Here Is The Most Patriotic Primer For The Dark Days Ahead

Thanks to a kink in the Blogger software that is beyond the blogger's faintest idea as to how it happened, Professor Timothy Snyder's initial post to this blog follows today's offering. That serendipitous glitch places Snyder's contributions in reverse order. First or second is of little import; just read Snyder's warnings for the hard, bleak days ahead. As a lagniappe, Professor Snyder provides a quick and dirty reading list of fiction and nonfiction treatments of authoritarianism in Point 6 below. If this is a (fair & balanced) successor yo Thomas Paine's Common Sense, so be it.

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Lessons On Dealing With Authoritarians
By Timothy Snyder

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abandon authoritarians away body break contact court defend die end ethics everyone example follow freedom general hard hook institutions internet investigate keep learn lessons life means moment nothing others paramilitary patriot person polite possible power practice professional push remember screen something speak start state things think true unfamiliar unless words

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Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Much 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 start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of "terrorism" and "extremism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "exception" and "emergency." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it.

6. 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. (Don't use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps The Power of the Powerless (1985) by Václav Havel, 1984 (1949, 1977) by George Orwell, The Captive Mind (1981) by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel (1956, 1984) by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1948, 1976) by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible (2014) by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. 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.

9. 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 your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.

10. 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.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to 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.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. 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.

13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.

15. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. 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. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

18. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, 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. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)

19. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.

20. Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it. ###

[Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University and the author of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015) as well as Bloodlands: Eastern Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2011). He received a BA (history and political science) from Brown University and a DPhil (modern history) from Oxford University and was a British Marshall Scholar as well.]

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Today, You Have 3 Guesses As To The Identity Of "Him" In Timothy Snyder's Depiction Of An Election Four Score & Three Years Ago

Quiz Hint (inspired by the holiday season): "Him" is identified in the illustration accompanying this post. Bottom line, boys and girls: this blogger is scarified. 'Tis most interesting that Il Douche called his campaign events "rallies," not speeches. It was a carefully chosen term: "rallies" echo the Reichsparteitag nearly 90 years ago. All that was missing from the "rallies" of 2016 was a film-maker like Leni Riefenstahl ("Triumph of the Will"). If this is a (fair & balanced) effort to ruin your holiday, so be it.

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Him
By Timothy Snyder

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administration although became beginning bodyguard called camps certain citizenry conspiracy control convincing country course crimes declared easy elite emerged failed faith followers found intellectual leaders left-wing mass matters minority moment nation opponents paramilitary party people philosophical police political power rallies seemed somehow started state suddenly support surprise task thinking war

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His election that November came as a surprise. The conservative intellectuals had made telling arguments against his racism and conspiracy thinking. Rival nationalists had mocked his affection for a foreign tyrant. Businessmen had explained that economic isolation could only harm an export economy. All to no avail.

His followers had faith, of course. They had roared at his rallies and echoed his slogans. They had come out to vote, in higher numbers than expected, especially working-class men and women. Even so, the results of the election were paradoxical. The left received 1 million more votes than his party. But due to the vagaries of the electoral system he was called upon to form a government. His followers exulted, but the various right-wing elites preserved their calm. Although they had failed to keep him from power, they were sure that they could control him. He was good at convincing his followers that he was a revolutionary and convincing others that he was harmless.

His administration was at first a coalition of the old right and his new right. The members of the major left-wing party, historically larger than his, had a sense that something was afoot. But the left was divided upon itself and unsure about its leadership; its own conflicts could, from moment to moment, seem more pressing than the affairs of the country as a whole. He did not invent the highway, as his propaganda claimed, but he did support public works. This sort of thing helped to confuse the left and the workers.

Among much of the ordinary citizenry there was a certain faith that the political elite had matters under control. Among the elite there was a certain faith that state institutions would somehow protect themselves, that the rule of law and administrative habit would somehow maintain themselves. It was a minority that exulted in his power and a smaller minority that broke the windows and painted the symbols. Somehow, amid the misplaced hopes, his followers set the tone. As the mood changed, much of the citizenry began to think ahead about what he would want and make adjustments in advance. This made his task infinitely simpler.

Writers reflected upon how he was changing the language. He defined the world as a source of endless threat and other countries as cradles of countless enemies. Global conspiracies were supposedly directed at his country and its uniquely righteous people. His left-wing opponents and the national minorities, he insisted, were not individuals but expressions of implacable international enmity to the righteous demands of his own people. He said that he spoke for his people, that he was their voice. He had no concern for factuality; what he said about others was meant to generate a certain fiction. In some measure, he was working within the philosophical conventions of his time. Important thinkers of the era had declared that the idea of facts understood by individuals was humbug, opening the way for a sense of identity to be confused with the apprehension of truth. But he was also aware that mass media created the possibility to project big lies with such force that they drowned out the small truths. He had a certain undeniable charisma, and he was the first major politician of a new media age.

The terrorist attack came as a surprise. It was unclear whether he planned this himself, but it hardly mattered. He blamed the left, banned its parties, and had its leaders put in camps. A state of emergency was declared and never lifted. A one-party state emerged. The division of powers vanished. The parliament became a rubber stamp. The bureaucracy proved loyal to him. Bright and ambitious men with law degrees were found. For many lawyers and judges, professional ethics were somehow submerged in an understanding of the greater good of the nation, state, or race. Intelligent people found ways to place their own intellectual and moral evolution within this or that philosophical or legal tradition. The legal stigmatization of a chosen minority had the political consequence of binding everyone else closer to the state. The moment citizens did not oppose this measure, they were in effect supporting it. The moment they took advantage of it (by enrolling their children in schools that suddenly had empty places, for example), they were co-opted by it.

Many of those lawyers wore uniforms of a certain special kind. They were elite members of a certain institution, his bodyguard. He had called upon them to throw out dissenters at his rallies and to beat up opponents. An odd thing had happened when he had come to power. Suddenly people who had always presented themselves as being in opposition to the state were comfortable bearing arms for their personal leader. The process was of course an unruly one; some of these people had to be purged. He claimed, falsely, that a coup d'état had been staged against him and had one part of his bodyguard murder the leaders of another (and some of the old right-wing leaders in the bargain). Now his bodyguard started to seem like a means of social advance. Trained in racism and conspiratorial thinking, its men penetrated the organs of state, especially the police. If anyone had a chance to resist at this point, it was the commanders of the military and the directors of intelligence. A few of them were inclined to do so, but they overestimated themselves, failed to seek allies and counsel, and waited too long. Once the war started, it was too late.

The war came as a surprise. Although he had spoken endlessly about the need for struggle, it had not been so easy to find the pretext or the partner. In the beginning he had to concentrate on breaking treaties and pressuring neighbors. But then another strongman was happy to offer him an alliance. This brought what seemed like an easy beginning to conquest, and during combat political opposition became all but unthinkable. The bodyguard and the corporations negotiated exploitative public-private partnerships in conquered lands, known as “ghettos” or “camps.” The army was followed into the field by the paramilitary, which had its own tasks, such as mass murder. In the setting of war, not just the paramilitary but the police, the army, and even civilians carried out mass killings on a stupendous scale.

These crimes bound them all to him and to his mission and guaranteed that they would fight to the end. Having done great evil, they found it easy to imagine that the world was against them. His war would be lost. Only his crimes would be immortal. Before he killed himself he blamed his own country for his failures. And a nation that had once seemed destined to shape a century fell into the shade. ###

[Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University and the author of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015) as well as Bloodlands: Eastern Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2011). He received a BA (history and political science) from Brown University and a DPhil (modern history) from Oxford University and was a British Marshall Scholar as well.]

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