Obeying In Advance
By
The first of Timothy Snyder’s 20 lessons on tyranny is “Do not obey in advance.”
1. Do not obey in advance.
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.
In the last few days, we’ve had at least two examples of obedience in advance.
The Stanford Internet Observatory is shutting down. It’s been a source of information on the uses of social media to spread propaganda and has been the subject of Republican congressional investigations and lawsuits. Stanford has done a bit of reorganization magic, but the look is of capitulating to authoritarian pressure.
It’s not clear that the film about Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, “The Apprentice,” will be shown in the United States. Distributors in the US are shying away from it, although distributors in Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan have bought the rights.
This is fine.