In journalist and historian Anne Applebaum’s recent book Autocracy, Inc., she describes the modern nature of autocratic regimes and their leaders. In the past, autocracies were fueled by grand ideologies or messianic visions of national fulfillment - think Hitler’s Germany, Joseph Stalin’s Russia, or Mao Zedong’s China. Whereas today, autocratic regimes are more like petty crime families operating in naked self interest. They seek to protect and enrich a select few, while controlling the rest of the population through illiberal means.
Modern autocratic leaders still use many of the same tactics that autocrats have used throughout human history. Some of those tactics include: telling ‘big lies’ that stir popular grievances and create ‘enemies’ to be fought. Intimidating or controlling the press in order to minimize scrutiny and opposition. Threatening, or using actual violence to bring about desirable political outcomes. Manipulating the legal system in such a way that illegal actions are done without fear of consequence. And demonizing groups within the ‘homeland’ that supposedly need to be feared or persecuted.
Amazingly, American voters in 2024 decided to elect someone who checked all the boxes of autocratic behavior. Former US President Donald Trump showed American voters who he was daily - but they chose him anyway. He perpetuated the big lie that the US 2020 presidential election was stolen. This ended up rousing his supporters to commit political violence on January 6th, 2021 in an effort to violate the Constitution, and allow Trump to maintain power.
Trump has constantly attacked the press; even calling them the ‘enemy of the people’. The specter of his wrath negatively influenced the wealthy owners of The Washington Post, and the LA Times. Each of which decided to keep their editorial departments from endorsing Trump’s 2024 political opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has interfered with legal cases brought against him, relied on help from corrupt judges, and shattered norms governing the separation between the Presidency and the US Department of Justice. Yet his calling card is demonizing immigrants and migrants as ‘poisoning the blood’ of the United States, and calling his political opponents ‘vermin’ or the ‘enemy from within’.
His personality is a natural fit for the modern incarnations of autocratic rule. Trump is completely transactional - meaning he makes decisions devoid of principle or morality. His way of interfacing through life is a combination of (probable) narcissistic personality disorder, a fondness for real mobsters, and the teachings of his mentor; the sadistic and ruthless Roy Cohn. He does have some ideological convictions over immigration and trade. Yet the true motivating sun in Trump’s orbit is self interest, status, and profit.
There is a reason Trump admires autocrats like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping. He admires the way they control their societies, and how they are able to enrich themselves; as well as those around them. He’s envious of the fact that they don’t have to deal with impartial investigations, or authentic media inquiry. He sees in them what he has always sought for himself: tremendous status, and tremendous unchecked power.
For any objective observer, it should be clear that Trump displays all the aspects of autocratic behavior and desire. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter whether he is a true fascist, or just a petty kleptocrat. His decisions and actions will be taken without any regard for democratic norms or the US Constitution. In fact, he will do his best to erode or erase democratic obstacles that seem to impede his objectives. His day-to-day governance will exist within a fever dream of lies and propaganda. Up will be down, left will be right, and two plus two will equal five. Yet unlike Trump’s first term as President in 2016, his default personality won’t be the only autocratic pressure point in government. This time around, he will have a more cohesive ideological movement behind him. One that has embraced varying aspects of autocratic rule as a political imperative.
Trump’s vice presidential selection of former Ohio Senator J.D. Vance represents a merging of chaotic Trumpism with what some have called the ‘New Right’. The New Right represents a somewhat cohesive intellectual response to what has happened to American society over the past 30 to 40 years. Some of the thinkers within the movement include Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and blogger Curtis Yarvin. Each individual has their own thoughts, but the general consensus is this: American society and government is broken, and the path to fixing it needs to be extreme. Or as Yarvin has put it, America needs a ‘national CEO, or what’s called a dictator’.
Considering this line of thought, the merging of the New Right with Donald Trump is a perfect match. Trump gets to feed his narcissism with the praise of a youth oriented political movement. While the New Right gets its wrecking ball to smash the ‘political swamp’ in Washington DC. Other members of the New Right are more focused on social remedies through technological advancement. Individuals like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk see technological progress as the only true way for humanity to advance. For them, free markets and economic deregulation are essential for human flourishing.
This kind of merging of techno-corporate power with Donald Trump is another ingredient in America’s autocratic moment. Elon Musk spent tens of millions to help get Trump elected president in 2024. Yet Musk’s companies also do billions of dollars worth of business with the federal government. Musk’s closeness to Trump will allow him to self deal, and be rid of pesky government regulation or oversight. This kind of overt oligarchic behavior is a common trait of autocratic regimes worldwide.
Trumpism and the New Right are the two main drivers of America’s autocratic trajectory. Yet there is a third contributor that should be noted. The United States Supreme Court has fully positioned itself as an enabler of autocratic presidents, and corporate oligarchy. Facing prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Donald Trump challenged the case based on the legal premise that he had ‘broad immunity’ as president. In Trump’s corrupt, autocratic mind, a president should have ultimate power and protection to do pretty much whatever they feel like.
Trump’s case reached the Supreme Court in 2024. Conveniently for him, the court was heavily tilted towards the political right. Ironically, this was mostly due to the fact that fate had allowed Trump to appoint three new right wing justices during his first term as president. The court ruled along partisan lines that a president ‘may not be prosecuted for exercising their core constitutional powers; and are entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for their official acts’. The court also noted that presidents are not immune from prosecution for ‘unofficial’ acts. Yet the ambiguous nature of the court's decision is a green light for presidential autocracy. As far as Donald Trump is concerned, he now has immunity for all ‘official acts’. This means that every corrupt transaction, or bypassing of the Constitution will be done by Trump under the guise of an official action.
Much of Trump’s corruption while in office will probably be geared toward bringing in money to pay off his legal bills and debts. Yet it was the money he was able to bring in during his presidential campaign from Elon Musk and others that is a better indicator of America’s autocratic moment. As detailed in the 2024 podcast series Master Plan, America is currently in the midst of an unprecedented tsunami of corporate money in politics. The podcast details the trajectory of campaign finance and regulation since the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon. The story culminates with the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision which allowed corporations and others to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence political outcomes. This unlimited fountain of cash in politics helps create the conditions for unabashed corruption, and enables autocratic behavior.
The corruption and failure of the Supreme Court is indicative of a broader trend within all three branches of the US government. Civic principles have atrophied, thus eroding the guardrails against an autocratic presidency. Donald Trump has sought to undermine checks on his power by challenging Congress, and attempting to install shameless loyalists to run critical government agencies. Much of Trump’s autocratic behavior in the years to come will have been entirely predictable; yet a majority of American voters chose him anyway. The complicated and vexing question is, why?
There are many reasons why American voters decided to return Donald Trump to power - some more significant than others. Yet the one that I always saw as the most compelling, was the idea that Trumpsim was a terrible response to a legitimate problem. The legitimate problem being the situation facing the average American resulting from unfettered capitalism and the actions of what some call the ‘ruling class’.
Whether it’s an apathetic acceptance of autocracy, or a welcoming embrace - a populace doesn’t arrive at either place overnight. It can take years for resentment and anger to build - or even decades. In the case of the United States, I would say the economic trajectory that paved the road for Trumpism began around forty years ago. Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s, the financial system (or ‘Wall Street’) began to morph into the version we see today. Excessive risk taking and excessive profit making started to become standard modes of operation. Increasing deregulation allowed Wall Street to function more like a high stakes casino rather than a financial service industry. This, (along with increasing financial globalization) began to accelerate economic and cultural separation between those at the top of the economy, and everyone else.
By the time the 1990’s rolled around, the cultural sorting between the elites and the rest of America was well under way. Former President Bill Clinton represented a new kind of elite politician. One that was younger, ivy league educated, and focused on world progress as much as he was the future of America. Clinton subscribed to a kind of new elite orthodoxy that saw globalization, large trade deals, and continued financial deregulation as economic pillars. This perspective would begin to fuel the economic degradation of many manufacturing based areas of the country. Areas that would no doubt turn out in mass for Donald Trump decades later.
By the early 2000’s, the fault lines that would lead to the cataclysm of Trump were clear. American manufacturing jobs were in decline as China began to rise. The nature of modern work was beginning to change from traditional labor towards information and technology. This in turn made a college degree more important for financial success, and made the economic landscape more difficult for men without a college degree. Extrapolate these two trends forward to today, and we can trace the line to Donald Trump’s young male political base; and the voting separation between those with a college degree, and those without.
In the years following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Americans truly began to lose faith in their government and the elites. They witnessed the country get dragged into a terrible war in Iraq based on the false premise of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. They saw the vice president at the time (Dick Cheney) basically engage in overt corruption by helping enrich the company (Halliburton) he used to lead. They saw their government fail in the face of a massive hurricane. And they watched their president (George W. Bush) bumble his way into a cataclysmic financial collapse.
This was the time period where the modern notion of the ‘elites’ or ‘ruling class’ began to take shape. Many Americans began to notice that the lives they were living were increasingly disassociated from those running the society. They began to realize that there was a kind of separate class that was becoming a revolving door between government, celebrity circles, media, corporations, and higher education. This phenomenon was detailed in the book This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America's Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich.
In the book Leibovich describes the gilded nature of Washington’s elites. Yet the most telling parts are when he details how the members would move between government and private interests. The point being that a member of the ruling class would serve in Congress one minute and advocate for access to healthcare for all Americans. Yet later, that very same member would go to work (or lobby) for a major insurance company and undermine the very reforms they were previously advocating for. This kind of naked self serving, and self enriching cynicism did not go unnoticed by the American populace. This phenomenon would years later be coined ‘the swamp’ by Donald Trump because he knew how to exploit the legitimate anger that existed in so many Americans.
By 2008, Americans had seen enough. Their government was spending billions on overseas wars, yet they still couldn’t afford healthcare or higher education. They watched Wall Street crash the economy, yet get saved by a Treasury Secretary who coincidentally used to run Goldman Sachs. They were told they had to send Wall Street billions of dollars because they were ‘too big to fail’ - even though they watched their neighbors lose their jobs or their houses. There was anger, resentment, and populist fervor; yet there were still no signs of pending autocracy.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, former President Barack Obama appealed to the best of human nature in an effort to combat the building cynicism in the country. His slogans of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ broke through in areas of the country that Donald Trump would dominate 16 years later. In many ways Obama was the mirror image of Trump - addressing the same circumstances but in a completely different way. His presidency was a good faith effort to thwart the trajectory that the country was on. Yet there was one terrible decision Obama made, and many other forces in the country beyond his control that cleared the way for Trump’s later political ascendence.
When Obama took office in 2009, the country was reeling from the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. It was the worst financial crisis since the 1929 crash, which led to the Great Depression. The 2008 crisis crystallized popular anger toward elites that had been building over the decade. Americans recognized that Wall Street had caused the crisis, yet their politicians were going to bail them out anyway. Despite this, President Obama had a once in a lifetime chance to break the power of Wall Street, and restore some balance in the American economic landscape.
As detailed by the Frontline PBS news series, Obama listened to competing advice on how to deal with the transgressions of the Wall Street elite. One side wanted to break up the too big to fail banks in order to set an example for future behavior. While the other side wanted to protect and preserve the financial status quo despite all that had happened. As the deliberations concluded, Obama refrained from telegraphing his decision. He then summoned the leaders of major financial institutions to the White House for a meeting two weeks later.
One would be hard pressed to think of another moment in American history where a president had so much political leverage over corporate power. The leaders of the financial industry were facing justified public demonization. While Obama was riding wide support and popularity from his historic victory as the first African American to become president. According to Frontline, the financial leaders feared they would have to accept sweeping reforms ranging from limits on executive compensation to a ban on too big to fail. The universe was aligned for broad, populist reform that would signal to the American people that finally the elites in Washington had their back.
Yet it wasn’t meant to be, as Obama gave in to his cautious political instincts. After an initial warning that he was the only thing standing between the financial leaders and the ‘pitchforks’ of an angry citizenry, Obama chose to let Wall Street off the hook. This decision signaled that despite his populist rhetoric, Obama was content to have an administration that didn’t really change much. Members of his administration continued the ‘elite revolving door’ tradition of moving between roles in government and private corporations. Obama’s embracing of the elite status quo, and his rejection of populist frustration was a mistake that aided the rise of Donald Trump in 2016.
Obama’s transition from optimistic populist warrior to caretaker (and member) of the elite was a quick and impactful one. Yet it probably wasn’t the most important transition that took place during the eight years of his presidency. American culture was undergoing its full shift into a culture dominated by smartphones, social media, and online communication. This change would literally alter the mental and metaphysical landscape of all Americans. And this alteration would turn out to play an important role in the autocratic situation America now finds itself in.
It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump’s entry into the American political scene was due in many respects to a big lie. The ‘birther conspiracy’ was a falsehood perpetuated by Trump that insinuated President Obama wasn’t really born in the United States - and was therefore illegitimate. Trump’s racially tinged demagoguery towards Obama was a kind of preview of his anti-immigrant rhetoric during his political rise. Trump’s autocratic instincts led him to try to establish Obama as a minority ‘other’ to be feared and loathed. A frequent tactic of autocrats is appealing to the worst instincts in their followers by maligning a group of human beings based on ethnic or racial differences.
Yet it wasn't simply Donald Trump’s words that made him an effective demagogue; it was the medium in which they were delivered.
The age of the smartphone and social media has primed American minds, and American political discourse for autocracy. Propaganda and autocratic messaging thrives in communication environments where truth is hard to discern. A digital landscape where Americans can curate their own reality is a landscape primed for autocratic messaging. In decades past, there were few options where citizens could get information. This in turn, led to a sense of a shared reality, or truth. It was a time where something like Trump's birther conspiracy would have a much harder time gaining true popular acceptance.
Yet in modern times, ‘truth’ has become dependent on who is saying it, and the personal opinions of those receiving it. Every issue or news item now enters into a kind of information ether. A murky space where Americans create completely different versions of reality. Donald Trump naturally floods this space with reams of lies and falsehoods. Yet because of the nature of the mediums we now use for communication, ‘lies’ don't function like lies should. They become building blocks for minds primed to use them to further create the reality they want to believe.
Yes, digital mediums have made it much easier for autocrats to propagate their messaging. Yet they have also changed the way the human mind actually works. Our digital landscape has shortened our attention spans; and led us to a place where deep thinking and contemplation have become rare commodities. It's led to the ‘24 hour news cycle’ and a sense of digital immediacy. One where the present is all that exists, and the past is quickly forgotten.
The impact of this as it relates to the rise of American autocracy cannot be understated. A citizenry that cannot remember (or doesn't care) about democratic ideals is one that has basically welcomed autocracy. Millions of Americans have reached the point where they can overlook Donald Trump's criminality, autocratic rhetoric, and his trashing of democratic norms. Much of this is due to the fact that their minds have been digitally conditioned to a point where morality and truth have lost any real substantive power. Everything has become digitally relative - even the value of the rule of law, and democracy itself.
Despite the tangible or material reasons one can find for America’s autocratic turn, there is a deeper, philosophical reason that can be identified as well. There is something about Trumpism, and the ‘MAGA’ (Trump’s slogan Make America Great Again) movement that fills a kind of spiritual void within its most ardent followers. As Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl famously described, human beings are propelled to seek meaning in life. For many of Trump’s followers, his movement gives them a certain purpose, and a voice that they felt they haven’t had for a long time.
Ex Fox News host Tucker Carlson summed up this phenomenon the night before the 2020 election. Trump held a huge closing rally in Butler, Pennsylvania and Carlson offered commentary on Trump’s appeal; which of course was still vexing to many. Still on Fox News at the time, Carlson would say:
Millions of Americans sincerely love Donald Trump. They love him in spite of everything they’ve heard. They love him often in spite of himself. They’re not deluded, they know exactly who Trump is - they love him anyway. They love Donald Trump, because no one else loves them.
Carlson would continue by hitting populist themes rooted in resentment and anger - forces that were discussed earlier in this writing. Yet the underlying theme to his message was that Trump made the forgotten people of Butler feel like they mattered. He made them feel like they had agency, and their lives were important. This phenomenon was also captured in a podcast series by The Atlantic called We Live Here Now. The series tells the story of Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt who was killed storming the capitol on January 6th, 2021. Witthoeft and other true believers have kept vigil outside the prison in Washington DC where January 6th perpetrators are kept. For them, the January 6th prisoners are ‘political prisoners’ unjustly held. Regardless, it’s clear their mission is as much about filling a void within themselves as it is about finding ‘justice’ for the MAGA movement.
There are two prominent psychological aspects at play when it comes to the meaning fulfillment that Trumpism provides. One can be forgiven when seen in a broader context, while the other is less excusable. In towns like Butler, Pennsylvania, and all across the vast rural parts of the United States, people have suffered under economic and social decay. As mentioned earlier, economic policy from both of the major political parties (over decades) has left many places with few good jobs, higher costs of living, and not much hope for the future. And within this economic void came opioids, and later fentanyl - which in turn brought wide pain and suffering.
In short, late stage American capitalism was (and is) a meaning destroying machine. And not only does it destroy meaning in people’s lives, it provides false replacements in entertainment, materialism, and digital stimulus. It’s hard to fault individuals who have had all the traditional avenues of meaning stripped from them for turning towards a populist demagogue. The emotional undercurrent of Trumpism carries the minds of its adherents to a place of excitement and purpose. A place that is far removed from the boring, day to day grind of empty, dead end capitalism.
While this first psychological response to Trumpism is understandable, the second is much more cynical and insidious. It is also related to finding meaning in a way, yet it is meaning through indulging the worst human impulses. Some of the allure surrounding autocratic movements is the behavioral permissions they give to their followers. Since one of the hallmarks of such movements is the creation of a great ‘other’ or ‘enemy’ to be fought, a psychological byproduct is a kind of opposition by ‘any means necessary’. The notion that the imaginary enemy is so abhorrent that there is no morality to be considered when acting against them.
This kind of permission eventually devolves into a kind of feedback loop that becomes less and less rational. The permission structure of the autocratic movement begins to attract bad actors and produce bad behavior simply due to power dynamics and human nature. We can see this with Trumpsim eight years removed from 2016. Many of the men close to Trump are certainly ready to punish ‘enemies’. Yet the true motivating factor seems to be that they will have unchecked power, and the ability to indulge their worst impulses. This seems especially true for Elon Musk who has seamlessly transitioned from dynamic entrepreneur to an oppressive, impulsive oligarch.
For many young male Trump supporters across the country, the allure of indulging their darker impulses is hard to withstand. Think of it this way: if you had an army platoon of young men, the rules governing their behavior would pretty much determine how they acted. With strict discipline and strong moral guidelines, you might have a few bad actors at certain times - yet widespread depravity would be unlikely. Yet if the same group was given explicit or implicit permission to do basically whatever they wanted; morally questionable behavior would most certainly ensue. The moral guardrails within the human mind will move depending on outward constraints - especially in young men.
As of now, most of the permissions being given in Trump’s autocratic movement are kleptocratic in nature. Trump and those in his orbit will use their power to self deal and increase their wealth. Yet considering the violence on January 6th, 2021, and the Trumpist rhetoric surrounding political retribution, the capacity for a darker turn in the coming decades exists. This doesn’t mean that the United States will see Nazi-like death camps anytime soon. Yet the road from autocratic infancy to full grown moral nihilism has many stops along the way. Trumpism might still be at the beginning of that road, yet the behavior it permits shows a clear path forward, no matter how long the ride.
Most likely, Donald Trump will not become a full fledged dictator and spend the rest of his life ‘on the throne’ so to speak. When people scoff at the notion of Trump’s autocratic intentions, they use this reductive example as a retort. Yet of course, history doesn’t really work in such a way. Societies don’t usually make a sudden, unforeseen flip from democracy to full fledged tyranny. The descent into autocracy can take decades, even centuries. And herein lies the problem, much like climate change, it is very difficult to raise the alarm about a problem that might erupt years into the future.
In Edward J. Watts’ book Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny he tells the story of ancient Rome’s transition from Republic to dictatorship over hundreds of years. The history he lays out serves as an apt metaphor for the trajectory of the United States. He highlights festering social inequalities, and political norms that are slowly discarded. He shows how political characters emerge through the years and make decisions that slowly make dictatorship more likely. And he highlights the role of wars over time, and how a populace can be stirred or manipulated for political gain. Overall, Watts paints a clear and vivid picture of a society that slowly degenerates into autocratic rule.
Sadly, there is a chance that hundreds of years from now, someone will have to write their own book about America’s decline into tyranny. An intriguing question will be where Donald Trump will fit in the story, and how far along the country currently is in the grand narrative. One thing is for sure: The elections of Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 have officially started the US down a path that leads away from American democracy as we have known it.
