On Tyranny
Published in the run up to Donald Trump’s first term, this is a short pamphlet looking at “America’s turn towards authoritarianism”. It draws historical lessons from the 20th century to try and give a playbook to Americans.
It’s this American centrism was a source of both fascination and alienation for me. I found my milage and interest varied between lessons. What currently ails US politics doesn’t analogise seamlessly to the UK.
A few chapters particular resonated with me:
Lesson 2 - Defend Institutions
The politics of executive discretion always feels like a quick resolution to our problems, if only we could put our favourite in the executive chair. Institutional thinking does trade that speed, but for checks on power that feel valuable. Which institutions we think are worth defending, he leaves up to us. However it’s a safe assumption nearly all of us can find one we’re grateful for. His suggests engaging there, going beyond passive gratitude for their existence into support and defence.
Lesson 15 - Contribute to good causes
Following institutional support, but seemingly more relevant to the broader ecosystem of commercial and charitable goods. There’s a particular need right now to pay for journalism. Something tough to make a general ask for whilst cost of living remains high. However none of the solutions to our problems will emerge from a more silent and less scrutinised world.
Lesson 17 - Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.
I found myself thinking the “breaking news consumer handbooks” the WNYC show On the Media used to run. An attempt to critique an often alarming and opportunistic media response to spectacular tragedy. An attempt to tease out the patterns of our responses, both accidental and predatory. To steel ourselves against kneejerk cries of something must be done and afford reflection from a colder light of day.
Singular, horrific tragedies occur, and a drive for security is real in those moments. However we pass too much law in the wake or those moments that would have provoked a general grimace the day before.
This ratchet effect drives one way, and there not an obvious countervailing moment where we could relax. So we ever expect the terrorist threat to relax to the point post 9/11 changed can be reset?
Lesson 14 - Establish a private life
This felt like a deep political insight. He paraphrases Hannah Arendt’s understanding of totalitarianism as:
Not an all powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public life. We are free only in so far as we exercise control over what people know about us and in what circumstances they come to know it.
This feels like a profound insight for a modern digital world. One with an impulse to ignore this, often driven from ourselves. To share all, be a creator, achieve fame from our homes and sofas.
The YouTube creator economy suggests there is a viable path to power and success there. One that I think must trade some of that freedom for a general scrutiny of why your voice is worth listening to.
But the numbers putting it all out there exceeds the numbers making it. This description of totalitarianism I think survives an era where quiet words in living rooms become public treason, to help us understand an era of social media platform power, surveillance capitalism and the public shaming events of curtain twitching feeds.
I struggle with this regularly. My impulse is always to record, capture, document, share. However even as I type these words I wonder who you are reading them. Or how you may wish to use them against me in futures I can’t yet imagine.
I suspect many could find similar resonances in this books lessons, even if the whole glitters less than it’s parts.
After "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" I read: The Only Good Indians
Before "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" I read: Pale Rider