Snyder's Anti-Tyranny Video Starring Ruffalo, Parker, Atwood
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- Timothy Snyder assembled more than two dozen public figures to recite instructions from his 2017 book 'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' in a video released July 4th and exclusively debuted by Variety.
- The video's participants include Mark Ruffalo, Sarah Jessica Parker, Margaret Atwood, Judd Apatow, Joan Baez, Maria Ressa, Ted Danson, Eric Holder, Bradley Whitford, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and roughly 15 other actors, activists, scholars and comedians delivering lessons such as 'defend institutions' and 'believe in truth.'
- Snyder's book analyzed what he called 'America's turn toward authoritarianism' under Trump by examining how 20th-century European democracies transmogrified into dictatorships.
- Mark Ruffalo told Variety he hopes America moves away from 'a government that caters to the wealthy and powerful' toward one focused on 'the needs, desires and dreams of the children and young people' and embracing Indigenous worldviews.
- Sarah Jessica Parker bookends the video with narration closing on: 'The next 250 years begin now. What happens next is not inevitable. It depends on us.'
- The project launched as Trump marked America's 250th anniversary with celebrations the source characterizes as 'gaudy displays honoring himself.'
Why it matters: The video gives Snyder's 2017 anti-authoritarian framework a celebrity-amplified platform timed to the nation's 250th birthday, reframing July 4th from patriotic celebration to civic warning. Ruffalo's statements push beyond democracy rhetoric into explicit critiques of wealth inequality and colonial extraction, signaling that the participants see this as more than a symbolic gesture — they want policy-level change.
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