On Tyranny is organized into 20 lessons. On the first page of each lesson, which has a simple and commanding title, there is a brief synopsis of the lesson, usually followed by a few pages of historical precedents, current events in American politics, and advice on what we can do.
The first lesson is “Do not obey in advance,” which is about how much of the power authoritarians have is given to them preemptively or freely.
The second is “Defend institutions,” which is about courts, unions, newspapers, or laws, for example, and how we must defend them because they do not protect themselves.
The third lesson is “Beware the one-party state,” revealing how one-party states come to be and how to protect the electoral system.
The fourth is “Take responsibility for the face of the world,” explaining how symbols and gestures can be used to oppress and exclude.
The fifth is “Remember professional ethics,” which explains how important lawyers and judges are; there are numerous historical examples of how they capitulated to the Nazis and eased their path to power.
The sixth is “Be wary of paramilitaries,” which are used by people in power to degrade and then transform a political order.
The seventh, “Be reflective if you must be armed,” counsels care about carrying weapons and warns that most of the killing done in the past examples of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia was done by policemen.
The eighth, “Stand out,” uses Winston Churchill as an example of a figure who stood out and reused to play the fascist game even though it was a dangerous thing to do.
The ninth, “Be kind to our language,” warns against spending too much time on the internet, advocates reading books, and instructs us not to use the meaningless phrases everyone else does.
The tenth is “Believe in truth,” explaining how tyrants decry real news and disseminate fake news.
The eleventh, “Investigate,” asks us to do work ourselves, reading real journalism and not taking people’s shallow, conspiratorial claims for truth.
The twelfth, “Make eye contact and small talk,” as well as the thirteenth, “Practice corporeal politics,” suggests we actually engage in real life with real people, avoiding the scrim of anonymity on the internet.
The fourteenth, “Establish a private life,” counsels us to be careful about ways tyrants can break into our private lives and control us; this includes being careful with our digital footprint.
The fifteenth, “Contribute to good causes,” suggests we donate money to organizations and causes we care about because we need them to keep existing.
The sixteenth, “Learn from peers in other countries,” reminds us that the things we are experiencing now have already happened in Europe, so they can help us understand and prepare for the future.
The seventeenth, “Listen for dangerous words,” asks us to identify the hollowness of words like “extremism” and “exception” and how tyrants use them.
The eighteenth, “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” is about how Hitler used the Reichstag fire to topple everything in his way to power, and how we too can anticipate Trump and his cronies using some real or manufactured crisis to dismantle our democracy because it is a state of emergency.
The nineteenth, “Be a patriot,” discusses what real patriotism is vs. nationalism.
The twentieth, “Be as courageous as you can,” only has one line that says if no one will die for freedom, then we will all die under tyranny.
Snyder concludes with an epilogue discussing history and how to use it to understand what is happening right now and what may happen soon.
