The Surrender That No One's Talking About (And You're Probably Doing It Too)
The Resistance Sabotage Manual: Day 1 of 12
August 14, 2025
McDonald's. Target. Disney. Meta. Walmart. Ford.
They all did the same thing. Within 72 hours. Without being asked.
And you're about to do it too.
If you're reading from outside America, this might feel foreign — but don't close the tab yet. In Hungary, it was the newspapers that surrendered first. In Turkey, the universities. In India, WhatsApp groups went silent. In Brazil, comedians stopped joking. Different countries, same collapse. I'm writing about America today, but the playbook is universal.
You might have already started. That Facebook post you typed but didn't send. That conversation at dinner you steered away from "to keep the peace." That bumper sticker you thought about removing — not because anyone made you, but because "why invite trouble?"
That yard sign you didn't put up this time.
That donation you made anonymously instead of publicly.
That hat you stopped wearing to the grocery store.
You tell yourself you're "picking your battles" or "keeping the peace" or "reading the room."
You're actually surrendering before the fight starts.
Within 72 hours of Trump's victory — before he'd even taken office — America's biggest corporations voluntarily dismantled programs no one asked them to eliminate. No laws. No orders. No requirements.
They anticipated and obeyed.
So did you.
The Most Dangerous Thing We Do to Ourselves
You just did it again — even reading that list. Part of you thought "I should be more careful too."
This is anticipatory obedience — when people and institutions surrender freedoms before anyone tries to take them. Of all the ways we accidentally help authoritarians, this ranks first in effectiveness. It's killed more democracies than armies ever have.
Yale historian Timothy Snyder discovered something chilling when studying how democracies die: "Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given." Not taken. Given.
In Austria 1938, before the Nazis even arrived, locals forced Jews to scrub streets while neighbors watched with "interest and amusement." No orders. No threats. Just citizens deciding what they thought the new regime would want.
Sound extreme? Consider this: Fox News personalities privately mocked the election fraud claims they promoted on air. Internal messages proved they knew it was false. They said it anyway, anticipating what their audience — and the political movement they'd aligned with — wanted to hear. Cost them $787.5 million in settlements, but they did it anyway.
Your Brain's Authoritarian Autopilot
Here's why we do this: Our brains are prediction machines. We constantly anticipate what others want to avoid conflict. It's how we survived in small tribes for 200,000 years. But authoritarians hack this instinct.
When Meta eliminated fact-checking in January, Zuckerberg explicitly said it was because the "new administration" would be "big defenders of free expression." He revealed the game: I'm giving you what I think you want before you ask.
The effect cascades. When Fortune 500 companies see peers dismantling DEI programs, they follow suit. When one social media platform allows hate speech, others "compete" by loosening their own standards. Each act of anticipatory obedience signals to others what's now acceptable.
By the time actual authoritarian policies arrive, the work is already done.
The Damage This Week
Right now, as you read this, someone you know is deleting old posts. Teachers are removing rainbow stickers from classrooms. Librarians are pulling books no one has challenged. Your neighbor took down their flag. Your friend stopped wearing that pin.
Documentary filmmakers are shelving projects about immigration. Producers admitted to researchers they won't "get behind anything related to race" anymore. Stories "that need to get told" are being buried in pre-production.
University professors report self-censoring lectures. Healthcare organizations are removing LGBTQ+ resources from websites. Local libraries are pulling books no one has formally challenged.
The V-Dem Institute found that 67% of democracies that begin this process ultimately become full autocracies. The speed is breathtaking — Austria fell in days, Czechoslovakia in months. It starts with anticipatory obedience.
How to Stop Yourself
Easy Mode: The 48-Hour Rule Before changing any behavior based on political shifts, wait 48 hours. Write down what you're considering and why. Often, the urge to preemptively comply fades when you see it on paper. One teacher told me this simple delay stopped her from removing her classroom's "All Are Welcome" poster that no one had even mentioned.
Medium Mode: The Verification Check Ask three questions before any anticipatory change:
Is there an actual law requiring this?
Has anyone with authority specifically demanded this?
Am I doing this from fear of what might happen?
If you answer "no, no, yes" — you're anticipating. Stop.
Hard Mode: Strategic Non-Compliance Build systems that resist anticipatory pressure. The SEIU-UHW healthcare union didn't wait for anti-union policies — they organized 5,500+ workers preemptively. They prepared for the crackdown by building power first. Their win rate? 73.8% in 2024, the highest in 15 years.
Your Anticipatory Obedience Audit
This week, watch for these red flags in yourself:
☐ "We should probably tone down..." ☐ "Just to be safe, let's not..." ☐ "Given the current climate..." ☐ "We don't want to appear..." ☐ "It's not worth the risk of..."
Count how many times you hear these phrases. Count how many times you say them.
The Success Story You Need
When everyone else was dismantling DEI, Costco's board faced the same pressure. Shareholders demanded they eliminate diversity programs. The board's response? An overwhelming "no" — keeping their initiatives intact.
Their stock didn't crash. Their customers didn't flee. They simply refused to anticipate obedience.
Seven months later, they're fine. Better than fine. They proved anticipatory obedience is a choice, not an inevitability.
Just like the teacher who kept her poster up. The neighbor who added a second yard sign. The friend who said "actually, January 6th was an attempted coup" at dinner.
They're all fine too.
Tomorrow: Why you've started saying "unalive" instead of suicide — and why that linguistic surrender matters more than you think.
The Resistance Sabotage Manual is a 12-day series examining the specific ways we accidentally collaborate with authoritarianism — and how to stop. Based on analysis of democratic collapses from Weimar Germany to present day.
Have you caught yourself anticipating obedience? Share your story in the comments. The more we recognize it, the less power it has.