“Stand out... Believe in truth... Investigate!”
/On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder
I can’t recall ever reading a simpler, clearer, more readable – but absolutely valuable – book than this one by Yale University history professor and revered, prolific author, Timothy Snyder. And, depending on how you feel about what lies ahead for our democracy, this powerful, easy read might be just what you’re looking for. I’ve read the book twice because it has so much to offer – and asks so little of the reader. Much of what I present here will be taken verbatim from Snyder’s book, because, in most cases, I can’t possibly summarize a point more succinctly or more powerfully than he does. Let’s get started.
“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” So begins the prologue of this little handbook for resisting tyranny. Snyder says our founding fathers wished to avoid mistakes of the past, and one of them was definitely tyranny. If we are worried now, he says, we can follow their example and “contemplate the history of other democracies and republics.” Modern democracy, he asserts, is in a state of “decline and fall.” He outlines the globalization of the twentieth century, stating that “both fascism and communism were responses to globalization.” He notes the collapse of European democracies in the 1920s and ‘30s and the 7-decade grip of the communist Soviet Union.
“We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex... Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century.” And so he offers us 20 simple lessons from the past century, “adapted to the circumstances of today.” I will summarize each lesson briefly, and then I hope you will go out and get this very concise, readable book and devour it.
1. Do not obey in advance. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” Citing Germany after Hitler was elected and Czechoslovakia a few years later, Snyder says that people in both cases “voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders,” and that act could not be reversed. Often, he explains, people guess what their new superiors want and demonstrate its possibility. “At the very beginning, anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflecting, to a new situation.”
Snyder describes a 1961 experiment at Yale University in which subjects of various ages were told they’d be applying electric shock to other participants. Those other participants, though, were acting, only pretending to be shocked, pounding the glass between the two teams, complaining of heart pain. Some appeared to die, and still the test subjects continued to apply the apparent electricity as they had been instructed – and then left without inquiring about the health of the people they thought they’d electrocuted. The man conducting the test noted “that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting... if they are so instructed by a new authority.”
2. Defend institutions. “Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other...” German Jews, Snyder points out, responded to the new empowerment of Hitler with the belief that his forces “will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights... because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check.” They determined not to revisit their “earlier oppositional posture.” It seemed a reasonable view; we now know it was not. When a leader comes to power through an institution, promising to destroy that institution, the author warns, believe him. Institutions might be “deprived of vitality and function” or “humbled,” he says. The hope that a gesture of loyalty might “bind the new system to them” could be a vain hope, he concludes.
3. Beware the one-party state. Snyder advises, “support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote... while you can. Consider running for office.” Do not view our democracy as a city on a hill, defending itself only from outside threats, he warns. Even promising democracies have collapsed “when a single party seized power in some combination of an election and a coup d’etat. A party emboldened by a favorable election result, or denying an unfavorable one, might change the system from within.” Again he cites the Germans and Czechs and Slovaks in the twentieth century, saying that, as they voted, “most assumed they would have another chance.”
He warns, “Any election can be the last... We certainly face, as did the ancient Greeks, the problem of oligarchy – ever more threatening as globalization increases differences in wealth. The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens.” Snyder warns that we “have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties suppresses voting, claims fraud when it loses elections, and controls the majority of statehouses.”
“Much needs to be done,” the author says, “to fix the gerrymandered system so that each citizen has one equal vote, and so that each vote can be simply counted by a fellow citizen.”
4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. “Notice the... signs of hate. Do not look away, do not get used to them.” The world reacts to what you do, Snyder says. He recounts how Stalin depicted prosperous farmers as pigs ready for slaughter, suggesting to poorer farmers that they might help themselves to what their wealthier neighbors had. As they turned on each other, “Soviet power then seized everyone’s land,” which brought starvation to all. In Germany, shops were marked as “Jewish” or “Aryan,” and “envy transformed ethics.” The wish for Jews to disappear was “leavened by greed.” Snyder warns that, when “offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty, make sure such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them... What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion.” When one person seeks to “withdraw into daily life without trouble from the authorities... the public sphere is covered with signs of loyalty, and resistance becomes unthinkable.”
5. Remember professional ethics. “Authoritarians need obedient civil servants.” Using the Nazi regime as his example, Snyder explains: “If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.” He concludes: “Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional.”
6. Be wary of paramilitaries. “... people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics.” Snyder explains that they “can take the form of a paramilitary wing of a political party... a personal bodyguard... or apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives.” The author again refers to Hitler’s storm troopers, explaining “they created a climate of fear” and “took advantage of the absence of the usual local authority to loot, beat, and humiliate Jews, thereby changing the rules of politics... The SS began as an organization outside the law, became an organization that transcended the law, and ended up as an organization that undid the law.”
Snyder warns that “the use of violence in the United States is already highly privatized.” He now describes a scene in our own country in 2016 and “a candidate who ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies,” calling the resulting activity “mob violence [that] was meant to transform the political atmosphere, and it did.” He explains that the crowd took its cue and tried to root out all dissenters. Then he jumps to January 6, 2021, explaining, “Had that coup succeeded, our constitutional system would be no more.”
For violence to transform the system, he explains, “emotions... and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards.” He said they “challenge... penetrate... and finally transform the police and military.”
7. Be reflective if you must be armed. “... evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.” Snyder says “authoritarian regimes usually include a special riot police force... and a secret state police force.” Referring again to Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945, he explains, “without the assistance of regular police forces, and sometimes regular soldiers, they could not have killed on such a large scale.”
Using the Great Terror in the Soviet Union as an example, the author explains, “they could not possibly have carried out this campaign without the assistance of local police forces, legal professionals, and civil servants.” He says this Great Terror “took place during a state of exception that required all policemen to subordinate themselves to the NKVD and its special tasks.” Returning to Germany, Snyder says “every large-scale shooting action of the Holocaust... involved the regular German police... They had their orders, and they did not want to look weak.” Some who killed, he says, “were just afraid to stand out.”
8. Stand out. “The moment you set an example, the spell is broken, and others will follow.” The author explains that, in contrast to the myths of righteous resistance to Hitler after the war, “the dominant attitudes had been accommodation and admiration.” Before the war started, he says, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria had been drawn to Germany “by the promise of trade and territory.” European countries offered no resistance to Hitler at first, and some actually cooperated. When Churchill came to power in England in 1940, most of Europe was under siege by Germany and the Soviet Union. The Luftwaffe began bombing British cities; Hitler expected Churchill to cave, but he did not. Snyder says “Churchill instead resisted, inspired and won... Rather than concede in advance, he forced Hitler to change his plans.”
Hitler soon turned on his Soviet ally and then bombed Pearl Harbor, creating “a grand and irresistible coalition... But had Churchill not kept Britain in the war in 1940, there would have been no such war to fight... he had to stand out.”
Now Snyder tells the story of a young Polish woman, still in high school, named Teresa Prekerowa, who sneaked into the Warsaw ghetto “at great risk to herself” to bring food and medicine to the Jews being held there, and eventually helping a few of them escape. She became a Holocaust historian, telling the stories of others, but, Snyder says, “she stood out.”
9. Be kind to our language. “Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books... Politicians in our times feed their cliches to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them...So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean... entranced by visual stimuli... More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies, and the associated difficulties of thought.”
Snyder mentions Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, and Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, both having predicted book banning. He goes on to say, “Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable,” but he urges us to create, alternatively, “a mental armory we have developed somewhere else... So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books... think about ambiguous situations and judge the intentions of others.” Then he provides a wonderful list of political and historical texts he highly recommends. “And of course,” Snyder says, “we must be concerned with what is true and what is false.”
10. Believe in truth. “The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” Here the author gives some very clear guidelines, warning, “truth dies in four modes.” These are the four modes:
A. Open hostility to verifiable reality: “In 2017, the American president averaged six lies a day. The next year it was sixteen, the following year twenty-two. In 2020 he told on average about twenty-seven lies a day.”
B. Shamanistic incantation, or “endless repetition... [allowing] the transformation of individuals into stereotypes.” He cites the US president’s use of Twitter and the “Big Lie about elections” repeated over and over again.
C. Magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction: Snyder says “Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason,” citing statements that “a disease that kills hundreds of thousands will vanish,” or “the vote is always rigged,” or “Black people are taking the vote away from white people.” The author reminds us again of Hitler’s Germany, when Victor Klemperer was told, “you must always focus on the Fuhrer’s greatness rather than on the discomfort you are feeling at the present.”
D. Misplaced faith: Snyder refers to “the sort of self-deifying claims a president made when he said that ‘I alone can solve it’ or ‘I am your retribution.’” Such “faith” leaves no room for individual discernment or experience, he says. Klemperer of Germany recalls, “Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.” Then Snyder recalls famous Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco, who wrote the absurdist play about people falling prey to propaganda being transformed into rhinoceroses. He wished to help people see “just how bizarre propaganda actually is, but how normal it seems to those who yield to it.” The author reminds us of “a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts.” He concludes, “And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism.”
11. Investigate: “The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigator is a potential tyrant... We need print journalists so that stories can develop on the page and in our minds... When we learn them from a screen... we tend to be drawn in by the logic of spectacle. When we learn of one scandal, it whets our appetite for the next... We are watching a reality show rather than thinking about real life...The better print journalists allow us to consider the meaning, for ourselves and our country.”
Snyder cautions, “Before you deride the ‘mainstream media,’ note that it is no longer the mainstream. It is derision that is the mainstream and easy, and actual journalism that is edgy and difficult.” Then he quotes Russian dissident Vaclav Havel, whom he calls “the most important thinker among the communist dissidents of the 1970s.” In his secret essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” Havel writes: “If the main pillar of the system is a living lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.” Snyder concludes, “If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others.”
12. Make eye contact and small talk. Snyder says “this is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen.” He explains that the rise of each tyrannical regime is remembered by its victims in a “single tender moment.” Handshakes and smiles became so important, and avoidance of contact among those well acquainted grew fear. He urges us to “affirm everyone.”
13. Practice corporeal politics. “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, among groups who were not previously their friends... nothing is real that does not end on the streets.” Snyder takes us to Poland in 1980-81, when “intellectuals and professionals formed a group to assist workers who had been abused by the government... people from both the Right and the Left, believers and atheists... people who would not otherwise have met.” He concludes: “We are free only when it is we ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen.”
14. Establish a private life. “Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.” This time Snyder refers to “the great political thinker Hannah Arendt” and what she meant by “totalitarianism.” She said it “was not an all-powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public life.” She continues, “Totalitarianism removes the difference between private and public... to draw the whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories...we are [then] seduced by the notion of hidden realities and dark conspiracies that explain everything.”
Allowing tyrants, oligarchs and spooks to determine what is relevant or interesting to us means we are just “going along with everyone else.” Arendt calls this “the devolution of a society into a ‘mob.’”
15. Contribute to good causes. “Insofar as we take pride in these activities, and come to know others who do so as well, we are creating civil society... In the twentieth century, all major enemies of freedom were hostile to non-governmental organizations, charities, and the like... Today’s authoritarians... are also highly allergic to the idea of free associations and non-governmental organizations.”
16. Learn from peers in other countries. “History, which for a time seemed to be running from west to east, now seems to be moving from east to west. Everything that happens here seems to happen there first.”
17. Listen for dangerous words. “The most intelligent of the Nazis... explained...the way to destroy all rules... was to focus on the idea of the exception... by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency. Citizens then trade real freedom for fake safety.” The author continues: “When [politicians] try to train us to surrender freedom in the name of safety, we should be on our guard... People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.”
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. “When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authorities exploit such events in order to consolidate power...the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.” Snyder describes at length the Reichstag fire of 1933, reminding us that Hitler claimed it was the work of Germany’s enemies. He explains, “Hitler had used an act of terror, an event of limited inherent significance, to institute a regime of terror.” Then he turns to Putin, explaining that “Putin’s rise to power and his elimination of two major institutions – private television and elected regional governorships – were enabled by the management of real, fake, and questionable terrorism.” Now moving to the US, Snyder says, “After 2016, the United States became a country of staged crises, such as supposed refugee ‘invasions.’”
The author offers these lessons: Concerning the Reichstag fire, “one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission. For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions. Courage... means recognizing and resisting terror management right away.” He reminds us that “James Madison nicely made the point that tyranny arises ‘on some favorable emergency,’” and “a failed coup is usually practice for a successful one.”
19. Be a patriot. “A nationalist will say that ‘it can’t happen here,’ which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop 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.”
In the book’s epilogue, called “History and Liberty,” Snyder does not disappoint. It’s a hearty epilogue, filled with sound advice. Reminding us of Hamlet’s lament, “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right,” the author declares, “We have forgotten history for one reason and, if we are not careful, we will neglect it for another... We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy... we lowered our defenses.”
Snyder explains “inevitability politics,” which portrays “the present simply as a step toward a future that we already know,” and teleology, “a narration of time that leads toward a certain, usually desirable goal.” He calls this a “self-induced intellectual coma.” Once “we accepted the politics of inevitability,” he says, “we assumed that history was no longer relevant... It stifled policy debate... one political party defended the status quo, while the other proposed total negation... The whole notion of disruption is adolescent,” Snyder claims. “It assumes that after the teenagers make a mess, the adults will come and clean it up. But there are no adults. We own the mess.”
After inevitability politics, the author turns to the “politics of eternity,” which offers a different “masquerade of history.” He says this mindset “is concerned with the past, but in a self-absorbed way, free of any real concern with facts.” It longs for “past moments that never really happened,” reminiscent of “national victimhood.” It’s about an external enemy attacking the purity of a nation. “National populists are eternity politicians.”