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
People must confront and remove “signs of hate” like swastikas, which have real political effects. For instance, in the 1930s, the Soviet government caricatured wealthy farmers as pigs in order to justify expropriating and collectivizing all land, then killing millions of people. Similarly, by marking shops with symbols that meant their owners were Jewish, the Nazis taught Germans to see Jews as economic and political enemies to be eliminated.
Although they might seem innocent because they are mere symbols, signs of hate, loyalty, and inclusion are actually an important way for different ideas to gain access to people’s psychology. Authoritarians use such symbols to gradually make dangerous ideas acceptable to the population and push their agenda into the public’s picture of what is politically possible and acceptable.
Themes
If the government demands people display their loyalty, they should do so through inclusive symbols. Even small symbols like lapel pins and seemingly innocent expressions of national pride can create exclusion. For instance, the Czech writer Václav Havel remembered seeing a grocery store owner put up a pro-communist sign in his window just to please the government, but this made it impossible for him to resist that government.
When displaying symbols of loyalty to the government becomes normal—as in Havel’s example—these symbols demonstrate the government’s power over every aspect of life and people’s utter loss of privacy and personal freedom of expression, which they should be guaranteed in a just society.
Themes
