Establish a private life

Snyder doesn’t give historical examples to support this lesson (the Nazis and Stalin were not concerned with your email, after all). Nonetheless, we know that revenge is one of the goals of the incoming Trumpist government. Ordinary citizens may think, why would the fascists care about me? One can think about how it must have seemed to the average Soviet citizen in 1936, when the NKVD started arresting central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses. Those were all important people who had hands on the levers of power—they were important enough to be purged. Not us little people! But the Soviet government was clever at figuring out new crimes to accuse even the weakest, most powerless of their citizens of. Do you think Kash Patel or Russell Vought won’t spread their surveillance and lawfare to average citizens?

Basically, guarding against that is the point of this lesson. Tracking malware may become a legal requirement under Trump. Not loading it may make you vulnerable to legal sanction. This will be a good time to invest in private prisons. The only way to avoid the new NKVD is to become invisible. This impossible state is what Snyder is in essence proposing.

You can’t become invisible to a state that wants to find you and dominate you. You can take reasonable precautions, though. But Snyder does invoke an important thought from Hannah Arendt—that a totalitarian regime doesn’t actually have total power, but it has erased the difference between private life and public. The religious fanatics with whom Trump is larding his government want to be in your life, in your kitchen, in your bed, in your thoughts. Having a private life is a big “fuck you” to those freaks.

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