Pigs (Symbol)
Snyder writes about how powerful symbols are, and uses the example of pigs. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, pigs represented prosperous farmers. They were on posters dehumanizing and denigrating them, and since it was a rural setting, the suggestion was slaughter of those farmers. For "those who followed the symbolic logic," they "became victims in their turn" (33). Poorer peasants were easily swayed against the richer due to the power of this symbolism.
Swastikas (Symbol)
The swastika is one of the most powerful symbols of the 20th and 21st centuries, suggesting fascism, white supremacy, murder, persecution, and more. Snyder writes that "what might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion" (35), as it was during Nazi Germany as well as today.
The Capitol (Symbol)
Snyder mentions the attack on the Capitol a few times, noting that if it had succeeded, our democracy as we knew it would have been over. One of the main reasons Trump sicced his followers on that building was symbolic, for the Capitol represents the seat of American democracy. The building houses the mechanisms of democracy, and an attack on it is an attack on democracy. Trump knew exactly what he was doing even if his individual followers did not.
Language (Motif)
Snyder frequently invokes the power of words and language to show how tyrants amass their power. They use simple words without precise meanings; their words exclude instead of include; they lie and obfuscate and rile and provoke and enrage.
Spectacle (Motif)
Americans love the spectacle, the drama, the conspiracy, the two-dimensional, the lurid. This means that they are not actually engaging with truth or nuance, making it easier for them to construct a shallow, self-absorbed view of the world that tyrants can exploit to come to power.
