! Learned helplessness! Anticipatory obedience! We, lovers of America and it is constitutional values of democracy must never give up! Never! I am watching Silicon Valley Billionaires, Wealthy Opportunists,Christian Nationalist Groups (eg.SCOTUS Trump justices). Mary Ellen! Vote! Vote like you can help innocent people! Voting 3rd party helps dictator-loving, mass deportation-loving Trump oligarch nationalists. Read Timothy Snyder’s short powerful pamphlet “On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th Century” (122 short pages for hope).
I am really getting scared. I'm scared what will happen to the economy if The Bloated Yam gets in and what will happen with the work force when he deports the hard working undocumented workers we desperately need here in NC. At 83, I am suddenly truly scared.
Thank you. I follow Prof. Snyder and have read many of his books. I'm Scared too. I need Hope. I Voted for Kamala Harris. I'm sending out reminders to people to vote. Can we each do our part to elect Harris? Our civil society, democracy, our lives depend on it, Kit.
I wasn't afraid earlier, but as we get closer to the election, I seriously worry about the "no confidence voters". Those who strongly oppose US arming Israel for instance, and the refusal of Biden/Harris to take a stand against genocide, which now includes Lebanon! Terrified the votes will be so close that there will be a coup of unprecedented proportions.
I'm reading "on Freedom". It is fabulous, Timothy. You bring it together nicely so far. At 71 there are so many of the stories you tell that I have experienced. I was a pain in my teachers' arse because I always asked 'Why' or discussed why the question did not lead us to anything new, but if you would ask it this way...then...Great book so far. Thanks
Deporting 10 million people as Trump and his party promise is about human beings being deported – 1 person times 10 million; it will bring violence all over the country; deportation will involve people you know; it will separate families; on this scale - with the mass deportation of 10 million people - there will be mistakes - you or your mother or friend could be one of them; ‘it will cause a culture of denunciation, it has to’ …you have to worry about who is going to denounce you; you will be expected to help find undocumented people; there will be acts of resistance, which will generate hate against whole communities.
The point of this deportation is to turn us against one another. ‘It is going to affect everyone’.
Have you thought about Trump’s deportation plan and its costs to all of us?
The one question I have about his notion to deport so many people. WHERE does he intend to deport everyone to? What counties want trumps “cast-offs”; especially so many? Has anyone even asked the question of him?
Well said, Professor. Now will your message get to the people who vote. Will they connect your message to voting Harris and Not 3rd Party (ending up for Trump) My question for all who read this: How do we get your words to the people who can swing the voters toward Harris/Walz? I'm sending this, I hope, to my relatives and friends; can we each do our part. DONT GIVE UP!
Thanks for the lucid list. This is something I can share with people I know. And you didn't even mention the impact mass deportation will have on The World...the places to where the deportees are sent, the countries that follow the 'example' of the USA, the finite supply of housing/food/water. Your item about resistance leads to thoughts re, potential damage of civil unrest, opposition on a national scale, underground railroads, vigilantes...etc. etc. The list goes on and on.
Thanks for putting this so brutally. For years *I've* been trying to explain these things to people I know, and the response has usually been a blank stare followed by a change of the subject. I do hope others will listen to and take you seriously. Most Americans lack a knowledge base that they can look to as a comparison to what they experience in their own lives and for that reason do not know what is possible when certain conditions are met. Reading history *can* be soul-crushing, yes, but it can also lead us to a deeper understanding of life, indeed of everything. If you know that to understand history is to know what is possible, then with the help of others, you can protect society AND plan for a better future.
On a lighter note, when my siblings and I were very young, growing up in a house with ditches near the streets to carry rainwater rather than the more modern underground pipes, we were always puzzled that after a good rain, crawdads would suddenly appear in the ditches. We were much too young to understand how they lived, so we found something magical in their appearance. We would hover over them and marvel at them swimming about. After the ditches dried out we'd forget about them until the next time.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t trump say he would end “Birthright Citizenship”.
I don’t think he means just immigrants from countries that he doesn’t like.
That statement, if my memory hasn’t failed me, indicates that those of us with ancestors who came to this continent and delivered American offspring since the 1630’s will not be safe.
I was raised in a very WASPy family. When I learned that I didn’t have to follow my parent’s Evangelical Pentecostal religiosity, by proxy.
They were Christmas and Easter Christians who forced only the youngest three of 11 siblings to go every Sunday.
The preacher called my parents and notified them that I was not ready to accept the word of “God”, because they suspected that I might be gay. I was 8 years old at the time.
I wonder if the preacher knew the hell I was suffering at the hands of my parents and siblings on a daily basis, would he have said anything differently.
My father made sure that no one of power or influence would find out because we were repeatedly told that, “if anyone found out he would kill us.
I spent 18 years in that chaos.
Today I am a white male gay secular humanist. My Ancestors were Quakers.
Am I wrong or are we potentially at risk of confinement in a “camp” of some sort or even deportation.
I see a headline today from Democracy Docket that a Virginia court has said that Governor Glenn Youngkin’s attempt to remove Naturalized Citizens from the voter rolls has been reversed by a Federal Judge.
I’ve said that Trump, who has said that he would end Birthright Citizenship, wouldn’t stop at dreamers.
Now, the attack on Naturalized Citizens, one of my brothers is a Naturalized Citizen since he was born in Germany during our father’s military deployment there.
I don’t think it’s a stretch that it would eventually extend to anyone who was born in this country before it was a country, but referred to as, “The New World”.
Again, my family had its first ancestor born in 1635.
And here's the thing: This is not an abstract piece. This is not, "We will lose democracy. We will lose freedom." This is the mundane reality that will ruin your life. Add to this the need to learn what the going bribe-rate is to get any kind of government service or the going rate for police "protection." Add in the reality your and your family's ability to succeed in education, employment, running a small business, practicing any religion, speaking your mind, will all depend on who you know or can pay off in some way. And even that will be no guarantee of safety. This is a version of Hell.
Timothy Snyder, you are a national treasure. Blending current affairs with the tack that Hitler took against the Jews would be a powerful ad for the Harris campaign.
When Trump ran in 2016, I thought it was a joke. We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby hustler masquerading as a big shot, a two-bit playboy lying his way into the tabloids.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Now, like a recurring nightmare, it can happen again. And with Project 2025 and a rogue Supreme Court that gave him criminal immunity, it will be even worse.
Thank God there’s a solution: Electing Kamala Harris. - Robert De Niro 🗳️
On the point of deporting people who think they are US citizens,, I set myself forth as an example. The child of divorce, I cannot prove that my biological father was a US citizen, and although I have my mother's birth certificate as well as my own, per the proposals of Mr. Miller that does nothing to prove that I am a US citizen. To really establish that I am, it would be necessary for me to prove that all my grandparents or great grand parents, as the case may be, had naturalization papers. This I cannot do.
The fact that I was in the US military and both then and subsequently held multiple security clearances is irrelevant, first because foreigners have frequently served in the US military and second because the investigations for security clearances do not delve deeply into the matter of citizenship, assuming, as it were, that if you were born here you are a citizen.
I raise this point to remind everyone that in MAGA Amerika you cannot count on the color of your skin or your perception of belonging here to protect you from the evil afoot.
In the archives of my family we have a government issued booklet of my great-grandmother from the Nazi era recording (or leaving blank) ancestry, with which people had to demonstrate that they were Aryan (Arier Nachweis), going back 4 generations from their birth, which was 1904 in the case of the great-grandmotehr and 1925 in the case of my grandmother. This particular book has blanks, they could not trace everybody back then I suppose.
To think that a Nation formed by immigrants who escaped a tyrannical King to form something new and more just (committing a lot of injustices and crimes in the process, for sure) is on the brink of getting a government that threatens to resort to Nazi crimes is unfathomable and scary to the bone.
There is one more point: Latinos will be the first targets, but as always, there will be others. Other immigrants, Jews of course, progressives, and anyone else that Trump or Stephen Miller or Thomas Homans or other sycophants decide are their enemies. Trump said he'd be a "dictator on day one" - but of course I cannot remember ANY dictator for only one day in world history. It's too intoxicating to continue getting rid of people. So anyone who believes that "it won't happen to me" is dreaming.
They have been talking about denationalizing people-taking away citizenship from legally naturalized citizens. I am absolutely terrified-they will not stop with undocumented people. And they will punish anyone who tries to help or hide targeted people. I’m nauseous just typing this.
Same
People may have forgotten the China Initiative that allowed the arrest of Chinese Americans on suspicion of spying without any credible evidence during the Trump Administration. Dr. Gang Chen was abruptly arrested at his home and incarcerated on the allegation of spying, but later all charges were dropped on lack of evidence. This kind of terrorism will be rampant. Non-Christians will also be targets.
The GOP has been captured by fraudsters & power by any means authoritarians. The projection & propaganda never stops.
Trump, Vance & their election denying sycophants can’t handle the truth threatening fact checkers, whistleblowers & truth tellers with retribution. https://wapo.st/3XXgHPt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaL0eCSFHGU
Trump & MAGA whine about booming Bidenomics: 98% of jobs created since 1989 were created during Democratic administrations. Republicans have lost jobs while ballooning the deficit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbPBuk5QoV8 Trump's top general calls Trump "a fascist to the core...the most dangerous person to this country” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98OkyUCJ6V0” MSNBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJy155VKcN8. Meidas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hWHj5KwGlw Bulwark
How tf is this race close?
It is terrifying. trump should never have been in this race. Tells us right there he can get away with anything. Supreme Court backs him.
It may NOT be. It's corporate media and pundits of every stripe telling us it is. Observation on the ground suggests otherwise. One glaring problem is how questions are asked, often leading to ambiguous answers that then get interpreted! JMO
How is it that Biden sends bombs to help PM Netanyahu kill innocent civilians, in Gaza and Lebanon? I worry about us. isn't silence complicity? And I'm a Harris/Walz voter unhappy about the Biden policy of unconditional support for a leader who uses our bombs to kill innocent Gazan civilians.
How is it that Gazans offer themselves as human shields and die? Seems to me their lives are better spent to fight and die, if needs be, for their future, a Country called Palestine. As it stands, they don't fight for anything. They go along to get along with Hamas that has no vision of a Country called Palestine, while the West, the UN pours money at them.
Fight for something if you're going to die anyway, because Hamas is making sure you do. Using you as human shields - your schools, your places of worship, your hospitals, the apartment buildings you live in. Did Hamas tell/warn you that Israel isn't playing that game anymore after October 7?
Surely they knew what would follow.
I spoke yesterday to a young man from Michigan, a progressive Jew, who feared that in his Michigan district BOTH the Arab and the Jewish vote will break for tRump because of this conflict, which seems "insane" to me.
I have been thinking about this a lot because what is happening in Gaza to so many innocent people makes me sick and points out I can do nothing. There is nothing I or any group can say to persuade any elected representatives to suspend supporting Israel until they stop the murder of innocent people. I know the U.S. will not alter its policy. How can that be? I think we continue helping Israel so Russia does not. I think we have painted ourselves in the proverbial corner. We have this huge weapons industry (for profit and privatized of course) that has created billionaires and probably props up the economies of other countries. We created the monster world-destroying nuclear weapons. Both Russia and Israel possess nuclear weapons. A chess game imperiling the whole of humanity. Now what? We pick DJT and we give up our Democray, Russia is given a green light and Europe is left in the lurch or we pick Harris and pray!
This is the attitude of helplessness that Strongman autocratic oligarchs cultivate and love in the governed! Learned helplessness! Anticipatory obedience! We, lovers of America and it is constitutional values of democracy must never give up! Never! I am watching Silicon Valley Billionaires, Wealthy Opportunists,Christian Nationalist Groups (eg.SCOTUS Trump justices). Mary Ellen! Vote! Vote like you can help innocent people! Voting 3rd party helps dictator-loving, mass deportation-loving Trump oligarch nationalists. Read Timothy Snyder’s short powerful pamphlet “On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th Century” (122 short pages for hope).
I am really getting scared. I'm scared what will happen to the economy if The Bloated Yam gets in and what will happen with the work force when he deports the hard working undocumented workers we desperately need here in NC. At 83, I am suddenly truly scared.
Thank you. I follow Prof. Snyder and have read many of his books. I'm Scared too. I need Hope. I Voted for Kamala Harris. I'm sending out reminders to people to vote. Can we each do our part to elect Harris? Our civil society, democracy, our lives depend on it, Kit.
I wasn't afraid earlier, but as we get closer to the election, I seriously worry about the "no confidence voters". Those who strongly oppose US arming Israel for instance, and the refusal of Biden/Harris to take a stand against genocide, which now includes Lebanon! Terrified the votes will be so close that there will be a coup of unprecedented proportions.
I'm reading "on Freedom". It is fabulous, Timothy. You bring it together nicely so far. At 71 there are so many of the stories you tell that I have experienced. I was a pain in my teachers' arse because I always asked 'Why' or discussed why the question did not lead us to anything new, but if you would ask it this way...then...Great book so far. Thanks
From 'Deportation Nation’ by Timothy Snyder:
Deporting 10 million people as Trump and his party promise is about human beings being deported – 1 person times 10 million; it will bring violence all over the country; deportation will involve people you know; it will separate families; on this scale - with the mass deportation of 10 million people - there will be mistakes - you or your mother or friend could be one of them; ‘it will cause a culture of denunciation, it has to’ …you have to worry about who is going to denounce you; you will be expected to help find undocumented people; there will be acts of resistance, which will generate hate against whole communities.
The point of this deportation is to turn us against one another. ‘It is going to affect everyone’.
Have you thought about Trump’s deportation plan and its costs to all of us?
The one question I have about his notion to deport so many people. WHERE does he intend to deport everyone to? What counties want trumps “cast-offs”; especially so many? Has anyone even asked the question of him?
Well said, Professor. Now will your message get to the people who vote. Will they connect your message to voting Harris and Not 3rd Party (ending up for Trump) My question for all who read this: How do we get your words to the people who can swing the voters toward Harris/Walz? I'm sending this, I hope, to my relatives and friends; can we each do our part. DONT GIVE UP!
Thanks for the lucid list. This is something I can share with people I know. And you didn't even mention the impact mass deportation will have on The World...the places to where the deportees are sent, the countries that follow the 'example' of the USA, the finite supply of housing/food/water. Your item about resistance leads to thoughts re, potential damage of civil unrest, opposition on a national scale, underground railroads, vigilantes...etc. etc. The list goes on and on.
Thanks for putting this so brutally. For years *I've* been trying to explain these things to people I know, and the response has usually been a blank stare followed by a change of the subject. I do hope others will listen to and take you seriously. Most Americans lack a knowledge base that they can look to as a comparison to what they experience in their own lives and for that reason do not know what is possible when certain conditions are met. Reading history *can* be soul-crushing, yes, but it can also lead us to a deeper understanding of life, indeed of everything. If you know that to understand history is to know what is possible, then with the help of others, you can protect society AND plan for a better future.
On a lighter note, when my siblings and I were very young, growing up in a house with ditches near the streets to carry rainwater rather than the more modern underground pipes, we were always puzzled that after a good rain, crawdads would suddenly appear in the ditches. We were much too young to understand how they lived, so we found something magical in their appearance. We would hover over them and marvel at them swimming about. After the ditches dried out we'd forget about them until the next time.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t trump say he would end “Birthright Citizenship”.
I don’t think he means just immigrants from countries that he doesn’t like.
That statement, if my memory hasn’t failed me, indicates that those of us with ancestors who came to this continent and delivered American offspring since the 1630’s will not be safe.
I was raised in a very WASPy family. When I learned that I didn’t have to follow my parent’s Evangelical Pentecostal religiosity, by proxy.
They were Christmas and Easter Christians who forced only the youngest three of 11 siblings to go every Sunday.
The preacher called my parents and notified them that I was not ready to accept the word of “God”, because they suspected that I might be gay. I was 8 years old at the time.
I wonder if the preacher knew the hell I was suffering at the hands of my parents and siblings on a daily basis, would he have said anything differently.
My father made sure that no one of power or influence would find out because we were repeatedly told that, “if anyone found out he would kill us.
I spent 18 years in that chaos.
Today I am a white male gay secular humanist. My Ancestors were Quakers.
Am I wrong or are we potentially at risk of confinement in a “camp” of some sort or even deportation.
I see a headline today from Democracy Docket that a Virginia court has said that Governor Glenn Youngkin’s attempt to remove Naturalized Citizens from the voter rolls has been reversed by a Federal Judge.
I’ve said that Trump, who has said that he would end Birthright Citizenship, wouldn’t stop at dreamers.
Now, the attack on Naturalized Citizens, one of my brothers is a Naturalized Citizen since he was born in Germany during our father’s military deployment there.
I don’t think it’s a stretch that it would eventually extend to anyone who was born in this country before it was a country, but referred to as, “The New World”.
Again, my family had its first ancestor born in 1635.
And here's the thing: This is not an abstract piece. This is not, "We will lose democracy. We will lose freedom." This is the mundane reality that will ruin your life. Add to this the need to learn what the going bribe-rate is to get any kind of government service or the going rate for police "protection." Add in the reality your and your family's ability to succeed in education, employment, running a small business, practicing any religion, speaking your mind, will all depend on who you know or can pay off in some way. And even that will be no guarantee of safety. This is a version of Hell.
Timothy Snyder, you are a national treasure. Blending current affairs with the tack that Hitler took against the Jews would be a powerful ad for the Harris campaign.
Thank you Professor Snyder.
Sharing.
This is so important. Thank you for making it clear. I wish more high profile people were talking about it.
thank you. shared widely
When Trump ran in 2016, I thought it was a joke. We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby hustler masquerading as a big shot, a two-bit playboy lying his way into the tabloids.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Now, like a recurring nightmare, it can happen again. And with Project 2025 and a rogue Supreme Court that gave him criminal immunity, it will be even worse.
Thank God there’s a solution: Electing Kamala Harris. - Robert De Niro 🗳️