Democracy Dismantled: Intro to Trump, Populism, & Authoritarianism

Welcome to the new six part series here at the Diplomat, called  Democracy Dismantled. My name is Ella Leffler, I am a third year UCM student studying international relations and philosophy. As a German-American, the history and state of U.S. politics has frustrated me for as long as I can remember taking an interest in politics. 

The past year however, has been especially angering. Donald Trump has facilitated a multitude of domestic and especially international violations, pulling the United States into authoritarianism and violently reshaping the international community. The six parts of this series will encompass :

(1) This introduction piece to the crucial context of Donal Trump’s relationship with the presidency and terms from Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny. 

(2) The destruction of institutions, both cultural and political. 

(3) Federal weaponization of the National Security Forces. 

(4) ‘Big Event’ as justification for the consolidation of power. 

(5) The Epstein Files. 

(6) Trump and the International Sphere, plus a conclusion to the series. My hope is to run through the timeline of Trump’s regime mapping how his domestic policy has facilitated a consolidation of authoritarian power which mirrors his ongoing foreign policy. 

I understand that major headlines all display the excruciating lengths of Trump’s decisions and impacts, and reading about him can be tiring.. However, this series takes a unique approach, with a different subject for each part, the focus extends beyond Trump, spanning various different sections of U.S. peoples and institutions. 

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Authoritarianism. A word that is thrown around to describe not only the past, but the direction in which many of our world's current self-proclaimed democracies are headed. 

What exactly is authoritarianism? Historically, authoritarianism is a monoist method of ruling, in which near unchecked power lies in the hands of one ruler or a small group of rulers who rule largely by specific assumptions of how the world should work. As a citizen you are deprived of most, if not all, of your political freedoms and civil rights. 

But as most things, this ideological standpoint has evolved and changed with time. More modern day regimes seen to be slipping towards an authoritarian rule have been doing so under the guise of democratic politics. This is more in-line with the concept of authoritarian-populism, which utilizes democratic institutions to come to power where they subsequently weaken them to push an agenda. 

Anti-pluralist in nature, authoritarian rulers often construct an ethno-nationalist ideology for the ‘silent majority’ they claim to represent–sowing division between “the righteous” and “everyone else.” Everyone else becomes a scapegoat for most societal problems, narrowing the 'righteous' world views to be simplistic and illogical, making them easier to control. In their view, “everyone else” is to blame for the world's evils encompassing their opposition. Historically marginalized communities, individual and minority rights, the rule of law and immigration are this “opposition.” Immigrants, especially, tend to be transformed into the source of economic problems, cultural loss, rise in crime and job loss. 

Essentially, differences among people in a nation become weaponized, which in turn demands obedience and sameness to one mode of thinking and ruling, punishing those who don’t want to abide by them. 

Snyder’s On Tyranny

Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny, is a guide to navigating the United States descent into authoritarianism, during Donald Trump’s first election and term. Drawing on examples from authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century, Snyder holds that all of these regimes came about slowly, unrecognizable at first by the average citizen. The book is centered around Donald Trump and how his rule threatens the fragile state of democracy. However, almost a decade has passed since this book was published and the United States has progressed deeper into a state of authoritarian populism. Snyder’s warnings can be applicable to the far deeper authoritarian populist nature of Donald Trump’s second term, and the threat this poses. 

How have we gotten to where citizens and institutions became so susceptible to authoritarian rule? Snyder claims that frustration boiled up as a result of the Politics of Inevitability which most Western societies have been functioning under since the fall of communist regimes. Described by Snyder as a self-induced intellectual coma, it's the sense that in the post cold war era, liberal democracies, capitalism, transatlantic negotiations and prosperity was the end point of our ideological advancement. 

Francis Fukuyama is most famous in the field of international relations for this thesis. He stated that capitalist liberal democracies fulfill an individual's desire for freedom and equality, through material well-being and recognition. This made them the most rational and final form of human governance. In his linear conception of history, he coined it, “the end of history,” since for him there is no other governing form for societies to progress to. The future became something “not to worry about” as most tensions can be remedied by the resources of a liberal democracy. 

Snyder holds that the Politics of Inevitability made the West forgetful of the dangers and power of authoritarianism. Since liberal democracies and capitalism marked the “end of ideological progression” for the West, the lessons of the past became somewhat forgotten under the belief that no authoritarian regimes would ever reoccur. The ‘End of History,’ and the purpose of liberal democracies became misinterpreted by leaders as inevitable; fueling complacency, inequality, and the underestimation of authoritarian threats.

Elon Musk is projected to become the world’s first ever trillionaire. Meanwhile, there are people in the same country who depend on food stamps to feed themselves, barely getting by making around $6,000-12,000 annually. Such drastic wealth inequality was facilitated by years of unregulated capitalism in the United States’ liberal democracy, which Fukuyama, who’d advocated for open markets, critiqued. However, in U.S. democratic history, inequalities became sidelined under the image of an “advanced Western-democratic society” and for the benefit of political and economic elites. U.S.–foreign invasions and violence were also justified under the ideals of a perceived moral high ground of liberal democracies. Snyder himself, in an interview, cited the U.S invasion, and successive war, of Iraq from 2003-2011. 

“If you think that democracy arises because of natural forces, then you might really get yourself to believe that if you destroy a state, then the next logical or inevitable thing to happen will be the flowering of democracy, which of course, historically speaking is absolutely crazy” - Timothy Snyder

Through unwavering commitment, liberal democracies became devoid of moral integrity. Teaching that as long as it is in the name of democracy, the bombing, invasion and murder of other lands, peoples and countries is moral. Similar to how authoritarianism fuels an illogical and simplistic world view, so does unregulated belief in Western moral high grounds, which says: “it’s all okay, they’re not a democracy yet, they can learn from us.” 

Through this mode of reasoning, you lose any moral compass or claim to rationality. You foster a citizenry that resents leaders of liberal democracies, who allow inequalities to exacerbate. The stagnation that the Politics of Inevitability created is what fueled the subsequent rise of populism and what Snyder denotes the Politics of Eternity. This is not to put democracy to shame. Democracy is vital for a participatory and inclusive citizenry, however its existence in the U.S. is so that its ideals are often undermined in practice. Structural inequalities, concentrated wealth, and political inertia limit its ability to deliver genuine equality and representation for all.

The Politics of Eternity, is where the past, including times of violence, inequality and oppression becomes romanticized by a leader, obscuring the reality of the past. Past historical moments are selected to paint an image of innocence and greatness to be reignited, so as to escape from a victimized position an external enemy poses to them and the country. 

The United States realized their entrance into the Politics of Eternity, with Donald Trump’s unexpected win of the presidency in 2016. His win broke through the logical barriers of the Politics of Inevitability, which had wrongly assured people that ‘in no possible reality would a populist beat the traditional-style democrat candidate Hillary Clinton’. His win revealed the problem with liberal democratic ideology in the U.S. If you stick so uncritically to the governing ideology, under which people's struggles are neglected in the name of “destiny and progress”, you will produce a mass of people who feel deeply neglected. Neglect fuels vulnerability to dangerous forms of populism, which they see as finally able to represent them. This is how Donald Trump won. Angling the support of blue-collar, rural Americans who felt neglected by mainstream liberal democratic politics that was largely focused on globalizing efforts and foreign policy. 

Populism & Trump

Populism, the kind of regime that encapsulates Trump’s first presidential term, is conducive to the Politics of Eternity. Populism simplifies society into two dichotomies, ‘the people’ who they claim to be a true representative and advocate of, and the ‘dishonest elite,’ who they usually still align with behind closed doors. The gravitating claim is that politics should express the general will of ‘the people’. The caveat with this is how ‘the people’ are defined in populism. Populism exploits the average person's struggles to ascend to power which they historically abuse and use for their own advantage. 

Populism made up much of Donald Trump’s first term agenda, with his infamous campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. His campaign scapegoated immigrants for stealing ‘real Americans jobs’ and increasing crime and violence and stereotyped Muslims as terrorists imposing a ‘Muslim travel ban’. He decried mainstream media as an ‘enemy of the people,’ only endorsing those who aligned with his ideological base. In office, he enacted protectionist economic practices, tax cuts for the rich, reduced regulation of businesses, pulled out of climate policies, made drastic cuts to medicare and instated judges and other government officials who would bend to his will. Generally, his first term rule was defined by the  sowing of divisions among North Americans. 

Throughout the 2020 elections, Trump sowed mistrust in the entire electoral system claiming that if he were to lose, it would immediately indicate a fraudulent election. In fact, his fierce opposition to Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election culminated into a crucial moment that marked his rule as more than populist: the insurrection of the nation's capital. 

On January 6th, 2021 Congress was in the process of certifying the electoral votes of the election, which would confirm Biden’s victory. Meanwhile, Trump hosted a counter “Save America" rally, filling Washington D.C with MAGA supporters and groups like Q’anon, a right-wing conspiracy group, and the Proud Boys, a neo-Nazi group. Trump called on the crowds to march down to the Capital and stop the count. Rally goers marched down, raided and broke into the Nations Capital in a clear cut attempt, to undermine democratic processes for Trump’s personal consolidation of power. The legacy of this event reflects Trump's intention for authoritarian rule, as insurrectionists enacted Snyder’s ‘Anticipatory Obedience”. An idea stipulating that power consolidated by an authoritarian leader is willingly given at the start, when institutions and individuals comply with the goals and desires of the regime without reflecting on its implications. Trump supporters' willingness to raid a government building demonstrated to his regime what kind of power was possible given his supporters' readiness to commit federal crimes in his name. 

Since Trump has been in office this time around, the authoritarian tactics have increased. The mindless compliance his domestic supporters and allies supply him with has fostered a government whose democratic backsliding has become blatantly obvious and dangerous. The U.S. is headed in a direction that aims to absolve itself of most domestic and international checks on its power–a pattern that must be confronted and discussed by citizens globally. Trump’s actions not only directly affect people beyond U.S. borders, but push out a ripple effect influencing the internal politics and policies of other countries–threatening our safety and individual sovereignty.

What is to come in this series will be a focus on the larger themes of Snyder’s messaging, applied to Trump’s authoritarian-populist actions so far to understand how power is dangerously being consolidated right now in the United States. So tune in for the next issue if you too are interested in a critical look at the U.S. under Trump’s rule. 

“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” - Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.