Trump Isn’t Hiding— So Why Are Our Democratic “Leaders?”

You Can’t Stop Fascism with a Senate Procedure Manual 

People I know are wary, edgy, but almost none of them believes in their heart of hearts that the U.S. is really on the verge of turning into a full-on dictatorship. After all, we’re not Hungary or Turkey or the Philippines. We have safeguards— a constitution, traditions, a somewhat weakened but still vibrant democracy. Adrienne LaFrance warned yesterday that that frame of mind is just what Trump needs— and that there’s no one to stop him. We’re running out of time, she insists. “People,” she wrote, “sometimes call the descent into authoritarianism a ‘slide,’ but that makes it sound gradual and gentle. Maria Ressa, the journalist who earned the Nobel Peace Prize for her attempts to save freedom of expression in the Philippines, told me that what she experienced during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte is now, with startling speed and remarkable similarity, playing out in the United States under Donald Trump. Her country’s democratic struggles are highly instructive. And her message to me was this: Authoritarian leaders topple democracy faster than you can imagine. If you wait to speak out against them, you have already lost. Shortly after Trump was reelected last fall, I called Ressa to ask her how she thought Americans should prepare for his return. She told me then that she worried about a failure of imagination. She knew that the speed of the destruction of institutions— one of the first steps an authoritarian takes to solidify and centralize power— would surprise people here, even those paying the closest attention. Ressa splits her time between Manila and New York, and she repeatedly warned me to be ready for everything to happen quickly. When we spoke again weeks after his inauguration, Ressa was shaken. President Trump was moving faster than even she had anticipated.”

LaFrance heard a similar message from Garry Kasparov, who tried to resist Putin’s decision to end Russian democracy 20 years ago. “The chorus of people who have lived through democratic ruin will all tell you the same thing: Do not make the mistake of assuming you still have time. Put another way: You think you can wait and see, and keep democracy intact? Wanna bet? Those who have seen democracy wrecked in their home country are sometimes derided as overly pessimistic— and it’s understandable that they’d have a sense of inevitability about the dangers of autocracy. But that gloomy worldview does not make their warnings any less credible: Unless Trump’s power is checked, and soon, things will get much worse very quickly. When people lose their freedoms, it can take a generation or more to claw them back— and that’s if you’re lucky.”

The Trump administration’s breakneck pace is obviously no accident. While citizens are busy processing their shock over any one shattered norm or disregarded law, Trump is already on to the next one. This is the playbook authoritarians have used all over the world: First the leader removes those with expertise and independent thinking from the government and replaces them with leaders who are arrogant, ignorant, and extremely loyal. Next he takes steps to centralize his power and claim unprecedented authority. Along the way, he conducts an all-out assault on the truth so that the truth tellers are distrusted, corruption becomes the norm, and questioning him becomes impossible. The Constitution bends and then finally breaks. This is what tyrants do. Trump is doing it now in the United States.

In the Philippines, it took about six months under Duterte for democratic institutions to crumble. In the United States, the overreach in executive power and the destruction of federal agencies that Ressa told me she figured would have kept Trump busy through, say, the end of the summer were carried out in the first 30 days of his presidency. Even so, what people don’t always realize is that a dictator doesn’t seize control all at once. “The death of democracy happens by a thousand cuts,” Ressa told me recently. “And you don’t realize how badly you’re bleeding until it’s too late.” Another thing the people who have lived under authoritarian rule will tell you: It’s not just that it can get worse. It will.

Americans who are waiting for Trump to cross some imaginary red line neglect the fact that they have more leverage to defend American democracy today than they will tomorrow, or next week, or next month. While people are still debating whether to call it authoritarianism or fascism, Trump is seizing control of one independent agency after another. (And for what it’s worth, the smartest scholars I know have told me that what Trump is trying to do in America is now textbook fascism— beyond the authoritarian impulses of his first term. Take, for example, his administration’s rigid ideological purity tests, or the extreme overreach of government into freedom of scientific and academic inquiry.)

Between the time I write this sentence and the moment when this story will be published, the federal government will lose hundreds more qualified, ethical civil servants. Soon, even higher numbers of principled people in positions of power will be fired or will resign. More positions will be left vacant or filled by people without standards or scruples. The government’s attacks against other checks on power— the press, the judiciary— will worsen. Enormous pressure will be exerted on people to stay silent. And silence is a form of consent.

The truth is, checks and balances work only when individuals are courageous enough to speak out. Many American citizens, though, have been conspicuously quiet in the early days of Trump’s second term. People like Kasparov and Ressa, who have lived through the flip to authoritarianism elsewhere, warn that this is a mistake, as do many scholars who have studied totalitarianism and dictatorships across history. At a time like this, hesitation can mean the difference between freedom and tyranny.

These are not uncertain times, not really. The trick of aspiring dictators is they tell you exactly what they’re going to do ahead of time. There’s a famous saying about propagandists— that they repeat the lie until it becomes true. But corrupt leaders use repetition effectively in other ways, too. An authoritarian repeats lies, yes, but he also repeats outrageous truths until they no longer sound outrageous, at least to some. Tell people again and again that you’re going to imprison political enemies or journalists, or otherwise take away basic freedoms, and the public becomes primed to accept the attack when it finally happens. The role of technology in the rise of authoritarianism cannot be overstated: Social platforms built for scale— and designed to reward anger, hate, and snap reactions over truth— helped Trump win the presidency, serve as networks for anti-freedom propaganda, and have assisted others like him in gaining power around the world. Technologies that could be used for democratic expression are instead used to warp public opinion and suppress dissent.

…This is why Trump calls journalists purveyors of “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” It’s why he floats the idea of executing his perceived political foes, and doing away with the First Amendment. It’s why he has moved beyond simply wanting to deport people who are in this country illegally and now says “homegrowns are next” when he talks about his desire to send Americans to a gulag in El Salvador. And it’s why he is trying to take over universities and other once-independent institutions. In his first month back in office, Trump banned the Associated Press from the White House because it wouldn’t agree to use only the words he liked. He seized control of the White House press pool, which previously operated independently, run by members of the press. And his Pentagon told journalists that it would end long-standing tradition and do away with the press pool that has the chance to travel with— and ask questions of— the secretary of defense. Trump continues to muse, as he has done before, about crushing the press and anyone who leaks information to reporters. Trump ranted in a social-media post about anonymous sources, saying that that “a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty” and threatening to sue reporters and news outlets. He went on: “I’ll do it as a service to our Country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”

Trump keeps moving the goalposts this way. Remember when he mused publicly that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it? He wants people to believe that they deserve to be punished, and that he deserves to do whatever he wants, with impunity. More recently, Trump put it this way: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

One key difference between Trump and Duterte, at least so far, is violence. Duterte started carrying out the extrajudicial murder of citizens within hours of taking the oath of office. He was, he said, making good on his promise to crack down on crime. (He’d previously done the same when he was a mayor, with the help of vigilantes and even police officers.) His administration, human-rights groups say, ultimately killed tens of thousands of civilians. 

…Ressa has some advice for Americans: If you’re in a leadership position, she says, you must demonstrate that you understand the seriousness of the situation, and that you’re there to protect the people who are depending on you. But also, you have to know that not everyone is brave. Not everyone is ready to stand up for their freedom; those who are fearful are easily manipulated, and can put others at risk. When the stakes are this high, she advises, there’s no time for weakness. Remember that a weak link— be it an individual, a university, or a law firm— is a point of danger for those who need to hold the line. As I’ve written before, capitulation is contagious. But so, too, is courage.

…Dangerous times call for high levels of both calm and courage. You need to assume the worst is going to happen, and work backwards from there. People like to join the pack, and that’s not always a bad thing. Strength in numbers is real. You need to create a community around you. Not just for your own protection, but for everyone else’s. Remember that facts still matter. Every individual who speaks out, every person who calls a lie a lie, demonstrates fealty to the truth. Do not assume that your voice does not matter. It does. You also choose truth by what you read, how you choose to spend your time. If people no longer care about reality, authoritarians learn that they can do whatever they want. Put another way: If you lose reality, you lose the rule of law. You lose democracy. You are no longer free.

All you can do is hold the line. Hold the line to the standards of your industry’s ethics. Hold the line to what the Constitution says. The minute you step back, or voluntarily give up freedom, it is gone for good. Dissidents do not always win. Garry Kasparov spoke out against Putin and ultimately fled his country for America because he faced persecution at home. In the Philippines, the people were able to beat back Duterte democratically— but democracy is still extremely fragile there, certainly more so than when Duterte first won the presidency.

Basic American freedoms are already far more vulnerable today than even one month ago, even a week ago. The United States has long been a bulwark for democracies everywhere. Not so at the moment. But it is not too late. Find your people. Fight for your values. Collaborate with those who still believe in truth, and humanity, and the inalienable rights of the people.

“When I hear people ask if they should flee to some other country, some faraway land, I want to shake them. You want an escape plan? To where?” Ressa said to me recently. “If the United States of America falls, it’s the ball game.”

It is easy to dismiss warnings about the demise of American freedoms as hyperbole, or the darkest pessimism. But there’s a paradox here. Those who have the greatest sense of urgency about the need to protect democracy in the United States, those who have seen firsthand how bad it can get and how quickly freedom can be snuffed out— they are optimists in their own way. We should listen to them not only because they may be right, but because they recognize what Americans know in their bones to be true: This nation, these freedoms, they are sacred. They are ours. And it is not too late. Not yet, anyway.

And yet, where is the opposition? Not the activist grassroots— who’ve been screaming about this for years— but the institutional opposition, the people who are supposed to hold the line? Democratic leadership in Congress has been catastrophically outmatched. Chuck Schumer, in particular, has been less a wartime consigliere and more a sleepwalker through crisis. Faced with a party that’s actively undermining democracy, Schumer clings to Senate decorum like a security blanket. His strategy— if one can call it that— has been rooted in fantasy: that Republicans will come to their senses, that bipartisanship will prevail, that norms will self-repair. Meanwhile, the judiciary has been captured, civil rights are being unraveled, and Trump’s allies are openly planning for permanent minority rule.

The danger is no longer theoretical, and the GOP is no longer hiding its intentions. But Schumer and much of the Democratic Senate leadership remain trapped in an era that no longer exists, paralyzed by fear of upsetting donors, media gatekeepers, or mythical swing voters. There’s no urgency, no imagination, no fight. When Trump and his movement are signaling authoritarianism as policy, the Democratic response can’t be to shuffle press releases and hope it all works out. History doesn’t forgive timidity in the face of fascism. It damns it.

On Fresh Air yesterday, Dave Davies asked Steven Levitsky about the rise of competitive authoritarianism in the U.S. “These are regimes that constitutionally continue to be democracies. There is a Constitution. There are regular elections, a legislature and importantly, the opposition is legal, above ground and competes for power. So from a distance, if you squint, it looks like a democracy, but the problem is that systematic coming (ph) abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. This is the kind of regime that we saw in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. It's subsequently become a full-on dictatorship. It's what we see in Turkey under Erdogan. It's what we see in El Salvador. It's what we see in Hungary today. Most new autocracies that have emerged in the 21st century have been led by elected leaders and fall into this category of competitive authoritarianism. It's kind of a hybrid regime… [S]tudying democratic backsliding, studying authoritarian turns in other countries, we've learned that there are certain things that make it more or less likely that autocrats will succeed in the long run in establishing an autocracy like, say, Putin did in Russia or Chavez and Maduro did in Venezuela. Those are consolidated autocracies. Two factors that matter a lot— one is the popularity of the president. A president with an 80% approval rating— 75% or 80% approval rating like, say, Bukele in El Salvador, like Hugo Chavez had, like Modi had for a while in India— can do much, much more damage than a president with 40%, 45% approval rating. That's not fully prohibitive, but it helps to slow down the degree to which an autocrat can consolidate power. But more importantly than that, the degree of what I would call organizational and financial muscle in society matters a lot. It's much easier to consolidate an autocracy in countries with a pretty small private sector, with a weakly organized, maybe fragmented opposition and with a relatively underdeveloped civil society. The United States has none of those things. The United States has a very large, very wealthy, very diverse private sector. You know, even with people like Zuckerberg and Bezos kind of moving to the political sidelines, there are still hundreds of other billionaires in the United States, and there are literally millions of millionaires in the United States. There's a lot of money out there in society. There are a lot of organizations with high-powered lawyers out there in society. There are many, many well-organized foundations and civic organizations. And the opposition, for all of its flaws, the Democratic Party represents a unified, well-organized, well-financed, electorally viable opposition. So compared to societies elsewhere, our civil society and our opposition is pretty well-equipped to resist Trump… Our society, our very muscular civil society, has not stepped up, for the most part. There are signs that this is changing, but we've been very, very slow to respond. And the wealthiest, most prominent, most powerful, most privileged members of our civil society have, for the most part, remained on the sideline, and that's allowing Trump to do much more damage than I expected him to be able to do. Again, in the long run, I think we continue to have a number of institutional channels to contest Trump, and we continue to have the muscle, the organizational, financial muscle in society to sustain opposition.”