“On Tyranny” - Chapter 9: "Be kind to our language"
This chapter, it seems to me, is less about “being kind” to language than recognizing language’s power, not just to communicate outwardly with others, but as the means by which we frame and order out thoughts and take in the messages from without. Snyder here is asking us to be aware of the epistemic nature of thought and words and how we as individuals can shore up and reinforce thinking independently and critically while offering tools on how to do so.
Snyder introduces us to Victor Klemperer, a phonologist and scholar of Jewish origin who used his training to combat Nazi propaganda. He noticed how.the a term like “the people” was exclusionary; it meant some but not all people. This may seem tangential, but I don’t think it is: the term of “people” in German is Volk, and had been used, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries as equivalent to “national spirit”. This was part of a larger philosophical movement that sought to identify the uniqueness of the German people within the larger historical framework in the wake of the fall of The Holy Roman Empire also known as the The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had dissolved in the early 1800s.
Fichte asked what is a Volk “in the higher sense of the term” and concluded that it was the “particular spiritual nature" of a unique outcome of the human environment that forms the individual, right down to his thoughts. It’s the predecessors from whom we’ve come and who have formed us. What followed in the 19th century was a proclivity for looking backward and elevating all things Germanic; folklore and local histories which led to a kind of “back to the. Land”/anti-urban movement. This was the völkisch movement.
There wasn’t a general consensus that there was a single German people. There were certainly Gemranic peoples, bounty by sociolinguistic traits that had historical ties to one another and shared some customs; but it wasn’t. Until 1848 that the idea of a German nation seemed to coalesce and even then, at this remove, it seems more of a superpostioning onto diverse populations than an organic structure. The Frankfurt Parliament of that year tried to set up a national constitution for all the German states but this met with resistanc, if not failure, owing to rivalries and conflicts between, principally, Prussians and Germans. Mid-century brought wars that set Austria free of Germany as its own nation. Germany itself really didn’t come together as a unified nation until the 1870s.
Hitler derided the term völkisch as being too vague and preferred the term Volksdeutsche as more precise in delineating ethnic Germans. However, given the history leading up to Hitler’s rise, it’s difficult to see what “ethnic German” meant. One may safely assume that it could mean one who was born within the borders of the German nation and of course, spoke German. One can also see how absorbing Austria would make some kind of sense to him, after which he could begin the Germanization project of Europe (entailing all the subjugation and ethnic cleansing that implies).
The point of this ramble is that the use and abuse of language begins with how a political order defines a term like “the people” or “my people” (see the current occupier of the White House). Loyalty and ostracism begin here. Then other words become laden with restricted/restrictive meanings until language itself is an arbitrary reduction of codes words and phrases.
Snyder abjures us to “[a]void pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of thinking, even if only to convey thet thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.”
We live in a time when language itself is undergoing substantive changes, irrespective of any single demagogue. We live in a world of emojis, catch-phrases, and shorthand terms that are intended to convey more outside their brevity. The problem is that all thees forms of linguistic “efficiency” often replace the meaning of the terms that they’re abbreviating. A course in semiotics isn’t necessary to convey how susceptible we are to new modes of speech. It is that susceptibility that propagandists and political leaders can exploit.
Orwell, of course, knew this and we have him to thank for pointing out the doublethink that characterizes much of our political discourse today. Unfortunately, instead of calling out the bullshit right away, terms like “alternative facts” and “fake news” (when applied to genuine news media and information) have become normalized.
Ron Suskind attributed the term “reality-based community” as mockery to an unnamed official in George W. Bush’s administration in
2004, when the official “said guys like me were ‘in what we call "the reality-based community”, which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’” The staggering quote though is what follows. Suskind quotes the official:
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore…We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create out own reality.” This is, of course, frightening enough, but the official - many of whom have said is Karl Rove - continues, “And while you’re studying that reality — judicisiously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will just be left to study what we do.” Susskind noted that this discussion happened in summer of 2002. While Susskind notes that this quote got to the heart of the Bush administration’s MO, it has very much become a manifesto for the Republican Party and its current configuration.
Language creates reality to some degree, but it is not reality. If I see an act of police brutality, I am not going to refer it to as "an enthusiastic act of law enforcement keeping us all safer.” The first line of attack on language is to debase it and render it nonsensical, hence, Snyder’s chapter title does make sense; have enough respect for language to use it appropriately, accurately. Use it internally to protect yourself from accepting falsehoods and lies. Use it well to convey what you’ve seen and experienced and don’t be afraid to call out lies when you can.
When COVID number were beginning to tick upward and before the shut-down, a woman I worked with opined that she had no idea who to believe. I told her straight up, yeah, you do. You have a college degree, you’ve been in the energy field and you’re now a member of clergy. She didn’t say much in response, and I’ve not talked to her since, but I hope she got a clue and “knew who to trust.”
The occupier of the White House at the time is back in office and we are now set upon by a worse round of falsehood, error, and lies. Names of geographical areas are being changed on a whim, there is so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” doing its best to destroy all other agencies and thereby destroy “efficiency”; we have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is being derided and effaced from all government departments and policies. The vaunted “transparency” that the regime has promised has resulted in government websites going dark, and the words that the current occupier of the Oval Office speaks are often nonsensical and meaningless..
Snyder points to the avenues by which all this is circulated: “Politicians in our times feed their clichés to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying. Images, but the succession of from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is ‘breaking’ until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave, but never see the ocean….Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone. Who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it.”
I would enlarge Snyder’s media to very much include how we receive images (and words) on social media platforms and platforms like YouTube. Yet, while the barrage of images and text is readily at hand and we live in a period where there is more information at out disposal than ever, the regime uses words and images to distract and terrify a nation and its media. Already, major news organizations have fallen in line with the regime’s edicts to rename an international body of water, and to rescind DEI policies and remove all mention from their in-house personnel documents.
With this onslaught, most Americans now exist in a state of anticipation like a collective deer in the headlights of an on-coming Tesla cybertruck. People need time and space to reconnect with language in order to use it with any reasonably meaningful purpose. Snyder shows us the outcome of how a regime like the current one uses language as part of its “flooding the zone” strategy: “in 1984, the language of visual media is highly constrained, to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the present, remember the past, and to consider the future. One fo the regime’s projects is to limit the language further by eliminating ever more words with each edition of the official dictionary.”
So far, we don’t have an official dictionary to instruct us in the language the regime would have us use. There’s something more effective and as restrictive; simply repeating ad nauseam lie upon lie upon lie upon lie. This has worked well for them for quite some time and there is another barrier to erect with which to restrict language usage; doing away with the Department of Education at the federal level and restricting school districts in what they can and cannot teach at the local level.
If you restrict what is being taught or alter a subject to promote an ideological emphasis, then you have begun more actively removing the concepts needed to fully understand the world around us. The assault on language takes the form of epistemological repression.
Snyder stresses that reducing screen time is an effective place to begin: “Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon an armory that we have developed somewhere else. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework (emphasis mine - JB). To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires more reading. So get the screens out of our room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this — but we still can.”
Snyder recommends a solid reading list, but I’d like to add something else here. Take a class. Take a civics class, a history class, a philosophy class. Even if you’re relatively well-read, put yourself somewhere where you can engage with ideas and discuss them with peers. I’d do it sooner than later, given that the humanities are under attack, but if you’re reading Orwell, look around for others who might be expanding on his ideas.
If you’re more into fiction, then look at novels even more thematically.
You might say that this all “just more reading, and I do plenty online” and that’s where logging off and reading makes a noticeable difference. When you sit down to read a physical book, the sheer physicality of it brings you back to the reality locked out of virtual spaces. You are back in your body more fully. The act of having to turn a page, the tactical sensation of pages being turned is a visceral reminder that you’re not a slave to screen. We slow down when we read a book or a magazine; studies have shown we retain more information by doing so. The cognitive benefits are significant; but most of all, we are engaging with a text on our own terms and for that matter, the text’s own terms. There will be no comments section at the bottom to scroll to; you can make notes on the page or keep a reading journal, but this is a major corrective to what the regime is forcing on people.
Regime’s don’t want thinkers, they don’t want articulate people who can use words to evoke powerful, truthful ideas. Read a book out of love, out of rebellion.
I don’t have to add a lot here in terms of what we will likely be called on to do. You will read, again and again, how important it is to contact your reps, to volunteer your time, to march in protest, and to help where you can/as you can.
Two places to start with:
Mobilize at https://www.mobilize.us/. I have the landing page set to my area; populated with events, petitions, and volunteer opportunities, it’s practically one-stop shopping.
Indivisible at https://indivisible.org/ is another comprehensive hub. You can sign up for updates, download their guide to organizaing, find candidates to support, and more.
If you don't have a copy of "On Tyranny", you can purchase one here:
"On Tyranny" at Timothy Snyder's website where he lists several options. Support local bookstores and buy local or check it out from your local library.
Navigation
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Afterword(s)
Bibliography
Moore, Gregory (ed). Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2008.
Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny - Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Crown Publishing. New York. 2017.
Susskind, Ron. Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The New York Times. October 17, 2004. PDF download from the Internet Archive retrieved February 12, 2025. https://archive.org/details/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w.-bush-the-new-york-times/page/n2/mode/1up
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