So You’re Worried About Autocracy
You can fight a politician but not your fellow citizens – Issue #135
Just after the election AP polling found that “nearly half of voters said they were ‘very concerned’ that another Trump presidency would bring the U.S. closer to authoritarianism.” This includes about 10% of Trump voters. If you are one of the people who worry about this, what should you do? Our answer is that ultimately, it will be your fellow citizens who allow or prevent the President from further centralizing power—so persuading them has to be the core strategy.
Red readers might scoff at this anxiety, pointing out that our democracy survived a first Trump term just fine. Of course the rejoinder is that Trump orchestrated a broad campaign to try to stay in office even after he lost in 2020, culminating in the January 6 riots. And the rejoinder to that is that this all makes perfect sense if the election was fraudulent, which most Republicans believe. (We think Biden won fairly, because the deepest dives by conservatives, liberals, and the courts found no evidence of fraud.) It doesn’t help that Trump has said he’s willing to “terminate” the constitution, and is currently pulling a number of moves that are classics in the authoritarian playbook: blaming immigrants, attacking the media, invoking emergency powers (twice in one day). For a fuller analysis, see political scientist Neil Abrams’ Gaming Out the Descent series.
If you’re already nursing concerns about Trump’s second term, you can probably list further ways in which he’s repeating history. And if you don’t believe this is a problem, it’s still worth paying attention because so many Americans do.
Why the resistance failed
When Trump took office the first time in 2017, he was met with fervent and outspoken reaction. Thousands protested his travel ban. An estimated half a million people took to the streets of DC for the Women’s March. This time the mood is much more muted. The #resistance of Trump’s first term failed. As Alex Shephard writes in the New Republic:
For the last eight years, Democrats have, again and again, run campaigns focused on the existential necessity of defeating and rejecting Trumpism. By rejecting Trump entirely and making every election a referendum on him, Democrats could also conveniently dodge political accountability…
By treating Trump as a singular political force, one who had cast a spell over tens of millions of Americans, the Democrats could position themselves as the wizards who would break that spell—without having to necessarily provide a political alternative to Trumpism.
Musa al-Gharbi has a particularly sharp critique. Democrats in 2024, he writes,
focused on the message that was most resonant and satisfying for … themselves, even at the cost of failing to persuade “normies,” and therefore helping the “fascists” win. As Orwell pointed out roughly a century ago, this has been a chronic problem with “resistance” liberals: they define themselves as the last line of defense but often end up increasing the appeal of “fascists” in practice due to their indulgent approach to politics.
In other words, Democrats ended up fighting their fellow citizens. But the many people who voted for Trump can’t just be removed from politics or otherwise coerced, marginalized, or eradicated. (As ever, this is the classic conflict fantasy.) We have to find some way to live together. Even better would be to articulate a mutually beneficial future.
The core problem is that the anti-Trump coalition does not have an alternative response to our current crises that is both practical and popular. Worse, they’ve positioned themselves against a number of popular policies. Zaid Jilani makes this point in a recent article for Compact Magazine:
So if Democrats don’t simply resist the new president, what’s the alternative?
They must start by recognizing that much of what Trump built his campaign brand around—from denouncing Washington’s corruption to securing the US-Mexico border to reshaping our trade relations with other countries to ending wars—has a real constituency across the country. And to the extent he’s willing to back up his populist rhetoric with populist action, Democrats should be willing to step up and work with the administration and its allies in Congress to get things done for the American people.
Some on the Blue side will take this as blaming the victim. Perhaps it is; surely the vicious attacks and careless lies from the MAGA contingent caused real damage. On the other hand, it’s indisputable that the resistance lost. Even if you believe they were always in the right, a different strategy is needed.
In search of a positive vision
To some, all this may sound like an argument for collaboration with the enemy (and the feeling is mutual; each side thinks the other is “evil”). But making your fellow citizens into the enemy is a terrible strategy. For an authoritarian regime to truly succeed, large numbers of people need to either explicitly condone its rule or stand by and let it take over. As Neil Abrams writes, Trump can only transform into an autocrat if the public is complacent:
Without the acquiescence of state and local leaders, he cannot rig elections. Absent the collaboration of blue cities, he cannot round up and deport millions of immigrants. Unless people stay home out of fear, he cannot defeat a protest movement. If not for elections officials, district attorneys, business leaders, and universities “obeying in advance,” he cannot intimidate them into furthering his reactionary agenda.
“Unless people stay home out of fear” is a key phrase here. Fear can be paralyzing, and history has demonstrated that a mobilized people is the most potent threat autocrats face. But admonishment, blame, and moralizing won’t get people out of their houses either. Crucially, Maria J. Stephan and Timothy Snyder wrote in 2017, “Successful movements need to be able to inspire hope and optimism in order to sustain popular participation in the resistance and focus people on building alternative systems.”
This past week, Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka revisited the trenchant reminder she issued at the start of Trump’s first term:
Most importantly, remember, the status quo isn’t worth protecting. It’s so easy to be in reaction, on the defensive, fighting for the world we had yesterday. Fight for something better, something we haven’t seen yet, something you have to invent. Find a thousand collaborators. Include people you disagree with. Meet division with imagination. Imagine a country united.
Quote of the Week
Americans are exhausted, disillusioned, and bitter. We need something to believe in. But our leaders seem only interested in pushing weird ideologies that no one likes, or scamming us for money and selling us out.