Rules for Resistance

Rating: 4/5, good

Rules for Resistance is a short (200-page) collection of essays by journalists and activists from different countries giving Americans advice on how to deal with Trump. It’s edited by David Cole and Melanie Wachtell Stinnett.

It was interesting, but I don’t know if it was as instructive as I was hoping for. The Indivisible guide at the end which describes how to call your senators and representatives and bother them at town halls was the most practical part of the book.

I thought David Cole had a good point in the introduction by stressing how important it is to maintain liberal control of institutions (like educational and political institutions).

“One theme in particular united virtually all the contributors: whether one faces an autocrat in Turkey, Russia, Chile, the Philippines, Egypt, Italy, Venezuela—or the United States—the principal defense lies in the institutions of civil society—or more directly, in an engaged citizenry.”

David Cole, Introduction to Rules for Resistance

The Trump administration has been taking control of some educational, medical, and legal institutions, which is frightening for people with liberal values. Fortunately, we have people within those institutions struggling to resist these institutions being taken over by people with unscientific or bigoted political or religious beliefs.

As for the individual essays, I liked Alexander Stille’s piece “Donald Trump, America’s Own Silvio Berlusconi.” It explains how Ronald Reagan’s FCC commissioner Mark Fowler’s elimination of the Fairness Doctrine for television in 1987 on top of the proliferation of channels with new technology led to an economic landscape where narrow ideological one-person talk shows became lucrative and how that created political polarization in the United States. Stille says that led to collapse of public trust in the media and even a weakening of belief in objective truth: “If you don’t know what to believe, you will believe anything.”

In “Authoritarian Democracy: A Playbook” Nick Robinson describes Narendra Modi’s authoritarian tactics as warnings for Americans. He says, “the most powerful discretionary tool of an authoritarian-inclined leader is not any specific action, but rather his or her silence or inaction in the face of violence or intimidation undertaken in their name.” Trump has been doing this all through both administrations.

Suketu Mehta in “The Art of the Outrage” compares Trump to the Indian politician Bal Thackerey.

“At the rallies, each attendee felt like Thackeray was speaking to him personally. A Shiv Sena activist told me that, after the riots, Thackerey had ‘powertoni’: a contraction of ‘power of attorney,’ the awesome ability to act on someone else’s behalf, to sign documents, or to have people killed. The Trump supporters now feel like the Sena supporters: Through him, the formerly powerless factory workers in Ohio and coal miners in Kentucky have powertoni. Every time your hero, your attorney, humiliates the good and the great, you feel a swell of pride, you feel, in your shabby house with the leaky roof, that you’ve got a measure of power, in Manhattan, in Washington.”

I like the catchiness of that phrase “powertoni” and I think it really describes how a lot of Trump supporters seem to feel when they watch him speak or go after people they don’t like.

Many of these articles are explaining what’s happening or suggesting general attitudes to take when trying to convert people to liberal causes. The advice is not the most specific or actionable, but it makes for interesting reading. It helps us understand this moment and know that we’re not alone in the world trying to resist an authoritarian leader.

What books have you found helpful in dealing with life under a Trump presidency?

Did anything inspire you to engage in activism in a certain way?