Democratic regression and political polarization are not unique to the US. Having more guns than people is. So are militias, usually formed of lower- and middle-class white Americans harboring anti-government sentiments. The threat posed by these anti-government extremists — though not necessarily terrorists — was thrown into relief when at least 13 members of Michigan’s Wolverine Militia were arrested for planning to kidnap, “judge,” and potentially execute for treason the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. In her classic book about the Argentine military dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s, and its disappearances of “subversives” and secret prisons, Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz wrote, “The regime’s depravity reached its outer limit with pregnant detainees.” The Trump regime’s depravity reached its outer limit with what it did to the children of those detained migrants. Trump is a celebrity-turned-right-wing politician. He acts as a consummate demagogue, fabulist, and ultranationalist, and he appears to have a strong inclination for nepotism and kleptocracy. His efforts to use the presidency to finance his lifestyle and enrich his family resemble the schemes of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. In addition to profiting from his time in office, Trump, like Marcos, has challenged constraints on executive authority without investing resources into a sustainable political organization.

Would-be dictator Donald Trump would be unstoppable in a Would-be dictator Donald Trump would be unstoppable in a

Kruse: A scholar who studies violent conflict, Thomas Homer-Dixon, recently wrote, “By 2025 American democracy could collapse causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” Does that sound right to you or too extreme? Trump's mode of governing has been to stoke division, confusion and chaos. An America in crisis is exactly what Trump desires since it then becomes easier for him to exert control and power, to profit from corruption, and to wreak vengeance on his foes. With the midterms and some key governors races approaching, Ben-Ghiat is looking around the corner again. She sees dangerous signs of autocracy seeping into state houses and governors’ mansions where leaders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are executing policies and enacting laws that mimic Trump but with a smoother, less bombastic style. Image of Trump and Kim Jong-Un ( https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/could-trump-deal-kim-jong-un-be-october-surprise-john-ncna1233693) It’s all there, if you can bear to look at it. From the kleptocratic impulse – Trump pushing to meet foreign leaders at his hotels, so that he can profit – to his undisguised admiration for his fellow strongmen. Trump can’t get enough of Kim Jong-un, handing him another propaganda gift last weekend by setting foot in, and thereby legitimising, the slave state Kim rules so bloodily – and, once again, getting nothing in return. But in Osaka, at the G20 summit, he was also palling around with Mohammed bin Salman, even though the UN and the CIA both agree the Saudi leader was directly responsible for the violent murder of US resident Jamal Khashoggi. As for the simpering deference Trump shows Vladimir Putin, it’s a wonder Trump’s supporters describe him as a strongman at all: next to the Russian president, he looked like a teenager with a crush.

While Trump has been able to weaken environmental regulations, the courts and the system itself proved to be guardrails. As of the last year of his administration less than half of his environmental regulatory actions (48 out of 84) were in effect. The others were either in process or have been repealed or withdrawn—often after the administration lost in court. Trump is unfit to be president. He represents a clear and present danger to our democratic way of life. The psychopathology that underlies and fuels his wish to be an authoritarian dictator is severely malignant. If I was doing this as a bottom line in some debate, I’d say that Trump is not a fascist, but what he is quite consistently is an illiberal democrat. He is a democrat to the extent that he’s used democratic processes to be where he is, which he doesn’t radically challenge. He obviously plays fast and loose, like any wheeler dealer, with things like the Supreme Court, who he gets in, etc. He doesn’t care about the rules, but the core system he doesn’t want to change, because he’s somebody who’s profited by that system.

10 Ways Trump Is Becoming a Dictator, Election Edition

But things could always get worse. There really are leaders who suspend elections, dissolve legislatures, throw large numbers of citizens into camps without trial or appeal, who turn their nations into one-party states oriented around a cult of national rebirth. The fascist leaders of the past, the University of Texas’s Jason Brownlee notes, “not only pursued right-wing policies, they also built-up mass-mobilizing parties and paramilitary organizations with the goal of sweeping aside alternative movements and establishing single-party dictatorship.” Ben-Ghiat: No. David Pepper, who wrote this book Laboratories of Autocracy, has always said that many states are no longer functioning democracies. I would say that nationally, we are a functioning democracy. That’s how we got rid of Trump. But the system has been eroded and many states are shifting, are evolving over time to a condition where votes are going to mean less. And then you get into a situation which is like what happened in Hungary where over time Viktor Orbán has developed a system where it’s almost impossible for the opposition to win.The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to conduct in-depth, nonpartisan research to improve policy and governance at local, national, and global levels. Donate Kruse: There has been increasing talk of the inevitability of civil strife, of civil war. And full democracies don’t have civil wars. Autocracies also don’t have civil wars, right? It’s sort of those places that are in some worrying state of transition that might be susceptible to that kind of violence. Are we on the way to civil war? As a result, Trump and his co-conspirators have been left free to continue their plotting to destroy democratic rights and establish a fascist dictatorship. Basically, I think it matters whether we call Trump fascist or not fascist, not academically or intellectually, but because it’s a red herring — it actually diverts attention from where we should be doing the critique. If all our intellectual energies are, like Don Quixote, jousting with windmills and fascism, instead of actually jousting with the real enemies of democracy, and using our energies to avert the climate crisis, which is going to engulf us all, if we’re not careful, then we’re wasting our time.

US could be under rightwing dictator by 2030, Canadian

It’s hard for a society to rid itself of the effects of an evil dictatorship, I’ve seen so many try and fail. Some of these effects can be institutional—in Chile, for example, the Pinochet dictatorship survives through a constitution absurdly contorted in such a way as to guarantee to right-wing parties an outsized share of power in any government, and through the extant, despised, repressive Pinochet-era militarized police colloquially known as “Los Pacos.” A decade of non-stop protests by students and other young people, especially, seems now finally to have led to the chance to write a new Chilean constitution. Maybe that will sweep away the other remaining vestiges of Pinochetism that survive, whether institutional or embedded in human spirits. But how are we supposed to forgive evil? How do you compromise with racism? It’s not possible to reach a half-way point of common agreement on racism. Hutchinson said she overheard Meadows say in regard to chants by insurrectionists to “hang Mike Pence” and nooses set up outside the Capitol, “He [Trump] thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.” Hutchinson finally testified that on January 7, Trump and Meadows discussed pardoning the rioters. In previously released taped testimony, she listed six Republican congressmen—Mo Brooks, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Matt Gaetz—who requested or inquired about presidential pardons in the aftermath of the failed coup. On Tuesday, she revealed that Giuliani and Meadows likewise asked for pardons. The group known as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have relentlessly searched for the missing offspring of their own disappeared children. Of the approximately 500 children believed to have been taken in that way, the Grandmothers have managed to identify and recover 130, restoring to them their original identities, at least. Argentina is one of the countries that has been most successful in bringing the criminals of the former dictatorship to justice. But it took longer to hold members of the former military junta and their accomplices accountable for their “systemic plan” to steal babies. The Constitution distributes power between the federal government and the state government, codified in the 10 th Amendment to the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It took Trump a long time to understand this but states have repeatedly exercised their power against Trump, especially in two areas; COVID-19 and voting.

Francisco Goldman Considers What Happens Next

But most experts did not even go that far, and some expressed concern that describing Trump as a fascist undermines the term and leads to a misanalysis of our current political situation. “If Trump was a fascist and we were in a situation akin to Germany in 1932 or Italy in 1921, certain kinds of actions would be justified,” Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, says. “But we are not and they are not.” Michael Kruse: We’re coming up on seven years since Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president. I’m wondering where in your estimation we are in this country in the timeline of increasing authoritarianism. Nearly two years later — after a riot, an impeachment, and a monomaniacal campaign to punish the Republicans who tried to hold him accountable — Ben-Ghiat has ample proof of her thesis. And she professes even more concern that Trump’s sway over the GOP has permanently transformed the party’s political culture. “He’s changed the party to an authoritarian party culture,” she told me. “So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any dissent.” Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

Milley in farewell speech: ‘We don’t take an oath to a

But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unraveling of democracy in the United States. We need to start by fully recognising the magnitude of the danger. If Mr Trump is re-elected, even under the more optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable.” The term “fascist” regarding Trump continues to mislead rather than inform. But that cannot inure us to what Alexander Reid Ross has called the “fascist creep.” Stanley Payne, Jaume Vicens Vives and Hilldale professor emeritus of history, the University of Wisconsin Madison

As mental health professionals, we cannot remain silent. Trump's authoritarian presidency is a national emergency

Kruse: Is it fair to see DeSantis as a very capable, committed student, whereas Trump is more of an instinctual autocrat?