Trump’s Wager and the Authoritarian Shift
Is Trump getting weaker, or is the authoritarian danger increasing? Yes.
1. The Shift
Today I want to unpack a something from TNL yesterday.
Tim and Sarah think Donald Trump is weakening, quickly. Bill agrees. They point to his declining popularity, high-profile Republican defections, and the likelihood Democrats could win some federal power next year.
I want to grant all of that. Yes, Trumpism might be falling apart before our eyes. But there’s another possibility.
What if Trump is executing the Authoritarian Shift?
Many authoritarian regimes begin as popular movements.1 They win a couple elections, ride waves of discontent, and seize power through legitimate, or at least quasi-democratic, means.
It’s only later that they become authoritarian. After gaining power the aspiring authoritarian assaults the democratic system itself, seeking to remove the need for popular support. The regime tames the legislature, sidelines or steamrolls the courts, co-opts the business class, exerts control over the media and universities, and begins nibbling away at electoral machinery.
At some point the regime has consolidated so much power that its popularity no longer matters. The Authoritarian Shift is the process of trading popular legitimacy for structural control.
Sometimes this process takes years, as it did for Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Sometimes it takes weeks, as it did for Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Whatever the case, the end result is a regime hated by its subjects but wielding so much internal power that it cannot be displaced by ordinary democratic means. If you wish to see living examples of regimes that successfully executed the Authoritarian Shift, look to Orbán, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin, and Nayib Bukele.
I stipulate to all of the points Sarah, Tim, and Bill make about Trump’s popular decline. His approval numbers are way down. Republicans keep losing elections. There are schisms within MAGA. All of this is very real.
But there have been . . . other developments.