Information Warfare

The case for a Shadow Cabinet – a positive form of opposition.
snyder.substack.com/p/shadow-cab…

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— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) January 6, 2025 at 9:11 AM

Timothy Snyder, who famously warned us Do Not Comply in Advance, has a very interesting proposal in his latest SubStack post:

When I moved to Great Britain to study, I found the politics very exciting. The parliamentary system was different, so that new elections immediately led to new governments. The press was excellent but political, so that one could read the newspapers and be informed both of the facts and the sentiments. And, when reporting government policy, journalists always had an opposition voice to quote: members of the “shadow cabinet.”

Like so much else in British public life, the institution of the shadow cabinet was unfamiliar to me, but I soon grew to appreciate and admire it. The “cabinet,” of course, was the assembly of government ministers, led in Britain by the prime minister. The party in opposition (the Labour Party when I arrived in Britain in 1991) appointed its own leading members to “shadow” each government minister, including the prime minister.

Shadow meant follow. The shadow ministers “shadowed” the actual ministers, in the sense of following their every move, criticizing policy and offering alternatives. Importantly, the shadow minister was always available to offer commentary to the press on his or her area of expertise. This greatly enriched public life. At any point a journalist, and thus the public, had access to an alternative point of view, one which was both pertinently expert and politically relevant. Shadow ministers did not always become real ministers after the next elections, but often they did.

Four years ago today, Donald Trump led an attempt to overthrow a democratic election and thereby undo our constitutional system. In two weeks, the same man will be inaugurated president of the United States, this time with a centibillionaire as the unelected de facto head of government and with anti-qualified anti-patriots as his cabinet nominees. What to do? People talk about resistance, and about opposition. What forms should these take? I have written elsewhere about what citizens can do. Leading politicians of the opposition party, the Democratic Party in the United States, have a special responsibility, and also special opportunities. One of these is to form a shadow cabinet. I want to join the voices of those advocating for this. (Here I am speaking for the idea on television a few weeks ago.)

In Great Britain, the shadow cabinet represents “the loyal opposition.” The loyalty in question is to the state and to its head, the monarch. In the United States, a “loyal opposition” would be loyal to our Constitution — and, indeed, that could be the basis of its activity. We face the unusual situation of a government — a president and his cabinet — who seem indifferent to the rule of law itself. By beginning from the principle that we have a government of laws, not men, a shadow cabinet would reinforce the American way of politics. It would be a very good thing to have a constitutional lawyer or two on the shadow cabinet.

And a shadow cabinet would remind us of how much better things can be. The regular reactions of its members to Musk-Trump would flow from different sense of politics and policy. That is material that the press needs, and that we all need. As Trump and his cabinet undertake their unpredictable whorl of destructive policy, journalists and others will be at a loss as to what to say. The worse things get, the harder it is to think of an alternative. As time goes by, the chaos of Musk-Trump might seem like the only possible reality. That, of course, will be the goal of the new regime: to persuade us that government just means dysfunctionality, spectacle, and repression. At every moment, members of the shadow government can remind us what government could instead be doing, positively, for the people. They are there to remind us that a better America is always possible…

Yes, there is a problem in that we Democrats are infamously ‘not an organized political party’. But that can be its own strength — we’re not an intellectual monoculture, uniformly susceptible to every passing blight! In any case: Go read the whole thing, and let’s discuss.

Important Read: <em>The Case for A Shadow Cabinet</em>Post + Comments (179)