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jenny_islanderThe beginning of today's lesson is actually the last paragraph in Lesson 13, as follows:
"The choice to be in public depends on the ability to maintain a private sphere of life. We are free only when it is ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen."
Yes.
Onward to Lesson 14: "Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around…Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks."
Snyder identifies two ways to do this. In short:
First, practice good online hygiene. There are many leaks in the standard-issue online access model. Some of them allow people who don't have your best interests in mind to eavesdrop on your communications, using automated software that searches for things that they don't like people to talk about. There are ways to be more secure, but ultimately it's best, says Snyder, to "have personal exchanges in person." Do not rely on simply being a good person. "No one (except perhaps a tyrant) has a private life that can survive public exposure by hostile directive."
Second, try to stay out of legal trouble. This can be very difficult when laws are passed that are impossible to keep. It is doubly difficult when the tyrant proclaims what the law is and others obey him. But do your best to escape official notice, and also support human rights organizations. I add that if your existence is illegal or proclaimed to be so, and you join a public protest at which police presence is expected, read up on how to remain anonymous before you go.
It isn't only a matter of avoiding the boot. We are induced to admire it, even without realizing. Snyder notes what historiographer Hannah Arendt noticed about the tyrannies she lived through and observed. In short, "Our appetιte for the secret…is dangerously political." Making up a secret isn't even necessary. Pulling a private communication out of context and flourishing it in public "is an act of falsification."
This trick can be performed over and over. One goal is to force the person whose private life has been made public to either attempt to explain--further exposing their private life--or attempt to deny--which would be lying; either tactic makes them look weak, and as we all know, the tyrant loves to be the strongest one. (Winning!) But another goal is "to draw the whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories." The act of simply having a private life can be recast as conspiratorial. We begin to expect that the news won't be about what is actually happening, but instead about whose private acts have been exposed and what terrible hidden agenda that implies.
"By now the better reporters have understood all this, but," he says gloomily, "in the meantime millions of Americans have learned to substιtute sinking into the depths for thinking about the facts…this mechanism works even when what is revealed is of no interest. The revelation of what was once confidential becomes the story itself." (But her emails!)
Here is Snyder's blunt summation. "When we take an active interest in matters of doubtful relevance at moments that are chosen by tyrants, oligarchs and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own political order." Or as someone said online (my paraphrase), we need to practice the art of reacting to irrelevant scandal-mongering with a simple, "Sounds juicy. But as I was saying..."
"The choice to be in public depends on the ability to maintain a private sphere of life. We are free only when it is ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen."
Yes.
Onward to Lesson 14: "Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around…Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks."
Snyder identifies two ways to do this. In short:
First, practice good online hygiene. There are many leaks in the standard-issue online access model. Some of them allow people who don't have your best interests in mind to eavesdrop on your communications, using automated software that searches for things that they don't like people to talk about. There are ways to be more secure, but ultimately it's best, says Snyder, to "have personal exchanges in person." Do not rely on simply being a good person. "No one (except perhaps a tyrant) has a private life that can survive public exposure by hostile directive."
Second, try to stay out of legal trouble. This can be very difficult when laws are passed that are impossible to keep. It is doubly difficult when the tyrant proclaims what the law is and others obey him. But do your best to escape official notice, and also support human rights organizations. I add that if your existence is illegal or proclaimed to be so, and you join a public protest at which police presence is expected, read up on how to remain anonymous before you go.
It isn't only a matter of avoiding the boot. We are induced to admire it, even without realizing. Snyder notes what historiographer Hannah Arendt noticed about the tyrannies she lived through and observed. In short, "Our appetιte for the secret…is dangerously political." Making up a secret isn't even necessary. Pulling a private communication out of context and flourishing it in public "is an act of falsification."
This trick can be performed over and over. One goal is to force the person whose private life has been made public to either attempt to explain--further exposing their private life--or attempt to deny--which would be lying; either tactic makes them look weak, and as we all know, the tyrant loves to be the strongest one. (Winning!) But another goal is "to draw the whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories." The act of simply having a private life can be recast as conspiratorial. We begin to expect that the news won't be about what is actually happening, but instead about whose private acts have been exposed and what terrible hidden agenda that implies.
"By now the better reporters have understood all this, but," he says gloomily, "in the meantime millions of Americans have learned to substιtute sinking into the depths for thinking about the facts…this mechanism works even when what is revealed is of no interest. The revelation of what was once confidential becomes the story itself." (But her emails!)
Here is Snyder's blunt summation. "When we take an active interest in matters of doubtful relevance at moments that are chosen by tyrants, oligarchs and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own political order." Or as someone said online (my paraphrase), we need to practice the art of reacting to irrelevant scandal-mongering with a simple, "Sounds juicy. But as I was saying..."
