Timothy Snyder. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Tom Duggan Books, 2017. 126 pages.
Jason Stanley. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House, 2018. 218 pages.
Two Yale professors walk into a police state…
Not really. Although maybe.
Stanley and Snyder are colleagues who have written complementary books on current political realities, both terrifying, and each with its own bent. Stanley has written previously on propaganda; he is a child of the Holocaust. Snyder has written extensively on Hitler and Stalin.
Snyder’s is short. I combined it, in fact, because otherwise the review would be longer than the book. He says 20 lessons, and he enumerates them. 1. Do not obey in advance. 2. Defend institutions. 3. Beware the one-party state. 11. Investigate. 15. Contribute to good causes. 18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Each one has 2-8 word statement, a 40 or so word synopsis, then 200-1,600 words elucidation. You can almost read them as daily devotions or affirmations, if you’re inclined. They are surely fodder for pondering.
Stanley’s is longer, but still just 10 short chapters on such things as victimhood, hierarchy, sexual anxiety, propaganda. “The Mythic Past” is particularly compelling, as we hear echoes of the previous president (and so many others before) insisting there was a grand and glorious history that we’ve forsaken and must reclaim.
“While fascist politics fetishizes the past, it is never the actual past that is fetishized. These invented histories also diminish or entirely extinguish the nations’ past sins. It is typical for fascist politicians to represent a country’s actual history in conspiratorial terms, as a narrative concocted by liberal elites and cosmopolitans to victimize the people of the true ‘nation.’”
“When it does not simply invent a past to weaponize the emotion of nostalgia, fascist politics cherry-picks the past, avoiding anything that would diminish unreflective adulation of the nation’s glory.”
Weaponizing nostalgia. I love that phrase. So apt.
You can see why this feels relevant. Hitler makes an appearance, of course, and Himmler. And Trump. But also Mussolini, Erdoğan, Bolsonaro and … Mitt Romney. Yep, Mitt, who responded to Trump’s awful rhetoric about women by noting that Trump’s words “demean our wives and our daughters,” which Stanley notes reinforces the patriarchal ideology that is a hallmark of a fascist state (and, he says, “typical of much of the U.S. Republican Party policy”).
It seems to me that the prudent way to fight anything — cancer, fascism, a burglar — is to see it coming, and both these works help us take an honest look at where we find ourselves as a nation.
Sadly, they both went to print before the horror of Trump became fully clear. While both are pretty timeless (Snyder’s is moreso), I would have especially appreciated Stanley’s updates for Trump’s worst, including Covid and the January 6 coup attempt. But there is tremendous value in both works now, as we watch the next generation jockey for Trump’s place in the party — Hawley, Cruz, Rubio, Cotton.
“The pull of fascist politics is powerful,” writes Stanley. “Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of us. There are easier ways to live.”
Indeed.
#20. Be as courageous as you can.