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
Faced with tyranny, Hamlet famously declared that “time is out of joint.” Contemporary Americans should feel the same way: they are ignoring and risk repeating history. Their first error is the “politics of inevitability”: they believe that democracy is the logical endpoint of all history. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when it became obvious that communism would not create a utopia, Americans happily decided that capitalist liberal democracy was inevitable. But this idea means that Americans have lost the ability to imagine political change.
The “politics of inevitability” results from a failure to adequately understand the collapse of democracies throughout history, but it is also a product of history itself: namely, the United States’ global dominance since the Cold War has led many Americans to assume that the rest of the world will eventually turn into the United States. Specifically, they assume that this dominance means there is something exceptional or superior about the American system of government. In addition to being empirically false—Snyder emphasizes that the United States is now one of the most fragile democracies in the industrialized world—this idea is also profoundly dangerous because it leads Americans to assume that their political system will save itself. This idea serves the interests of tyrants, who benefit from an idle population that simply has faith in the inherent goodness of their country. Snyder’s central message is that democracy will not save Americans: rather, Americans need to save their democracy.
Themes
Along with the “politics of inevitability,” Americans are also guilty of the “politics of eternity,” or trying to recreate an idealized past that never existed. The Nazis, Soviets, and politicians who led Brexit all reasoned this way. So does Donald Trump, who took the slogan “America First” from a 1930s pro-Nazi committee, and whose plan to “Make America great again” does not refer to any actual historical moment. His kind of mythologized politics becomes about celebrating the nation’s “inherent virtue” instead of actually solving political problems.
Just as the “politics of inevitability” places absolute faith in the idea of American progress and democracy, the “politics of eternity” thinks the same thing about an even hazier idea of American “inherent virtue.” While the “politics of inevitability” says that the United States will always be the greatest democracy on Earth (even though, Snyder suggests, it isn’t), the “politics of eternity” says that the United States will always be great, no matter what it does—and anyone who disagrees is not truly American. Trump’s adoption of a pro-Nazi slogan makes it clear that his “politics of eternity” is based on a profound misunderstanding of history.
Themes
As an alternative to the politics of inevitability, the politics of eternity entrances people and threatens to establish “fascist oligarchy” in the United States. When people can no longer believe in the politics of inevitability, it is easy for them to turn to the politics of eternity.
When Snyder argues that Trump’s politics threaten “fascist oligarchy,” he is not just being pejorative—rather, he has chosen those two words carefully. Trump’s government would be an oligarchy because his policies and political style threaten to concentrate all wealth and political power in the hands of a small business elite that would never have to give up that power, and it would be fascist because it would use the assertion of American “greatness” to rally supporters around a sense of pride and loyalty, so that they do not examine the actual effects of Trump’s policies.
Themes
Both the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity encourage people not to act. They do so by claiming that the future is already determined and failing to see the relevance of history. If people are to take meaningful political action, Snyder says, they should first consult history in order to uncover patterns in the past, learn to analyze the present, and build a sense of individual responsibility for the future. But contemporary Americans have grown up with the politics of inevitability, so they have never learned from history. They can choose eternity, or they can choose to learn about history in order to change it.
Snyder ends by reaffirming two of his book’s central messages for the American public: the importance of history and the reality of political agency. The politics of inevitability and eternity are counterproductive for citizens (but useful for tyrants) because they teach people a false history that prevents them from seeing their own political agency. Snyder’s goal has been to show his readers concrete examples of when democracies have failed and how citizens can protect them, so that Americans can start taking the concrete actions that are necessary to save American democracy in the present.
Themes
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