On Tyranny - Lesson 4: Take Responsibility for the Face of the World

 Lesson 4 is to take responsibility for the face of the world. This lesson is about noticing symbols, being careful about what symbols you wear yourself, and being intentional about what you do with symbols out in the world.

If you see a Nazi symbol somewhere, take it down. Change it. Ruin it. Every person who simply passes by contributes to its normalization, and to normalize hateful symbols is to allow the hate they represent to thrive. If you see someone sporting a Nazi symbol, don't just engage with that person and ignore their public expression of hatred. Point it out. Challenge it. This is sure to be uncomfortable, but it shouldn't be comfortable to ignore it either. Nazis have a history of making it dangerous to not be one of them; check in with lesson 1 - don't obey in advance.

Snyder talks about public symbols in terms of both Naziism and Soviet Communism. In the Soviet Union in the 1930's, better-off farmers were depicted on posters as pigs. They were dehumanized so that the poorer peasants wouldn't mind so much when the better-off farmers lost their lands. But it wasn't too long before the government took everyone's land for collective farms. The collective farms led to years of starvation among the masses. I'm not sure why the collective farms failed to feed the people as well as the individual farms had; Snyder doesn't go into those details. The point of this anecdote was that the Soviet government turned the poorest peasants against the less-poor peasants via dehumanizing propaganda. Seemingly, there wasn't much outrage when the better-off farmers lost their land. They were pigs for having it in the first place, after all. We should be careful about how we divide ourselves in society. Are we dividing ourselves, or are we playing to the hand of a puppeteer in power? Maybe sometimes it's both.

Not only should we be careful about the symbols we hold for ourselves, but as a society we should be careful about the symbols we allow to fly under the radar. If someone wants to have a shrine to Naziism in their basement or garage, I suppose they should have at it. But when they bring their friends over, I hope those friends acknowledge it and express utter disdain. If your friend is a Nazi, a good friend would do their damndest to snap them out of that nonsense. A good friend would decry the symbols, and reject the hatred. They likely won't appreciate it, but it's not ideal to make Nazis content to be Nazis. 
People have a tendency to be followers. I'm not here to apply hierarchy to wolves and sheep. But if you stand against Naziism, there's a good chance you'll embolden someone else to do the same. On the flip side, if we allow it to be normalized, group-think kicks in. It will always be someone else's problem, someone else's responsibility to reject hateful symbolism. The truth is, it's all of our responsibility all of the time.