Stand out.
Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do
or say something different. But without that unease, there is no
freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example,
the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

Most people don’t support tyranny because they believe in it—they support it because they don’t stand against it.

What Timothy Snyder is doing with the 8th lesson is telling the reader that, unlike the myth that tranny is natural or inevitable, it was shown in the 1930s and WWII that most people and governments accommodated and admired authoritarian power. It was only a small number of individuals – often seen at the time as irrational or extreme – that chose to resist. These individuals would later be known as heroes, but their actions were not obvious or widely supported at the time.

Winston Churchill

He is the example of political leadership and is often seen as the bald Prime Minister who wore a bowler hat and always had a cigar in his mouth. He was adherent to imperialism and economic liberalism, but that is a different story for a different day.

Churchill is presented as a figure who defied political realism and public pressure in the 8th lesson. When Britain stood alone after the fall of France, it would have been very easy to negotiate peace. But Churchill chose resistance, which prevented total Nazi domination of Europe, forcing Germany into a two-front war. Further, it would enable the three powers of the US, Britain, and the USSR to form an eventual alliance. This shows that one leader’s refusal to conform can reshape global history

Teresa Prekerowa

She was an example of ordinary individual resistance. During the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, most people accepted the isolation and disappearance of their Jewish neighbors; however, Prekerowa did not.

Prekerowa secretly entered the ghetto many times and delivered food and medicines. She even helped families and individuals escape, leading to her saving lives during the Holocaust. She may have been in extreme danger, but she later describes her actions as “normal,” highlighting the idea that a moral action should be ordinary but rarely is.

What Does this Mean?

Conformity sustains oppressive systems. A good example of this is the Jim Crow South – seen in media like The Help. The main character, Skeeter, is opposed to the Jim Crow South and tries to help change the opinions of those around her.

As well, the people in Jackson are more than happy to keep things as they are; after all, why rock the boat when there are people who are below them? It would upset the caste system. It is the conformity to the caste systems in place that keeps the oppression of the black population in ‘their place,’ after all.

Resistance begins with individuals willing to act differently. Acting differently, such as Reverend James Reeb, a Kansas native, who was a pastor who participated in the Selma to Montgomery march. He died in 1965 of head injuries sustained after being beaten by segregationists.

There is also Viola Liuzzo, an activist who drove from Detroit to Selma to support the march for voting rights. On March 25, 1965, she was shot dead by three Klansmen while driving activists between the cities.

Jonathan Daniels was killed by Tom Coleman, a highway worker and part-time deputy sheriff, in Haynesville, Alabama. He saved the life of a 17-year-old named Ruby Sales. She worked full-time as a voter registration organizer and was assigned to Calhoun County, Alabama. After she was released from jail for a demonstration on 14 August 1965, she and a few others from the demonstration went to a store to get drinks. It was there that Coleman threatened them with a shotgun.

This is where Daniels pushed Sales out of the way, taking the shot meant for her and dying instantly. Sales was traumatized by Daniels’ death, and she nearly lost her ability to speak for seven months. Coleman was acquitted by the jury of 12 white men, and in an interview a year after the killing, he said he had no regrets, and he would “shoot them both tomorrow.”

These are just a handful of people who stood out for those who were being oppressed.

“Standing out” breaks the illusion that the status quo is inevitable. After all, once one person acts, others are likely to follow. A single act of defiance can disrupt an entire system of compliance. You see, freedom requires individual acts of nonconformity and discomfort, and social risk is a necessary condition for liberty.

People tend to avoid standing out and follow social norms. This rationalizes inaction. But as mentioned, one visible act of defiance can disrupt this pattern, as courage is often socially contagious.

What Standing Out Actually Means

Hannah Arendt, German-American historian and philosopher and one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century, discussed the banality of evil in her analysis of the Adolf Eichmann trial. She argues that “evil is not primarily committed by monsters, but by ordinary people who conform.”

For example, the people in Warsaw who “let their Jewish friends slip away” are not sadists. They are functionally normal actors embedded in a system. Prekerowa was the anomaly because she thought instead of defaulting to social scripts. She refused what Arendt called “thoughtlessness.”

Tyranny, after all, doesn’t require mass belief – it requires mass non-resistance. Whereas “Standing out” restores moral judgment where it has been socially suspended.

Biopolitics and Normalization

Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and political activist, focused his work on the relationship between power and knowledge. He shifts the focus from ideology to systems that manage life itself.

He found that power works through classification (Jew / non-Jew; Coordinator / Natural), surveillance, norm enforcement, and population management.

The Warsaw ghetto is a biopolitical technology. It segregated a population, controlled movement, and enabled extermination. This can be seen in the Jim Crow South, as well as in schools and neighborhoods were segregated as Black / White. It can be shown in anime as well, such as Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, as there are “elevens,” “honorary Britannians,” and “Britannians.” These groups are separated, and the “elevens” often live in ghettos (such as the Shinjuku Ghetto).

These systems only work if people accept the categories as real and binding. Perkerowa’s defiance breaks biopolitics at the micro level because she crosses the boundary. This is something we see with Kira Yamato in Gundam SEED, after all, he is a Coordinator fighting for the Naturals (the ‘enemy’ of the Coordinators according to Patrick Zala and other PLANT radicals).

Perkerowa also treated “classified” people as fully human and disrupted the system’s logic. We see this again with Miriallia and Dearka, how they treat each other as humans, not “natural” or “Coordinator.” And again with Cagalli and Athrun.

Mainly stating that “standing out” is the refusal to recognize imposed categories as morally legitimate.

Biopolitics and Genetic Authoritarianism

Looking back at Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny, we can see Naturals and Coordinators as biopolitical stratification. Naturals, as previously mentioned in my post about Gundam SEED, are baseline humans, and Coordinators are the engineered elite. This is a pure Foucauldian classification as it shows population sorting, genetic governance, and reproduction control. PLANT society tracks lineage and optimizes reproduction, treating bodies as state assets.

This is shown in regards to Athrun Zala and Lacus Clyne, who were engaged for political reasons and designed to strengthen the bonds of their very politically powerful families, as their fathers were key leaders in both the Supreme Council, with him and Seigel Clyne founding the Zodiac Alliance in C.E. 50. This means that their families were planning to have them consolidate the power among their families, pairing the daughter of Chairman Siegel Clyne and the son of the National Defense Chairman Patrick Zala. Making them state assets. This is biopolitics pushed to the logical extreme.

ZAFT Radicalization = Arendt’s Banality

As established, most Coordinators are not genocidal. However, they accept propaganda. This is seen after the Battle of Heliopolis, when he made it clear that a) they hadn’t seen him and b) he omitted the fact that the Strike Gundam was piloted by a Coordinator. After all, it would only incite the moderates like Siegel Clyne and Yuri Amalfi.

He did it again when he came up with Operation Spitbreak, where, officially, the goal was to take out the mass driver at Panama. Instead, he deployed his forces to take out the Alliance at JOSH-A in Alaska.

The Coordinators accepted this escalation and followed orders, which did result in 80% of the attacking ZAFT force at JOSH-A being glassed by the Cyclops.

Kira Yamato Stands Out

As a character, Kira refuses both the ZAFT and Alliance logic. He rejects genetic determinism and total war – embodying the anti-biopolitical resistance and the moral refusal of system categories.

He does exactly what Perkerowa did. He saw individuals, not classifications.

Shinn Asuka Does Not Stand Out

Shinn, the protagonist of SEED Destiny, begins as a victim of war. After all, in the very first episode, we are shown how Shinn lost his entire family during the Battle of Orb as they were trying to evacuate. The only reason he survived is that he was not in the blast radius, and it was a miracle he survived, giving him survivor’s guilt.

He channels his trauma into conformity. He just accepts Durandal’s system (Destiny Plan), where social roles are based on genetics. The Destiny Plan is Foucault, eugenics, and technocracy if they had a baby.

This is the Antithesis of what Snyder is trying to convey in On Tyranny. For Shinn, there is no need to “stand out” as the Destiny Plan pre-determines roles.

Freedom is eliminated at the structural level.

Spectacle, Resistance and Mass Psychology

As mentioned above, Code Geass is another highly political anime that I plan to touch on in another post. The basis is that Britannia is an imperial nation led by an Emperor, and they conquer and rename their new lands by numbers. Japan becomes “Area 11,” and its nationals, “Elevens.”

The main character, Lelouch vi Britannia/Lamperouge, operates within the racial hierarchy of Britannians v Elevens, territorial control, and identity erasure. This directly mirrors the Nazi racial ordering and colonial biopolitics.

Lelouch as Engineered “Standing Out”

Unlike Perkerowa and Churchill, Lelouch manufactures resistance. He uses the symbol of Zero (his alternate personality), media spectacle, and strategic violence to manufacture resistance. This aligns with Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, where resistance must be visible, dramatic, and break psychological passivity.

But Lelouch runs into a problem… the Mass Problem. In Code Geass, most people adapt to the hierarchy and accept Britannian rule. Even victims, those under the imperial rule (such as the Elevens), internalize the inferiority. This is both the Banality of evil and internalized domination.

However, there is one ultimate “Stand Out” Act that Lelouch does. His final act: Zero Requiem. He makes himself the global villain and forces a unified opposition. He creates a single Coordination point for humanity.

One Framework

It is through the normalization of tyranny and societal norms that the classifications are made: Jew / Aryan, Coordinator / Natural, Britannian / Eleven. And that normalization leads to “This is just how things are,” fostering passive compliance and causing most people to adapt.

Standing out is not some self-help advice. It is a theory of political rupture. Arendt explains why people comply, Foucault explains how systems structure that compliance, and Snyder explains how it breaks.

With Gundam SEED and Code Geass, the same truth is dramatized: Systems of domination are stable not because they are all-powerful, but because they are rarely challenged at the individual level.

In every case presented, the system appeared total. The categories seemed fixed and the outcome inevitable. But it wasn’t.

Inevitability is a story people tell themselves when they are afraid to act.

The moment someone refuses – refuses the category, the order, the silence – the system is exposed for what it actually is: fragile, contingent, and dependent on compliance.

Most people wait for permission to resist, but history shows that permission never comes; it needs to be taken.

And it is always taken the same way: by someone willing to look at the world as it is, reject it, and act anyway.

That is what it means to stand out and it may be the only reason freedom has ever existed at all.