Quick comment from me, not to the direct point in this post, which I like too, but on something about Snyder which I learned (just off-hand) from a colleague within the past 2 weeks.
These ideas about the language of inevitability as one of the devices of tyrants was, I think, argued in much the same terms by Hannah Arendt, and Snyder continues in that framework, continuing to test and develop it. What I learned is that he expanded another of her ideas in a place she didn’t get to. This question of whether ethno-states are the only long-term attractor forms for states is being tested again in this era, to a degree it never really was before. Somewhat in the early 20th century, but the notion that rights-based states would fill the world was still nascent then. Arendt argues that the “universal rights of man” were articulated at a time when the number and sizes of groups of stateless people was on the rise. But at the end of the various competitions, this notion of “man” was diaphanous enough that these supposed “rights” didn’t actually protect anybody who wasn’t already being protected by a state under its charter. The waves of the stateless was both a human calamity in its own terms, but also a source of stress that the totalitarians were able to use to activate the masses into motion in “the movements” as she calls them. She even called the Israel-Palestine disaster exactly, right away at the beginning of its formation. Saying that, because Europe had never properly corrected its problem of generating stateless people, it then exported that problem to the middle east by constructing a new class of stateless people, now the Palestinian Arabs. Much else, of course, has always been ongoing in the region, with its local interests and competitions, of course, so one doesn’t want to seek one-factor analyses. But this one factor, for the part it plays, seems exactly rightly articulated by her, to me. What the colleague told me is that Snyder wanted to check whether this was a good argument, and followed it up by a comparison of the situation of Romanian Jews, who were given statehood, to the many others who were not, through the era of the two world wars. He concludes that Arendt’s analysis is a good one, though there were other stresses in Romania at the time that make deconvolving the various threads of causation something one has to put in work to do. I like these kinds of work put in by historians, when they are done really well. Eric > On Aug 11, 2024, at 5:46, Jon Zingale <jonzing...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I appreciate Timothy's warning for why historians should be sensitive to the > use of telic political exposition. That is, he shows why defining telos in > terms of finality or pre-determination is both useful and important. In the > lecture, Timothy describes a well-known tyrant's *love letter* to a nation, > which I find strangely reminiscent of Frank Booth's threat to Jeffrey > Beaumont in Blue Velvet. The telos expressed is one of inevitability. Timothy > warns: > > "When a tyrant makes an argument for how history *has to be*, then some of > the forces that are actually resonant in history get classified as being > ahistorical or nonhistorical or exotic or alien." > > He then elaborates on how this Tyrant's premise and derived predicates lead > to a logic of ethnic cleansing, a foundation or a rationale for war. I have > just started the lecture series. I hope it remains this rich. For those > interested, the lecture is queued to where this post is intended to be a > reference. > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_&index=1&t=720s > > While I am personally appalled at what is happening in Ukraine, I am not > intending to post here on politics. I am interested in Timothy's modelling of > the argument, how important it is to his argument that one does not erase > human agency when describing human history. His perspective reminds me of why > it is important to know *for what use* a person fixes the meaning of a word > like telos. > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,7PgK-ca9PuF2-5-w1q3KYe-E2213L4MyNVE0eOe4I6AuKf-50AVzwP8-OXVCIE_xrJqNpIs-BwXpk8kjKtUUthb1dvMrVifpf6x6ig5FemUtKw,,&typo=1 > to (un)subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,Z30HgI20pElCVbIvYbSYIDeI9c4Mq4cQI9ANDQhNQskx44PAac4N-9zCyRB-VFdN8oQQyTjvC3NMD1gz0wDnDbKe4-5bTm__LJz3hvXOERyrQrZze8b8YrKgiKY,&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,_7AWi1tLP3N6wntVJDLGRTDQHu04eMHEhVm1dMKvfxO-VbZT3bU6Jr4VGHiQsOrQplcz5huWROhD7o_STxfY3WoSeX29Lv8g-03PxxwiQm3rS20,&typo=1 > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,1LSvaSnJ4kVtVCCJG8Jar7PqdZ0BHsPWs747ALN0dBDf-ZUDISJ58nJrw_Db2uAP9mMOudoXaK4Qzl1qHibtXfy8JHF4EyLKm_ubVNOBUKu3zhMlfZpZjds,&typo=1 > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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