Resist Authoritarianism by Refusing to Obey in Advance (2017)
lithub.com
lithub.com
When I was younger I never had the patience to learn from history. Now that most of my life is about understanding people rather than understanding code, I can't get enough history.
Basically the book points out the same lessons that Hannah Arendt and others have been pointing out for a long time, that such mass death of innocent people is quite possible even outside the strange ideologies of Nazis. The conditions for evil are quite endemic to the human condition, especially in those that abandon truth in pursuit of political strength.
This same phenomenon has hit me like a ton of bricks over the last few years.
I spend half my time learning about humanity's past and the other half trying to keep up with the burgeoning AI explosion. It's a little disorienting tbh.
We used to say that law cannot keep up with technology. Now I think the society starts to not keep up with technology.
Ditto:
> In this book, Snyder examines the political, cultural, and ideological context tied to a specific region of Central and Eastern Europe, where Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany committed mass murders of an estimated 14 million noncombatants between 1933 and 1945, the majority outside the death camps of the Holocaust. Snyder's thesis delineates the "bloodlands" as a region that now comprises Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), northeastern Romania, and the westernmost fringes of Russia; in this region, Stalin and Hitler's regimes, despite their conflicting goals, interacted to increase suffering and bloodshed beyond what each regime would have inflicted independently.[1]
[…]
> The book was awarded numerous prizes, including the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, and stirred up a great deal of debate among historians. Reviews ranged from highly critical to "rapturous".[4][5]
IMHO it's far easier to report on the history than to get counter factual reasoning correct enough to propose preventative measures. That said it's good to have a plan, but the plan must adapt to reality and our view of reality is never perfect.
always see sayings like this from westerners, or americans, to be specific
everytime when something shit happened in the US:
- what are we becoming? DPRK/africa/china?
- at least we are not like Russia
this makes me wonder, were there similar sayings in 1940 german? "at least we are not in communism" "the worst fascism is still better than communism"
This is why studying history is important. It makes clear the dividing line between systems that use violence as a legitimate political tool and those that don’t.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_and_Ideological_Sta...
it's in the history of american too
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Mangione
i think americans should have a deeper understanding abt this now
A Weberian state is defined by its monopoly on violence [1]. So yes, the state--and by extension, almost by definition, its rulers--will use violence to further their state's political aims. (Mandatory Clausewitz: war is the continuation of politics by other means.)
That's very different from people within a state using violence to further political aims. Politics as a civic activity collapses when the population and its rulers fail to appreciate the difference between the two, which is why perhaps the singular question in designing governments throughout the ages has been how to enable rulers to deploy violence to further the state's collective aims while disabling them from doing so further their personal aims. (Althusser's simplification of the ruling class into a monolith is analytically enabling, but the political scientific equivalent of a spherical cow. You see a similar mistake made by foreigners describing others' political systems; no man rules alone, and no man rules unopposed.)
Also, when the political systems break down, i.e. personal political aims begin being openly pursued through violence, the order of impact starts with the poor. Even in the French Revolution, most of the rich escaped. In modern violent revolutions, the rulers have tended to leave with their wealth intact and egos bruised; the poor lose their lives and the middle class become the new poor.
In a rough analogy, there're many companies, sometimes they unit, sometimes they fight against each other, but they all speak for the board, who rules the company, just an analogy
and, there're no "personal aims" in politics, personal aims can never play a decisive role in politics
Even in the most centralized empires, the emperor could only rely on a specific political group of the ruling class and could not achieve his political goals alone
I found many HN users thinking like this, "what if Xi want to ..." "Putin decided to do ...", in fact, before they do everything, they has to unite at least 100 others, and should be on behalf of majority of the ruling class
> a state using violence to further political aims
all states using violence to further political aims, otherwise there'll not be polices, prisons and army, even the state itself
> Also, when the political systems break down, i.e. personal political aims begin being openly pursued through violence, the order of impact starts with the poor.
personal rebellion is not revolution, because it's not organized, let alone class revolution, black panther movement is more like a class revolution
speak of "violent revolutions", althusser talked abt this:
> When the bourgeoisie is politically in a position to use violence, when it uses it, then the masses can only respond by revolutionary violence. But if, at the end of a long class struggle and heavy sacrifices, the balance of forces is found, in some particular place, to be both highly favourable to the proletariat and united workers, and highly unfavourable to world imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, then a peaceful and even democratic transition becomes possible and necessary.
although i don't agree all of this
This is the spherical cow. Different members of a ruling class have different motivations in respect of how the ruling class interfaces with the society it's in.
MLK Jr., JFK and Hoover each belonged to our elite in the 60s. They had vastly different interests, to the point that they were sometimes in open conflict with each other.
> there're no "personal aims" in politics, personal aims can never play a decisive role in politics
This is obvious nonsense. Individuals have pet policy aims. When they're particularly powerful, the system indulges these quirks.
Individual elites also have different levels of respect for constitutional order, drive, risk tolerance, et cetera. Most importantly, individuals typically (though not always) want to maximise their own power; the collecive, on the other hand, typically (though not always) wants to constrain them.
> When the bourgeoisie is politically in a position to use violence, when it uses it, then the masses can only respond by revolutionary violence
The prediction is when the bourgeoisie has the opportunity to stage violent rebellion, it always does? Or always should? Again, this is Althusser playing with sociological lego blocks in a vacuum when empirical reality paints a messier picture. Predicting civic strife isn't as simple as predicting whether it's possible. Humans aren't automotons; they also need to be motivated to engage the severe (and constantly changing) risk-reward calculus that is violent revolution. Particularly in the modern era, when it basically means the elite can leave unscathed while the revolutionaries must pick up the pieces.
that why I said 'the ruling class is not a monolithic entity', class is not political factions, but all political factions belong to a certain social class
this is a classical misunderstanding abt marxism, although it was explained thousands times
"The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena."
and if you look into history - the topic we are discussing about - History is, in fact, surprisingly new.
"It was not the French bourgeoisie that ruled under Louis Philippe, but one faction of it: bankers, stock-exchange kings, railway kings, owners of coal and iron mines and forests, a part of the landed proprietors associated with them – the so-called financial aristocracy. It sat on the throne, it dictated laws in the Chambers, it distributed public offices, from cabinet portfolios to tobacco bureau posts."
"Owing to its financial straits, the July Monarchy was dependent from the beginning on the big bourgeoisie, and its dependence on the big bourgeoisie was the inexhaustible source of increasing financial straits. It was impossible to subordinate the administration of the state to the interests of national production without balancing the budget, without establishing a balance between state expenditures and revenues. And how was this balance to be established without limiting state expenditures – that is, without encroaching on interests which were so many props of the ruling system – and without redistributing taxes – that is, without shifting a considerable share of the burden of taxation onto the shoulders of the big bourgeoisie itself?"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-strug...
"The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary ministry that Bonaparte brought into being. Its dismissal forms, accordingly, a decisive turning point. With it the party of Order lost, never to reconquer it, an indispensable position for the maintenance of the parliamentary regime, the lever of executive power. It is immediately obvious that in a country like France, where the executive power commands an army of officials numbering more than half a million individuals and therefore constantly maintains an immense mass of interests and livelihoods in the most absolute dependence; where the state enmeshes, controls, regulates, superintends, and tutors civil society from its most comprehensive manifestations of life down to its most insignificant stirrings, from its most general modes of being to the private existence of individuals; where through the most extraordinary centralization this parasitic body acquires a ubiquity, an omniscience, a capacity for accelerated mobility, and an elasticity which finds a counterpart only in the helpless dependence, the loose shapelessness of the actual body politic — it is obvious that in such a country the National Assembly forfeits all real influence when it loses command of the ministerial posts, if it does not at the same time simplify the administration of the state, reduce the army of officials as far as possible, and, finally, let civil society and public opinion create organs of their own, independent of the governmental power. But it is precisely with the maintenance of that extensive state machine in its numerous ramifications that the material interests of the French bourgeoisie are interwoven in the closest fashion. Here it finds posts for its surplus population and makes up in the form of state salaries for what it cannot pocket in the form of profit, interest, rents, and honorariums. On the other hand, its political interests compelled it to increase daily the repressive measures and therefore the resources and the personnel of the state power, while at the same time it had to wage an uninterrupted war against public opinion and mistrustfully mutilate, cripple, the independent organs of the social movement, where it did not succeed in amputating them entirely. Thus the French bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position to annihilate, on the one hand, the vital conditions of all parliamentary power, and therefore, likewise, of its own, and to render irresistible, on the other hand, the executive power hostile to it."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumai...
like you said:
> This is why studying history is important
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. "
> Particularly in the modern era, when it basically means the elite can leave unscathed while the revolutionaries must pick up the pieces.
i'm not going to go further abt this, you can find part of the answer in 18th brumaire too
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...
Italians called themselves fascist. Germans would not have identified as such.
Fascism is difficult to define, even when it does not mean "my current political enemies." I tend to favor Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism traits. Eco is a historian who grew up under Italy's fascism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
If you take a step back and squint a little, almost all of that could apply to the US, regardless of administration. I would hope that would serve as a dire warning and not as a weapon.
9 and 14 are the only ones I would interpret as applying more to the Democrats.
(which is the original sense of the word and which, as everyone here hopefully knows, predates computers, and btw didn't originally have to do with breaking into closed systems)
Pro-democracy and anti-democracy is another axis entirely.
Both are political comparisons, but they are not the same thing.
The implication of the article is that we will only discover whether the current government is authoritarian based on how it handles social resistance.
Now flagged and nowhere near the front page.
This is the same thing done by everyone from radio jockeys dealing with callers, to TV shows.
The fundamental tool is the ban, because the only real power for site owners is silence.
Any principled stand will be riddled with exceptions in under a few days of operation. I’ve seen this repeated in multiple free speech communities, like clockwork.
Id very much like to see a principled stand which isn’t reducible to “free speech = speech exceptions I can tolerate.”
Most people can’t and don’t want to live in 4chan (8chan ?)
If you're constantly comparing people to some group, you can't talk about that group without being suspected of dogwhistles. Which forecloses discussions that otherwise could have been interesting.
When you look back at how the world received Hitler before he became the Hitler we know, you see publications like the NYT musing that Hitler really doesn't mean anything he's saying about the Jews, and when he comes to power he will temper himself [1]:
So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night.
But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.
Sometimes they are close enough but different that the similarities strike normal people. Except when they bring it up, the defense is “no actually the Nazis we’re specifically doing XYZ. This isn’t the same. Which shuts down conversation about both - the actions being similar or identical.
But this is the value of rhetoric.
I think you could invoke Godwin's law but it was seen as childish, not political.
Don't forget that laws are (hu)man-made. Laws reflect the kind of people that make the law. Certain kind of people can make certain kind of laws. At that point, rule of law would appear indistinguishable from lack thereof.
> The rule of law is a political and legal ideal that all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers, government officials, and judges. It is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law". According to Encyclopædia Britannica, it is defined as "the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power."[0]
Regardless what the laws enacted are, ensuring no one is above them (a president or an entire branch of the US Federal government, say) is a cornerstone of US civil life.
I don’t think all exercises of free speech are OK.
Maybe you’re from a country where obnoxious has a stronger meaning.
But a bunch of Nazis walking down the road demanding human rights violations is pretty obnoxious.
Alienating the people who don’t care is always a risk.
It’s one reason I don’t go to protests, and generally avoid activism, even though I care greatly about many issues and take discreet action when I can.
My representatives know my views very well, as do many government rule-making bodies that must consider public input.
My neighbors know nothing about this. Even though I’m well known to the press, they have no idea what my politics are.
Activists very much have to be activists. There is often very little space for polite activism without the impolite creation of awareness in the first place.
And the progress of a position also depends on the ability to get work done politely when impoliteness is not needed.
You have to insist on a more fundamental source of legitimacy, economic power, and wield a threat that cannot be easily defeated.
Remember: these presidents are elected by about a quarter of the country if that, and the most recent election had a fall in turnout. Even if you base your entire theory of legitimacy in election results, the legitimacy of U.S. elections is looking worse and worse every season. The opposition didn't even have a primary lol
Never once have I heard that WW2 was won by vocally and vociferously insisting on the rule of law
That aside, an argument could be made that if the rule of law had been more forcefully adhered to in their early days, Hitler and the Nazi Party could have been stopped before the gears of war had started to turn.
Not to mention the cdc scrubbing and such that judges are now overturning and demanding information returned to the public.
People did not vote for the Dark Enlightenment nor the Butterfly Revolution. Want to gut USAID? Work with Congress and pass a law. Want to strip Social Security? Samesies.
That is the rule of law. If you are a representative of the people, you follow the law.
Heck, want to get rid of the useless penny (like we Canadians did years ago)? Change the law:
I ask again, where are the adults?
ten-year
.
A bit wordier, but hopefully harder to denounce on the pretext that it's playing dumb.
Other people have found different things from that experiment, E.G., https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-yo...
And https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-shocking-truth-of-...
And
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-el...
Also consider that these were studies in which the the participants volunteered, and had nothing to lose by refusing orders or simply walking away. In the real world, these people would be agents of the state, or employees of a company, whose jobs, physical safety, and even lives (not to mention that of their family members) would be dependent on following orders. It's reasonable to assume in those situations, there would be a much higher rate of obedience than in the relatively safe environment of an experiment.
Conclusion: people are easily manipulable by authority.
To quote one of the articles, "he actually did around 30 studies and obedience varied between 0 and 100 per cent…
...Reicher pointed out that only the final one of these phrases is a direct order, and in fact none of Milgram's participants continued with the study after hearing this order."
I don't recall in the study whether the shockers knew the shockeys or volunteers but I bet they thought they were and thus they thought they were trying to help advance science. Since so many people dropped out after hearing pain in the shockees, I'm guessing that if we were to try to replicate the study scientifically and without looking for confirmation bias, we would find entirely different results.
These types of comment are what keep me coming back to HN.
If that surprises you, I recommend reading the hacker howto.
"Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by — and, given the way authoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers."
There is a difference between a hacker and a cracker, which might these days be called "tech-bro". Even if it might not be obvious to everyone.
Some of the people on this site maintain a strong anti-authoritarian, instinctive and philosophical hacker instinct, sure..
Many others however are just about as fully establishment, self-serving techno-elitists as you could want. One this site there's no shortage of such authoritarian types who happily defend all kinds of social control notions by default, while embracing a supposed need to monitor and herd "average" people for their own good.
The "Hacker" in Hacker News is more a cute marketing phrase than a real description of any such dominant ethos here.
Edit: And the post for this thread just got flagged. Amusing indeed.
disagree. While hackers traditionally do lean anti-authoritarian, I am consistently disappointed by how many folks here generally side with CEOs and tech leadership that do, in fact, display authoritarian tendencies.
It is no coincidence that the "tech bros" are sinking democracy full steam ahead, given how Thiel and fiends find democracy incompatible with their vision for the world.
So, no, I wouldn't say that HN tends to lean anti-authoritarian. From my experience on this site, I would say the opposite.
I found this to be a great video that has acted as a reminder of what it used to be. https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-bioterrorism-will-save-your-life...
People need exemplars, stories, ideas move their changes along.
They still exist, both young and old, but is a minority. The flagging of this article is a proof of that.
I understand keeping flamewars out of HN is important, but this discussion has been surprisingly calm. I hoped that it was enough to pass the filter
Except in (certain) cases where they find it very easy to accept if it is in line with their beliefs.
The true defenders are the ones who stand for the freedoms of those who have different opinions. This is a very small minority, everywhere.
However, I wouldn't go so far to disparage messing with the political system as "cracking". Hackers often try to break systems that are stagnant, and get those systems changed so that they come out stronger on the other side. And there's nothing more stagnant than modern politics. Ultimately it's a question of whether the people "hacking" the political system are "black hat" or "white hat".
I know what color hat Musk has chosen to represent himself, though.
Counterpoint: I've seen many posters here that are highly supportive of Trump and Elon. Not to mention all of the "hackers" enlisted in the DOGE army.
The BOFH was plenty authoritarian, and was celebrated for it.
I may not have the power to change things directly, I'm definitely watching what politicians and companies are lining up to lick boots. The boot lickers have not just been Republicans unfortunately.
Most that I'm aware of take a dim view on government police forces but don't really take a dim view on enforcement apparatuses against the government. An authoritarian regime needs a strong police force to properly function.
For example, I don't think I've ever seen a Libertarian complain about the inspectors general (except maybe for strict anarchists).
The keyword here is 'leads'. The libertarian's lack of government leads to a criminal enterprise, ie. a dog eat dog society.
As for small police force, what if police is outsourced to businesses? E.g. PIs, using AI.
If you still have military (and in this case, you do), you can just declare martial law, and use your military.
that was true of "hackers" (who in "old times" might be more likely to associate with anarchism), but not true of "tech bros" (who seem much more concerned with how much money they have than how much they're hacking), and I think HN reflects more of the latter than the former, though of course a wide spectrum with lots of people that fit neither category
He stopped echoing the hacker ethos in the 2000s, IMO.
One quote from him in the last week on Twitter (I was curious):
> We (the majority that voted for Donald Trump, and many others) are now past caring about accusations of racism. Even when they're true.
From a few days back, in re: dismantling of the gov't:
> Wrong. I voted for this, and more. Not thinking I would actually get it, mind you.
ESR is not a hacker, just a run-of-the-mill libertarian.
You may dislike esr's comments or find him appalling, but he is most definitely, by definition, a hacker.
yeaaaah, i can vaguely recall off the top of my head some quote from ESR about young black men being a mortal threat to everybody around then, and another incident where ESR was advocating the nuclear genocide of the entire islamic world as retribution for 9/11. The only reason I might be surprised to find out he's a trumpster is that Trump seems too moderate for him.
>ESR is not a hacker, just a run-of-the-mill libertarian.
c'mon man don't do the libertarians like that, they have some dumb ideas i disagree with about voluntary non-association but that's not because they're racist, it's just that they don't like the principal of the government forcing them to do things that they would probably be willing to do anyways.
> Timothy David Snyder (born 1969)[2] is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.[3][4]
> He has written several books, including Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017), The Road to Unfreedom (2018), and Our Malady (2020). Several of them have been described as best-sellers.[5][6]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder
"Do Not Obey In Advance" is the first chapter to his book On Tyranny:
Instead, suppose you're the government bureaucrat who must decide whether this vaccine hesitant individual gets medical care or keeps their job which is their family's sole income. Are you really going to oppose the state or is this an acceptable level of authoritarianism for the greater good?
What if the state requires you to report any known illegal immigrant or face jail time and steep fines. You know some illegal immigrants, are you going to refuse to obey in advance?
What if the state requires you to put pronouns in your linkedin and HN profile, are you going to refuse in advance?
Where do you draw the line on rule of law vs. authoritarianism?
Correct. And the rule of law ensures that I can sue as it violates my rights of free speech.
Right now, that institution is being put to the test.
And of all the people in the world who know how to slow roll degradation of rights, middle managers and administrators are great at it.
edit: also but sorry, complying with vaccine mandates isn't the best start for the slope you're trying to slick up.
In any case, what lines would you draw, what specifically would you refuse to prevent authoritarianism?
One thing I find very frustrating about articles and books like these, and about governance in the US, is the lack of awareness by the Professional-Managerial Class that there are factions within the population that reliably support any form of government you can think of, no matter how "backwards" or violent it is. It is only through the federal and state partnership in law enforcement that multiple regions of the country don't devolve into various flavors of revolutionary communism, theocracy, monarchy, petty-warlord-ism, etc. The educated person's obsession with "democracy" as a guiding light becomes increasingly naive as the pool of voters expands to capture every individual, as "democracy" in the case of the US actually means "a very strict limit on what the People are allowed to vote for". The constant shock by ostensibly intelligent people that huge groups of Americans broadly support policies the PMC has labelled as "fascist" or "archaic" makes me more convinced that they don't realize that the US is kept in line at gunpoint, not by some voluntarily and consensually held allegiance to internal pacifism and democracy.
An example: what form of government do you think street gangs prefer? What about white collar criminals? What about cops?
What is interesting is this urge is usually held in check by people realizing they don’t want the “other side” to have that kind of power. The information environment has conspired to convince everyone the other side does have that kind of power and uses it. That makes the game escalatory.
Respectively.