Defend Institutions

This is the second of the 20 lessons in On Tyranny. The first is here.

The content of this lesson is to remind people that the institutions of civil society did not protect Jews in Nazi Germany, even though German Jews expected those institutions to hold. And he discusses two anti-institutional strategies employed by nascent authoritarian governments. Strategy 1) instant destruction of existing institutions. This was the Soviet strategy after winning the revolution and civil war. The second strategy was used by the Nazis after they won an election, about which Snyder writes, “Sometimes institutions are deprived of vitality and function, turned into a simulacrum of what they once were, so that they gird the new order rather than resisting it. This is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung.” In my opinion, we have already seen a notable example of institutional defense in Houston with this election. Houston voted against the two bond elections for HISD in a stunning rebuke to the unelected superintendent, Mike Miles. Miles was installed by the Texas one-party state leaders—he is one of the paladins of our new authoritarian state. It was a blatant case of removing democracy from the people. This bond vote was a tricky case—we as a people want to defend the institution that is our school system. Paying for some maintenance costs seems like a vital part of it. But HISD voters don’t trust Miles and know that he is a malign destroyer. Who knew what he might have used that $4.4 billion for?

I voted for the bond measures. Why? Because I want our schools to be safe and well-maintained. The thought that the Nazi in charge of HISD might be a bad actor with a gift of this much money didn’t even occur to me. I failed in my task to try to defend an institution I care for. This tells me that going forward, I will have to be more thoughtful about the institutions I value, and work to avoid Gleichschaltung maneuvers like this bond election.

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