On Timothy Snyder’s 20 lessons to fight tyranny in the 20th century

This is a sequel to an earlier essay summarizing the first ten of Timothy Snyder’s twenty lessons from the 20^th century in his 2017 book On Tyranny.

11. Investigate. The author suggests that we figure things out for ourselves, that we spend more time with long articles, and that we subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. He warns that some material on the Internet is harmful, and he strongly urges us to take seriously our responsibility in our communications with others.

Snyder asks, “What is truth?” He believes that our ability to discern facts makes each of us an individual, although it is our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a viable society. “The individual who investigates is … the citizen who builds, and the leader who dislikes investigators is a potential tyrant.” Snyder writes that during the 2016 campaign, “the president claimed on a Russian propaganda outlet that American ‘media ha[d] been unbelievably dishonest.’ And in fact he banned many reporters from his campaign rallies. Branding statements as lies or “fake news” most often means that such statements are not to his liking.

The author quotes the political theorist Hannah Arendt who explored lies told in the 1970s in the context of the Vietnam war: “Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough … to cover the immensity of factuality.”

Also in the 1970s, the communist dissident Vaclav Havel said, “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

The author noted that during the 2016 campaign, “[p]eople going door to door …encountered the surprised blinking of American citizens who realized they would have to talk about politics with a flesh-and-blood human being rather than having their views affirmed by their Facebook feeds.”

Snyder believes that we need print journalists whose stories can develop on the page as well as in our minds. This is valuable because the best print journalism allows us to consider the meaning — for ourselves and our country — of what might otherwise seem to be isolated bits of information. The research and writing of real journalism is hard work and “[t]he work of people who adhere to journalistic ethics is of a different quality than the work of those who do not”. Snyder notes that the two-dimensional Internet world was more important during the 2016 election cycle than the three-dimensional world of real people having real conversations. Since most of us have become publishers in the Internet age, we bear some responsibility for the public’s sense of truth, and if we can avoid doing violence to the minds of those on the Internet, others might learn to do the same.

12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite but is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society.

Snyder writes “Tyrannical regimes arose at different times and places in twentieth century Europe but their victims’ memoirs are in one respect similar whether in fascist Italy of the 1920s, Nazi Germany of the 1930s, the soviet Union of 1937-38, or the purges of communist eastern Europe of the 1940s and 50s. These victims remembered how their neighbors treated them — a smile, a handshake or greeting was both welcome and significant. But fear grew when friends and neighbors looked away or crossed the street to avoid contact.

13. Practice corporeal politics.

Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them. Snyder believes that protests can be organized by social media, but “nothing is real that does not end on the streets” and “[i]f tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.”

14. Establish a private life.

Consider using alternative forms of the Internet or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person.

Snyder says that what political thinker Hannah Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all-powerful state but the erasure of difference between private and public life. He believes that during the 2016 campaign without even noticing, we took a step toward totalitarianism by accepting the violation of our electronic privacy. Whether it’s done by American or Russian intelligence agencies or any other institution, “the theft, discussion, or publication of personal communication destroys a basic foundation of our rights…. Whoever can pierce your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will.”

The timed email bombs of the 2016 presidential campaign were … a powerful form of disinformation. Words written in one situation make sense only in that context. The very act of removing them from their historical moment and dropping them in another is an act of falsification.”

Arendt thought that our appetite for the secret is dangerously political. Snyder writes that “totalitarianism removes the difference between private and public not just to make individuals unfree but also to draw a whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories.”

Snyder believes that “[w]hen we take an active interest in matters of doubtful relevance at moments that are chosen by tyrants…we participate in the demolition of our own political order.”

15. Contribute to good causes.

Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity of your choice that supports civil society and helps others do good.

“[O]ne element of freedom is the choice of associates, and one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to sustain their members. [W]e should engage in activities that interest us, and/or our families.” This helps create civil society. Snyder believes that sharing in an undertaking teaches us to trust people beyond our narrow circle of friends and family and that this capacity for trust and learning can make life less chaotic and mysterious and democratic politics more plausible and attractive. The author notes that earlier Eastern European dissidents recognized this kind of “nonpolitical activity of civil society as an expression and a safeguard of freedom.” But current authoritarians in Turkey and Russia seem “allergic to the idea of free association and non-governmental organizations”.

16. Learn from peers in other countries.

Snyder advises that we maintain our friendships abroad and make new ones and that we and our families have passports. He believes that our present difficulties here are part of a larger trend.

Snyder observes that during the 2016 campaign commentators assured us that the candidate would be stopped by one American institution or another. But those who were students of the history and politics of Eastern Europe found the election outcome unsurprising; for example, “to Ukrainians, Americans seemed comically slow to react to the obvious threats of cyberwar and fake news.” By contrast, when Russian propaganda targeted Ukraine in 2013, journalists acted decisively and immediately to expose the disinformation. Snyder cites the example of Russian media falsely claiming that Ukrainian troops had crucified a small boy. And during the 2016 campaign, Russia used some of the same disinformation techniques on the US when Russian media spread a story that Hilary Clinton was ill because she had mentioned an article about “decision fatigue” in an email. Snyder notes that “since so much of what has happened [here] in the last year is familiar to the rest of the world … we must observe and listen.”

17. Listen for dangerous words.

Be alert for the use of words like extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

Carl Schmitt who Snyder calls the “most intelligent of the Nazis” explained the essence of fascist government: “the way to destroy all rules was to focus on the exception”. Nazi leaders promoted the general conviction that the present moment was exceptional and then transformed this exception into a permanent emergency, thereby trading citizens’ “real freedom for fake safety.”

“People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.” Snyder believes that it is a government’s job to increase both freedom and security.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When a terrorist attack comes, authoritarians exploit it in order to consolidate power.

Snyder refers to the burning of the Reichstag (German parliament) on February 27, 1933, which “initiated the politics of emergency” and gave Hitler an opportunity to consolidate his power by attributing the fire to the enemies of Germany. The next day the parliament issued a decree which suspended the rights of German citizens and subjected them to a policy of preventive detention. A week later, after the Nazis won decisively in parliamentary elections, German police and Nazi paramilitaries began to round up members of left-wing political parties. Soon thereafter, the newly elected parliament passed legislation that allowed Hitler to rule by decree. This remained so until the end of World War II.

“Hitler had used an act of terror, an event of limited inherent significance to institute a regime of terror that killed millions of people and changed the world.” Snyder likens Vladimir Putin’s use of a series of bombings in various Russian cities to Hitler’s use of the German Reichstag fire as justification for removing obstacles to the wielding total power in Russia. Putin also assaulted Russia’s neighbors by declaring “a war of revenge against Chechnya’s Muslims”. He promised to pursue these supposed perpetrators and in Putin’s words “rub them out in the shithouse”. This wording by the Russian is strikingly similar to that of the American president about some nations in Africa.

The next year Putin won the presidential election. In 2002 Russian security forces killed Russians while suppressing a terrorist attack at a Russian theater and then exploited this incident to seize control of private television.  A couple of years later a terrorist attack at a school caused Putin to abolish elections for regional governors.

When Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, Russia introduced terror management into its foreign policy. Snyder writes that Russian tried to hack the 2014 presidential election in Ukraine but failed. In France in 2015, Russian hackers took over a television station, pretending to be ISIS and broadcasting material meant to terrorize and drive voters to the far-right Russia supported National Front. In November 2015, a think tank “close to the Kremlin” rejoiced that terrorism would drive Europe toward fascism and Russia.

Snyder mentions the first telephone conversation between Putin and the current president during which they “shared the opinion that it is necessary to join forces against the common enemy number one: international terrorism and extremism”. He states that “[f]or tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission.” After that 1933 fire, Hannah Arendt wrote: “I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.”

19. Be a patriot.

Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

Snyder writes what patriotism is NOT:

dodging the draft and mocking war heroes and their families,

discriminating against active duty members of the armed forces in your company, campaigning to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property, comparing one’s search for sexual partners in New York to military service in Vietnam that one has dodged, avoiding paying taxes,

asking working taxpaying American families to finance one’s campaign and spend these contributions in one’s own companies, admiring foreign dictators and saying that Bashar-al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders, although an American has a First Amendment right to voice such opinions, it is different and more troubling when an aspirant to the American presidency openly calls upon Russia to intervene in a presidential election or cites Russian propaganda at campaign rallies,

sharing an adviser with a Russian oligarch, soliciting foreign policy advice from a Russian energy company shareholder, reading a foreign policy written by one on a Russian energy company payroll, and/or appointing a national security adviser who has benefitted financially from a Russian propaganda “organ.”

The author does not suggest that Russia and America should be enemies but he does suggest that “patriotism involves serving your own country.” He points out that a nationalist and a patriot are different in that the former appears to encourage us to be our worst while telling us we are the best. He quotes George Orwell who wrote that nationalists who “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” tend to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.”

Snyder describes a patriot as someone who holds universal values and standards by which he judges his country and who “wants the nation to live up to its ideals … to be our best selves… always wishing it well and wishing that it would do better.”

A nationalist is likely to say, “It can’t happen here,” which Snyder believes is the first step toward disaster. The patriot is likely to answer “It could happen here, but we will stop it.” This allusion to action is very important.

20. The author’s final lesson from the 20^th century is: Be as courageous as you can. His words are stark: “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.” Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s, Snyder believes that our time is “out of joint”. He thinks that until recently, we Americans had convinced ourselves that there was nothing in the future but more of the same. This allowed us to accept the politics of inevitability, that is, the sense that history could only move toward liberal democracy, what he calls “a self-induced intellectual coma.” He believes that the acceptance of this kind of inevitability has skewed our discussion of 21^st century politics. Once we took for granted this inevitability, “[w]hat appeared to be critical analysis often assumed that the status quo could not change.”

Snyder also discusses the politics of eternity, another anti-historical way of considering the past but in a “self absorbed way not concerned with facts,” one to which national populists subscribe.

Snyder discusses Brexit, Britains’ withdrawal from the European Union, as a “leap into the unknown”. When British judges ruled that the nation’s exit from the EU required a parliamentary vote, a British tabloid called them “enemies of the people,” a term used in Stalin’s 1930s show trials.

Snyder notes that in the American president’s 2016 campaign, he used the slogan “America First,” the name of the committee that wanted to “prevent the United States from opposing Nazi Germany.” Snyder notes that an unnamed strategy advisor of the president (who may no longer be with the administration) promised policies that would be as exciting as those of the 1930s.

Snyder believes that in the politics of eternity, the seduction of a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. “The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction.”

He writes that “[h]istory allows us to see patterns and make judgments … [it] permits us to be responsible: not for everything but for something.” He speaks to the younger generation when he states that if it does not begin to make history, the politicians of inevitability and eternity will destroy it.”

The Levin Professor of History at Yale University ends the book with a passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The time is out of joint – O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! Nay, come, let’s go together.”

Yes, let’s go together to set it right!