If the despots can engage in magical thinking, then so can we

On telling ourselves a story (about our strength, about our capacity for love, about how we're going to win) and then making that story come true

Demonstrators gather in the shadow of the monument for the March on Washington, 1963

The thing I’m noticing about tyranny, or at least the version of it that’s currently being practiced in the United States of America, is that its primary feature is guys just saying stuff. Lies, mostly. Lies that we are to believe merely because they are stated forcefully and parroted by sycophants. Lies that masquerade as holy decrees because the gatekeepers who are supposed to prevent laws from becoming truths would prefer to forego that duty. But still, for all their sound and fury: lies. Just lies.

I knew this, I suppose. I too once read the Emperor’s New Clothes. I was warned about the toxic compound that results when vainglorious malevolence is married to institutional cowardice. You get a naked emperor, is what you get. A naked emperor and a hell of a lot of people embarrassing themselves in deference.

The problem with how we talk about the authoritarians of the past is that we often focus so much on what happened when their lies were accepted as truths that we inadvertently reinforce those untruths ourselves. We speak of dictators as if they were mystically cunning, such that that their rise to power was pre-ordained. It’s telling that the common parlor game, vis a vis Hitler and time machines, is whether or not you’d take him out when he was a baby. What an odd hypothetical. It reinforces a belief that, aside from snuffing out the sin-eater, there’s nothing that could have prevented all that came to pass. It endows Hitler with almost celestial levels of inevitability. He ceases to be a broken man who achieved his goals merely because a sufficient percentage of the German population decided that lies were preferable to truth.

I am not ignoring that Hitler, like all dictators, did not merely repeat lies. He reinforced his lies with guns and thugs and armies and concentration camps. It is those tools we fear. But also. Before the violence came the lies. That’s always how it works.

Here in the U.S., our current would-be authoritarians lie about so many matters. They lies about Gulfs of America and who is allowed to elminate a Federal Department. They lie about whether they actually have an overwhelming popular mandate and whether they know what they are doing. The lies that trouble me the most are the ones about other human beings. These are the most classically fascistic of the lot. “If you see us doing something awful to another person— shipping them off to Guantanamo in the middle of the night, firing them without cause, declaring war on their gender identity— it’s because they deserve it.” That’s what we’re told anyway. More and more every single day, until we forget that we once believed anything else.

America’s emergent despots tell us that their initial victims had it coming— they were criminal aliens or corrupt pencil-pushers or sexual predators. The message is clear: They aren’t like you, the real American presumably half paying attention, so there’s no need to sympathize with them. You should thank the protectors for saving good, honest Americans from the interlopers and their fiendish plans to live in this country and do their jobs as public servants and be able to be true to themselves. Don’t you want to live in peace? Don’t you believe in the sanctity of women’s sports? Trust the liars and all your dreams will come true.

Organizing flyer for The March on Washington, 1963

By this point in the second Trump administration, we have all been sufficiently Timothy Snydered, so I recognize that this sounds like it is building to another admonishment to not comply in advance. That remains good advice. By this point, though, you have probably heard it repeated hundreds of times, perhaps verbatim, perhaps with the addition of a few choice curse words. The power of that truism, of course, is that it counters authoritarian lies. It stares down the small men who’ve declared themselves Gods by fiat and makes them at least have to work for it.

Yes, yes, yes to all of that. But it’s just the start. Whenever a people’s movement has ever changed the course of history, it’s taken more than just repudiation of the other side’s farcical wish-casting. The best movements don’t merely point out that the Emperor has no clothes. They remind all of us that we, the people, didn’t need a dictator in fancy duds in the first place, that we possess something more beautiful than silks and diamonds. We have each other. The emperor needs us, or better put, the emperor wishes that he had an ounce of our true power.

Goodness, what flowy, presumptive words. What treacly, materially unjustified sentiment. “People’s movement” “We have each other.” “The emperor needs us.” Can I be any cornier? I sure hope not. In this specific moment, the mawkishness is the point.

If you are a weary, frightened bleeding heart, the only thing I care about about right now is helping you believe in a near future that likely seems fantastical. I want you to believe that past need not be prologue. I want you to believe that— even if we are not in the streets in the numbers we will need— we will be soon. I want you to believe that though whatever fears and doubts you have are real, there are friends and strangers who will stand with you in the moments when it matters most. I want you to believe that you are a part of a life-giving, historically powerful peoples’ movement, even though that movement has not yet coalesced.

First we tell the stories, then we make them true.

Mobile marketing for the March on Washington, 1963

It’s impossible to spend extended amounts of time with me (either in real life or in this space), without hearing the story of Desmond Tutu in St. George’s Cathedral. You’re likely already familiar with its general outline, even if you haven’t heard it from me. It’s reached folk tale status in certain activist circles. I’ll never apologize for the repetition, though. I’ve recited it to myself nearly a thousand times and it hasn’t lost an ounce of its power. If overtly religious talk isn't your cup of tea, I hope the language isn’t off-putting. I trust you to make the necessary rhetorical substations to match your epistemology.

As the story goes, one day, deep in the apartheid era, Tutu was preaching to a mass meeting of activists at St. George’s in Cape Town. Seemingly out of nowhere, the South African security police stormed the building. They circled the walls, pointed their guns at the crowd and made their message clear: The gathering was to disperse, or else. The mood among the gathered activists was anything but heroic. They no longer cared about their collective strength. They eyed the exits, terrified.

Sensing the crowd’s fear, Tutu leaned into the microphone, but chose not to reassure his allies. Instead, he turned to the soldiers lined up around the cathedral’s perimeter. His voice bellowed, more triumphant than pleading.

“You are powerful,” the tiny archbishop intoned to the stormtroopers in his midst. “Very powerful…. but I serve a God who cannot be mocked!”

He took a pause, then continued.

“And since you have already lost, I invite you today to join the winning side!”

He stopped. There was no more to be said.

The congregation erupted, first in cheers, then in dance. They danced out of the cathedral and onto the streets. Once outside, they encountered an even larger crowd of security forces. And then, the miracle. The army, not expecting to be met with a defiant street party, retreated.

It’s a beautiful parable, made better by the fact that it’s 100% true. I understand you may be skeptical, and for good reason: We are not all Desmond Tutu. If stories like this were more common, myself and other hope peddlers wouldn’t need to repeat it ad infinitum. And again, we ask, what about Hitler? Some despots, we are told, can’t be stopped by people power. Their followers are too craven, too willing to eliminate all who stand in their way. The troops in St. George’s laid down their arms, but not all gun thugs would choose grace in that moment.

Volunteers at Riverside Church in New York prepare box lunches for the March on Washington, 1963.

I am not here to argue whether all of society’s worst dictators could have been countered by a mass nonviolent movement. I believe so personally, but I understand the counter-points. If you disagree with me, that’s fine. I care more about doing beautiful work with you all than I do about winning this or any other debate. But back to Hitler again, all I’ll mention is that there were in fact a handful of communities throughout Europe who felt with all their hearts that they could stand up to the Reich. What’s more, they weren’t wrong. In the midst of mass tragedy, there were sublime victories for humanity birthed by the power of collective belief. I’m sure we could “well, actually…” their stories, as well as hundreds of other stories of mass movements standing up to authoritarians across the globe, but I’d much rather believe in something beautiful and hope-giving than accept defeat preemptively.

Last week, I shared a list of thirty lonely but beautiful actions for this moment. I hinted in the preface that there was a narrative through line to the project. At the risk of being overly pedantic, my intention wasn’t merely to offer a rote accounting of “what to do,” but to propose a set of building blocks that might help frightened, overwhelmed activists act as if we are movement architects. The choice to start from our loneliness was deliberate. I wanted to help isolated world-changers first play-act and then become in practice people who bring others into the fold, sustain communities, and convert local networks of care into national momentum.

I love that list, and I’m glad that it’s been resonant for so many of you. I love even more that it joins a growing pantheon of other helpful lists. I left out a crucial element, though, one that that our opponents both understand and have deployed to disastrous effect. Before the action comes the belief. Before the reality comes the story. Before the inevitability comes the ridiculous assertion that none of this is impossible.

The difference between us and the despots is that when they engage in magical thinking, it is to spread nefarious lies. They tell us that our only shared destiny is one of fear and retribution. They repeat the old fascist trope that some of us can find freedom in others’ persecution. They bewilder us with spectacle, asking us to project strength onto sad, empty canvases.

The disadvantage we who love humanity have, in spinning our stories into reality, is that our current situation looks and feels so powerless. We command neither armies nor formal levers of political power. We are exhausted and overworked and isolated from one another. Some of us are sick. Some of us fear for our safety. Many of us harbor a secret hope that somebody else will come to save us, not because we aren’t willing to do the work, but because we doubt that our own distractible hearts will be sufficient for the task at hand.

All that would leave us in a rather hopeless state if not for one monumental counterpoint.

Our stories, even at their most magical, aren’t lies.

Our stories are about how there is actually room for all of us at the table. Our stories are about how the power of love fares against the love of power. Our stories are about how there are more of us who believe in care and community than there are fascists. Our stories are about how every action that has ever made our world or our country better— the forces that have brought down colonialism, toppled empires and welcomed more and more people into a siblinghood of belonging— came from groups of people who were profoundly powerless until they suddenly discovered that they were powerful beyond belief.

Our stories are about how change comes slowly and then all at once.

I don’t blame any of you for not believing in us yet. While I find cynicism to be a generally unproductive pose, it does feel validating, especially when we’re overwhelmed by fear. “Of course I’m scared,” we can tell ourselves, “everybody around me is either evil or incompetent.”

The problem with cynicism is that while the despots don’t believe in our humanity, they do believe in themselves. Well, maybe not truly, but enough to put on a convincing pantomime of confidence. The despots will keep telling their stories—about their own inevitability, about how all of their victims had it coming. And if they keep doing so, how can bear to cede the floor? How can we leave the storytelling to those who hate us? How can we stay so silent that we too accept their lies?

Here’s the story I’m telling, friends.

I believe in us, because otherwise I would have already given up.

I believe in us, because my heart can’t bear not believing in us.

I believe in us because, if you look closely, we're already giving plenty of reasons to believe in one another.

I believe in us, because our lives depend on it.

The March on Washington, 1963

End notes:

1. Again, I am so glad that last week’s essay was so meaningful for so many of you. If you’re new here, welcome, sincerely. I truly hope this is a space that is meaningful and helpful, but if you’re already wondering “wait, I thought this was the guy who gives me lists of what to do, not syrupy essays about how he loves me, a stranger he’s never met” I’m not offended if you decide this space isn’t for you. It’s a gift to be with you, for whatever length of time you’re here.

2. Speaking of that “thirty things…” essay, it’s been so touching to hear how many of you are adapting and using it in practice: I’ve heard about discussion groups, about people passing it out at protests, about hundreds of new commitments to action. It’s even in zine form, now, thanks to Jen Meyer of the Zinestack newsletter (feel free to print out and distribute- you have both of our blessing).

3. Oh my goodness so many of you have signed up for upcoming Barnraisers Project trainings (the one’s I’m offering on how to build community in a moment such as this). What a treat! But also, as our numbers continue to grow, my colleague Carly and I are considering (for logistical purposes) having to close enrollment a bit early (typically it’s 48 hours before sessions but we’re considering this Friday as the final deadline). That’s to say, if you haven’t registered yet, there’s value in doing so sooner rather than later. We may not end up closing early, but wanted to give the heads up about that potentiality to give you plenty of time to get registrations in if you’d like to join us. Thanks for your patience as we adjust to high demand. We want to offer these courses to everybody who wants them, but are updating our systems in real time. More info here and registration here.

4. I said this last week, but it remains true: If you appreciated this list (or the trainings, or my other essays) the best way to help is by sharing, spreading the word and subscribing (especially a paid subscription). This is my day job, and I’m doing my best to build a useful space for big-hearted but weary dreamers in this moment. Thanks for considering.

5. Another evergreen note: comments are for paid subscribers (it helps keep things a little more vulnerable and community-oriented and a little less like, well, the Internet) but I’m very generous with comping, just ask. And per my offer to talk up above, I’m garrett at barnraisersproject.org

6. Would you like a song this week? The first time I heard it was in my dorm room in college. A dear friend played it on a banjo. The fourth time I heard it, that same friend and I sang in a Quaker Meetinghouse. It wasn’t until many years afterwards that I learned of its most famous performance. That’s how songs work. At some point, they were all first sung to a single person.

The mostly complete Song of the Week playlist, which I still need to update, is on Apple Music and Spotify.