Don’t stay indifferent

When I lived in Germany for two years starting 28 years ago the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe were crumbling. I heard it described this way (though I had to look up the details): Poland’s revolution took ten years. The revolution in Hungary took ten months, in East Germany it took ten weeks, and in Czechoslovakia it took ten days.

So, starting about 1979 Lech Walensa captured the imagination of the West. Democracy arrived in 1989.

I remember the elation I felt when the Berlin Wall was opened. A few weeks before I planned a trip to Berlin, not knowing what was coming. I was there five days after the Wall opened – after the weekend party in West Berlin finally subsided. Easterners were allowed to freely cross to the West, but us Westerners still had to go through passport control. I spent a day in East Berlin, which included a requirement to change a certain number of West German marks to East German marks (made of aluminum) and spend it all before I returned to the West. I used it to enter a couple museums and buy lunch. Back in West Berlin I went through the Checkpoint Charlie Museum that documented the various ways (many bizarre and ingenious) people tried to escape from behind the Iron Curtain. Some were successful.

I went back to Berlin 18 months later. The experience was different – no wall. I could pass from West to East just by walking past the Brandenburg Gate. No passport check, no lightweight coins. Watch for the vendors selling trinkets to the tourists.

East Germany is now safely a part of Germany, a very democratic country. But Poland appears to be another matter. The government led by the Law and Justice Party and its leader (though not Prime Minister) Jaroslaw Kaczynski is becoming authoritarian. In response, Martin Mycielski of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy organized the largest mass demonstrations in Poland since 1989. For these efforts Mycielski and his organization were awarded the European Citizen’s Prize by the European Parliament in 2016.

Mycielski has long admired American culture and politics. He was quite alarmed by the election of the nasty guy. He is helping us in the way he knows – describing for us what authoritarians do. For that he created the website Learn from Europe.

Mycielski starts with “Year 1 Under Authoritarianism – What to Expect?” He has a list of 15 items. All of them seem to accurately describe what the nasty guy and the GOP have been doing over the last year. Some of them:

They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth. Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system.

Remember – gaining power through a democratic system does not give them permission to cross legal boundaries and undermine said democracy.

They will divide and rule. Their strength lies in unity, in one voice and one ideology, and so should yours. They will call their supporters Patriots, the only “true Americans”. You will be labelled as traitors, enemies of the state, unpatriotic, the corrupt elite, the old regime trying to regain power. Their supporters will be the “People”, the “sovereign” who chose their leaders.

Don’t let them divide you – remember you’re one People, one Nation, with one common good.

They will create chaos, maintain a constant sense of conflict and danger. It will be their argument to enact new authoritarian laws, each one further limiting your freedoms and civil liberties. They will disguise them as being for your protection, for the good of the People.

See through the chaos, the fake danger, expose it before you wake up in a totalitarian, fascist state.

On to the “Authoritarian Checklist.” A couple of those items:

* Win elections on fear & populist promises

* Limit minority & women’s rights

Mycielski provides “6 Rules for Survival under an Authoritarian Regime.” The first of those:

Don’t stay indifferent. It WILL concern you eventually. It will concern your family, your friends. Voice your objection IMMEDIATELY. Show them you care. RESIST.

And “7 Rules on Approaching Authoritarian Supporters.” This is a list of guidelines to follow if that regime supporter is a neighbor, friend, or family member. Rule 1:

Don’t look down on them, don’t patronize them, even if you know what they’re saying has no factual basis or you find it offensive. Don’t preach, ask questions. Try to understand them, where they are coming from, what their problems are and why they see solutions to them in the regime. Treat them as people, as equals. They believe what they’re saying is true and they might have valid reasons for their support.

Host Ray Suarez interviewed Elaine Tyler May on today’s edition of All Things Considered on NPR. May wrote the book Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy. A lot of our leaders have made a big deal of danger to personal safety – fear of dangers increased even while the dangers statistically declined. This fear has its uses.

Don’t want women in the public arena? Warn them they are only safe at home. Want to keep the races separate? Loudly proclaim that young black men were dangerous. But the most likely victims of violence are black men and the least likely are white women. May’s conclusion:

[Fostering fear] has really affected our political life. It has affected our personal lives, and really since the late 1960s, American politicians, American leaders, have used the fear of crime to call for law and order kinds of policies, to encourage Americans to be afraid of their neighbors, of people they don't know. And that has really caused a sense of retreating of the common good. It's created distrust where we know those fears are highly exaggerated and completely out of touch of the reality of the situation.