> Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

Well said.

Hannah Arendt wrote a great book about this, but it sounds like you might have already read it.

I haven't. I would imagine Timothy Snyder is an avid fan of, if not a major historian of, Hannah Arendt and I probably got that through Snyder. I had actually not heard of her specifically yet.

https://history.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-has-been-awarde...

Apparently Snyder received the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.

He quotes her here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/04/preparing-for-an...

After the Reichstag fire, political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote that “I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.” Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.