Listen for dangerous words

This is lesson 17 from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. It has a level of irony built in. There are dangerous words that are dangerous because they might cause someone to become so angry that they become violent. But in this lesson, Snyder is talking about words that are used by authoritarian states to make its citizens afraid. Not words like “obey!” or “halt!” or “pull over”. All of these words are aimed at you, the person to whom they are addressed. And to be sure, they are frightening commands. The words Snyder is referring to are not commands—we should be concerned about them even when they are not addressed to us in particular.

“Exception” doesn’t seem especially dangerous, but here Snyder is paraphrasing Carl Schmitt, the legal theorist whom Snyder describes as “the most intelligent of the Nazis.” For Schmitt, a “state of exception” or emergency is where the location of power in a state is demonstrated. Emergencies can be used to legally suspend civil rights, democracy, etc. Authoritarians need emergencies to help them convert a democracy into a dictatorship.

For example, in February 1933, a Dutch communist set fire to the German parlaiment building, known as the Reichstag. The Nazis used this event to suspend civil liberties and engage in a round-up of communists. Hence the most dangerous word was “communist”, a word so dangerous that Germans’ freedom had to be scacrificed to fight it.

Let’s speed forward to 1999, when four Russian apartment blocks were bombed in terror attacks. Three hundred people were murdered in these attacks, which were presumed at the time to have been perpetrated by Chechen Muslim terrorists. “Terrorism” and “Muslim” were words used to snuff out Russia’s nascent democracy and solidify Putin as the thug in charge.

One wonders what heinous act of violence will be used to gin up the exception under Trump? It will be something big, whether a real emergency or a “false flag”. It has to be a big event—the 9/11 attacks would have triggered a sufficient “exception” if George Bush had desired to become a dictator, as Trump avowedly does. And whatever the event that triggers the exception, there will be words to use for it. Words to make everyone feel OK about giving up their freedom.

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