Scot's lessons and ours

My friend Scot Nakagawa has been around a lot of blocks -- as a member of the field staff of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce back when being LBGTQ was not cool or safe, as an organizer against right wing paramilitary fascist and racist violence in the Pacific Northwest, and as an anti-racist and anti-authoritarian idea generator with Race Forward and ChangeLab. He is currently writing a Substack, The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook. It's very worth checking out.

He's lately done a series of posts, commenting on and amplifying historian Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder's format invites such an exercise in political thought. I did some of this myself when trying to think through the neo-Nazi eruption in Charlottesville in 2017.

Two of Scot's points seemed particularly intriguing to me. 

On the subject of Snyder's admonition to Be Kind to Our Language:

For political activists, having a common language, including key words and concepts, on which to found a shared practice, with shared tools and evaluative methodologies, is extremely important. But when it comes to how we speak and act in the world, just repeating words, phrases, slogans, and memes without reflection can be a default to social separation, which is exactly what authoritarians want from us. 

... Reading books and other sources of knowledge available in the commons - places like libraries, public journalism, etc. - and especially those that frame knowledge just outside of your most closely held assumptions, is not just a means of sharpening your critical faculties, but of broadening your view such that you can see others, and potential danger, more clearly. 

Take the time to put ideas in your own words. Doing so requires critical evaluation of the meaning of the memes that catch our attention. Everyone has biases and filters that shape the way we see the world. Knowing what biases and filters shape your worldview turns them from limitations to opportunities.

Or, in blunt language of this electoral organizer,  you have to talk with people you hope to influence or convert in language they can understand. And if you listen, you may find they can offer you their own language that meshes with your concepts. You don't get anywhere demanding that people learn your language in order to converse with you.

On the subject of Snyder's admonition to Be a Patriot:

There’s patriotism and there’s chauvinistic ultranationalism. Know the difference and make “America” mean constantly striving for greater inclusion, pluralism, fuller representation, and greater equity for all. We are the land of the brave who embrace diversity and are not afraid of it, nor of dynamism and change in our politics as long as all can participate equitably in decision making.  

More specifically, be aware nationality is the overarching identity on which nation-states are founded and without which they cannot survive. When we grow cynical of the possibility of inclusive, people-centered nationality, we grow cynical toward the state and the very idea of unity under a single government. When this happens, openings are made for reactionary forms of ethnic and racial nationalism and the end of the democracy looms over us. This is as true or perhaps even more true for the U.S. because American nationalism is rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy. 

Every state achieves national unity through some forms of coercion. The balance of voluntary versus coercive unity is greater in democratic states and, importantly, democratic states protect the freedom of citizens to act against coercion and for the achievement of a more perfect union. Autocratic states do not.

Too often, some groups are partially or fully excluded from nationality in order to hold them in a state of easy exploitation or, in the case of Native Americans, Chamorros, Native Hawaiians and other indigenous people, to dispossess them of their land and sovereignty. For this reason, American nationality must not attempt to achieve unity through colorblindness. Unity needs to be founded on anti-racism.

Patriotism is so hard to stomach for any of us who came up trying to end the U.S. empire's wars -- in Vietnam, Central America, the misbegotten "War on Terror." Or for those of us who never could trust that they would not be ejected from the nation by other citizens. 

But defending democracy from an authoritarian Republican Party has to include appeals to unity within the nation's unrealized possibilities. We have to embrace a vision of national aspiration. We can't just reject. People still risk their lives to live here rather than in so many other, more awful, places. Sure, this is a wealthy place to fetch up. But also, there is here a wisp of a vision of an equitable multiracial, multi-gendered land. That national vision is our inheritance and we have to affirm it, carefully even if uncomfortably. 

As Dorothy Day once told me, "you can't change it, if you don't love it first."