On Tyranny: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

So far, Snyder has repeatedly emphasized how authoritarian governments secure power bit by bit, gradually eroding their opposition, civic institutions, and citizens’ sense of truth and reality. However, at a certain point, these gradual efforts are successful enough to permit an authoritarian government to suddenly and irreversibly grab power. By making the “state of emergency” permanent, Hitler destroyed all semblance of democracy in Germany, until his regime fell. In short, tyranny takes control of a society just like Ernest Hemingway famously said that people go bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.” Stopping tyranny is far easier in the first, gradual stage—but citizens must have some idea of “the unthinkable” that is to come.

Putin’s use of “terror management” shows how authoritarians can also combine the tactic of manufactured emergencies (or the principle that “one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission”) with the strategy of gradually eroding checks and balances. Like the Reichstag fire in Germany, the conveniently timed, manufactured terrorist attacks were cynically designed to convince the public that there was an enemy that needed to be defeated and they needed to place faith in the government in order to do so. In other words, it created a sense of a warlike national mission for Russian citizens, when its real motive was to help Putin secure greater and greater power. As Putin’s government continues using these same disinformation and false terrorism tactics to gain empire-like influence throughout the world, it spreads the same violence against minorities and antidemocratic disorder that it has sown inside its borders.