“The Reichstag Warning” is a short essay by Timothy Snyder just published in The New York Review of Books (NYRB). Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University. You might have read his widely shared post on 20 lessons from the 20th century on Facebook from November on how to resist the spread of fascism in Trump-ruled America.
In his latest essay, Snyder warns about how terrorism will be used to destroy (“deconstruct” in Trump speak) our American democracy. He wrote:
The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize upon some dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.” What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. […]
In 1989, two centuries after our Constitution was promulgated, the man who is now our president wrote that “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.” For much of the Western world, that was a moment when both security and liberty seemed to be expanding. 1989 was a year of liberation, as communist regimes came to an end in eastern Europe and new democracies were established. Yet that wave of democratization has since fallen under the glimmering shadow of the burning Reichstag. The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror—real or fake, provoked or accidental—can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.
Responding to terrorism is the proven justification that an “aspiring” tyrant will use to gain control and undo democracy. Hitler blamed terrorists in 1933 and seized control of Germany. Putin blamed terrorists in 1999 and seized control of Russia. Already, Trump and his cronies have weakened our national security with the point of inviting a terrorist attack.
“If we know the history of terror manipulation, we can recognize the danger signs, and be prepared to react,” Synder wrote.