Guest writer Wendy Covington, written during September of 2020.
On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder
Fascism is back and it threatens America.
It was in early February of 2020 that I realized we were in deep shit. After the 2016 election, I thought in the very least we’d have another election in four years. Standing at The Women’s March in DC the day after the inauguration, I spotted a sign that said: 1,460 days left and felt my stomach drop. How could we possibly survive that many days with a madman in control of the nuclear football? Each day since election night had felt like a month. But it never occurred to me that we wouldn’t have a free and fair election again, in one thousand four hundred and sixty days.
At that time, like the majority of Democrats, I had a decent amount of faith in Mueller. “It’s Mueller Time” we would lightheartedly joke with each other while patiently waiting for Mueller to release his report. It had felt like a victory just getting an investigator we thought we could trust.
Looking back, we shouldn’t have placed so much hope in one man. We should have been out in the streets showing our outrage everyday that human beings were being put in cages at our border and so many other assaults on human rights that occurred while we waited…and waited. For nothing. By the time the report was released so many horrors had been normalized. Trump had successfully executed the “boiling frog” method by committing greater and greater atrocities while we were waiting. Slowly, incrementally, things were getting worse.
By February, I was losing faith in our institutions. My small town of Floyd, Virginia formed a local militia and the sheriff was obviously supportive. Trump supporters marched into the capitols of several states armed with semi-automatic rifles and dressed for war. The FBI declared white nationalist groups domestic terrorist.
I’d seen Timothy Snyder appear on The Rachel Maddow Show so, trusting her judgment, this was the first book I ordered to try to make some sense of the unthinkable. I read it out loud to my partner in the car on a last road trip to visit my parents before we went into quarantine. “See, I’m not being paranoid” I whined when I reached chapter 16 where Snyder pleads with Americans to have passports. We’d been engaged in a serious debate over fleeing the country or not and I’d just sent in our passport renewals two years early.
On Tyranny is a survival guide for an era where, all over the world, democratic norms are under attack. One thing I found particularly satisfying is that Snyder gives us some actionable items. If you’re like me, you sometimes feel powerless and frustrated. What can we do? On Tyranny gives us small acts of rebellion we can incorporate into daily life. Make eye contact, among other things it helps you know who you can trust. Read books. Make friends in other countries. These are also ways of taking your power back.
Its been about six months or 487 years since I first read this book. During that time we saw Trump unleash his own version of a paramilitary on peaceful protestors at Lafayette Square in our nations capitol. We’ve seen police intermingle with armed right-wing citizens. We've seen Republican efforts to undermine the elections, and angry militias swear they will show up at polling places with guns. I’m going to share Snyder's introduction to chapter six:
When the men with guns who have always claimed
to be against the system start wearing uniforms and
marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh.
When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police
and military intermingle, the end has come.
Chapter 17 warns us: Listen for dangerous words. In the summer of 2020, the Republicans held their National Convention and it was a festival of cacophony. They painted a dark and dystopian future should Biden win and demonized protestors standing up for civil rights and against police brutality. On Tyranny helps us identify and therefor respond to the tactics being used against us.
We’re cautioned to “Believe in Truth”. Countless times in my youth I’ve been guilty of believing what I wanted to believe rather than what was verifiable reality. Our culture values optimism and conformity and therefore many of us find it can be isolating and uncomfortable to insist on the truth, especially a dark truth. But sometimes popular opinion is based on pretty lies. What I found most shocking about this chapter, though, are the thoughts and observations of Eugene Ionesco. Ionesco was a Romanian playwright who lived through the rise of Fascism in the 1930’s.
In 1959 Ionesco wrote a play titled Rhinocerous, based on observations of his friends and acquaintances during the 1930’s. He watched them, one by one, consume disinformation and evolve into Nazi’s until only a few were left who resisted Hitler’s fascist ideals. I found this particularly alarming. Republican efforts to attack trusted information sources, their attempts to normalize disinformation, should leave us cautious about who we trust. The assumption of goodwill, and the freedom to speak as if surrounded by people of goodwill, is something we are losing.
In 2012, I was in Istanbul staying at a small guesthouse owned by two young, friendly, and modern sisters. One day I was sitting outside the entrance talking with one of the owners and I said something negative about Erdogan. “Shhh” she cautioned and leaned in to whisper, “you can’t say things like that in public here, it’s not safe”. How hard would it be for Americans to learn to keep their mouth shut? How many areas are there where the QAnon cult is already so strong that one needs to be careful about one says out loud?
We’re strangers in a strange land now, at risk of losing our right to vote, at risk of becoming stateless, homeless. We have a lot to learn about staying safe and fighting back. Using examples from around the world both past and present Snyder connects the dots and helps us wrap our heads around what seemed implausible just a few years ago. America, like so many other democracies around the world, is in grave danger of falling into the hands of a tyrant. For these reasons I consider this book a must read. We need a crash course in how to fight back.
I’ve shared this book with my mother, friends, and my oldest child. I’m on my 2nd copy. It’s a quick read and an excellent reference manual. I call it the lazy citizens essential guide to Fascism. For $7.00 be sure to order a few to send to friends, so they can better understand what is at risk each time we vote.
I’ll close with one thought of my own to add to Snyder’s excellent lessons. Hold onto those you love, remember who you are and when things seem their darkest, remember those you love and those that love you. In the words of Martin Luther King: Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
The twenty lessons covered include:
Do not obey in advance.
Defend institutions.
Beware the one-party state.
Take responsibility for the face of the world.
Remember professional ethics.
Be wary of paramilitaries.
Be reflective if you must be armed.
Stand out.
Be kind to our language.
Believe in truth.
Investigate.
Make eye contact and small talk.
Practice corporeal politics.
Establish a private life.
Contribute to good causes.
Learn from peers in other countries.
Listen for dangerous words.
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.
Be a patriot.
Be as courageous as you can.