Book of the Month: ON TYRANNY by Timothy Snyder
"History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have."
As I left behind 2024 and entered into 2025, I knew exactly what I wanted my first book of the year to be. I felt afraid and frustrated when I looked at the state of the world, and I needed a source of guidance to help me prepare myself for the incoming Trump administration. So on January 1st, I picked up a copy of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Each day, from then until the dreaded January 20th, I read and thought about a single lesson from that book. I wanted to absorb its ideas piece by piece, easing myself into the new reality that we're all faced with. And while I still have plenty of fears and questions about that new reality, I recommend Snyder's book as an easy starting point for those wondering how to survive the next four years.
Timothy Snyder is an American historian whose area of specialty is Central and Eastern Europe, focusing in particular on the Soviet Union and the Holocaust. He currently teaches at Yale and has previously worked at several prominent universities around the world, such as the College of Europe in Warsaw, Leiden University in the Netherlands and the London School of Economics and Political Science. In addition to his academic career, he has authored fifteen books on European history.
On Tyranny, originally published in 2017, marked the beginning of Snyder's focus on modern American politics in addition to his historical interests. Observing the 2016 presidential election, Snyder realized that Americans opposed to Trump would benefit from learning about resistance to authoritarian governments in 20th-century Europe. He examined a number of case studies—fascist governments in the 1920s and 1930s, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, communist governments aligned with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s—and from those examples, he put together a list of twenty basic lessons for how to resist a tyrannical government.
Some of the lessons are fairly straightforward. "Do Not Obey In Advance" is the first, meaning that citizens should not preemptively cooperate with the orders of the new regime or attempt to ingratiate themselves with authoritarians by guessing what they want and carrying out abusive actions in their name. "Beware the One-Party State" is the third, encouraging citizens to defend and participate in democratic elections. Lessons like these are (or at least should be) common sense for anyone trying to resist tyranny.
But other lessons are less self-evident at first. What does it mean to "Stand Out" and "Be Kind to Our Language," the eight and ninth lessons? Why is it important to "Make Eye Contact and Small Talk," which is Lesson Number 12? These lessons are essential because they teach the importance of small, individual bravery and kindness in times that seem hopeless. Standing out is about following your conscience and doing the right thing even when—especially when—it goes against the status quo. "It can feel strange to do or say something different," Snyder writes, "but without that unease, there is no freedom." Eye contact and small talk is a way to provide affirmation to those feeling threatened by an authoritarian society, as well as the first step to building a network of allies that you can trust. Being kind to our language is about breaking away from the simplified jargon fed to us by politicians and television, then reading good fiction and nonfiction that will give us the words and knowledge to express complicated political ideas. Snyder provides a potential reading list of such books, though the inclusion of Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows is a choice that has aged poorly due to the political views of its author.
Paired with nineteen of the twenty lessons is a short chapter that demonstrates the lesson in action using real-life scenarios from European history. "Stand Out," for example, shows how the lesson of nonconformity can be implemented on both a national and individual level. Snyder reminds us of Winston Churchill's determination to keep Britain from capitulating to Nazi Germany, but he also tells the story of Teresa Prekerowa, a Polish woman who saved the lives of her Jewish friends by helping them escape the Warsaw ghetto. The thirteenth lesson, "Practice Corporeal Politics," summarizes the Solidarity movement in 1980s Poland, which saw workers and intellectuals band together to create a labor union so powerful that the communist regime had no choice but to recognize and later negotiate with it. Other case studies are more ominous; Lesson 6 warns against the rise of violent paramilitary groups by reminding readers of the atrocities committed by the Nazi SA and SS, while Lesson 3 tells us that we can never know which election will be the last one we freely cast our votes in. The section where Snyder asks if Americans will someday see the elections of 2024 "much as the Russians saw the elections of 1990, or the Czechs the elections of 1946, or the Germans the elections of 1932" is chilling to read in a post-2024 setting.
Perhaps the most ominous warning arrives at the end of the book. There is no case study for Lesson 20, "Be as Courageous as You Can." It simply gives you the following sentence:
Though the book was originally published in 2017, Snyder revised the book a few years later, since the version I read makes references to the January 6th insurrection. In fact, Snyder makes frequent references to events that happened during Trump's first presidential campaign and first administration. What I find curious, however, is that Snyder never once refers to Trump by name. He is always just "a candidate" or "an American president." In a way, this helps make the point that the threat of American tyranny is bigger than just one man; it existed long before Trump came on the political scene, and it will remain long after we are finally rid of him. But it still feels strange not to directly name the current leader of that tyrannical movement. The book was first published shortly after Trump's initial election, and Snyder makes no effort to disguise the identity of his subject, even quoting Trump more than once. I don't know why this choice was made, but it comes across as a combination of wanting to make the point I mentioned above and wanting to demonstrate a little caution. Perhaps Snyder and/or his publishers did not want to risk getting Trump's attention so blatantly. Or perhaps it is meant as a subtle instruction to readers on how they might speak about a tyrant in a scenario where citizens are forbidden from criticizing their leaders openly. Though I may not fully agree with Snyder's choice, I think it does multiple useful things within the text. It doesn't strike me as cowardice, but as calculation.
In times like these which feel so unprecedented, confusion and despair often feel like the most natural reactions. Snyder's plain language is a good way for you to start getting your feet on the ground and stepping away from all the portents of doom on your social media feed. He does not offer bland statements of reassurance that everything is going to turn out all right in the end. In fact, he attempts to give voice to readers' despair using a quote from Hamlet: "The time is out of joint; O, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!" It is perhaps not the best choice of quote if you remember what happens to Hamlet at the end of that play, but I digress. His goal is to give readers an idea of how to approach the future and remind them that although things could turn out like they did in 20th-century Europe, they don't have to.
The epilogue of On Tyranny sees Snyder demonstrating a pair of "antihistorical" approaches to modern politics, and how one can easily slide into the other. The first is the "politics of inevitability," or the idea that history marches towards a single, unchanging goal. In America during the late 20th and early 21st century, this mindset manifested as the "end of history" mentality, the idea that our status quo is a permanent state of affairs and couldn't be changed even if change was necessary. Such an attitude breeds complacency and stagnation. The second approach is the "politics of eternity," the idea that our nations were at their best in the past and that we must strive to return to our "golden age" without bothering to learn or consider the facts about that historical period. We see this idea represented in modern-day America by nationalist politicians and the MAGA movement, wanting to roll back the progress we've made and rights we've gained in their pursuit of a mythical "perfect" America. When the politics of inevitability are challenged and prove false, the knee-jerk reaction for many people is to drift towards the politics of eternity instead: when the present has failed you, why not look to the past? Both of these perspectives, however, stifle societal innovation and fail to see the world as it truly is. The only cure is to see our past, with all its flaws and triumphs, and realize that nothing is inevitable: it falls to us to learn from history and try to do better.
"History allows us to see patterns and make judgements," Snyder writes. "It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, each one of them different, none entirely unique. To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something...History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have."
Sitting here on Inauguration Day (as well as MLK Day), typing up this article, I think the stories of those who endured and resisted against authoritarian regimes of the past are the best company that a person looking for hope and guidance could ask for. This book won't give you all the answers, because nobody can. But it can help you gather the resolve to take the first step in defending and rebuilding our democracy.
