Michael: Kevin, if you had to describe Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny in one sentence for someone who's never heard of it, what would you say? Kevin: It's like your grandpa's 'back in my day' stories, but if your grandpa was a terrified Yale historian and 'back in my day' was the fall of the Weimar Republic. Michael: (Laughs) That's... surprisingly accurate. It's this tiny, 126-page book by Timothy Snyder, a major historian of the Holocaust and Eastern Europe. He wrote it in a rush right after the 2016 election, basically as an emergency field guide for citizens. Kevin: So it's not a dusty history book, it's more of a fire alarm. Michael: Exactly. And it became a massive bestseller because it tapped into this widespread anxiety about democratic backsliding. It’s been praised for its clarity but also criticized by some for being alarmist. Today, we're going to dig into why it struck such a nerve. Kevin: I’m ready. It feels like a book you’re supposed to have read, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Michael: It absolutely does. And that discomfort starts with a really chilling idea: that most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.

Kevin: Whoa, hold on. Freely given? I always thought tyranny was imposed with tanks and secret police. You’re saying people just hand over their freedom? Michael: That's the core of Snyder's first and most important lesson: "Do not obey in advance." He calls it "anticipatory obedience." It's this human tendency to figure out what a new, repressive power wants, and then offer it to them without even being asked. Kevin: Okay, ‘anticipatory obedience.’ What does that actually look like in real life? Is it just people-pleasing on a national scale? Michael: It's much more sinister than that. Snyder gives this terrifying example from Austria in 1938. Hitler was threatening to annex the country, and the Austrian government caved. But here's the key part: before the German army had even fully crossed the border, local Austrian Nazis, and even many ordinary, non-Nazi Austrians, started taking matters into their own hands. Kevin: What did they do? Michael: They started rounding up their Jewish neighbors, forcing them to scrub the streets, to remove symbols of the old, independent Austria. People who weren't even party members joined in, looting Jewish homes and businesses. It was a spontaneous eruption of cruelty, all based on a guess about what the new regime would approve of. Kevin: That’s horrifying. They weren't even ordered to do it? They just... guessed what the new bosses would want and did it preemptively? Michael: Exactly. And Snyder's point is that this act of anticipatory obedience did something crucial: it taught the Nazis what was possible. It signaled to the regime how far they could push. A citizen who adapts in this way, he writes, is "teaching power what it can do." Kevin: It’s like they were beta-testing atrocity for the government. That makes my skin crawl. It feels like it's about more than just fear; it’s about wanting to be on the right side of power, no matter how ugly that side is. Michael: Precisely. And if you think this is just some historical quirk, Snyder brings up the famous Milgram experiment from the 1960s to show how deep this runs in our psychology. Kevin: Oh, I've heard of this one. This is the experiment with the electric shocks, right? Can you walk us through what happened there? Michael: Of course. Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to understand if Germans had some unique authoritarian personality that led to the Holocaust. He set up an experiment where ordinary people from New Haven were told to act as "teachers" and administer electric shocks to a "learner" in another room every time they got a question wrong. Kevin: But the learner was an actor, right? They weren't actually getting shocked. Michael: Correct. The learner was an actor who would scream, complain of a heart condition, and eventually fall silent, as if dead. The "teacher" was sitting in front of a machine with switches going all the way up to 450 volts, marked "Danger: Severe Shock." And whenever the teacher hesitated, an experimenter in a lab coat would just calmly say, "Please continue," or "The experiment requires that you continue." Kevin: And what happened? Please don't tell me people kept flipping the switches. Michael: The majority did. A staggering two-thirds of the participants went all the way to the maximum 450-volt shock, long after the learner had gone silent. These were normal, everyday people, willing to inflict what they thought was lethal pain on a stranger, simply because a person in a position of authority told them to. Kevin: That is just devastating. What did Milgram conclude from that? Michael: He was so shaken he wrote, "I found so much obedience that I hardly saw the need for taking the experiment to Germany." His conclusion was that ordinary people are shockingly willing to follow new rules in a new setting, and that our moral compass can be easily overridden by the presence of authority. Kevin: So when you combine that psychological wiring with a moment of political upheaval, you get... Austria in 1938. People start looking for the new rules, and they’ll follow them even if it leads to horror. Michael: That's the warning. It's not about a few evil men at the top. It's about the millions of people below them who, through a series of small, seemingly insignificant acts of conformity, pave the road to tyranny.

Michael: Fighting that internal instinct to obey is one thing. But Snyder says we also have to recognize the game being played on the outside. And that brings us to the tyrant's playbook, which often starts with an attack on the very things we assume will protect us. Kevin: You mean institutions? Like courts, the press, and the rule of law itself? Michael: Exactly. Lesson Two is "Defend institutions." And he uses the tragic story of German Jews in 1933. After Hitler came to power legally, a leading Jewish newspaper published an editorial. They wrote, and this is a direct quote, that they did not believe Hitler would "deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos." They had faith in the system. Kevin: A faith that was completely, tragically misplaced. Michael: Utterly. By the end of that same year, Germany was a one-party state and all those institutions had been humbled or destroyed. The lesson is brutal: institutions don't defend themselves. They are just buildings and rules. People have to defend them. And when a leader tells you they intend to break them, you have to believe them. Kevin: Okay, but how does a leader get away with that? You can't just wake up one day and announce, 'Democracy is cancelled.' There has to be a pretext, a justification. Michael: And that is perhaps the most crucial part of the playbook. Snyder calls it "terror management." This is Lesson 18: "Be calm when the unthinkable arrives." Authoritarians don't just use terror; they exploit it. They wait for a moment of shock and fear—a terrorist attack, a national disaster—and use the public's grief and panic to consolidate power. Kevin: You're talking about the Reichstag Fire. Michael: It's the textbook case. February 27, 1933. The German parliament building is on fire. Hitler, who had only been Chancellor for a month, rushes to the scene and immediately declares it's the beginning of a communist uprising. He shouts, "There will be no mercy now. Anyone standing in our way will be cut down." Kevin: He seized the moment perfectly. Michael: Perfectly. The very next day, he convinced the government to issue a decree that suspended all basic civil rights—freedom of speech, assembly, the press, privacy. You could be arrested and held indefinitely without charge. It created a climate of terror right before a crucial election, which the Nazis then won decisively. A month later, they passed an "Enabling Act" that allowed Hitler to rule by decree. The state of emergency lasted for twelve years. Kevin: Wow. So one fire, one 'unthinkable' event, was the key that unlocked the entire dictatorship. Michael: It was the pretext for everything. And Snyder warns that this is a recurring pattern. He points to Vladimir Putin's rise in Russia, which was cemented by a series of mysterious apartment bombings in 1999. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists, launched a popular war, and rode a wave of nationalist fear straight to the presidency. Later, he used other terror events, like the Beslan school siege, to justify eliminating elected regional governors. Kevin: So the playbook is: wait for a crisis, or even create one, then offer 'safety' in exchange for freedom. And people, in their fear, are likely to make that trade. Michael: Yes, and they use specific language to sell that trade. This is Lesson 17: "Listen for dangerous words." Be on high alert when you hear politicians talking constantly about "extremism" and "terrorism." Be wary of the constant declaration of "emergency" and "exception." Kevin: Why those words specifically? Michael: Because "extremism" is a tool to marginalize any opposition. The tyrant defines the mainstream, and anyone who disagrees is an "extremist" who must be dealt with. And "emergency" is the legal key. A Nazi theorist named Carl Schmitt argued that the true sovereign is the one who decides on the "exception." The one who can say, "This is an emergency, so the normal rules don't apply." Once you accept that, you've given them the power to dismantle everything. Kevin: It's a trap. They create a false choice: your freedom or your safety. And as Snyder says, "People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both." Michael: That's the heart of it. The playbook is designed to make you panic and give up the very things that keep you free.

Kevin: So we're supposed to resist our own psychology and be on guard for these huge political plays. It feels overwhelming. What's the actual, practical advice here? How does an ordinary person even begin to push back? Michael: This is where the book pivots from diagnosis to prescription. And it starts with a powerful reframing of a very loaded word. Lesson 19 is: "Be a patriot." Kevin: Patriotism. That word means so many different things to people. For some it's about protest, for others it's about unquestioning loyalty. What's Snyder's take? Michael: He draws a very sharp, very important line between a patriot and a nationalist. A nationalist, he says, believes their nation is the best, period. It's a belief based on emotion and resentment. A nationalist tells you to be your worst, and then tells you that you are the best. Kevin: That sounds... dangerous. And familiar. So what's a patriot? Michael: A patriot, for Snyder, wants their nation to live up to its ideals. A patriot is concerned with the real world and holds their country to universal standards of truth and justice. A nationalist says, "My country can't fail." A patriot says, "My country can fail, and it is my job to stop it from failing." Kevin: I really like that distinction. It reframes patriotism from just flag-waving to active, critical responsibility. It’s not about thinking your country is perfect; it’s about loving it enough to make it better. Michael: Exactly. And that leads to his other practical lessons. For example, Lesson 11: "Investigate." In an age of disinformation, you have to do the work yourself. Read long articles. Pay for actual journalism. Understand that much of what you see online is designed to provoke an emotional reaction, not to inform. Kevin: He’s basically saying we have to take responsibility for our own information diet. We can't be passive consumers anymore. Michael: We can't. And we can't just be consumers online. That's Lesson 13: "Practice corporeal politics." Get out from behind the screen. Go to a town hall. Join a protest. Meet people who are different from you. He tells the story of the Solidarity movement in Poland, where intellectuals and factory workers, who had previously been suspicious of each other, finally came together in person and built the trust needed to challenge the communist regime. Nothing is real until it happens on the streets. Kevin: It’s about breaking out of our bubbles, both digital and physical. And I imagine that connects to his more personal advice, too. Michael: It does. Some of the most poignant lessons are the simplest. Lesson 12: "Make eye contact and small talk." He says that in repressive societies, the first sign of danger is when people start avoiding each other's gaze, crossing the street to avoid a neighbor. Those small acts of connection are a quiet form of resistance. They rebuild the social trust that tyranny tries to shatter. Kevin: It’s a reminder that politics isn't just about what happens in the capital; it's about the social fabric we weave every day in our own communities. Michael: And that requires courage. The final lesson is "Be as courageous as you can." And for Snyder, courage means embracing history.

Kevin: Embracing history? That sounds more academic than courageous. What does he mean by that? Michael: He means we have to reject two dangerous ideas about time. The first is what he calls "the politics of inevitability"—the belief, common after the Cold War, that history was over and liberal democracy had won forever. This made us complacent and blind to new threats. Kevin: Like assuming the institutions would just protect themselves. Michael: Exactly. The second, and the one he sees as more dangerous now, is "the politics of eternity." This is when a leader creates a mythic past of national victimhood, where the nation is always innocent and always under threat from enemies, both internal and external. In this mindset, there's no progress, only a constant cycle of threat and grievance. Kevin: And if you're trapped in that cycle, you can't actually solve any real-world problems. You're too busy fighting ghosts from a fake past. Michael: You've got it. History, real history, is the antidote to both. It shows us that nothing is inevitable, and it gives us examples of people in the past who faced similar, or even worse, situations and made choices. It gives us patterns, it allows us to make judgments, and most importantly, it gives us a sense of responsibility. Kevin: So the big takeaway is that history isn't something that just happens to us. We're making it with every small choice—whether to obey in advance, whether to defend an institution, whether to believe a lie. Michael: That's the entire message of this little book. It’s a call to shake off the sense of powerlessness. History doesn't just instruct; it empowers. And maybe the first step is the simplest one. Kevin: What's that? Michael: It's what Snyder suggests in Lesson 8: "Stand out." Someone has to. He tells the story of Winston Churchill in 1940, when all of Europe had fallen and it seemed logical to make peace with Hitler. Churchill stood out and said no. He tells the story of Teresa Prekerowa, a young woman in Warsaw who risked her life to smuggle food into the Jewish ghetto when most people looked away. She later said her actions were just "normal." Kevin: But they weren't normal. They were exceptional. They were courageous. Michael: They were. And the book leaves us with that challenge. In a world that pushes us to conform, to obey, to look away, we have to find the courage to be the one who stands out. Kevin: A simple but powerful idea to end on. Michael: Let's leave it there. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.