The ideal capitalism envisioned by advocates of the free market depends upon social virtues and wise policies that it does not itself generate. - Timothy Snyder

If we don't have access to facts, we can't trust each other. Without trust, there's no law. Without law, there's no democracy. So, if you want to rip the heart out of a democracy directly -- if you wanna go right at it and kill it -- what you do is, you go after facts. And that's what modern authoritarians do. Step one: You lie yourself, all the time. Step two: You say it's your opponents and the journalists who lie. Step three: Everyone looks around and says "What is truth? There is no truth." And then resistance is impossible and the game's over.

The fascism of the 1920s and 1930s, Ilyin’s era, had three core features: it celebrated will and violence over reason and law; it proposed a leader with a mystical connection to his people; and it characterized globalization as a conspiracy rather than as a set of problems. Revived today in conditions of inequality as a politics of eternity, fascism serves oligarchs as a catalyst for transitions away from public discussion and towards political fiction; away from meaningful voting and towards fake democracy; away from the rule of law and towards personalist regimes.

In a new Russian colonialism that began in 2013, Russian leaders and propagandists imagined neighboring Ukrainians out of existence or presented them as sub-Russians. In characterizations that recall what Hitler said about Ukrainians (and Russians), Russian leaders described Ukraine as an artificial entity with no history, culture, and language, backed by some global agglomeration of Jews, gays, Europeans, and Americans.