Offhand I don’t think it’s suitable as an alternative—“obedience” (Gehorsam) and “subservience” (Unterwürfigkeit / Unterwerfung) are simply not synonymous.

(That said, for all I know you, or someone else, may be able to produce some context where Gehorsam is being used in such a way that the sense is close to or indistinguishable from Unterwerfung. I would have thought, though, it would be the exception.)

Hier noch eine weitere Anfrage; kann sein, dass das einfach eine Dopplung ist*, aber die verlinkte hat schon mal eine Antwort mehr ...

Siehe auch: hurrying obedience - vorauseilender Gehorsam

*nein, ist es nicht.

In der #9 muss ich wie immer wenigstens diese(n) Rechtschreibfehler korrigieren:

Richtig:

As a German native

... the German term

in English

the German phrase

Isso. ...

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. (...) After the German election of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak election of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience.

Noch eine Stimme für "anticipatory obedience" -- nicht meine, sondern die von Timothy Snyder, der das in On Tyranny so nennt.

1932 ... 1946 ...

Jump forward to 2026 and this deeply depressing article about the plight of the great American museums under ideological pressure from the current regime:

There is one potential weapon, however, that the Trump administration might try to use against private museums. Many of them, along with charitable foundations and universities, have tax-exempt status, which Trump could threaten to remove. [...]. “Theoretically they can’t do it,” Lowry told me. “But the mere threat acts as a form of pressure. Institutions might start to self-censor, and that is a very real risk.”

[...]

Tracking self-censorship is difficult. Often it operates in subtle ways – the removal of a word in a label here, the discreet pulling of a display that never got publicly announced there.

[...]

People are acquiescing in advance as a way to stay under the radar,” said Steven Nelson, who recently stepped down from a senior position at the National Gallery of Art. “Very quickly, things that would not have been considered DEI began being considered DEI, which was almost anything not white.” No one currently in post at the Smithsonian or the National Gallery of Art spoke to me on the record about such matters, fearing for their jobs and for those of their colleagues.

[...]

At times, the self-censorship approaches dark comedy. One Smithsonian employee had removed the word “diversity” from texts and replaced it with the synonym “variety”. Diversity, after all, was a word guaranteed to provoke the ire of the Trump circle because of its association with DEI programmes. But in this particular case, “diversity” was being used in a strictly scientific context: the “diversity” of astronomical objects. Nevertheless, the employee was anxious about the word’s potentially snagging on any search engines through which the administration might run museum texts. Better, all round, to deflect the gaze.

For some, the self-censorship – what some might call anticipatory obedience – is becoming increasingly frustrating. [...] “The administration don’t really have to do anything, because institutions are doing it all for them.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/...

Siehe auch: USA unter Trump -2- (ehemals Amerikanische Pr... - #97

Well, censoring is only one aspect. The Gehorsam in the German phrase has to do not simply with statements, with language, but - more importantly - with actions, with the execution of unarticulated policies. That is much more dangerous. I have a feeling I contributed to a thread on "Vorauseilender Gehorsam" a couple of decades ago, but I can't find it. I think we did not arrive at a satisfactory rendering into English. But certainly virtually any rendering must be better than "hurrying obedience", which to me sounds simply absurd.

Here's another variant English rendering of the concept, Just read it today and was reminded of this thread. Not as clumsy as many other English attempts:

As the historian Timothy Snyder warned in his 2017 book, On Tyranny, this is how societies slide into danger: people obey in advance.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/202...

But I want to jump back to the L.A. Times and The Washington Post. There is a problem when the people who have the most money set the example of yielding to power first. It’s a problem. They shouldn’t do it. It is obeying in advance. It’s textbook anticipatory obedience. It’s absolutely 180 degrees not what they should have done.

[“Do Not Obey in Advance”: Timothy Snyder on How Corporate America Is Bending to Trump: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/20/trump... ]

@ isabelll #19

Right, “to obey in advance” works nicely when a verb form is needed. Noun form: “obeying in advance.”

Possibly the Latinate “anticipatory o.” is met with more often in academic contexts? Snyder himself seems to suggest something of the kind in the interview linked above where he uses "textbook" as a qualifier.