As an onlooker in the UK, as someone with American kin, friends, as someone who knows we owe to America that we are not nazi slaves, that my Jewish father lived to father me, as someone who see that if America is lost, freedom everywhere is lost: I do not understand, I cannot understand, I shall be never understand, WHY you did not prosecute Trump for treason or insurrection, immediately after his coup failed. Instead you leave him, and his supporters, to organise better, and have another go . America has a death wish.
Thank you for your concise distillation of the January 6 report. It’s stark telling is more disturbing in its simplicity.
Your book, On Tyranny, was a book I bought by the dozen. I carried them with me and gave them to friends, neighbors, family, elected leaders, then buying more, and repeating. I have begged for accountability from elected leaders, and ran for office myself and was elected, thinking i could make a difference.
I was at work watching the coup happen. I listened to a client cheer the insurrectionists efforts. I had recently been to DC and spent time in the Capitol and was sickened listening and watching the violence.
All of this has happened in plain sight. Prosecuting the ring leaders must happen. Accountability.
I’ll buy more copies of On Tyranny. People have short attention spans and need reminding.
Tim, anybody with a sense of history could have seen this coup coming from miles away. Anybody with a knowledge of Trump and his ways of conducting business and ties to Russia and the mafia here and being trained by Roy Cohn could have seen this coming.
As you noted, Americans dismiss threats to democracy and have a strong sense of “It can’t happen here” as if we have a predestined place in history. During 2020 I was accused of being alarmist, a drama king, and that I did not know what I was talking about. My work colleagues in Canada could see it with alarm. Ironically, my wife who is a Spanish citizen and was born under Franco and has heard all the stories from first hand accounts thought I was blowing it out of proportion. You see, it is the US, and not Europe.
As I see it, in the words of Tom Nichols, we are not a serious country. We have become our own worst enemy. How? Education about history, politics, sociology, psychology and liberal arts in general have been demeaned and denigrated in favor of STEM. STEM graduates and professionals are in silos and know nothing about other areas. I see this in my work with engineers in the power and gas industry everyday.
Then there are the large numbers in our population who look down on education in general, whether out of resentment or lack of exposure, and insecurity. My grandparents looked at it as “long haired book learning” that has not practical application. That persists among a large share of the population to this day.
In short, as long as so many in this country do not value knowledge and education outside of their silos our democracy will remain in peril.
The Duke of Wellington, after the Allied victory at Waterloo, described it as a "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life." The coup attempt began months before January 6, and could also be described as the nearest-run thing. We need to remember that such an event can happen here, and could again since a sizeable minority of the population reject facts and a major party is willing to encourage and promote lies in order to preserve power.
I remember when I was in a favorite used bookstore (that also sells new books) with my kids, and was SO relieved to find, "On Tyranny". I bought it but it was set aside. I didn't really make a connection to Timothy Snyder for some reason until the Yale course on Ukrainian History was posted. I wish I had seen the other Timothy Snyder lectures all along Trump's presidency. I have double majors in German and Russian Studies and a minor, one credit short of a major, in history emphasizing Modern European History. From twenty years ago. I live in a rural area, and could see Timothy Snyder's predictions as accurately paralleling Hitler's rise to power so closely. For some reason I still wasn't connecting the name and face to, On Tyranny, and the predictions. I was scared of what was happening, and had no good way to convey what I too saw happening. Thank you so much Dr.Snyder for being a PUBLISHED voice standing up for a problem so many of us are witnessing, but can't publish or express ourselves. You are a HUGE psychological relief that there is someone out there saying something, and we are not alone. Your Ukrainian History class is much appreciated. I feel your pain about not taking your class outside on nice days. But, that class has filled in so many missing history points and has explained a lot. I was able to finally connect your face to your publications. And it has been a RELIEF. What I learned from Holocaust Literature classes was a warning from survivors to stand up and speak out as soon as we see authoritarianism rising. So many survivors stated their main regret was to NOT start saying something immediately. You have done this. And like we owe Ukraine, and like we owe Zelensky, we also owe you. ❤
This a a copy of my note to my family, forwarding the Snyder piece: The summary of 15 principal facts Prof. Snyder has pulled from the January 6 Report are stunning in their simplicity and meaning. I don't see how the AG can fail to indict Trump. If our laws don't compel prosecution for this treasonous behavior, what use are they to deter wrong-doing of the most evil kind? To say, as politicians have said over and over, "we can't allow this to happen again," and then take no prosecutorial steps to punish the wrong-doer and deter others is, to this citizen, incomprehensible. I hope the 15 points become mandatory subjects of instruction in grade and high schools. Bevis Longstreth
I could not be more grateful for you, Prof Snyder. I have been listening to you carefully since ~2019. I work at MIT & am very interested in American higher ed (esp our prestigious institutions, because they have the resource & microphone) to do more to harden American democracy against this ongoing threat. If you know of collective efforts underway in that regard, can you let me / us know? I feel like I’m whistling in the wind, would like to join forces with others.
You are good at this -- seeing and articulating what is really going on, especially when the "what" is mistaken for being less important than other, more stunning aspects of events or the spin given to them. Go you (and Hannah:) )
"There is a temptation to act as if something is not shocking if we have heard part of it before, as though this were a mark of political sophistication. "
"I love the uneducated". There is a clip of Trump saying this on Youtube. The GOP loves the uneducated. This is who they, the current GOP and Trumpists on Fox and in social media circles, cater to. This is not how we keep a democracy. The "Big Lie" was a brilliant epithet from the beginning, coined ( I read) by Hitler. But there has been a lack of messaging to correct the mis and disinformation, a lack of appeal, the ability to break the attachment people have to lies, to their tribal instincts and too easily to our lower natures. But we do have, maybe mainly, structural problems that may cause us to lose our country to this evil. (It is evil.) It seems to me that appealing to people's higher natures would work, at least for most. But it's work and a battle that must be engaged across the divide. Thank you for your work.
As your excellent series on the history of Ukraine teaches us, history repeats itself in ways that are utterly devastating. Why can’t we break this cycle? Why can we not convince our neighbours of the horrors of this cycle? Is there anything we can do to break this well known cycle? I guess we have to try harder, and not give up, for our children’s sake. I hope you continue to have the strength and patience to continue to kept trying to educate us. 
I made a comment on another Substack the other day. Trying to suggest one understanding of how it is possible that so many are attracted by someone who is totally defying to acknowledge losing, even when he has done so:
"As I explained in an earlier reply I refer to my experience of children comparing themselves with the others. I have been doing projects in schools where the children have been doing painting, masonry, carpentry, and theater in their environment outside of curriculum, without being graded. Sadly, it is my experience that all too many go to school to learn: 'I am not very good at this'. We need all teachers and grown ups, like you, to counter this, but we don't always control how we make others feel. My experience is from Sweden, but I think there is something similar in the US, and I would not say it is healthy that 70 million vote for Trump. His message never to accept being a loser is attractive for a reason."
This was in response to someone who thought I was pointing finger to "losers"; the sad thing is that so many are ascribing themselves to be "losers", in an environment of competition and lost or non existing opportunities.
The Remnick edition of the Committee report is due to arrive at my house on Friday. Usually I read in e-format these days, but this time I need to hold the real book in my hands and keep it safely on the shelves with my most valued books (On Tyrrany, text and graphic, among them).
As everyone else has said, thank you for this powerful, concise summary of the January 6 report. I am sharing it widely, so that the facts don't so easily get lost among people (like me) who may not easily find time to read the entire report soon.
Democracy in America has felt precarious for quite some time. January 6 was yet another shocking tipping point. As a nation, we certainly cannot afford to gloss over the importance of what occurred.
I watched the entire procession of events, January 6, because I had an ominous feeling about what was going to happen. I don’t have a TV or patience, normally, to watch any such public event, but did so, minute by minute. I saw the attack transpire and the hours before there was the military came in to restore order. I watched in agony the brave but feeble defense feeblest put up by a few, overwhelmed Capitol Police.
It was completely obvious to me and to anyone else still attached to reality what was going on, including that the Guard had to have been called off. And that order could have come from only one source. I was horrified by the whole thing--then and afterwards, deeply morally disgusted.
We have witnessed and endured such profound dishonesty and sickening collusion by those trying to gain power by the lowest means. This spectacle of January 6, and all its groundwork before and defense afterwards, has been allowed to happen, covered up and rationalized, with all blame redirected to critics, innocents and outsiders.
The visibly obvious perpetrators that day should have been hauled off to jail, to be followed, after quick and efficient investigation, by the leaders and colluders. But instead the American public has had to watch helplessly, and to pay and pay with our taxes, our energy and possibly our future, for what has been an unending display of deceitful and vicious childishness--venality, self aggrandizement and retaliation. This was the display of “power” laid out for all to see.
Cowardice is at the bottom of all this, the cardinal failing, I think. Americans accepted a put-up, fake leader--a pasteboard prop and model gliding down a golden elevator to the ground where the rest of us lived. But we were the ones debasing ourselves as we tried to try to make him and our contractual relationship with him be what it was not. All we had was an image, a cartoon form of American Royalty, a mouth full of poisonous manipulations and shameless lies. For all the sentient people who went along, debasement followed debasement in their desperate fervor to compel what was false to be true--which can never happen. Only the psychopaths, like Roger Stone, could laugh and jump with joy, possessing for that time what seemed to them like real freedom and happiness.
Was this whole exercise just a means to release the psychopaths in our midst, so they have their could run of elated lawlessness? Was this the “liberty and pursuit of happiness” so seriously laid down in our country’s founding documents, or rather its ugly, fand deformed imitation?
As an onlooker in the UK, as someone with American kin, friends, as someone who knows we owe to America that we are not nazi slaves, that my Jewish father lived to father me, as someone who see that if America is lost, freedom everywhere is lost: I do not understand, I cannot understand, I shall be never understand, WHY you did not prosecute Trump for treason or insurrection, immediately after his coup failed. Instead you leave him, and his supporters, to organise better, and have another go . America has a death wish.
Thank you for your concise distillation of the January 6 report. It’s stark telling is more disturbing in its simplicity.
Your book, On Tyranny, was a book I bought by the dozen. I carried them with me and gave them to friends, neighbors, family, elected leaders, then buying more, and repeating. I have begged for accountability from elected leaders, and ran for office myself and was elected, thinking i could make a difference.
I was at work watching the coup happen. I listened to a client cheer the insurrectionists efforts. I had recently been to DC and spent time in the Capitol and was sickened listening and watching the violence.
All of this has happened in plain sight. Prosecuting the ring leaders must happen. Accountability.
I’ll buy more copies of On Tyranny. People have short attention spans and need reminding.
Tim, anybody with a sense of history could have seen this coup coming from miles away. Anybody with a knowledge of Trump and his ways of conducting business and ties to Russia and the mafia here and being trained by Roy Cohn could have seen this coming.
As you noted, Americans dismiss threats to democracy and have a strong sense of “It can’t happen here” as if we have a predestined place in history. During 2020 I was accused of being alarmist, a drama king, and that I did not know what I was talking about. My work colleagues in Canada could see it with alarm. Ironically, my wife who is a Spanish citizen and was born under Franco and has heard all the stories from first hand accounts thought I was blowing it out of proportion. You see, it is the US, and not Europe.
As I see it, in the words of Tom Nichols, we are not a serious country. We have become our own worst enemy. How? Education about history, politics, sociology, psychology and liberal arts in general have been demeaned and denigrated in favor of STEM. STEM graduates and professionals are in silos and know nothing about other areas. I see this in my work with engineers in the power and gas industry everyday.
Then there are the large numbers in our population who look down on education in general, whether out of resentment or lack of exposure, and insecurity. My grandparents looked at it as “long haired book learning” that has not practical application. That persists among a large share of the population to this day.
In short, as long as so many in this country do not value knowledge and education outside of their silos our democracy will remain in peril.
The Duke of Wellington, after the Allied victory at Waterloo, described it as a "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life." The coup attempt began months before January 6, and could also be described as the nearest-run thing. We need to remember that such an event can happen here, and could again since a sizeable minority of the population reject facts and a major party is willing to encourage and promote lies in order to preserve power.
I remember when I was in a favorite used bookstore (that also sells new books) with my kids, and was SO relieved to find, "On Tyranny". I bought it but it was set aside. I didn't really make a connection to Timothy Snyder for some reason until the Yale course on Ukrainian History was posted. I wish I had seen the other Timothy Snyder lectures all along Trump's presidency. I have double majors in German and Russian Studies and a minor, one credit short of a major, in history emphasizing Modern European History. From twenty years ago. I live in a rural area, and could see Timothy Snyder's predictions as accurately paralleling Hitler's rise to power so closely. For some reason I still wasn't connecting the name and face to, On Tyranny, and the predictions. I was scared of what was happening, and had no good way to convey what I too saw happening. Thank you so much Dr.Snyder for being a PUBLISHED voice standing up for a problem so many of us are witnessing, but can't publish or express ourselves. You are a HUGE psychological relief that there is someone out there saying something, and we are not alone. Your Ukrainian History class is much appreciated. I feel your pain about not taking your class outside on nice days. But, that class has filled in so many missing history points and has explained a lot. I was able to finally connect your face to your publications. And it has been a RELIEF. What I learned from Holocaust Literature classes was a warning from survivors to stand up and speak out as soon as we see authoritarianism rising. So many survivors stated their main regret was to NOT start saying something immediately. You have done this. And like we owe Ukraine, and like we owe Zelensky, we also owe you. ❤
Thank you !
How could the United States allow such a serious gesture of affront and contempt to go unpunished?
From 🇨🇦
This a a copy of my note to my family, forwarding the Snyder piece: The summary of 15 principal facts Prof. Snyder has pulled from the January 6 Report are stunning in their simplicity and meaning. I don't see how the AG can fail to indict Trump. If our laws don't compel prosecution for this treasonous behavior, what use are they to deter wrong-doing of the most evil kind? To say, as politicians have said over and over, "we can't allow this to happen again," and then take no prosecutorial steps to punish the wrong-doer and deter others is, to this citizen, incomprehensible. I hope the 15 points become mandatory subjects of instruction in grade and high schools. Bevis Longstreth
I could not be more grateful for you, Prof Snyder. I have been listening to you carefully since ~2019. I work at MIT & am very interested in American higher ed (esp our prestigious institutions, because they have the resource & microphone) to do more to harden American democracy against this ongoing threat. If you know of collective efforts underway in that regard, can you let me / us know? I feel like I’m whistling in the wind, would like to join forces with others.
You are good at this -- seeing and articulating what is really going on, especially when the "what" is mistaken for being less important than other, more stunning aspects of events or the spin given to them. Go you (and Hannah:) )
"There is a temptation to act as if something is not shocking if we have heard part of it before, as though this were a mark of political sophistication. "
"I love the uneducated". There is a clip of Trump saying this on Youtube. The GOP loves the uneducated. This is who they, the current GOP and Trumpists on Fox and in social media circles, cater to. This is not how we keep a democracy. The "Big Lie" was a brilliant epithet from the beginning, coined ( I read) by Hitler. But there has been a lack of messaging to correct the mis and disinformation, a lack of appeal, the ability to break the attachment people have to lies, to their tribal instincts and too easily to our lower natures. But we do have, maybe mainly, structural problems that may cause us to lose our country to this evil. (It is evil.) It seems to me that appealing to people's higher natures would work, at least for most. But it's work and a battle that must be engaged across the divide. Thank you for your work.
As your excellent series on the history of Ukraine teaches us, history repeats itself in ways that are utterly devastating. Why can’t we break this cycle? Why can we not convince our neighbours of the horrors of this cycle? Is there anything we can do to break this well known cycle? I guess we have to try harder, and not give up, for our children’s sake. I hope you continue to have the strength and patience to continue to kept trying to educate us. 
Thanks. This was a great breakdown of the report. On Tyranny was a game changer. I reread it regularly. Your insights are greatly appreciated.
I made a comment on another Substack the other day. Trying to suggest one understanding of how it is possible that so many are attracted by someone who is totally defying to acknowledge losing, even when he has done so:
"As I explained in an earlier reply I refer to my experience of children comparing themselves with the others. I have been doing projects in schools where the children have been doing painting, masonry, carpentry, and theater in their environment outside of curriculum, without being graded. Sadly, it is my experience that all too many go to school to learn: 'I am not very good at this'. We need all teachers and grown ups, like you, to counter this, but we don't always control how we make others feel. My experience is from Sweden, but I think there is something similar in the US, and I would not say it is healthy that 70 million vote for Trump. His message never to accept being a loser is attractive for a reason."
This was in response to someone who thought I was pointing finger to "losers"; the sad thing is that so many are ascribing themselves to be "losers", in an environment of competition and lost or non existing opportunities.
The Remnick edition of the Committee report is due to arrive at my house on Friday. Usually I read in e-format these days, but this time I need to hold the real book in my hands and keep it safely on the shelves with my most valued books (On Tyrrany, text and graphic, among them).
As everyone else has said, thank you for this powerful, concise summary of the January 6 report. I am sharing it widely, so that the facts don't so easily get lost among people (like me) who may not easily find time to read the entire report soon.
Democracy in America has felt precarious for quite some time. January 6 was yet another shocking tipping point. As a nation, we certainly cannot afford to gloss over the importance of what occurred.
I watched the entire procession of events, January 6, because I had an ominous feeling about what was going to happen. I don’t have a TV or patience, normally, to watch any such public event, but did so, minute by minute. I saw the attack transpire and the hours before there was the military came in to restore order. I watched in agony the brave but feeble defense feeblest put up by a few, overwhelmed Capitol Police.
It was completely obvious to me and to anyone else still attached to reality what was going on, including that the Guard had to have been called off. And that order could have come from only one source. I was horrified by the whole thing--then and afterwards, deeply morally disgusted.
We have witnessed and endured such profound dishonesty and sickening collusion by those trying to gain power by the lowest means. This spectacle of January 6, and all its groundwork before and defense afterwards, has been allowed to happen, covered up and rationalized, with all blame redirected to critics, innocents and outsiders.
The visibly obvious perpetrators that day should have been hauled off to jail, to be followed, after quick and efficient investigation, by the leaders and colluders. But instead the American public has had to watch helplessly, and to pay and pay with our taxes, our energy and possibly our future, for what has been an unending display of deceitful and vicious childishness--venality, self aggrandizement and retaliation. This was the display of “power” laid out for all to see.
Cowardice is at the bottom of all this, the cardinal failing, I think. Americans accepted a put-up, fake leader--a pasteboard prop and model gliding down a golden elevator to the ground where the rest of us lived. But we were the ones debasing ourselves as we tried to try to make him and our contractual relationship with him be what it was not. All we had was an image, a cartoon form of American Royalty, a mouth full of poisonous manipulations and shameless lies. For all the sentient people who went along, debasement followed debasement in their desperate fervor to compel what was false to be true--which can never happen. Only the psychopaths, like Roger Stone, could laugh and jump with joy, possessing for that time what seemed to them like real freedom and happiness.
Was this whole exercise just a means to release the psychopaths in our midst, so they have their could run of elated lawlessness? Was this the “liberty and pursuit of happiness” so seriously laid down in our country’s founding documents, or rather its ugly, fand deformed imitation?