Reviewed by Matthew Manera.
Though this book was published in 2017 and deals with the aftermath of Trump’s election in 2016, it applies just as well, perhaps even more so, to where we are in 2025. Snyder begins with a Prologue on History and Tyranny to set the stage for the rest of the book.
The second of these twenty lessons is “Defend Institutions,” in which he writes, “The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.”
In the chapter “Beware the one-party state,” he quotes the American abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who said that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” adding that “the manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten.” This is a reference to Exodus 16:4 ff—check it out. With regard to safeguarding the electoral system, Snyder says, “We need paper ballots, because they cannot be tampered with remotely and can always be recounted.”
Concerning professional ethics, he writes, “Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the [political] situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as ‘just following orders.’ If members of the professions [especially politicians and lawyers] confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment […] they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable.”
In another chapter, “Stand Out,” he says, “Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.”
“Be kind to our language” advises us to “avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.” “Politicians in our times,” he continues, “feed their clichés to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. […] Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is ‘breaking’ until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.” He also refers to the suppression of books and the narrowing of vocabularies, and “the associated difficulties of thought.” Snyder advises us to “get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books.”
“Believe in truth,” he writes. “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.”
In the chapter “Investigate,” Snyder encourages us to “figure things out for yourself” and to “take responsibility for what you communicate with others.” “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.”
Snyder argues that we must “Practice corporeal politics—power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.”
These are only a few of the lessons about which Snyder writes. The book is easy to read—only 125 pages in a 4-inch by 6-inch edition.