gatto:
Timothy Snyder, a scholar of authoritarianism, that power is often freely given to an authoritarian in anticipation of punishment, what Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience.”
There’s a phrase in German that is unfortunately not easy to translate into English: “vorauseilender Gehorsam”. It can be translated as “anticipatory obedience” but that doesn’t capture all the nuance of obsequiousness and eagerness[1]
This phrase is often used when talking about the Third Reich, especially the time before the Nazis took power. It describes the situation in which people, very often officials, did what they thought the Nazis wanted without them even having to ask, either because they were scared what would happen to them once the Nazis were in power, if they hadn’t shown enough obedience and weren’t seen as helping on the way up, or because they agreed with the Nazis and wanted to help even if they didn’t have to or weren’t officially allowed. This is what I’m seeing here.
I am surprised that my translation of the German term uses the exact same wording as Snyder, who I was not aware of when I wrote that and who definitely didn’t come up with the concept, since, as outlined, it has existed in German for a long time.
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