By Don Curren
Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century was published in 2017 and rapidly became a touchstone for those opposed to the Trump Presidency.
It may prove even more influential in the opening phases
of the Trump Tyranny.
Deservedly so.
On Tyranny is a succinct, insightful and effective
book.
Snyder, a historian at Yale University, distills 20 lessons
in how to resist tyranny drawn from the history of the 20th century.
The result is a kind of “field guide” on resistance,
to borrow a phrase from Guardian reviewer Tim Adams.
The lessons are summarized in brief headings and then
explained in more depth with historical references. Snyder draws heavily from
the history of Nazi Germany, but also from Stalinist Russia, and more recent episodes
such as Putinist Russia’s initial incursions into Ukraine in early 2010s.
“The European history of the twentieth century shows
us that societies can break, democracies can fail, ethics can collapse, and
ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their
hands,” Snyder writes. “It would serve us well today to understand why.”
Synder’s approach works. The book has struck a
responsive chord. It is cited almost every day on social media, or at least on
the social media platform that I mostly restrict myself to these days, Bluesky.
(For my reasons for focusing on Bluesky, see this post).
Snyder’s first lesson is “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,”
he writes.
This is perhaps the lesson from On Tyranny that has
been quoted the most often.
But apparently not often enough, considering how many individuals
and organizations in the US have done precisely what Snyder recommends against.
Several other lessons are explicitly political. They
include Lesson 2, - Defend institutions, and Lesson 3, “Beware the one-party state.”
But what surprised and intrigued me about the book was
how unpolitical many of the lessons seemingly are.
There are several that, on the face of it, have no
direct connection with the political aspects of resisting tyranny.
Among them are: Lesson 12 – Make eye contact and small talk, Lesson
14 – Establish a private life, and Lesson 13 – Practice corporeal politics.
We tend to think of tyranny as something that is
imposed on us from above, and by force. How could things such as “making eye
contact” play any role in resisting it?
I believe that within the apparent paradox of emphasizing
such personal practices as bulwarks against tyranny lies one of the key
strengths of Snyder’s book.
What Snyder is getting at is the extremely close
connection that exists between the personal and the political.
Some behaviors help create a social fabric that is conducive to tyranny. Others
create one that resists it.
For an example,
take Snyder’s Lesson 12, the one about making 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,” he writes.
Throughout On
Tyranny, there are reminders that tyrannical regimes eventually ensnare everybody
who lives under them. Everyone runs the risk of being informed on - or being an
informer.
“In the most
dangerous of times, those who escape and survive generally know people whom
they can trust,” Snyder writes.
So, making eye
contact and small talk can, ultimately, save your life.
“Having old
friends is the politics of the last resort. And making new ones is the first
step toward change,” Snyder writes.
In the section
on “corporeal politics,” Snyder argues, “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,” he writes.
On Tyranny
reminds us that power comes at least in part “from below,” as the French
philosopher and historian Michel Foucault famously wrote.
Supine passivity in front of a TV or other screen is a form of behaviour that makes it easier for tyrants to assume and maintain power than when people are active and engaged in their communities.
Snyder’s book also puts me in mind of two of Foucault’s
compatriots, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator Felix Guattari,
and the concept of “microfascism” they develop in their book A Thousand Plateau:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Deleuze and Guattari don’t have the flair for clarity
and specificity that Snyder does.
So, what I’m offering here is my own take on “microfascism”
rather than any attempt at a definitive interpretation of the concept as they
present it.
For me, a microfascism is a form of behavior that
replicates or echoes the aggression and the assumption of inequality and lack
of respect for others that characterizes fascism, but at a level smaller than
the governmental.
Any time you look away while someone is being bullied,
you are committing a microfascism.
It’s the “fascism inside you,” and it can hide inside
anyone, even those who think of themselves as antifascist, Deleuze and Guattari
write.
It’s the pervasive microfascisms that make fascism a particularly
dangerous from of tyranny, they write. “What makes fascism dangerous is its …
micropolitical power, for it is a mass movement: a cancerous body rather than a
totalitarian organism,” Deleuze and Guattari write.
I developed my own corollary to the idea of “microfascism.”
If there are microfascisms, there must be “micro-antifascisms,”
or kinds of behavior that, at a personal level, promote the freedom and reciprocity
that confound fascism.
The behaviors Snyder is advocating such as making eye
contact and practicing corporeal politics, are forms of micro-antifascism, to
use my extension of Deleuze and Guattari’s idiom.
He may not use the same language as Deleuze and Guattari,
but I believe he is on the same page.
Snyder’s insistence on recognizing how the personal
and the political are connected is one of principal strengths of On Tyranny.
Our fight against tyranny happens not only at the
ballot box, in the council chamber or the courtroom. It also rages in
the streets, shopping malls, and living rooms.
I haven’t read Snyder’s new book, On Freedom, in which
he apparently uses the same approach as he did in On Tyranny, but I intend to
seek it out.
Another book I read recently, In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, makes an interesting companion piece to On Snyder’s On Tyranny.
Larson’s book, published in 2011, recounts the period
from mid-1933 in which the Nazi Party consolidated its power over the floundering
Weimar Republic and launched the Third Reich.
It’s written in Larson’s typical style of popular,
well-written narrative history. It engagingly tells the story through the lens
of the American ambassador to Germany in that period, William E. Dodd, and his
family, particularly his daughter Martha.
He draws heavily from their diaries and other writings
from the period.
It’s a gripping account a society teetering on the brink
of fascist totalitarianism and then plunging over that brink into an abyss of
violence, tyranny, war and genocide.
Larson’s book shows in some detail how the transition
from democracy to tyranny explored in more analytical, “field guide” approach in Snyder's book played
out in a pivotal period in one country’s history.
It chronicles how the Nazis at first achieve a degree of
power by constitutional means and then consolidate their control through
events such as the Reichstag fire, which they used as a pretext to seize emergency
powers, and the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, after which they consolidated
that office with the chancellorship held by Hitler. At that point, Hitler officially
became “Führer
und Reichskanzler.”
The parallels with the situation in the US are
uncanny, and disturbing.
Larson’s book is full of “microfascist” moments.
The reader watches queasily as Martha Dodd, an aspiring
writer who numbers among her friends Carl Sandburg and Thornton Wilder, voices
anti-Semitic sentiments - and positive views of the Nazis.
She does eventually recant. But her dalliance with
Nazism is a troubling reminder that many people who should be immune can become
ensnared in fascist ideology.
Her father, an academic historian and old-fashioned
Liberal, fares somewhat better, slowly becoming a vocal critic of the Nazis
after his retirement.
“Mankind is in grave danger, but democratic governments
seem not to know what to do. If they do nothing, Western civilization,
religious, personal and economic freedom are in grave danger,” Dodd said in a
speech at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in January 1938.
In the Garden of Beasts provides a well-written and frequently
riveting account of how a society can rapidly descend from constitutional
democracy to fascist tyranny, and the wide variety of individual responses,
from outright acquiescence and collaboration to heroic resistance.
Both books are instructive about the current
situation, although in different ways.
If you only have time for one of them, read On Tyranny.
Just by doing so, you will have achieved a moment of
micro-antifascism.
It might be a modest, but it’s a start …
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