
Timothy Snyder wrote On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century in 2017, during the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency. Somewhere around half of America still felt a sting from the sucker-punch of the previous November. I was at a party in Washington, DC with old friends, mostly from my college days. They ranged in outlook from liberal to democratic socialists and anarchists. A couple of them worked for a Congressperson or Senator on Capitol Hill. A couple protested in the streets a few months later at Trump’s inauguration, and at least one got on police radar for doing so. Most of us expected Hillary Clinton would take the election comfortably. I can remember the shock, the fear, the rage. I remember it morphing into a perverse acceptance, too. “Of course this is what happened, of course this is what this country is”. Maybe thinking like that is a a coping mechanism? Now, it feels like a different universe, like the continuation of a death drive decades in the making.
I think that’s what Timothy Snyder was trying to get at. The countries that call themselves liberal democracies have to be aware that their system can fall prey to a tyrant, and know the warning signs. In every one of them, the potential is there. Forces are in motion that can turn very, very quickly into an overpowering storm.
Snyder’s a historian, and he draws his examples from history, but On Tyranny is not a thick history text. It’s minute, unassuming, and clearly the intent is for it to be approachable and pack quite a punch. It’s a book that wants to be carried with you and passed around. It’s structured around twenty pieces of advice Snyder culls from others who have survived regimes he calls totalitarian. Snyder hails from a school of historical scholarship that believes Josef Stalin in Russia and Adolf Hitler in Germany had more commonalities than differences. It’s a view that is still very popular among Americans, but is losing currency among some scholars. I’ll be curious to see, as I read more on the subject, how I feel about whether it’s still a useful term. Some of his warnings draw obvious influence from the rise of Nazi Germany. These include beware the one-party state, be wary of paramilitaries, defend institutions. Growing up in a liberal democracy as a politics nerd, I’ve heard them all before. Even when I’m losing faith in our electoral system or institutions, I see this as a tragedy. It’s something to mourn. And when I see the likes of Proud Boys or Three Percenter militias, I fear the future. This is not just because I find their beliefs repulsive. I am uneasy in a society where well-armed, unaccountable groups have so much power.
But four years have gone by since Snyder wrote this book. A year’s gone by since I read it and when I sat down to write this review, in fact. Donald Trump is no longer president – despite his protests to the contrary. Joe Biden is. This book could have been easily written or endorsed by Joe Biden. It embodies his stated points of faith: that we need to be vigilant, trust in our institutions, be generous to one another and uphold a multi-party democracy. Although when Joe Biden hears “multi-party“, I’m pretty sure he only thinks of two, and that’s part of the problem. It’s a view that doesn’t make sense to me anymore – or, at least, it’s missing a massive part of the picture.
It’s obvious to me that neither major party is led competently. Neither is both capable and willing to go the distance on many proposals that their constituents want. Both need those issues to win an ever-roaring struggle for power. Both serve in the end to preserve an order that only benefits wealthy elites. Why bother defending institutions when they no longer defend anything except the elites, and their own inertia? Why bother defending a system that technically has two parties but often functions as if it really has one? The environment, the cost of living, the social order itself is all spiraling out of control – and it was happening well before COVID-19 surfaced. Snyder’s advice to “make eye contact and small talk with our neighbors”, “remember professional ethics” or “take responsibility” doesn’t seem like bad counsel. I’m not exactly saying it seems quaint, even now. But it seems we must cross a great distance for these values to become norms again in our society. We must also consider whether those norms ever reflected reality. If not, they were just parts of a myth we tell ourselves. Either way, true or not, I want it all back. I want to enact that virtue and see it enacted by others. Liberal democracy sounds nice.
But then I remember those I disagree with, those I loathe, resent, and fear. And like many of us, I still can’t help but think, you first.
On Tyranny
Looking backward as a way of scouting ahead, historian Timothy Snyder warned us early in Trump's first year that the lessons of fascism's past bear repeating.
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