Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship by Ken McGoogan
A Review by Christina Barber
In the last days of 2024 we sensed, more acutely than ever, a certain finality beyond the habitual ceding of one calendar to another. Events, both proximate and global and characteristic of the rise of right-wing and ultra-conservative movements, augur increased threats to democratic governance and the institutions and principles on which it relies, spurring in many a yearning for a grammar by which to parse this new social argot. We both dandle and refute the cyclical nature of history yet look to its convenience to locate time periods analogous to our own. In Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship, Ken McGoogan charts the rise of fascism and its calamitous corollaries in mid-20th century Europe while offering insight into the lives and minds of people who survived or succumbed to the tides of hatred and tyranny such that we might glean some lessons to see us through the uncertainties of our own times.
McGoogan adroitly arrays his inventory across six parts, covering the period from 1917-1975, a panorama within which we find Mathew Halton, Hugh Garner, Norman Bethune, Dorothy Thompson, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and André Malraux, among others. This through-line of writers, thinkers, and agitators, via comment or direct action, challenged the threats to democracy by the likes of Franco, Hitler, and Stalin. The author’s eclectic portrait of Canadian players and perspectives across events brings to the fore once again our nation’s rich contribution to world affairs in the 20th century.
Part One establishes the socio-economic and political atmosphere of North America and Europe in the interwar years, turning a particular lens on the actions and viewpoints of politicians and political actors during this turbulent time, while Part Two sees various countries courting the ideas of fascist rule as a desirable solution to the strife of the Depression and as an alternative to socialism and the threat of communism, but Civil war in Spain, where an elected government was toppled by reactionary fascist forces rendered the threat to democratic principles gradually clearer as the conflict galvanised people around the world, resulting in more than 40,000 volunteers from some 50 countries form the International Brigades to defend the republic against the rebel Nationalists gathered under the dominance of General Francisco Franco. More than 1600 Canadians heeded the call for support and travelled illegally to Spain to fight, many as part of what would become the predominantly Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.
In the aftermath of the occupation of France in 1940, citizens and residents struggled with their views and how they would respond to a new regime. Writers and journalists, of course were exempt from neither censure nor complicity, and McGoogan presents some of the stories of those who were adamantly and consistently against the régime, those whose views were varying, and those who, like Ezra Pound, actively supported and promoted fascist ideology and its implementation. The author presents too the fates of those directly persecuted, among them Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Irène Némirovsky.
Part Four is an appreciative look at Canadian involvement in the war, including the contributions of Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production, Farley Mowat in Sicily, but also includes descriptions of American contributions from Josephine Baker to Betty Pack, "The Mata Hari of Minnesota.” McGoogan continues with the French Resistance in Part Five, presenting the heroic deeds of those who undermined the German war machine at the risk of their own lives and by incurred retribution (as at Oradour-sur-Glane1), the lives of others. The result of these often-riveting stories is to conclude that individuals indeed can effectuate change through small or insignificant actions. Finally, in Part Six, in a rather short conclusion, the author synthesizes this history in an attempt to frame the current political turbulence in the United States and in Europe.
While Shadows of Tyranny is a well-researched presentation of personalities large and small that culminates in inspiring and often thrilling story-telling, McGoogan, in an attempt to cleanly suture two points in time, inadvertently (through what might be at best benign negligence and at worst, the habitual solipsism of the global north), induces a wide discursive fissure which makes total reception of his work somewhat problematic. McGoogan proposes two ages of dictatorship, the first ranging from the 1917 Russian Revolution to the death of General Franco in 1975, the second occurring currently. While I understand his desire to offer an expedient comparison between Western regimes then and now, his argument fails to acknowledge and is indeed hobbled by failing to assess the real second era of dictatorship which came about after and in many cases as an effect of World War II. The regimes of Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, Robert Mugabe, Argentina’s post-Peronist junta and the host of other murderous dictators who ruled with iron fists and who were responsible for the deaths of millions of their own citizens propose too many questions about the continuity of absolutist rule in the 20th and 21st centuries to be deflected. McGoogan also ignores the American involvement in many of those dictatorships, however indirect, where the U.S. undermined democratic institutions and policies in those countries while enshrining its own status as the great model of democracy2. Similarly, the author’s rather ebullient presentation of the triumph of the Allies over fascism at the end of WWII fails to fully acknowledge the legacy of the Franco regime in Spain which was not only allowed to continue without any major opposition but was eventually accepted and even supported by major Western democracies.3
The epilogue, “Where is our Churchill?” is a rather idle (read: trite) call for a saviour, and while I can understand the desire for strong leadership and someone who will galvanise a population to stand up for democracy and fight against totalitarianism, this airy, romantic final chapter runs counter to the author’s main conceit: that it is individualistic, grass-roots, and sometimes renegade movements who collaborate spiritually in the heroic maintenance of democracy. One parallel that I do see facing our democracies that is similar to the rise of authoritarian governments in Europe is the complacency of the general populace. What slow erosion of democratic principles will take place under the conditions of sanctioned self-interest and self-promotion? Within the current will to be entertained what atrocities shall become banalities broadcast upon myriad platforms, exchanged, reduced, ignored, erased? Indifference and complacency are fertile ground for aspiring dictators, for as Timothy Snyder opines in Shadows of Tyranny “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”4
“Shadows of Tyranny is a worthwhile and even an important read, especially when functioning as a primer for those readers curious about but unfamiliar with the ideas and personalities McGoogan brings together…”
The work of McGoogan’s many writers and activists, who believed that democracy should be preserved at all costs, serves as a signpost for the future. The importance of the collective within our democratic ideals must be considered equally with our commitment to the personal rights and freedoms enshrined within, thus, criticisms aside, Shadows of Tyranny is a worthwhile and even an important read, especially when functioning as a primer for those readers curious about but unfamiliar with the ideas and personalities McGoogan brings together to provoke our response to the echo of these voices, for when truth becomes terrorism and terrorism truth, when yet another annexation of the Baltic States is easily imagined and Scandinavian countries provide War Preparedness handbooks to their citizens as the perennial rough beast of the Middle East slouches toward Bethlehem, it is clear that the threat of internecine strife is omnipresent.5
Where McGoogan’s book succeeds is in demonstrating how individuals can work towards a collective good, making their own comforts and security secondary to ensure a future for fellow citizens and future generations. But in this we look to Snyder again and ask, with so very few of us now with any embodied memory of those trying times some eighty years ago, can we still, within the new syntax of geopolitics, find the semantics of the ideal? Witnesses in Syria might offer the clue and the refugees we embrace provide the code, for how many of us, weaned for so many years on what has surpassed privilege to become the luxury of social democracy could, indeed would go beyond the lip service of good intentions and sacrifice limb, life, or personal liberty to preserve on Earth a republic of dignity and grace?
About the Author
Ken McGoogan is the globe-trotting Canadian author of seventeen books—mostly nonfiction narratives but also novels and memoirs. His bestselling titles include Searching for Franklin, Fatal Passage, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Canada’s Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches. His most recent release, Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship, explores how figures like Donald Trump replay many aspects of the authoritarianism that spread in the middle of the last century.
McGoogan’s many accolades include the Pierre Berton Award for Popular History and the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography. A fellow of the Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, McGoogan sails as a resource historian with Adventure Canada. He was born in Montreal, has lived in towns and cities across the country, and now resides in Guelph, ON.
About the Reviewer
Christina Barber is a writer, dramaturge, artist, and educator based in Vancouver. Her poetry has appeared in The Whimsical Poet and contributed to the Vancouver City Poems Project.
Book Details
Publisher : Douglas & McIntyre (Aug. 24 2024)
Language : English
Hardcover : 320 pages
ISBN-10 : 177162424
ISBN-13 : 978-1771624244
Oradour-sur-Glane, the massacre of 643 citizens on June 10th, 1944.
Hitchens, C. (2021). The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Atlantic Books.
Noiser Network’s Real Dictators, 5-part series podcast on General Franco, May-June 2021.
Snyder, T. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, New York: Tim Duggan Books/Crown, 2017
Maxia, A. (2024, November 18). Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war. BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr4zwj2lgdo.