How to Not Capitulate for Dummies
A framework for weighing decisions under Trump.
Mark your calendars! I’m going live on Substack with Kristofer Goldsmith tomorrow (Thursday, October 9) at 12 ET! Join us.
Last November, in the days after the U.S. election, I was due to speak at a virtual event sponsored by a global financial services company. The engagement—a discussion about truth and trust—had been on the books for a long time; the organizer had even gathered me and the other panelists for a prep call the morning after Election Day. (I kept my camera off. I looked haggard.)
A few days later, with less than a week before the event, the organizer emailed the panelists: “Given the timing and backdrop coming off the election, as well as the unscripted nature of the event, there is some hesitancy to host a panel [on trust] at this time.”
“What the hell?” another panelist wrote to me privately.
I was incensed. The company thought that hosting an academic event about truth might jeopardize their future business prospects. I fired off a reply: “Let your partners know that right now is exactly when we need this discussion, and perhaps suggest to them that they read Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny.” I’ve included the first page for reference below. Seems especially apt.”
I was shocked at what I was witnessing: a multi-billion dollar corporation kowtowing to the Trump Administration, shying away from hosting a private event for its employees a few days after the election, months before Trump even set foot in the White House for his second term.
Nearly a year later, this behavior is no longer shocking. “Do not obey in advance,” Trump critics everywhere post ad nauseum, as we watch universities, law firms, media organizations, and tech companies1 all choose compliance, access, and profit over integrity, democracy, and truth.
These are the examples that have made headlines, but as my experience last year shows, there are probably a thousand such tiny acts happening every day. I’ve seen examples of organizations rewriting their mission statements to avoid attracting attention, philanthropies excising entire portfolios deemed “too risky,” in which they had previously invested millions of dollars. They call it being “strategic” or “practical,” but there is nothing strategic about obeisance. There is nothing practical about complicity.
Those obeying and complying might justify their decision by claiming it allows them to continue their other work. Sure, but it also makes it easier to justify the next time they contort themselves and their values to escape Dear Leader’s scrutiny, and it all might be for naught. They might twist themselves into a pretzel only to be targeted anyway; I’ve seen those who have made ruthless practicality their Trump 2.0 mantra be targeted, despite all their efforts to fly under the radar.
So how do we prevent ourselves from sleepwalking into autocratic compliance? When you find yourself weighing how to proceed in a situation made more complex by our current political climate, imagine what the subservient response would be, and do the opposite. “It’s not that easy,” you say. I know. You have security and monetary considerations. But when you start to imagine what’s possible, you gather your courage to pursue it. When you pursue it, you start to inspire others along the way.
This is why I haven’t shut up, even though the MAGA movement would very much like me to.
This is why I keep using terms like “disinformation”—you know, real words, with real meanings—even though we’ve been told they’ve become “too toxic.”
This is why I sued Fox News, even though many people told me not to. (I did not win, but I don’t regret it.)
You don’t have to take my word for it. Take Czech dissident (and later president) Vaclav Havel’s. In his famous essay “The Power of the Powerless,” he describes a greengrocer who one day refuses to hang party propaganda in his shop window, providing the pretext for others to pierce the regime’s stronghold on society:
The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.
The greengrocer looked at what was expected of him and did the opposite, setting off a chain reaction of dissent throughout his country. So did Ukrainians in 2022, facing the advancing Russian army. They had lived through authoritarianism once before, and they weren’t about to let its soldiers stroll freely down Ukraine’s boulevards. They towed Russian tanks. They confronted Russian soldiers. They threw their pickled tomatoes at Russian drones. And they galvanized not only the resistance of their fellow Ukrainians, but the support of the Western world.
Your acts of dissent do not need to be quite so bold, but even little things are radical acts of opposition that are worth actively pursuing.
So send the tweet.
Use the disfavored word.
Donate to an embattled non-profit.
Subscribe to your local paper.
Read a banned book.
Show empathy for your fellow human beings.
Throw the (metaphorical) tomatoes.
Keep showing the Trump administration that unlike those with more power and resources, you will not quietly comply.
Do the opposite.
Love this reminder to stand up and speak up. Thank you!!
Yes let’s throw all the tomatoes! Great piece thank you.