Anticipatory Obedience

In his book On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder wrote about lessons from attempts by tyrants to establish and reinforce their regimes over the past hundred years or so.

One such lesson is that authoritarians will often rely upon what he calls “Anticipatory Obedience” to make people and other entities (businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, etc) obey their will in advance; before they’re even asked (or told) to do anything.

So rather than having to overtly threaten and coerce those who might oppose them, would-be tyrants can instead imply that there will be consequences for those who fail to toe their preferred line, and rewards for those who back them.

This implication then causes many such entities to act in the interest of the most tyrannical potential leader, because it changes the self-preservation math leading up to milestone moments like elections.

If one candidate were to make very clear that they will play favorites (so anyone who’s not publicly on their side will have a very hard time under their administration), then, and the other candidate runs on the idea that playing favorites is not allowed, many entities will come to the conclusion that there’s no real downside to supporting the former (or bare-minimum, not publicly supporting the latter), because the latter won’t punish them either way, but the former will if they take control.

It just makes good, survival sense (according to the superficial implications and stakes, at least) to kowtow to the threatening candidate under such circumstances, because there are potential (and potentially significant) downsides to not doing so, while there’s little or no obvious benefit to the opposite stance.

This is worth understanding in part because today’s communications ecosystems can amplify the impact (and possibility) of such threats, and because of how entangled with politics many business interests have become: the owners of newspapers do business with the government, and those in charge of a social platforms fear regulatory reprisals if a candidate they speak out against (or otherwise hinder) wins.

This in mind, it’s also worth remembering that public expressions of support (or the opposite) don’t necessarily mean anything, especially if they’re from entities that might fear punishment, tomorrow, for actions (or stances) they take today.