36 votes

Book recommendations for regular people living through fascist/authoritarian regimes?

I have a sudden unexplainable urge to learn about how people got through it, and I don't really mind what century or location.

I'm talking about people who couldn't be heroes, who couldn't just leave, and just had to do what they could to survive.

Does anybody know any books that touch on this subject matter?

18 comments

  1. Notcoffeetable
    (edited )
    Link
    I’ve been listening to On Tyranny: 20 Lessons for the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Each chapter is focused on a lesson learned by people resisting authoritarian regimes. Autocracy Inc. by...

    I’ve been listening to On Tyranny: 20 Lessons for the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Each chapter is focused on a lesson learned by people resisting authoritarian regimes.

    Autocracy Inc. by Anne Applebaum is also an excellent read about how modern authoritarians operate and have adapted to resistance throughout the twentieth century.

    And a recent fiction book I found surprisingly prescient: The Mercy of Gods by James SA Corey (The Expanse authors). Deals with the different psychological responses individuals under go during a harsh shift into an authoritarian regime (in this case an alien invasion).

    12 votes
  2. [9]
    infpossibilityspace
    Link
    Probably not quite what you had in mind, but the "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" has been going around recently. It's a short pamphet aimed at normal people looking for easy, low risk ways to fight...

    Probably not quite what you had in mind, but the "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" has been going around recently. It's a short pamphet aimed at normal people looking for easy, low risk ways to fight fascism and written in 1943/44 (I wonder what related thing was happening around that time...).

    https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf

    11 votes
    1. [6]
      json
      Link Parent
      .gov hosted pdf providing advice about fighting facism seems a bit like a canary wrt the removal of info from the other .gov websites.

      .gov hosted pdf providing advice about fighting facism seems a bit like a canary wrt the removal of info from the other .gov websites.

      5 votes
      1. tanglisha
        Link Parent
        I'm not sure we need a canary at this point.

        I'm not sure we need a canary at this point.

        3 votes
      2. [4]
        NomadicCoder
        Link Parent
        My response was that it sure looks a lot more like a honeypot than a canary. Yep, let's make it super easy to see who's downloading it.

        My response was that it sure looks a lot more like a honeypot than a canary. Yep, let's make it super easy to see who's downloading it.

        1 vote
        1. [2]
          Minori
          Link Parent
          Eh, it's a historical CIA handbook from the 20th century that was used to combat enemy regimes. I don't think there's any deep conspiracy theory here.

          Eh, it's a historical CIA handbook from the 20th century that was used to combat enemy regimes. I don't think there's any deep conspiracy theory here.

          3 votes
          1. Notcoffeetable
            Link Parent
            Agreed, media consumption and spending habits are going to be much better flags if anyone is trying to target potential resistance members.

            Agreed, media consumption and spending habits are going to be much better flags if anyone is trying to target potential resistance members.

            4 votes
        2. json
          Link Parent
          Ah yeah that sounds more CIA like.

          Ah yeah that sounds more CIA like.

          1 vote
  3. eyechoirs
    (edited )
    Link
    Less a guide on what you should do under a fascist regime, and more simply a depiction of the internal experience of everyday people who end up collaborating with the regime: Milton Sanford...

    Less a guide on what you should do under a fascist regime, and more simply a depiction of the internal experience of everyday people who end up collaborating with the regime: Milton Sanford Mayer's 'They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945'. It's simply a series of interviews with ten members of the Nazi party - not men of distinction, but just 'regular' people with mundane lives. I see this book as a useful tool for understanding those of our (former) friends, family, neighbors etc. who support Trump or at least are ambivalent to his abuses. It also contains one of my favorite quotes explaining why 'the slow creep of fascism' is in fact a slow creep:

    “But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

    But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

    And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

    9 votes
  4. TheFireTheft
    Link
    You reminded me of a book I read a few years ago that I thought I'd crack open again. The Authoritarians -- free download Here's an excerpt from the end of the book, which was actually just...

    You reminded me of a book I read a few years ago that I thought I'd crack open again.

    The Authoritarians -- free download

    The last reason why you might be interested in [this book] is that you might want more than just facts about authoritarians, but understanding and insight into why they act the way they do. Which is often mind-boggling. How can they revere those who gave their lives defending freedom and then support moves to take that freedom away? How can they go on believing things that have been disproved over and over again, and disbelieve things that are well established? How can they think they are the best people in the world, when so much of what they do ought to show them they are not? Why do their leaders so often turn out to be crooks and hypocrites? Why are both the followers and the leaders so aggressive that hostility is practically their trademark? By the time you have finished this book, I think you will understand the reasons. All of this, and much more, fit into place once you see what research has uncovered going on in authoritarian minds.

    Here's an excerpt from the end of the book, which was actually just referring to getting out and voting, so it may be too little too late...

    However Americans have, for the most part, been standing on the sidewalk quietly staring at this authoritarian parade as it marches on. You can watch it tear American democracy apart, bit by bit, bite by bite. Or you can exercise your rights too, while you still have them, and get just as concerned, active, and giving to protect yourself and your country. If you, and other liberals, other moderates, other conservatives with conscience do, then everything can turn out all right. But we have to get going. If you are the only person you know who grasps what’s happening, then you’ve got to take leadership, help inform, and organize others. One person can do so much; you’ve no idea! And two can do so much more.

    But time is running out, fast, and nearly everything is at stake.

    7 votes
  5. [2]
    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy and Suki Kim’s Without You, There Is No Us are both about living in North Korea. Demick’s is the better and more illuminating of the two books, but I found both of...

    Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy and Suki Kim’s Without You, There Is No Us are both about living in North Korea.

    Demick’s is the better and more illuminating of the two books, but I found both of them to be worthwhile reads.

    Neither is an exact fit for what you’re looking for: Demick interviewed defectors, while Kim was working with kids from “wealthy” families. Still, each gives a lot of insight into everyday life within North Korea.

    5 votes
    1. irren_echo
      Link Parent
      Seconding Nothing to Envy, I enjoyed the way she wove the stories together, and it felt like a pretty good on-the-ground account of a few different viewpoints the average person might hold in that...

      Seconding Nothing to Envy, I enjoyed the way she wove the stories together, and it felt like a pretty good on-the-ground account of a few different viewpoints the average person might hold in that situation, as well as how/if they changed.

      Another great one is Cambodian Witness, which is a memoir rather than journalism. This one really drives home how very quickly things can go wrong, how they can just as suddenly be righted (somewhat, obviously nothing was ever right again the way it had been, but), and how those on the ground can only really do their best and get a little lucky. Which doesn't seem like it would be comforting, but honestly for me it kinda was.

      Dancing Bears: People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny is another investigative reporting similar to the first one, but here we're looking at post-Soviet society and how trauma can color one's memory in ways that seem unintuitive.

      All three are very well written and engaging. Heavy, obviously, but well worth the read.

      5 votes
  6. boxer_dogs_dance
    Link
    I will bear witness, diary of Victor Klemperer,

    I will bear witness, diary of Victor Klemperer,

    3 votes
  7. CunningFatalist
    Link
    I can recommend Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

    I can recommend Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

    1 vote
  8. xavdid
    Link
    These are all great history-related recs, but does anyone have any good fiction to recommend? I guess the obvious one is Handmaid's Tale, but I wasn't sure what else should go on the list.

    These are all great history-related recs, but does anyone have any good fiction to recommend? I guess the obvious one is Handmaid's Tale, but I wasn't sure what else should go on the list.

    1 vote