Be calm when the unthinkable arrives

This is lesson 18 from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. In a way, this is a continuation from the previous lesson, Listen for dangerous words. Expect an “emergency” to arise within a year. The initiating event could be a real thing, like the 9/11 attacks or a “false flag”. I suspect that we will never know for sure.

Like the Reichstag fire, like the Russian apartment bombings, like (as Snyder points out) the threat of “migrant caravans”, the next emergency will come and will be used to frighten you into voluntarily giving up your freedom.

Snyder writes:

For tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission. For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions. 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.

This is another one of those responses to rising authoritarian power that feels fearful. Am I brave enough to say “no” to the secret police after America has been attacked by terrorists? I don’t feel brave.

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