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I spend most of my time studying how people fight back against autocratic regimes in places like Russia. But as my fellow Americans worry about the potential of an authoritarian coup in Washington, I’m seeing a different set of parallels – and it worries me.
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If you believe you live in a democracy, elections are a wonderful thing. Sure, the campaign can be nerve-wracking, but at the end of the day the votes are cast, someone wins, someone else loses, and attention gradually shifts to the next opportunity to do it all over again.
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If you live in an autocracy, however, elections are nothing more than another opportunity for the regime to retrench its power and your powerlessness.
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Autocratic elections are an exercise in voicelessness, and the first rule of opposition is to understand just how heavily the system is stacked against you.
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The TL;DR is this: If we’re to come out of this with our republic intact, those of us who believe America is a democracy need to understand – as @anneapplebaum notes – that an increasing number of our compatriots do not.
https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1345642737119408128?s=11
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https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1345642737119408128?s=11
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America is not an autocracy. For all its faults and inequalities, for all the propensity of our government to prolong the power of the powerful, the Commander-in-Chief remains incapable of manipulating institutions to ensure that he never has to leave.
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Trump could not prevent his opponents from getting on the ballot or hound them off the campaign trail. He could not bar them from making their voices heard. At the end of the day, he could neither dictate the count, nor cow underlings into doing it for him.
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From state capitols to the Supreme Court, and even to the office of the Senate Majority Leader, the institutions of American democracy bent but did not break.
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That is the truth of the matter, but the truth hardly matters. Let me be clear: Those who believe that the election was stolen from Trump are wrong. But that does not change the fact that a significant minority of Americans has come to believe otherwise.
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They have come to believe that they are locked out of politics, that they have no franchise, and that their only recourse is opposition to the system itself.
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Whether based on truth or fiction, that is a powerful set of beliefs to hold. It justifies – indeed, necessitates – severing the ties that bind society together, because those ties are imbued with the power of those who have stolen your country.
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Suddenly, rejecting the media and messages of broader society isn’t an act of lunacy: it’s an act of survival. The ridicule and scorn heaped on you by those who don’t see what you do is proof not that you are marginal, but that they are complacent, conformist, brainwashed.
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Like the opposition in Russia or Venezuela or so many other genuine autocracies around the world, pro-Trump Americans know that the path they have chosen does not lead immediately to victory.
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They know that they are walking away from any chance at participating in the exercise of political power. If they choose to go into the wilderness, it is because they believe they have no real choice at all – that the wilderness was, in their view, imposed on them.
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And that is why appealing to the integrity of those in the Republican establishment who have sided with Trump – whether Vice President Pence, or Senator Cruz, or Representative Hawley – is doomed to fail.
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In their own view, the 12 Senators and 140 Reps who have announced their intention to challenge the result are not undermining American democracy: they believe they are saving it. For them, integrity itself has been banished to the wilderness, and so they will follow.
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Like all radical oppositions, they will work hard to defend themselves against pressures to return from the wilderness, to conform, to integrate back into “normal” society.
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Not all, of course, will keep the faith, and those who break ranks – Senators Romney or Graham, for example – will be marked out as apostates and shunned.
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To avoid ideological contamination, adherents will focus more and more on media that don’t simply diverge from the mainstream agenda, but that reject it entirely.
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They will drift away from personal relationships that encourage complicity with the ruling regime, severing friendships and even family ties. In their place will emerge new networks, which will encourage commitment and solidarity.
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In fact, a lot of this has already happened. For those have supported Trump through thick and thin, to face facts and say “enough is enough” is no longer simply a shift of political judgment: it is the rejection of a community and of a way of life.
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To turn your back on Trump is to turn your back on all of the people who encouraged you to support him in the first place, who donned that red cap together with you, who egged you on and whom you egged on.
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It is not only to say that you were wrong: it is to tell those people that they are wrong, that they were lied to and, most probably, lied themselves. The ties of radical opposition – even if delusional – bind tightly.
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Those of us who believe in our democracy and want it to survive need now to tread exceedingly carefully.
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The movements that face up to dictators succeed by turning adversity into solidarity. As a result, if we increase the Trumpists’ already inflated sense of threat, we will only bolster their cohesion.
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Trump’s supporters are not an anti-authoritarian movement, because they are not facing an authoritarian regime. But because they believe they are facing an authoritarian regime, they will turn anything that smacks of repression to their advantage.
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We should not, of course, indulge behavior that undermines our Constitution. Powerful people who have sought to subvert democracy should pay a price for that, and there can be no place for Trumpism in American politics.
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But we should not be so quick to raise the flag of sedition, and we must keep the door open for our compatriots to return from the wilderness.
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