Why Thinking and Questioning Matter Now More than Ever

An overview of my favorite chapters from Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny.

A friend of mine posted on social media - just three days before Christmas - “I’m just not feeling it this year. Not in the mood and ready to get it over with.” Her post received over 70 comments, most sharing the same sentiment. It was a bit depressing to scroll through the comments, one after another, complaining about how much work the holiday season is, how much each commenter couldn’t wait for it to be over. If I was honest, though, I was kind of feeling the same way. My kids, 11 and 15, are just beyond the magic of it all. This year, the gift-giving was modest, with no exciting, you-won’t-believe-it reveals. Despite living in Michigan, there was no snow on the ground and, because my husband is refinishing our wood floors, all the holiday decor was relegated to the downstairs family room. I didn’t feel very Christmasy either.

I was telling myself that this is just middle age. I’ve done so many Christmases that maybe it’s just starting to feel mundane. But many of the comments in that thread suggested a deeper dread. Some went as far as to say, “worried what the world will look like next Christmas.”

Since the election, I’ve really tried to temper my concerns about the future. Sometimes I allow myself to wallow in the concern for a worst-case, dystopian nightmare on the horizon. Other times, I remind myself that we survived one Trump administration, and we can survive another. When I talk with friends and family, many are dismissive of my concerns. Most are worried about the economy, but there seems to be a general “we’ll be fine,” mentality. Only occasionally, with some friends or “just between the two of us” will someone admit they are actually really scared.

I recently finished On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. It’s a quick, easy read, which I recommend as a great place to start if your brain is constantly wondering and worrying about what might come next. What’s most striking (disturbing) in this book are not the horrific, but well-known references to Nazi Germany. It was the small, simple ways Hitler was able to secure more and more power. Snyder uses examples from WWII, but also draws from examples as recent as the early 2000s in Russia or, well, Trump’s last term. When we think about Hitler’s Germany or WWII in general, horrific images of war, famine, work camps, and concentration camps tend to block out the parts of the story that show us how leaders like Stalin and Hitler were able to get to the point where they were able to carry out such atrocities. And perhaps, because we only think of the most horrible parts, our brains naturally think “That could never happen again.” But when you study history and tyrannical governments around the world, you’ll see that it’s often little by little that average citizens find themselves suddenly living in a dystopian nightmare. It’s the lack of resistance at many levels, the following along, playing nice, and repeatedly telling oneself “it’s not that bad,” that allows a tyrannical government to grow and prosper.

There were a few chapters that were most intriguing to me mostly because they felt so immediately present in our country today. It was these three chapters - right in the middle of the book:

These chapters summarize the importance of language and ideas and how these, as well as notions of “truth” are manipulated by tyrannical leaders to justify their actions. These chapters are important to me because I felt that they helped illustrate how a leader can build a foundation on lies and propaganda. And only with this foundation can he then begin to chip away at our governmental structures and traditions.

Chapter Nine talks about the use of dehumanizing language, repetitive catchphrases, and the oversimplification of complex topics in public discourse. The chapter draws on examples from Nazi propaganda, dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, to Trump’s own 2016 campaign. Snyder warns, “When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading.” He goes on to insist, “...get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books.” Of course, I’m a former English teacher, so I’m a bit biased when the solution to anything is more reading. Well, of course it is! But it is true that the brain is a muscle like any other and, just as an athlete trains to stay in top physical condition, so must we continue to exercise our brains. Thinking critically, questioning, and finding answers to complex questions is difficult work. We must keep our brains in good shape.

I think I highlighted about two-thirds of Chapter Ten because it put into words so much that I noticed in my Trump-voting friends leading up to the election. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, we were seeing a few inklings of idol worship around Harris within the Democratic party too. Early in the book, Snyder recounts that it was Wendell Phillips (an American abolitionist) who said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and, to me, that means a constant questioning and investigating of the world around us (27). But I also believe that it means respecting experience and credibility within professional institutions (scientists, doctors, etc). Snyder opens chapter ten with a quote that I’ve read to a handful of friends in the last few weeks: “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case” (66). I think we have all seen friends and family trade facts for what they “want to hear.” I think of how many times Trump says something offensive or worrisome and Trump voters dismiss it with, “Oh, he’s just joking.”

Snyder goes on to summarize Victor Klemperer’s work (a German scholar) by summarizing the four modes that lead to this above ideology and, according to Klemperer, this transition is often permanent. I’m summarizing these from pages 66-68 in the book.

• Mode 1: Open hostility to verifiable reality. This takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they are facts. Think about the increase in blatant lies we’ve seen Trump spew since he first began campaigning in 2015. In fact, now, it’s nearly impossible to fact-check him in real time because there are so many.

• Mode 2: The use of “endless repetition” to make the fictional lies plausible. If you call someone by an offensive nickname long enough (Sleepy Joe) if you constantly repeat that the election was stolen, the lies begin to sound familiar and believable over time.

• Mode 3: “Magical thinking,” or the open embrace of contradiction. This is perhaps the most infuriating thing, to me, about Trump voters. Farmers who rely on immigrant labor, but also believe immigrants are stealing American jobs. Covid isn’t real despite the millions of reported deaths. Trump has declared bankruptcy six times, yet he’s an ideal businessman. Snyder states what many of us witnessed from people we know and love, “accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason.” And he shares that, in 1933 Klemperer remembers losing friends the same way over their support of Hitler!

• Mode 4: The final mode is misplaced faith. “It involves the sort of self-deifying claims a president made when he said that ‘I alone can solve it’ or ‘I am your retribution’... Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.” This stage is thel sacrificing of one’s individualism, experience, or discernment in place of a larger “faith.” What’s dangerous about it is this dedication to the candidate becomes a new religion and followers willingly abandon any evidence that contradicts what they are told. In the words of George Orwell, from his novel 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

When these three chapters are pulled out of the context of the book in this way, Chapter 11 serves as kind of a call to action. The misinformation shared on social media has always bothered me. It’s so easy to run something through Google first to verify its accuracy. If something sounds oversimplified - it probably is. And, keeping in mind the modes discussed above, both sides need to be cautious about sharing things just because we agree with them… that doesn’t make them accurate after all.

In Chapter 11, Snyder also reminds us to break free of our two-dimensional online lives and seek more connection in the real world. It’s through our connections, conversations, and experiences that we will be able to discern truth in the world. Snyder says, “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” (73).

So when I’m alone with my thoughts and I’m unsure if I should panic, the repeated words of scholars and historians ring fresh in my mind. We don’t have to guess about what’s coming next. We simply need to look to history. And, if left unchecked, it’s not a hopeful prophecy.

The good news (I hope) is that we have the words of scholars and historians to help us fight as well, to help us see the signs, and to direct us on when to stand up and say no. In fact, Snyder opens his Prologue with the line, “History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” I just hope enough of us are willing to fight, stand up, and say no when the time comes.