On Tyranny - Lesson 16: Learn From Peers in Other Countries

 Lesson 16 of 20 from the 20th Century On Tyranny is to learn from peers in other countries. The United States isn't going through our current political strife without context or in a vacuum. The entire world saw an anti-incumbent movement as well as a shift towards far-right policies and politicians. 

Snyder's focus in this lesson is on Russian interference in the 2016 election, as compared to false Russian propaganda in Ukraine just a couple years prior. In 2014, Russia spread a fake story about Ukrainian soldiers crucifying a young boy. Ukrainians reacted immediately to deny and dispel the story as false. In comparison, when Russia spread untrue stories about Hillary Clinton, such as her being ill, in 2016 Americans spread it almost gleefully. Ukrainians regarded our response to cyber warfare in the form of fake news as comically slow, given their immediate and swift response just 2 years earlier. The point is that despite all of the America First rhetoric, there is much we can learn from the political environments and circumstances around the world. 

Americans tend to see the world as they see America. We often don't consider how life and culture abroad might be different, except to parrot the "starving children in Africa" type narratives. Snyder believes we should make sure everyone has passports and can travel abroad to observe eye opening context we didn't know we needed to our current political atmospheres. I want to push back against that just a bit, because not everyone can afford a passport or international travel. In fact, I would argue that most people can't, and anyone convicted of a felony has even more limited options for travel.

So how do we learn from peers in other countries without traveling to those countries? Pretty easily, I think, since we live in 2024 with access to the internet. Now, not everyone does have ample internet access, so that's where public access points like libraries offer crucial services (as per usual). But we can learn from other countries by paying attention to global affairs, and also by speaking with people abroad. It can be difficult to affirm that the person you're talking to is who they say they are, so be sure to vet and verify information when possible. What we don't want to do is live exclusively in our America First bubble without drawing context and lessons from the world around us. America is not the world; it doesn't exist in solitude, and neither do we.