The Market
I was sipping a pop in the Byward Market when a man started to harass me. I’m no stranger to being targeted in the market or over gender-conformity and I ignored him. He alternated between yelling “You’re intersex; I don’t know if you’re a man or a woman” and “if you’re a man I’d kick your ass”. When that didn’t elicit the reaction he wanted, he took to repeatedly calling me “fat ass”.
He finally placed himself at my feet and uttered “if you’re a man, I’ll kick your ass”. I looked up but didn’t say a word; people often gender me male after hearing my voice. He walked away.
It was a summer day in Ottawa’s busiest thoroughfare; we had been surrounded by people. In particular, there was a man sitting next to me. Early on he pointed at himself to my harasser as if to inquire whether this all was directed at him, before being told I was the target. Satisfied, the man went back to his sandwich.
I was alone in a sea of people, as I always am in these encounters.
Autocracy in the USA
As Republicans are rapidly reshaping the United States into a dictatorship, the general apathy to it all reminds me of those bystanders in the market.
This article isn’t about summarizing the first months of the violent return to power by a narcissistic sociopath and his cadre of sycophants. It’s to inquire why this regime’s actions have been met with relative silence.
This indifference is not unique to the American context; much has been written Russian complacency over decades of encroaching authoritarianism under Putin.
Bystander effect
There have been protests, of course: “Hands Off” in April; “No Kings” in June; those in LA and DC against the military occupation of cities that didn’t elect Trump.
But filling the streets for a few hours does little if anything to restore free speech, curtail unbridled corruption, or protect trans people and migrants from liquidation.
The worst impulses of this regime’s thought leaders can only be made real with the cooperation of thousands of individuals – so where are they in all of this?
I believe that the answer is not too dissimilar from what happened in the market: the bystander effect.
The five D’s
There’s the concept of the Five D’s in bystander intervention: distract, delegate, document, delay, and direct. Sometimes people don’t intervene because they think that last one is the only option – confronting the perpetrator.
It’s not. That kind of intervention can compromise physical safety if done carelessly. Similarly, there’s other options to countering autocracy given the secret police, corrupt justice system, and ability to destroy employment at a whim:
- People can learn from nonviolent dissidents in Russia, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, Hungary and China.
- They can also take lessons from closer to home, like the citizens who interdict organized harm against members of their community – gathering in numbers, placing themselves around the victim, shouting.
- They can help break the freeze response by drawing attention to the lack of intervention.
- They can document what’s going on.
- They can draw family members and friends out of disinformation pipelines. They can also guide people away from the dog whistles and official speak infiltrating vocabulary that are devised to make harmful acts palatable.
- They can introduce friction to news organisations and elected officials that rationalize the regime’s gleeful cruelty.
- They can volunteer for the election campaigns of principled candidates.
- If in a field aiding or abetting performative cruelty, they can search for another job without letting on why. They can manifest plausibly deniable delays.
- They can install little free libraries with books banned by the regime in proximity of the institutions that exclude them.
- They can cover materials in classes that criticize their censors without drawing attention.
- For instance, English classes could cover Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem that reveals how regular people can perpetrate atrocities. History classes could assign the 2014 film Labyrinth of Lies. Libraries could feature diverse authors that have escaped book bans.
- They can educate others on how to anonymize themselves online and off, to protect themselves not only from the state, but from militants aligned with the regime.
- They can financially support minorities under attack, be it to GoFundMe’s of those escaping red states or the US, donating to the Trans Lifeline, Erin in the Morning, TransLash, ACLU, etc.
No option will make up for the asymmetry of power. This is about reducing the number of victims, and here every person that’s spared is a win.