Living with Integrity Part 2 - Defend institutions
Professor Timothy Snyder’s second lesson from those who have experienced authoritarian regimes is quite simple:
2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about – a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union – and take its side (Snyder 2017).
If you take a look at repressive regimes, no matter how the takeovers came, very quickly the move was to institutionalize the people and goals of the “revolution,” and there is no better way than to take over existing institutions. Whether you look at the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the National Socialist 1933 electoral gains and Reichstag fire power grab, or the way modern autocrats – like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – all not only “seize the reins of power,” but move as rapidly as they can to re-make these institutions in their image. This is a global phenomenon.
Instead of eradicating democratic institutions, “today’s established and emergent autocrats (as is the case of Maduro or Orbán)...corrupt the courts, sabotage elections and distort information to attain and remain in power” (Menjívar & Del Real, 2024). Taking over and perverting institutions is more effective than burning them down.
Let no one doubt that this is an immediate and obvious threat to governance in the U.S. When the President is a felon, delaying prosecution and given immunity from future crimes by a corrupted court system, the [nominated] chief law enforcement officer is under investigation for crime, the chief public health official is a science-denier, et.al., there is no doubt the plan is to pervert their lawful role.
But the authoritarian campaign is not able to do everything everywhere at once. They are limited, and do not doubt they are outnumbered. They are simply organized and focused. They depend on the good-hearted opposition to be on the sidelines in denial, disarray, conflicted, and fearful.
Menjívar & Del Real’s recent article outlines the “toolbox of tricks” aimed at legalizing authoritarian rule, in just the ways that extreme-right U.S. partisans have planned in detail and announced in Project 2025. This is Steve Bannon’s plan to deconstruct the administrative state “by filling government jobs with partisans and loyalists” (Menjívar & Del Real, 2024).
So you, so we, had better also be organized and focused. Pick an institution and stand with it. Contend for it whether the challenge is direct and immediate, or slow and deliberate. Fight for funding. Mobilize support. Advocate in public. Win hearts and minds, because each heart and each mind comes with a person who can show up with their voice, their money, their work, their vote.
Pick your institution(s). Maybe it is your program or agency, your state DV coalition, your public library or school board, public defenders, the EPA, the public health agencies which have given us longer and healther lives. Pick your institution and stand up for it with your time, your treasure, and your voice.
The only sure way to lose is to not show up.
Credits:
Cecilia Menjívar & Deisy Del Real. (23 September, 2024). Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within: The new interconnected breed of autocrats gains and retains power by deception, globally undermining democracies through their own institutions. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-new-autocrats-who-dismantle-democracies-from-within
Sarah Repucci & Amy Slipowitz. (2022). Freedom in the World 2022: The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule
Timothy Snyder. (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny
2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about – a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union – and take its side (Snyder 2017).
If you take a look at repressive regimes, no matter how the takeovers came, very quickly the move was to institutionalize the people and goals of the “revolution,” and there is no better way than to take over existing institutions. Whether you look at the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the National Socialist 1933 electoral gains and Reichstag fire power grab, or the way modern autocrats – like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – all not only “seize the reins of power,” but move as rapidly as they can to re-make these institutions in their image. This is a global phenomenon.
Instead of eradicating democratic institutions, “today’s established and emergent autocrats (as is the case of Maduro or Orbán)...corrupt the courts, sabotage elections and distort information to attain and remain in power” (Menjívar & Del Real, 2024). Taking over and perverting institutions is more effective than burning them down.
Let no one doubt that this is an immediate and obvious threat to governance in the U.S. When the President is a felon, delaying prosecution and given immunity from future crimes by a corrupted court system, the [nominated] chief law enforcement officer is under investigation for crime, the chief public health official is a science-denier, et.al., there is no doubt the plan is to pervert their lawful role.
But the authoritarian campaign is not able to do everything everywhere at once. They are limited, and do not doubt they are outnumbered. They are simply organized and focused. They depend on the good-hearted opposition to be on the sidelines in denial, disarray, conflicted, and fearful.
Menjívar & Del Real’s recent article outlines the “toolbox of tricks” aimed at legalizing authoritarian rule, in just the ways that extreme-right U.S. partisans have planned in detail and announced in Project 2025. This is Steve Bannon’s plan to deconstruct the administrative state “by filling government jobs with partisans and loyalists” (Menjívar & Del Real, 2024).
So you, so we, had better also be organized and focused. Pick an institution and stand with it. Contend for it whether the challenge is direct and immediate, or slow and deliberate. Fight for funding. Mobilize support. Advocate in public. Win hearts and minds, because each heart and each mind comes with a person who can show up with their voice, their money, their work, their vote.
Pick your institution(s). Maybe it is your program or agency, your state DV coalition, your public library or school board, public defenders, the EPA, the public health agencies which have given us longer and healther lives. Pick your institution and stand up for it with your time, your treasure, and your voice.
The only sure way to lose is to not show up.
Credits:
Cecilia Menjívar & Deisy Del Real. (23 September, 2024). Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within: The new interconnected breed of autocrats gains and retains power by deception, globally undermining democracies through their own institutions. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-new-autocrats-who-dismantle-democracies-from-within
Sarah Repucci & Amy Slipowitz. (2022). Freedom in the World 2022: The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule
Timothy Snyder. (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny
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