On Tyranny

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

Good societies can go bad, and good people can do terrible things. One lesson of history is that tyrants can rise and bring out the worst in a nation. 

“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. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Even within democracies, many citizens are quick to fall under the spell of demagogues, to the point of abandoning their liberties for the mere promise of safety under an authoritarian regime. Sometimes even the tyrant is surprised by the ease with which he can persuade vast numbers of citizens to turn over their lives to his dictates. Tyrants reach quickly for such people, who form an advance guard in the battle to conquer a republic. 

“Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.”

Dictators must dismantle the structures of civil society. To do so, they must convince a people, not to protect their institutions, but to let them go. When free people stop defending their liberty, the dictator moves in.

“The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents.”

Moments arise when republics are weakened by events, and a fringe party attains enough power to join a coalition. The fringe leader then uses strong-arm tactics to take over the other coalition members. At that point, the new leader enjoys one-party rule.

“Does the history of tyranny apply to the United States? Certainly the early Americans who spoke of ‘eternal vigilance’ would have thought so. The logic of the system they devised was to mitigate the consequences of our real imperfections, not to celebrate our imaginary perfection.”

The Founding Fathers, well aware of the continuing dangers to a republic from demagogues, establish checks and balances against tyranny and encourage practices that push back against lassitude and folly. Theirs is not a republic that relies on ideal behavior, but one designed to function successfully despite human failings.

“The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. 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.” 

If people accept messages of hate and division, then their society will soon be filled with hate and division, and shortly thereafter it will be a society ruled by a tyrant who has harnessed that division to his own purposes. 

“A neighbor portrayed as a pig is someone whose land you can take. But those who followed the symbolic logic became victims in their turn.” 

First, the leaders disparage their enemies; then, these enemies are toppled by the people; finally, the people are toppled by their own leaders. 

“If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.” 

A tyrant will encourage professionals to abandon their codes of conduct; this permits the ruler to appropriate their activities to his own code, until the professionals are willing to commit atrocities. 

“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.”

A government survives only if it has a monopoly on force. When an interloper uses an alternative militia and the government does nothing, the interloper captures the monopoly and takes the country. 

“If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible.”

The chief purpose of governance is protection of its citizens, but the force employed must be constrained so that it does not turn against the citizenry. The chief purpose of a tyrant, on the other hand, is to train that same force on the people. 

“If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things.”

It’s one thing to serve society as one of its protectors. It’s quite another to allow one’s service to be turned, however slowly and slyly, to the very people one has sworn to protect society against. Wearing the uniform doesn’t guarantee that the wearer is on the good side. 

“Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.” 

Sometimes it takes just one person to start a movement. That one person will, for the moment at least, stand alone to face the enemy, and that aloneness is the hardest part of heroism. It helps to know that action done rightly, however frightening, sends out ripples that awaken others. 

“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.” 

One reason dictators tell bald-faced lies is to blur the distinction between true and false until the tyrant’s absurdities attain the same status as facts.  

“It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.” 

A lively political scene includes different ideas and varying perceptions of what’s true and false; this is part of how people come to terms with problems and their solutions. A leader who disparages, denigrates, and intimidates those who disagree with him is one who wants only his view to be aired and no other; given the chance, he will see to it that his society obeys that dictum. 

“Within the two-dimensional internet world, new collectivities have arisen, invisible by the light of day—tribes with distinct worldviews, beholden to manipulations.”

The internet is filled with sound bites, shallow beliefs, and outright lies. These compete loudly for our attention but often are promoted by people who prefer to work from the shadows. It’s far better to turn to thoughtful journalism and careful analysis.

“Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets. If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.” 

Talk is cheap; action makes the difference. Once a movement has discussed the situation, it’s time to stand up, directly and physically, in defiance of the authorities. Otherwise, the authorities can ignore the movement. 

“Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.”

No one is perfectly virtuous, but that shouldn’t prevent us from exercising our political rights. It’s important to keep our foibles private, lest we find ourselves blackmailed by those in power. We should restrict our public utterances to what’s vital, and keep our personal lives out of the limelight.

“Totalitarianism removes the difference between private and public not just to make individuals unfree, but also to draw the whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories.”

When everyone’s attention is focused on other people’s peccadillos, the petty overcomes the profound, citizens lose track of what matters, and the tyrant can make people distrust each other, which prevents them from organizing against him.

“People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.” 

The first thing sacrificed on the altar of safety is freedom; the second thing lost is the safety itself. 

“The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.” 

Civil liberties are easy to respect when times are easy but most at risk when times are dangerous. This is why dictators love emergencies, which encourage people to sacrifice freedom for security. As Benjamin Franklin put it, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

“Yet once we accepted the politics of inevitability, we assumed that history was no longer relevant. If everything in the past is governed by a known tendency, then there is no need to learn the details.” 

It’s dangerous to assume that the great political problems have been solved by democracy, for this ignores the dangers to democracy itself. To presume that history is complete is to assume there are no lessons to be learned from the past. Behind that veil of ignorance lurk the next would-be dictators. 

“Eternity politicians bring us the past as a vast misty courtyard of illegible monuments to national victimhood, all of them equally distant from the present, all of them equally accessible for manipulation.” 

A dictator preaches the wonders of a past that he alone can resurrect. Such a past was not wonderful, and the dictator can’t bring it back, but if he can convince enough people that it’s possible, he can conquer a nation. Hitler is a prime example; the current American president similarly campaigns for a mythical American past that he can make great again.  

“The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naïve and flawed sort of democratic republic to a confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy.” 

Once a people have abandoned the study of history, they become dupes for a dictator’s mystical appeal.