Preserving Democracy & Resisting Tyranny with Aristotle

Friends, especially Americans, and people I’ve encountered recently are all asking the same question: when democracy, free speech, truthful journalism and civil society are under attack, and governments are under the influence of malign and financially rapacious individuals, how are ‘ordinary’ people to fight back? 

One answer to this question lies in Aristotle’s dazzling dissection in his Politics 5 of the mechanisms implemented by tyrants to perpetuate their power. He had personally survived several years as a hired hand in the murderous, faction-ridden court of a brutal despot, Philip II of Macedon, and he knew whereof he spoke. 

If a tyrant is to survive, says Aristotle, he must not only silence outstanding opponents but wipe out all the social habits that, by fostering frequent friendly interactions, bind communities together (1313a-b). The customs he identifies as particularly threatening to a tyranny’s perpetuation (practices which were standard in the Athenian democracy where he preferred to live) have always intrigued me. He lists them as these: 

• public, communal eating; 

• membership of clubs and societies; 

• education, including study-circles and other arenas for debate. 

The reason is that such activities engender in those who participate not only intelligent sharing of information but a sense of self-worth, and, crucially, mutual trust. These forms of companionship and sharing of leisure-time, interests, information and views not only make people of different households more educated, but help them to know and understand each other better. 

This congenial and cooperative social fabric ultimately makes it impossible for the tyrant to “divide and rule”. So there is one way to resist--through our everyday behaviours--the atmosphere of suspicion and ignorance the tyrant needs to foster, and that is to participate in a friendly manner in all such interactions and collective activities. 

Get out for a pub meal and talk to other diners; carry on with your quiz nights, photography classes, sports teams and church choirs; enrol for that course at the local Institute of Continuing Education; put down your phone and talk to your postman or window cleaner; start up conversations with your shop assistant, fellow passengers on the train or your taxi driver. 

Discuss, debate, befriend, be kind: no tyrant has ever succeeded in overwhelming a community that behaved as if it were not ruled by a tyrant. Today I'm going to celebrate the blossom in a local wood with other tree-lovers, and then to the pub for banter. Get out there.  It is up to us.