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The Cost of Submission: The Appetite That Grows

Mathew Storm Jan 17, 2026
philosophy resistance authoritarianism current-events politics

Submission doesn't buy safety. It buys your place in line.

I. The Appetite

It is 2026, and we are barely even halfway through January - current events are escalating rapidly. The specifics change, but the pattern doesn't. We have seen this before.

Authoritarian demands do not stop when met. They escalate. This is not a moral claim - it's an observable pattern. Here is what it looks like right now:

Two weeks ago, Trump bombed Caracas, captured a sitting president, and announced America would "run the country" until further notice.

Today, he's threatening tariffs against any country that won't support his claim to Greenland. His envoy says a "deal will be made." The White House calls ongoing talks "technical discussions on acquisition". Denmark's foreign minister says if that's the framing, it will be "a very, very short series of meetings."

When asked if he'd use military force against a NATO ally, Trump refused to rule it out.

For months, many Canadians hoped Trump had lost interest in making our country the 51st state - his plate full with turning Washington and the global trading system upside down. Those hopes are fading. The administration's declaration that "THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE" makes earlier comments about annexing Canada seem less like insults and more like a menu. Former UN Ambassador Bob Rae warned that Canada is "on the menu" for Trump's hemispheric plans. A viral column in the Globe and Mail warned of the possibility that Trump may use "military coercion" against us.

The case for accommodation isn't foolish. Confrontation has real costs - economic damage, strained alliances, lives disrupted. Leaders carry genuine responsibility to protect their people from unnecessary harm.

Some counsel pragmatic submission. Why risk confrontation over an Arctic island most people can't find on a map? Make a deal. Find an accommodation. Give him something and the crisis passes.

The logic seems sound. It is catastrophically wrong.

Not because accommodation is shameful - though it may be. Because accommodation doesn't work. The historical record is unambiguous: authoritarian demands do not stop when met. They escalate. Each concession teaches power what it can do. The appetite grows with the eating.

II. The Only Direction

There's a mechanism at work. It's called the ratchet effect - a gear that permits movement in only one direction. Today's concession becomes tomorrow's baseline. The line moves, and it never moves back.

Nazi Germany didn't begin with death camps. It began with civil service restrictions. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum documents over 400 laws enacted between 1933 and 1939, each building on the last. Remove Jews from government jobs. Then strip citizenship. Then close businesses. Then confiscate property. Each step seemed small against the one before it. Each step made the next one possible.

The early measures appeared "rather mild" - because the regime was still testing what it could get away with. Compliance at each stage taught it to ask for more.

Hungarian Stalinist Mátyás Rákosi had a name for this: salami tactics. Slice away opposition piece by piece. Each cut too thin to resist. Look back later and the whole salami is gone.

You see the shape of it now. Venezuela. Greenland. Panama Canal mentioned. Canada threatened. Each success establishes that demands work. Each accommodation invites the next demand.

If America can freely invade Venezuela with no consequences, Greenland is next. If they take Greenland with no resistance, Canada is next. The only question is whether we're a year away or five.

Churchill understood this after Munich: "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war." Chamberlain's deal didn't prevent conflict. It transferred Czech armaments and strategic positioning to Germany. It made the eventual war worse.

The Atlantic Council's verdict on Crimea 2014 is blunter: "a geopolitical blunder of historic proportions that emboldened Vladimir Putin and set the stage for the biggest European invasion since World War II."

Compliance didn't prevent escalation. Compliance enabled it.

III. Your Place in Line

Martin Niemöller's confession is famous enough to be cliché. It shouldn't be. He was describing a mechanism, not making a moral appeal.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

Niemöller himself was the pattern he described. A nationalist, an anti-communist, an antisemite who voted Nazi three times. He thought his credentials protected him. When he resisted state interference in church affairs, he spent eight years in concentration camps. His offer to command a Nazi U-boat was rejected.

Compliance had not protected him.

German Jews who had lived there for centuries, who served in World War I - over 10,000 died for Germany - believed patriotism would distinguish them. It did not. Over 100,000 were murdered.

The Stalin purges are starker. Of 139 Central Committee members elected at the 17th Party Congress, 98 were arrested and shot. Old Bolsheviks - Lenin's original comrades - were eliminated precisely because they had legitimacy. Even Yezhov, the NKVD chief who ran the purges, was himself executed in 1940.

The mechanism: authoritarian regimes cannot distinguish genuine compliance from hidden resistance. So they purge periodically, sweeping away even the loyal. Your compliance doesn't protect you. It determines when your turn comes.

We recognize this pattern instantly in history books but we struggle to see it in our own moment.

Watch it happen in real time. First, it was undocumented immigrants - and many said nothing, because they weren't undocumented. Then three thousand federal agents flooded Minneapolis, and an ICE officer shot a legal observer - an American citizen with no criminal record. When protests erupted, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against American civilians. First immigrants, then observers, then protesters. Who's next?

And for some, there is no compliant position. The Uyghurs can't comply their way out of detention. The Rohingya can't modify their behavior to avoid persecution. When identity is the crime, there is no safe position available.

The counsel to "keep your head down" assumes you have that option. Many don't. When you choose neutrality, you're not avoiding the line. You're choosing to let others go first.

IV. The Greengrocer's Window

Václav Havel wrote about a greengrocer who places a sign in his window: "Workers of the world, unite!" He doesn't believe it. He barely sees it. Everyone has one. Refusal would bring trouble.

Havel's insight in "The Power of the Powerless":

If the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient," he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics.

The ideological slogan lets him hide from what he's doing. He's not submitting - he's just going along. Everyone does. It's normal.

But by performing compliance, he confirms the system. Fulfills the system. Makes the system. Is the system.

What this costs is hard to name. Havel called it "demoralization" - not sadness, but the loss of moral orientation. A person "dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization... with no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival."

Hannah Arendt watched Eichmann's trial expecting a monster. She found a bureaucrat. Terrifyingly normal. His defense: he was doing his duty, following orders, playing his part in the system.

Her conclusion inverts the collaborator's excuse: "No one has the right to obey."

Timothy Snyder calls it "anticipatory obedience" - the tendency to comply before being asked, to guess what power wants and offer it without being forced. This is how most authoritarian power is acquired. It's not seized, it's freely given.

A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

The parent who complies to protect their child may keep them physically safe. But what do they teach that child about what a person is? What do they become in the process of "going along"?

The compliant self is not the self that existed before compliance. Something has been lost that doesn't easily return.

V. Within the Truth

The alternative to compliance is not martyrdom.

Havel again: if the greengrocer stops displaying slogans, stops voting in elections he knows are farce, begins to say what he actually thinks - "he rejects the ritual and violates the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity."

This is what Havel called "living within the truth." Not grand heroism. Not revolution. The daily refusal to perform lies you don't believe.

The system rests on everyone's small lies. When one person stops lying, they expose the fiction. They demonstrate that living a lie is living a lie. The power of this act is disproportionate to its size.

Research confirms it: civil resistance movements succeed far more often than passive compliance. The probability of stopping democratic backslide rises from roughly 7% with institutional channels alone to over 50% with active resistance.

But the argument isn't really about odds. It's about what you can live with.

Camus wrote that the rebel is "a man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation." The rebel acts not from certainty of success but from recognition that some things are worth defending regardless of outcome.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis weeks before the war ended. His resistance didn't save him. It saved something else - something in him that submission would have destroyed.

The calculation behind compliance - "I'll go along to protect my family" - assumes the regime will be satisfied. History says otherwise. The demands will continue. The line will move. Your turn will come.

You can submit and delay. You can resist and possibly fail. But submission doesn't purchase safety. It only purchases your place in line.

The appetite grows with the eating. The only way to stop it is to stop feeding it.

References

This essay draws on:

Current events reporting from Al Jazeera, NPR, and CBS News.