Lots of people like the idea of “strong” leaders, leaders who are decisive, who cut through red tape, bureaucracy, and even established laws. But around the world, democracy is increasingly threatened by self-proclaimed strongman leaders and their supporters who want to “blow things up” including blowing up democracy itself.

As election season gets under way in the US, and in other countries too, those of us fortunate enough to vote will be choosing our leaders. As you think about who to vote for, I highly recommend reading Timothy Snyder’s article The Strongman Fantasy from his Substack Thinking about … .

He gets right to the point:

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won’t.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it. 

Contrary to the fantasy, strongmen don’t actually get anything done:

At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done.  But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive.  It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything.  The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker. 

What strongmen really do is enrich themselves:

Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests.  In the twenty-first century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire.  To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists. 

Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University. He’s written several books about the history of central and eastern Europe, notably Russia, Ukraine and Poland. You might have read some of his articles or heard him on podcasts in the last couple of years. Since Russia’s February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he’s become a sought-after commentator. I’ve read two of his books: The Road to Unfreedom and On Tyranny.

It’s a troubling sign of our times that he felt it necessary to write this article. I’m glad he did. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it too.

Thanks for reading.

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