HOW TO BE A DISSIDENT

A Rules for Radicals for our time.

Atlantic staff writer Beckerman opens with one of the best known of Josef Stalin’s literary victims: the poet Osip Mandelstam, who composed a poem so dangerous that he did not write it down. Yet, once he had recited the poem to a few people, the authorities descended, asking what his purpose was in his composition: “He wrote it, he said, because he hated fascism, hated it more than anything else; it was as simple as that.” Well, it’s clear that fascism hasn’t gone away, and contesting it requires Mandelstam’s clarity—arrived at, Beckerman suggests, by addressing the question, “Can I live with myself?” That question, he adds, “is what makes a dissident a dissident,” someone whose beliefs accord with their actions. It’s not an easy thing to do or be: Having to make one’s own choices, to elect to be free, is harder work than having someone decide for you. Beckerman then offers a series of mantras, some of which might seem contradictory on the face: “Be Pessimistic” doesn’t immediately square with “Be Funny.” Yet, as he notes, pessimism doesn’t equate to fatalism (the resigned certainty that things not only can but will get worse), and the aim of being funny is to lampoon those in power (fascists being notoriously without a sense of humor). Beckerman also writes, pointedly, that fascists gain authority not simply by violence or the threat of it, but also by coopting culture—by, let’s just say, cowing comedians and placing fellow travelers at the helm of news programs. More, Beckerman makes an important distinction that’s worth remembering: The point of dissent is to insist on a society worth living in and a government worth living under, one that obeys its own laws—and to believe, if such things have been damaged beyond repair, “that you can always begin again.”

A well-reasoned set of prescriptions for building a better future.