On Tyranny

Lawyers helped carry out the expulsion and execution of Jews in Nazi Germany. Doctors performed medical experiments on the victims. Business leaders used Jewish slave labor. Each group abandons its code of conduct to do so:

Snyder writes that “[p]rofessional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as ‘just following orders’” (41). Otherwise, professionals “can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable” (41). 

Democratic institutions are possible only when the central government holds a monopoly on violence. If, however, paramilitary groups form around a politician, and the central government is too weak to oppose them, these groups can take power. In Germany, “Nazi storm troopers began as a security detail clearing the halls of Hitler’s opponents during his rallies. As paramilitaries known as the SA and the SS, they created a climate of fear that helped the Nazi Party in the parliamentary elections of 1932 and 1933” (44).

In the US, during and after the 2016 campaign, the candidate who later becomes president uses a private security force to remove dissenters from his political rallies. He “also encouraged the

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