Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University. He speaks five and reads ten European languages. His specialization is Eastern European history and the Holocaust. I learned about him recently as one of three scholars who will be teaching at the Munk School in the University of Toronto in response to policies instituted by Donald Trump.
Timothy Snyder has written a book entitled On Tyranny which describes how one should respond to growing fascism. He has also posted twenty short videos about this book on YouTube. A 65 page essay has been uploaded which analyzes those videos in the light of mental symmetry.
Snyder’s statements are insightful and highly relevant. However, one can tell that Snyder is writing as a historian and not as a psychologist. He focuses upon describing the personal and political behavior that leads towards tyranny and fascism while spending less time examining the mindset that drives this behavior. The essay that I have posted uses mental symmetry to provide a cognitive explanation for the physical behavior that Snyder is describing.
Snyder also lacks a general Teacher theory within which to place his carefully researched statements. Instead, he keeps returning to the concept of ‘one person one vote’. The right to vote is fundamental, but what is even more fundamental is being able to choose between good political candidates. Being able to vote will not lead away from tyranny if all the candidates are promoting some form of tyranny. Cognitively speaking, the concept of ‘one person one vote’ is a Teacher overgeneralization: it is a sweeping statement that ignores factual details. An overgeneralization will generate the feeling of having a general Teacher theory, but it lacks the substance of a genuine Teacher theory.
Summarizing, I suggest that Snyder accurately describes the personal and political behavior that leads toward tyranny. Thus, On Tyranny is definitely worth reading and studying. But he describes external behavior as a historian rather than examining internal motivation as a psychologist. And the Teacher theory that he uses to bring unity to his descriptions is inadequate.