The Authoritarian Playbook and You
By Kevin Reed
A dictator or authoritarian “playbook” is a framework of proven tactics that dictators use to consolidate and maintain control of a country. This often means being elected and then taking actions to dismantle the democracy.
After all the unnecessary hysterics of “Stop the Steal” and January 6, 2021 I remember watching a series on PBS called The Dictator’s Playbook. At the time I was hopeful Trump would be held accountable for his various crimes, but also had the nagging feeling he wouldn’t be as it became evident that he still had widespread support from his conservative base.
The Dictator’s Playbook series, and books like On Tyranny by Snyder, highlight some key behaviors dictators use as they consolidate power. Some of the people that have successfully used all or many of these tactics are:
Idi Amin (Uganda)
Francisco Franco (Spain)
Manuel Noriega (Panama)
Benito Mussolini (Italy)
Saddam Hussein (Iraq)
Kim Il Sung (North Korea)
Adolf Hitler (Germany)
Vladimir Putin (Russia)
Viktor Orban (Hungary)
to a lesser degree Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, because currently Poland is working its way back to democracy
and others
Based on observable events and behaviors, we can add Donald Trump to this list as well, as he’s used all but the most extreme of the below tactics so far.
What do they all have in common? They all follow a playbook that somehow proves effective over and over again, even though we know about it and try to communicate it. The tools they use are:
Identifying their base of support, then catering to that base
Creating a cult of personality
identifying an internal enemy or enemies which are at odds with the base
Gaining consent
Creating chaos
Capitalizing on, or creating an emergency with which to consolidate more power within a single branch
Using political violence and violence against internal enemies or citizens
Delegitimizing, attacking, controlling media
Releasing propaganda
Weakening and dismantling institutions
Undermining the judicial system
Creating a culture of fear
Capitalizing on nationalism - Fascism, for example, celebrates military might, devotion to country, and the superiority of the country’s people to others
A promise to return to some former national greatness
Amassing personal wealth
Controlling information
Working outside democratic rules and rule of law
Creating a gulag
Purging enemies
Making examples out of people
Using terror
At some point, the authoritarian starts or jumps into a war as a way to unify the country and weed out anyone who would criticize the authoritarian since they are easier to flag as “traitor” during a war
What’s all this have to do with you?
Well, if you’re in the USA, then you have either voted for Trump or against him, or perhaps you didn’t vote at all.
Those who have voted for Trump knew very well that he already tried to overturn a legal U.S. election. So, they didn’t care and voted for him anyway. Many of these people are against government and see him as being a businessman who will clean up government, though that is not backed up by observable evidence.
The voting block that got him into office twice, the Christian Nationalists, believe that Trump is a King Cyrus figure and part of the “Kingdom of Light’s” holy war of “Good vs Evil,” and the only possible outcome is not compromise and unity but subservience, defeat, and vanquish of those different from them. This includes the collapse of secular democratic government, which they see as being in the “Evil” category. In either case, it would seem that those folks would be fine with most of the above tactics, so long as they don’t become the target of any of them (which, historically, they often do).
If you didn’t vote for Trump, and you believe in the USA and democracy and unity, then the above things should be very alarming to watch unfold in your own country. Not every one of them has been checked off so far (war, widespread violence against citizens remain to be seen), but it’s only the third week of his second term, and he’s hit all the rest of them already.
So we are currently watching a hostile takeover of the government by the Christian Nationalists who have been planning this for decades, and their tool, the authoritarian Donald Trump.
Many countries before us didn’t know about these things. Mussolini, for example, was the modern blueprint maker for the next century of dictators and authoritarians. He was in power 11 years before Hitler, who learned a great deal from watching Mussolini rise to power, and you can see authoritarians including Putin, Orban, and Trump all using his tactics today.
But today, in the USA - we know better. We can see history. We know what is happening. So we need to work to peacefully stop it before it turns into a lose/lose situation, as we’ve seen time and time again throughout history.
Jan 6, 2021 footage shot by rioter showing another insurrectionist holing up a bust of Trump to police.
