Chaleff is a speaker, innovative thinker and the author of “To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Brake a Toxic Leader.” This is the fifth entry in a series on political followership.
We recently read in The Washington Post that men in Afghanistan are regretting that they did not stand up sooner for the rights of their wives and daughters, now that the Taliban is imposing severe standards of dress and conduct on them.
Duh.
That’s the oldest regret there is when it comes to oppression:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
— Martin Niemöller, Lutheran Pastor
Niemöller was initially a Nazi supporter … until the Nazis began to target the Lutheran Church. Once they come for you, it is too late. Start worrying when they come for your neighbor.
But here’s the trick. You can’t just leave it to the “opposition” to speak up. Of course they are going to speak up. And they will get tuned out.
It’s the loyal supporters who need to speak up early. Theirs is the voice that makes a difference and, as I explain in my new book “To Stop a Tyrant,” they can apply the “brakes” to toxic behavior. Here’s the interesting news: They can do this while still supporting the leader if he or she accepts the boundaries of communal decency.
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Take Anna Kilgore. It was she who filed a police report blaming Haitian immigrants when her cat went missing. Whoops.
Miss Sassy was found several days later in Kilgore’s own basement. But the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates were already using the story to whip up anti-immigrant fever.
What to do? Kilgore is a Trump supporter. Because her cat story is already uber-public, this could make the candidate she is supporting look bad. Despite this, what does she do? Anna Kilgore sends an apology to her Haitian neighbors
In Yiddish there is an expression for that: being a mensch. A mensch, while literally meaning “a man,” colloquially means an ethical person who does the right thing.
We need “menschkeit” (the quality of being a mensch) in every walk of life, on both sides of the political aisle. Ideally, this comes from our political leaders. But let’s not depend on them. We, the political followers, have the power to do what is right and — let’s go out on a limb here — the moral obligation to do so.
A colleague of mine is famous for asking, “How many people did Adolf Hitler kill?” Her answer: none.
There is no evidence of Hitler ever having pulled the trigger on a single person other than himself at the very end. Who did kill the millions of prisoners in extermination camps? His followers who did not stop his frothing hate speech early enough to avoid their own horrible complicity, while they still could.
Look around. Who is being targeted now by political vitriol? If it is not you, surely you can go back to sleep. Or can you? Who should you be speaking up for now, so that later there is someone left to speak for you?
When someone does speak up, here’s another wild idea: Support them! When a neighbor, Erika Lee, heard that Kilgore found Miss Sassy, she was appalled that she had inadvertently triggered a national frenzy by having written a Facebook post about the missing tabby. She took down the post. Lee has publicly regretted contributing to the story based on something she heard from yet another neighbor who also heard it from someone …
Whoops again. Whether online or over the clothesline, we are all responsible for verifying salacious tidbits before spreading them throughout the system. (No need to feel guilty. Just don’t do it again.)
The Taliban is at it once more in Afghanistan. Whose behavior needs standing up to here, in our own political system? If we oppose them, have at it. If we support them, it’s even more important to stand up to their overreach.
After all, if they don’t listen to us, who will they listen to?
Another wise man said, “If not now, when?”
