By Occupy 2.5 Staff | July 1, 2025

In 1934, journalist William Shirer arrived in Berlin to cover what he hoped would be a passing authoritarian phase. Instead, he watched a nation descend into fascism. One of his first observations was not what people said — but what they no longer dared to say.

“The silence in the streets was chilling,” Shirer wrote. “People spoke in whispers. They looked over their shoulders.” (Berlin Diary, 1941).

Today in the United States, that same silence is spreading — not from fear of Nazi informants, but through economic retaliation, online blacklisting, and the cold, quiet hand of algorithmic censorship. Speak out at work? Lose your job. Post the truth online? Get buried by throttling or brigaded by bots. Try to protest? Get smeared, surveilled, or arrested.

This is not a bug in the system. It is the system. Shirer warned how fascism doesn’t just rely on brute force. It first kills conversation. It breaks the culture of dissent. When people stop talking — stop questioning — the road to tyranny opens wide.

Whether it’s corporate media avoiding uncomfortable truths, social media suppressing activist content, or workers too scared to organize, the U.S. is experiencing what Berlin did 90 years ago: a strategic, creeping chill.

Silence is not safety. It is surrender.

To those feeling the pressure to self-censor — that’s the point. It means they’re afraid of what you might say. So say it louder. Share it bolder. Organize anyway.

Because once everyone is quiet, it’s already too late.

References:


Shirer, W. L. (1941). Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die. Crown Publishing Group.

Snyder, T. (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Tim Duggan Books.