Mundane behaviors can contribute to the loss of freedoms.

Snyder repeatedly mentions that the erosion of personal freedoms often starts on a small scale. Fascist regimes do sometimes come to power through dramatic military coups and declarations of martial law, but often, fascist regimes start with seemingly innocuous changes to citizens’ daily lives. These can come in the form of propaganda, where certain groups of people or activities are given a label or new identity. There are examples in the book for both Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. In both cases, governments used a shift in perspective to persecute selected groups.

Loss of freedoms can also arise when laws are changed or government actions go unopposed. These also often start as simple shifts in how citizens (or specific groups of citizens) are treated but lead to further concessions by the populace. A shift can be as simple as a change in the language political leaders use to describe certain groups of people, their opponents, or even social movements. Phrases and slogans are then repeated by citizens. “Politicians in our time feed their cliches to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them.” Snyder advocates for people to choose their language and behaviors carefully and to make an effort to use their own words when reacting to or describing something, so that propaganda slogans are not perpetuated.

We should strive to create a civil society.

Snyder emphasizes the importance of being involved with one’s neighbors and taking an active role in one’s society. The more sedentary people become, consuming news content that serves specific agendas, the less likely they will be to defend their neighbors or stand up to a rising tyrannical regime. While Snyder advocates that people take active roles in politics, he also recommends that people join organizations that are not political, such as hobby groups, book clubs, or fan clubs of local sports teams. Joining such groups will force people to engage one another on a personal level and hear opinions from outside their usual circle of friends and family. It will also give a human identity to opposing views.  

Snyder points out that when specific groups of people were persecuted in 20th century Europe, many people in those groups later stated that they remembered how they were treated by their peers. Being personable and affirming others with common courtesy takes little effort and could be very meaningful to the other person. Unfortunately, the current trend in the United States is to denigrate the morals and intelligence of people that hold opposing political views, so much so that they are portrayed as enemies. News sources trumpet leaks of personal information that are often unrelated to an individual’s professional ability. Such pointed persecution does not foster a civil society.

Conformity enables atrocities.

Many of Snyder’s lessons refer to situations where common citizens chose inaction and the results were disastrous. As Edmund Burke is often (but most likely incorrectly) quoted as saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” While Snyder does give examples of common citizens choosing not to act in defense of their neighbors when a fascist or communist regime persecutes them, he also adds that the principle extends to professional ethics as well.

The commanders of Germany’s Einsatzgruppen were predominantly lawyers, who rewrote the law to serve the Nazi regime while punishing and destroying any rivals. As for medical doctors, they not only helped run Nazi concentration camps and death camps, but they also performed surgeries on unwilling victims. Many of the concentration camps also functioned as slave labor for local, unethical businessmen. Many bureaucrats were involved in the processing of paperwork that enabled efficient mass murder. Snyder argues that if such professionals were not so complicit, “the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.” This also extends to soldiers and law enforcement. In Soviet Russia, local law enforcement assisted the NKVD in killing over half a million citizens who were labeled as enemies of the state. It is every individual’s responsibility to take accountability for the actions of their government.

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