Stand Out

Who is as brave as Rosa Parks? I’m not. This is one of Timothy Snyder’s most crucial but most difficult lessons. He isn’t saying “Be a hero”, exactly, but that is what “Stand out” sounds like to me. I hear that lesson and the first person I think about is “tank man”, the Beijing student who stood in front of four tanks during the deadly street protests there in 1989.

Wikipedia says that we don’t for sure know who “tank man” was or what happened to him. I assume that he was snuffed out by the incredibly formidable system he was protesting.

Snyder gives two examples from 20th century history of standing out. The first was unexpected but when Snyder describes the circumstance of this person standing up, I am forced to agree. Snyder offers Winston Churchill as an example. Snyder writes:

In June 1940, Churchill told the British parliament that “the battle of Britain is about to begin.” The German Luftwaffe began the bombing of British cities. Hitler expected that this would force Churchill to sign an armistice, but he was mistaken.

Churchill did what others had not done. Rather than concede in advance, he forced Hitler to change his plans.

This one is a very tough because Churchill was such a morally compromised man. And perhaps Snyder was aware that his readers might be aware of the many hundreds of thousand dead Bengalis that Churchill callously permitted to die. So he gives an alternate example of a saintly “standout”, Teresa Prekerowa. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, she made a dozen secret trips into the Warsaw ghetto, carrying food and medicine for Jews there.

The thing is that this lesson is not about who is standing out, or even if they are terribly successful in standing out. And even more important, neither of the two individuals that Snyder mentions could know what would be the outcome of their actions. They both could reasonably guess that what they were doing would be utterly futile.

And perhaps most important about Churchill and Prekerowa from my point of view is that neither of them really provide any guidance about what I should do. According to their own promises, the Trump administration will start rounding up non-citizens instantly. They are making the logistical plans right now. If in February someone knocks on my door, seeking a closet to hide in, will I be brave enough to let them in? I just don’t know.

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