Updated 3/7/25:
Watch this inspiring talk by Timothy Snyder: The Real State of the Union!
Does Opposition or Resistance give you pause? Consider the writings of award-winning Yale scholar Timothy Snyder. After his book “On Tyranny” was published in 2017, he vaulted into the consciousness of activists and became a frequent media analyst of the destruction that Trump and his minions caused to our democracy. Between 2017 and 2025, activists grew stronger and more organized, but the few Republicans willing to put up guardrails were driven out of the government or their party. That anxious feeling in the pit of your stomach? We all feel it. But let’s look at what Snyder is actually asking us to do to protect our country – it’s really not that scary.
Timothy Snyder discusses the pressure points that authoritarians exploit to gain and keep power in “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” It’s a concise essay with pertinent examples, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. The 2021 graphic edition is updated and makes a wonderful gift. He creates manageable categories that we must monitor to oppose tyranny. Sometimes the lessons suggest concrete actions, sometimes they call for reflection, or sometimes they simply provide a discussion prompt. Knowing what to watch for can help you help you plan, especially if you are overwhelmed by the turmoil of Trump’s manipulation of the news cycle. His lessons will provide a framework to see beyond the chaos. He also has a substack newsletter that continues to explore these ideas. Here is a summary of his analysis:
- Do not obey in advance: Wonder why Trump makes all these crazy threats and floods the zone with chaos? It’s to make you give up in advance. What can you do? Keep living your life as you always have. Expect others to do the same. Do not “kiss the ring” or even appear to.
- Defend Institutions: The best way to preserve decency is to support our institutions. Authoritarians seek to hollow them out by depriving them of funds and attacking their goals. Choose an institution you care about and defend it. It could be a court, independent news, a labor union, a school committee, or any local or state governmental body, among many.
- Beware the One Party State: Consider running for office. Vote in local and state elections, especially primaries. Defend the rules of democratic elections across the country. This also applies to our state work fighting for transparency in Massachusetts.
- Take Responsibility for the Face of the World: Don’t allow symbols of hate and exclusion. This may be as obvious as swastikas or a confederate flag, but it is also any messaging language that attacks and marginalizes certain groups. Report them on social media, don’t allow them in your home or in your town. In 2025, be ready for attacks on LGBTQ (especially Transgender people), women, and immigrants. If Project 2025 gains speed, religions, other than the “approved” Christian evangelical one, will not be safe. Atheists and other freethinkers will also be attacked. On the positive side, talk about what the future should look like.
- Remember Professional Ethics: Beyond acting honorably yourself, support the professionals you know to uphold justice and the rule of law. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camps need workers and people eager to profit off of “private prisons.” We truly already have a crisis in this category with nurses and doctors refusing to treat women dying from miscarriages. There should be no such thing as “just following orders.”
- Be wary of Paramilitaries: Wonder why the 2nd Amendment is so important to MAGA acolytes? In red states, they already have an armed populace that is not accountable to anyone. The lack of background checks, and laws allowing “open carry,” make the situation ripe for violence. Keep fighting for gun safety laws, and don’t let mob violence be normalized. Be vigilant about your local police and expose their penetration by extremists.
- Be Reflective if You Must Be Armed: Authoritarians press ordinary citizens into violence against their targeted groups with propaganda and threats (think of the militias, and New Orleans mass murder. They also use soldiers and police officers, that society has given permission to carry weapons, to carry out their policies. People who have succumbed to this cannot be reflective about their behavior so we must support the press and others who try to hold them accountable.
- Stand Out: Set an example and break the status quo. Define yourself as a person who calmly resists evil. Authoritarians use hundreds of small cuts to decency before the whole evil plan is enacted. We can compare Project 2025’s plans for immigrants, LGTBQ, and women to the attacks on the Jews of Germany. Initially, certain activities and jobs were denied them. Then they had to live in certain areas while wearing a symbol of demoted status. There they were denied healthcare, food and housing. When there were too many to deport, they were killed.
- Be Kind to our Language: Avoid repeating MAGA’s authoritarian phraseology and stand fast against the tornado of “breaking news.” Remember that the whole point is to get you to forget about the last outrage. Think deeply and strategically and encourage others to do the same. Protect our libraries and schools. Read and give reading materials to others, both novels and non-fiction books about injustice or struggle.
- Believe in Truth: Snyder describes the four ways truth dies: 1. Open hostility to verifiable reality (thousands of lies by the President) 2. Endless repetition to make the fictional plausible or the criminal desirable (Sleepy Joe, Lock Her Up) 3. The open embrace of contradiction (vaccines prevent freedom and health) 4. Misplaced faith (Trump can lower the price of groceries, billionaires care about and try to solve our problems).
- Investigate: Subscribe to investigative journalism, and spend more time with long articles. Don’t succumb (or allow others to succumb) to indifference and cynicism that denies any truths and therefore elevates all lies. Examine the consequences of our elected officials using language such as women “belong at home,” pregnancy is “an inconvenience,” mothers are not “good workers”, and women are “pigs, or dogs” with “blood coming out of their whatever.” Is the media you consume simply repeating this pejorative language for the appearance of neutrality? Then they are promoting it as fact, and it would be best not to pay for it or share it.
- Make Eye Contact and Small Talk: Stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. Extend a handshake, a smile, or a word of greeting so people know you can be trusted to help them survive.
- Practice Corporeal Politics: Power depends on soft bodies and screen trances. Do things as simple as get outside, visit unfamiliar places and meet new people. Resistance needs cross fertilization of ideas and strengths and new people drawn into the movement. We can’t hunker down in our homes and wallow in escapist social media.
- Establish a private life: Write less on social media and interact more in person. Make sure not to share titillating stories meant to create conspiracy theories or simply distract from the facts. Learn how to scrub your browser history, and scan for malware on your computer. Make sure you and your loved ones delete any health-tracking apps. Learn how to turn off location tracking.
- Contribute to Good Causes: With recurring donations, support groups fighting for our way of life. Go beyond civic and media organizations and contribute to other groups that you care about, such as museums, libraries, food banks, shelters, etc.
- Learn from Peers in other Countries: Make sure you and your families have passports and that they are renewed (only 51% of Americans have passports.) Preserve the possibility of new experiences and spur of the moment travel. Keep in contact or make friends with people in other countries. Read global news and see how others are combatting authoritarianism. What perspective do they have about the United States?
- Listen for Dangerous Words: Be ready for the new regime to use words like exception, emergency, or terrorism. Weigh decisions to give up personal freedom for perceived security carefully.
- Be Calm When the Unthinkable Arrives: Authoritarians will exploit disasters to consolidate their power- ending checks and balances, suspending dissent, or tampering with the court system are some of their tricks. Consider how Trump has tried to falsely characterize the mass killings on New Year’s Day in New Orleans as perpetrated by an immigrant. Snyder says that “Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.”
- Be a Patriot: Set a good example of what America means for future generations. Help others to understand the difference between a nationalist and a patriot. Trump, as a nationalist, encourages us to be our worst and then tells us that we are the greatest ever. Orwell wrote that a nationalist “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, (and) revenge, tends to be uninterested in what happens in the real world.” In contrast, a patriot asks America to live up to its ideals in the real world.
- Be as Courageous as You Can: and help others to do the same. Be vigilant. Imagine a better future. Learn from history, but be imaginative about future solutions. Be watchful for a weaponized nostalgia for a past that never really existed (except possibly for white men.)