“…my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory”
Apropos of nothing.
Timothy Snyder – 20 Lessons on Tyranny:
1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about — a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union — and take its side.
3. Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.
4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
5. Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.
6. Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.
7. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.
8. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
9. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.
10. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
11. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.
12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
13. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
14. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.
15. Contribute to good causes. Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.
16. Learn from peers in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.
17. Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to use of the words “extremism” and “terrorism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “emergency” and “exception.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.
19. Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.
20. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.
These lessons are the openings of the twenty chapters of my little 2017 book On Tyranny, which has just been lightly edited since in successive printings to account for the Big Lie, the coup attempt, the war in Ukraine, and the risks we face in 2024. The lessons remain the same. On Tyranny has also been published in a beautiful graphic edition, illustrated by Nora Krug. For my positive ideas about liberty, see my new book, On Freedom.
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“judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.”
Isaiah 59:14, KJV
Trump personally lacks a few things compared to Hitler. He’s doesn’t have a coherent philosophy other than his own narcissism, and he doesn’t have his own army of brown shirts (he probably has many willing to be, though).
But, my worry is that Trump will be setting up favorable conditions for some future party or leader which does have a coherent philosophy (Christian nationalists, economic libertarians, populist oligarchs, a combination of that), and a lot of this will be the quieter behind-the-scenes stuff of packing our bureaucracy, courts, and military with loyalists, changing rules in the legislature, adding powers to the executive branch, and changing society by educational practices and by consolidating far right news while weakening leftist and centrist sources. In and of themselves, they might not be big splashy problems that gain the public’s attention and immediate concern.
Trump won’t be here forever, or even that much longer, but his effects could be. If that effect is large enough, a future authoritarian leader or party wouldn’t even really need a brown shirt militia. A steady erosion of norms and safeguards can be as deadly to democracy as a sudden revolution.
I’ll nitpick Biden on a couple small things. I think he shouldn’t have pardoned Fauci and the others. Assuming Trump would have gone after them, I think the public outcry would have been massively against it, weakening Trump’s position. Blanket pardons remove that, actually protecting Trump from his own worst instincts, while also tending to make Fauci and the others look guilty to large segments of our country.
Secondly, once it was clear that Trump was going to give TikTok an extra 90 days for the sale, Biden should have announced the same thing. As it was, it just gave Trump some free political capital with a bunch of younger voters.
“I think the public outcry would have been massively against it…”
Give me an example of public outcry stopping Trump. (Besides the speech where he recommended vaccination and the MAGA audience booed him into backtracking.)
Keeping his personal businesses instead of putting them in a trust? Blocking Muslims from entering the US? (That was overridden in court.) Using his family as official White House officials? Separating immigrant children from their families? Making nice to Kim Jong Un? Charging the Secret Service high rates to stay in his hotels?
Maintaining a dictatorship in a nominal democracy is damn common. Then, quoting numerous Americans, unspecific because I can’t remember who, USA is not technically a democracy but a republic. Things like the electoral college make it incredibly easy to modify election results despite majority wishes and the population already accepts a political supreme court. Gods hope you are correct James William, but I am going to pointlessly panic until the vindictive psychopathic moron is gone.
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-end-of-america/
I can’t help thinking the mango mussolini’s policies will ruin him. Tariffs and deportations will be hell on the price of construction materials and labor, not to mention food. He is setting the very traps that will snare him. And should bird flu begin to spread person to person and RFK jr is at HHS, holy shit.
I do feel despair at this moment, I was born post world war 2, in Germany, my father was in the British army, and was in Berlin during the surrender, he stayed to help rebuild German transportation, with the Royal Engineers, post the Nazi era. The big winners of the war were big business families who built the war machines, and they flaunted their wealth at the end of it all, with the defeated and bedraggled German public applauding them, when they appeared in public. Now I see Trump and his family, in fine attire it reminds me of that time, and the Krupp family in particular.
I read wealthy businessmen saying they want to smash the “woke” . The opposite of “woke” is asleep, do they want their customers to be in the state of sleep ?, without any humanity and unaware of what is happening.
Have we re-winded time ?
Yes we have indeed done just that and I shed a tear for humanity.
There is a classic 1941 article from Harper’s Magazine, ““Who Goes Nazi?”, by Dorothy Thompson. She had lived in Europe when the Nazis sprouted, and was in her article predicting who in the US would likely go Nazi. It’s an interesting read.