Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Tyranny, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Collapse of American Democracy
Tyranny and the Consolidation of Power
Political Action and Civic Responsibility
History and Memory
Summary
Analysis
Some words—particularly “extremism,” “terrorism,” “emergency,” and “exception”—are dangerous propaganda tools. The Nazis undid democracy by declaring “a permanent emergency” that required citizens to give absolute trust and power to the government. Terrorism is a real threat, but politicians exploit the idea of it in order to make people give up freedom in order to stay safe, even though freedom and safety are not in conflict. People might feel safer when they submit to the government, but in reality they are becoming less safe. The word “extremism” is meaningless—tyrants have always used it to describe their enemies, no matter their beliefs.
These emotionally charged words are the most extreme examples of how authoritarian governments’ propaganda denies citizens access to the truth by distorting the concepts that they use to analyze the world. Although these four words all do ordinarily refer to real things in the real world, authoritarians distort them so much that they can no longer be used in accordance with their original meanings. In other words, authoritarians destroy these concepts and force citizens to search for other concepts to think with. The inherently contradictory idea of a “permanent emergency” is a case in point: by definition, an emergency is temporary, but by extending declarations of emergency to justify extending their expanded powers, governments twist the concept of “emergency” beyond recognition in order to justify their tyranny.
Themes
