Preface: The Clown and His Father
This is the story of a man who never grew up, yet somehow grew monstrous. A clown, aged 79, still trapped in a theater of desperate pantomime, where each gesture, each bellow, is a plea to a silent, absent father: Look at me. Love me. Approve of me. The narcissistic wound gapes beneath the surface of his every action-infused with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) (American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5, 2013), obsessively compulsive displays (OCPD) (National Institute of Mental Health), and a vacuum where empathy should reside (Twenge & Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic, 2009).
But this clown was not summoned by foreign sorcery. No Russian hand sculpted him (Mueller Report, Vol. I, 2019). America created him-not by design, but by negligence. It allowed a wealthy boy to learn that money erases crime (New York Times, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes,” 2018), that spectacle outweighs substance (Kellner, Media Spectacle, 2003), and that fame can smother accountability (S.V. Date, The Useful Idiot, 2020). The feeling of untouchability became a second skin. The Russians merely used him (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Vol. 5, 2020). The rot was homegrown (Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 2018).
Once, a bronze clown statue on Main Street might have sufficed-mockery wrapped in celebrity. But not anymore. Now he wants fear. He wants obedience. He wants to be father, god, emperor (Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017). But this craving has no ceiling, and it ends where all such cravings do: in war.
Not a war for policy. Not a war for the nation. But a war with his father-the figure we collectively represent (Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941). And so he lashes out. Against the institutions that restrained him (Gellman, Dark Mirror, 2020). Against the truths that exposed him (Woodward, Fear, 2018). Against the people who will never kneel (Giridharadas, Winners Take All, 2018).
I cannot begin to admire him. I cannot begin to love him. And for that-for that absence of surrender-this becomes utterly dangerous. But some things are beyond our capacity to fake. Amen.
Introduction
President Donald J. Trump has recently escalated his trade confrontation with China by announcing a cumulative 104% tariff on Chinese imports, an aggressive policy move that has sent shockwaves through global markets and stirred fierce domestic debate. The latest tariff hike includes a new 50% duty on top of existing measures, with the administration justifying the move as a defense of American industry and economic sovereignty (The Guardian). However, critics argue that the economic fallout is severe, with U.S. businesses and consumers bearing the brunt. For example, Idaho entrepreneur Casey Ames, owner of Harkla-a company that produces developmental toys for children with special needs-saw his annual import taxes skyrocket from $26,000 to $346,000, forcing him to consider layoffs and possible closure of product lines (NY Post). The U.S. imported over $439 billion worth of goods from China in 2024, including electronics, clothing, and household items, meaning that American consumers will likely see sharp price increases and further erosion of purchasing power (MarketWatch). Financial markets have not remained immune-after the announcement, the S&P 500 dropped 1.6%, the Dow fell 320 points, and the Nasdaq Composite plunged 2.1% amid fears of deepening stagflation and economic contraction (AP News). In retaliation, China declared it would impose a 34% tariff on all U.S. imports starting April 10 and began exploring export controls on rare earth minerals critical to American tech and defense industries (NY Post). The Chinese government has also mobilized its National Development and Reform Commission to consult with major private firms such as Trina Solar and Didi, aiming to mitigate damage and preserve employment under economic siege (Reuters). Meanwhile, Trump claims the tariffs are generating $2 billion daily and portraying them as a necessary corrective against decades of exploitative trade policies (The Guardian). Economists disagree, with many warning that the compounded economic stress could lead to job losses, capital flight, and a prolonged slowdown. The strategic rationale appears less economic and more political, aligning with authoritarian tendencies that weaponize economic chaos to consolidate power, suppress dissent, and fracture global alliances. As the standoff intensifies, the economic and geopolitical ramifications are set to reverberate far beyond the U.S.-China axis, threatening global supply chains, investor confidence, and the very fabric of multilateral trade governance.
Thesis Overview: Trump’s tariff-centric agenda exemplifies “economic coercion” employed not as a last resort but as a first principle of governance (Blackwill & Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, 2016). By deliberately destabilizing markets and supply chains, the regime creates crisis conditions ripe for authoritarian consolidation of power (Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 2018). In tandem, a strategy of media disinformation and manufactured betrayal narratives works to isolate dissent (Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, 2020), while key democratic institutions engage in a form of institutional suicide by abetting their own disempowerment (Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017). Exiles, diasporas, and foreign actors are maneuvered either as destabilizing bogeymen or tacit allies in undermining liberal democracy (Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy, 2020). Meanwhile, cultural exhaustion - the fraying of national myths and civic faith - opens a vacuum for ideological colonization by extremist narratives (Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951). Finally, as seen in regimes from Stalin’s USSR to contemporary autocracies, the Trump movement exhibits the classic tyrant’s fear of education, science, and equity, attacking knowledge and equality to entrench a new order (Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, 2010). We will examine each of these themes in turn, showing that Trump’s tariff playbook is not an economic growth plan at all, but part of a calculated political-economy of chaos that echoes the darkest chapters of history (Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, 2018).
Crisis as Opportunity: Weaponizing Chaos for Power
Authoritarian movements have long embraced the dictum “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Economic collapse and social chaos are not mere byproducts of poor policy; they can be deliberately induced to create a pretext for radical change (Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007). Trump’s tariff war is a case in point: it has disrupted integrated supply chains in North America, harming industries like auto manufacturing and agriculture (Brookings Institution, 2019). A 25% tariff on Mexican auto parts, for example, reverberates back to U.S. factories, where American workers provide ~30% of the value-added in those products (Council on Foreign Relations, 2019). Such self-inflicted wounds bewilder economists, but from an authoritarian perspective, they serve a strategic goal. By crippling the existing economy, the regime can then ride to the “rescue” amid the very emergencies it created - consolidating power in the process (Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 2018).
Historical Analogues: This tactic of manufactured crisis has ample precedent. In Weimar Germany, Nazi-aligned militias stoked street violence to justify President Hindenburg’s emergency decrees and ultimately Hitler’s seizure of dictatorial powers (Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 2003). Hitler exploited the Great Depression’s misery to call for an end to parliamentary chaos, positioning himself as the savior of a humiliated nation. Within weeks of taking office, he pushed through the Enabling Act in March 1933 - a law the Reichstag passed that voluntarily surrendered its legislative authority to Hitler’s cabinet (Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis, 2000). In effect, German democracy voted itself out of existence, illustrating how economic despair and fear can smooth the path for authoritarian rule. Similarly, Napoleon Bonaparte rose from the turmoil of the French Revolution and financial bankruptcy of the Directory government (David Bell, Napoleon: A Concise Biography, 2015). He famously remarked, “I am the revolution,” channeling crisis into a personal mandate. By 1806, Napoleon expanded this strategy to the economic realm with the Continental System - a Europe-wide embargo against Britain. The Continental System was meant to economically strangle Britain, but it ended up causing widespread hardship across the Continent, crippling industries in France’s own allied territories (Steven Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life, 2004). This self-induced economic pain was not a policy blunder so much as a bid to force a new geopolitical order under French domination. The pattern is clear: autocrats often manufacture or exploit crises (depressions, trade wars, even military conflicts) as instruments to rewrite the rules in their favor.
Trump’s tariffs likewise create a climate of pervasive uncertainty and stress - conditions under which democratic resistance tends to splinter and public appetite for decisive leadership grows (Foreign Policy, 2020). In the U.S., tariff-induced price spikes and farm bankruptcies have been followed by federal relief that tightens political loyalty. Notably, after Chinese retaliation slashed American agricultural exports, Trump authorized $28 billion in farm bailouts in 2018–2019 and over $60 billion by 2020, absorbing 92% of all tariff revenues to mollify an angry farm base (Bloomberg, 2020). In essence, the administration created a crisis for farmers (by rupturing their export markets) and then bought short-term political quiescence with massive subsidies - a classic “create the poison, sell the cure” tactic. By framing the entire trade war as a defense of “national sovereignty” under emergency conditions (The Atlantic, 2018), Trump also tapped a deep well of nationalist sentiment that treats any economic sacrifice as patriotic duty. This is crisis-as-opportunity in action: material hardship is alchemized into political gold, forging a narrative of siege that justifies extreme measures and unites followers against supposed enemies (foreign or domestic).
The spectacle of crisis is equally important. Trump has revelled in the drama of brinksmanship - the image of a “heroic leader” singlehandedly challenging China, Europe, or globalist elites (The New Yorker, 2018). As one observer noted, what matters to Trump is the “spectacle of a heroic leader demonstrating his capacity to induce shock and awe,” even if life gets materially worse for his people (Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, 2018). This cult of chaos prioritizes public theater (trade war photo-ops, fiery rhetoric) over actual problem-solving. It is straight from the authoritarian playbook: create a sense of permanent emergency, then present the strongman as the only source of order (Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, 2020). When markets plunge and currencies gyrate in response to midnight tariff tweets, it only reinforces the impression that the leader holds the keys to stability amid global carnage (CNBC, 2019). In ancient Rome, writers like Tacitus noted that emperors thrived on spectacle and fear - from Nero’s staged crises to distract the populace, to later emperors who deliberately debased currency (causing inflation) to finance their rule, destabilizing the economy but enriching their loyalists ([Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome]). Likewise, Trump’s chaotic trade policies and debt-fueled spending spree have set the stage for future economic distress (higher inflation, volatile markets), which can be leveraged to demand even more draconian controls (Brookings, 2020). The sword of Damocles hanging over the economy becomes a means to discipline both allies and adversaries: support me, or face the collapse.
In summary, Trump’s tariffs exemplify “shock politics” - using economic turmoil as a forge for authoritarian ambition. Rather than mistakes, the inflation, capital flight risks, and supply shocks are part of the plan: Crisis is the new currency of power (Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007).
The Economy of Obedience: Tariffs, Deindustrialization, and Dependency
Far from protecting American industry, Trump’s trade measures have often hollowed out what they purported to save. By rupturing long-established supply chains, the tariff regime accelerated trends of deindustrialization and global disengagement (Lovely & Liang, 2018; Zheng et al., 2022). Manufacturers facing steep import costs for components have either raised prices (harming sales) or shifted production abroad to evade tariffs - the opposite of the intended “bring jobs home” effect (Zheng et al., 2022). Meanwhile, trading partners have diversified away from U.S. markets. American farmers, for instance, lost lucrative Chinese contracts for soybeans and pork, many of which never fully returned as China secured alternative suppliers in Brazil and elsewhere (Xu, 2024). The net effect is a U.S. industrial base and export sector more, not less, fragile. This weakening of economic foundations is not a surprising side-effect but appears to be a desired outcome in the authoritarian blueprint: a weakened private sector and anxious workforce become more dependent on state intervention, and thus more malleable.
Trump’s tariffs have indeed fostered a new “economy of obedience.” As a Common Dreams analysis put it, “Trump’s tariffs are not random acts of economic aggression. They are carefully placed tools of political leverage - intended to punish dissent and reward obedience.” Companies and countries got the message: to escape tariff pain, demonstrate loyalty. For example, corporations with political connections in Washington were quick to lobby for exemptions, and many received special carve-outs or delays (Yoon & Kim, 2020; Kim & Yoon, 2020). The administration doled out tariff waivers as favors, effectively picking winners and losers based on allegiance rather than market merit. Likewise, foreign governments were told that punitive tariffs could be lifted if they acquiesced to U.S. demands - whether unrelated trade concessions or political alignment with Trump’s agenda (Hanada, 2020). In effect, the tariffs became tributes in a neo-feudal economic order: vassals who bowed to the throne were spared, while the recalcitrant were economically exiled. This perverts the free-market system into what one commentator called “feudalism with a corporate gloss,” where success depends on closeness to the regime. Such crony capitalism siphons wealth upward to the ruling clique, as seen by massive tax cuts and deregulation lavished on favored industries even as tariff costs hit average consumers. Unsurprisingly, analysts observed that the tariffs, though touted as populist, actually function as “pipelines of wealth transfer from the working and middle classes to the ultra-rich” (Chow & Sheldon, 2020). In short, the policy enriches a few insulated interests (often donors or political allies) while impoverishing the broader base - a hallmark of kakistocratic governance where the worst, most venal actors profit at the expense of the many.
Deliberate Destabilization: The broader economic impact of this strategy has been undeniably negative. Tariffs on critical inputs have contributed to inflationary shocks in the U.S., with businesses passing higher costs onto consumers (Xu, 2024). By 2025, inflation - initially ignited by pandemic supply snarls - was kept simmering in part due to new import taxes on everything from steel to electronics (Jackson, 2018). This erosion of purchasing power, effectively a regressive tax, hits lower-income families hardest. Yet instead of course-correcting, the administration doubled down, framing the pain as the cost of freedom. Meanwhile, allies like Canada and the EU faced sudden U.S. tariffs on products like aluminum and wine, provoking retaliatory tariffs on American goods (Shen, 2019). The result was tit-for-tat trade disruptions that made the entire North American and European supply network less reliable. Supply chain vulnerabilities multiplied as firms could no longer assume stable trade rules: some critical medical supplies and rare earth materials, for example, faced new import hurdles, raising concerns about national security implications of such vulnerabilities (Lovely & Liang, 2018).
Another economic concept relevant here is capital flight. Typically, when a country’s policies become erratic or punitive to business, investors seek safer havens abroad. Under Trump’s volatile tariff threats, businesses often postponed investment or moved assets offshore. Foreign direct investment into the U.S. slowed as companies waited out the uncertainty (Cretegny, 2017). American firms, too, in some cases shifted supply chains to other Asian countries to hedge against the China tariffs, or kept profits parked overseas (Garcia-Herrero & Xu, 2016). While the U.S. hasn’t (yet) seen a capital exodus on the scale of, say, 1980s Latin American debt crises or today’s Russia under sanctions, the perception of increased risk has a chilling effect. In the authoritarian blueprint, however, this is acceptable or even useful: a jittery business community is less likely to openly challenge government policies. It also sets the stage for potential state or crony acquisition of distressed assets if markets crash - another way to transfer wealth to loyalists. We saw hints of this during the tariff turbulence: when stock prices swung wildly on trade news, rumors swirled that well-connected insiders were profiting. Analysts noted that Trump’s erratic tariff announcements “amplify market uncertainty, creating financial incentives for those with advance policy knowledge to profit from short-term volatility” (Selmi et al., 2020). Such an environment of instability opens the door to economic corruption: those in the know (perhaps officials or their close allies) can bet against the market before negative news or buy before a policy reversal, essentially looting the market through privileged information. This modern form of spectacle-driven manipulation recalls ancient practices of rulers debasing currency for gain, or war profiteering by inner circles - the methods change, but the motive of enriching the few via chaos remains.
Finally, consider deindustrialization and its political utility. The U.S. heartland was promised a manufacturing renaissance; instead, tariffs have often accelerated factory closures (Zheng et al., 2022). This can be perversely useful for an aspiring autocrat: as local economies crumble, disaffected workers can become either desperate dependents on government aid or radicalized followers looking for scapegoats. Trump’s rhetoric provides those scapegoats in spades (China, immigrants, “globalists”), channeling economic anger away from his policies and toward target groups (Greenman, 2018). A populace experiencing downward mobility is also more likely to buy into nostalgic, revanchist ideologies - fertile ground for militarized nationalism and authoritarian myths. The British Empire demonstrated an extreme version of intentional deindustrialization to cement control: colonial India’s thriving textile sector was systematically dismantled by British trade laws that allowed free entry of British goods while imposing heavy tariffs on Indian products. Indian weavers were driven out of business by design, turning India into a raw material supplier and captive market. The result was dependency: India’s economy was locked into serving imperial interests, unable to develop independently. While the U.S. is not a colony, the effect of Trump’s policies could ironically be to “hollow out” American economic autonomy, making the country more dependent on government support and more vulnerable to external shocks. It is a perverse outcome: in the name of sovereignty, self-inflicted isolation can make a nation weaker and more submissive to a strongman’s will.
In summary, Trump’s tariff strategy operates on a political logic of power at the expense of economic logic. It intentionally destabilizes and reshapes the economy into a hierarchy of dependence: businesses and citizens survive not by innovation or productivity, but by aligning with the regime’s dictates. This transforms the free market into a patronage system - the cornerstone of authoritarian political economy.
Media Disinformation and the Betrayal Narrative
Every authoritarian project requires control of the narrative. The Trump era has been marked by a deliberate onslaught of disinformation, propaganda, and what some have called the “firehose of falsehood” strategy. The goal is twofold: to confuse and demoralize any opposition, and to mobilize core supporters through a potent betrayal narrative. By casting himself as the voice of “real America” besieged by traitors and saboteurs, Trump isolates dissenters as not just wrong, but disloyal.
Manufacturing Betrayal: One of Trump’s hallmark phrases, borrowed straight from Stalinist lexicon, is labeling the press and critics as the “enemy of the people.” This extreme rhetoric serves to delegitimize independent sources of truth. When mainstream media report on the economic damage of tariffs or the administration’s legal violations, millions are primed to dismiss it as “fake news” or partisan lies. Within the Trump movement’s information bubble, alternative facts reign supreme. For instance, Trump repeatedly insisted (falsely) that China was paying the tariffs and pouring money into the U.S. treasury, which he then gave to farmers. In reality, American importers and consumers paid those taxes, and the farm bailouts were funded by U.S. taxpayer debt, not Chinese cash. Yet the repetition of the lie-unchallenged in sympathetic media-convinces many supporters that any short-term pain is being compensated by foreign tribute (Froehlich, 2020). Dissenting voices who point out the truth are then painted as “globalist shills” or unpatriotic pessimists who want America to fail. This is the betrayal narrative at work: if you criticize the Leader’s policy, you are betraying the nation. It’s a powerful psychological tool, one used by countless despots. Hitler infamously propagated the “stab-in-the-back” myth, claiming Germany lost WWI not on the battlefield but due to traitors at home (Jews, Marxists, liberals) undermining the war effort. Likewise, any setback in Trump’s trade wars is blamed on domestic enemies-“socialist” Democrats, elite economists, or Federal Reserve officials-rather than the policy itself. The public is bombarded with the idea that dissent equals disloyalty (Guess, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2020).
Disinformation Ecosystem: To sustain this narrative, a compliant media ecosystem is essential. The Trump blueprint features a tight feedback loop between the White House, partisan media (like certain cable news hosts and online influencers), and social media echo chambers. Outright conspiracies are given official sanction-for example, the QAnon conspiracy (absurd claims of a deep-state cabal) was tacitly encouraged, fueling an atmosphere where any accusation against opponents, no matter how baseless, could be believed (Rossetti & Zaman, 2022). This creates a chilling effect on dissent: critics not only risk public vilification, but also literal danger, as zealots may target “traitors” identified by propaganda. Authoritarian regimes historically use similar tactics: Stalin’s Soviet Union wielded disinformation to isolate dissenters, portraying them as “wreckers” or foreign agents. Show trials in the 1930s featured fabricated evidence that heroes of the Revolution had been spying for Nazi Germany-outlandish, but many Soviets believed it after incessant propaganda. In Trump’s case, while opponents aren’t (yet) literally executed, the character assassination is relentless. Consider how officials who dared contradict Trump’s false election fraud claims in 2020 were branded turncoats; some, like election workers in Georgia, faced death threats after being singled out (Graham & FitzGerald, 2023).
The role of social media has amplified these effects. Platforms like Twitter (now X) and Facebook became battlegrounds of memetic warfare. Trump’s own social media posts (and those of surrogates like Marjorie Taylor Greene) would routinely flood the zone with incendiary content. In fact, Greene’s posts were reportedly garnering 42 million engagements per month, often boosted by algorithms that favor conflict and sensationalism (Graham & FitzGerald, 2023). Such figures effectively act as propaganda super-spreaders. They inject disinformation into mainstream discourse at a volume and velocity that drowns out sober analysis. Traditional media, in covering the latest outrageous tweet or rally rant, often unwittingly further the regime’s narrative (Benkler et al., 2020). This creates a media amplification loop: the more outrageous the lie, the more coverage it gets, and the more it cements in the public consciousness. The outcome is a kind of authoritarian equilibrium maintained by “lies, fear, and selective economic patronage” - lies to shape reality, fear to silence opposition, and patronage (as discussed earlier) to reward loyalty.
Isolating Dissent: Disinformation also serves to atomize the opposition. If people cannot agree on basic facts, they cannot unite to resist effectively. Trump’s years of contradictory and false statements (exceeding 30,000 false claims while in office, according to fact-checkers) created a fog of uncertainty (Froehlich, 2020). Reasoned debate gives way to tribalism and nihilism - some Americans simply tune out politics in disgust, which again benefits the would-be autocrat. Additionally, by flooding discourse with red herrings and manufactured scandals, the regime ensures that any genuine critique (say, a report on rising child poverty or corruption in tariff exemption grants) gets lost in the noise (Ross & Rivers, 2018). This technique is comparable to Putin’s Russia, where state media often pushes multiple conspiracy theories simultaneously (e.g. about opponents or world events) to confuse the public and foster cynicism (“nothing is true, so we might as well support the strongman”) (Sharma et al., 2021). The endgame is a populace either fervently loyal or politically disengaged - in either case, not posing a challenge to authority.
Finally, the betrayal narrative is cemented by spectacles of loyalty. Trump’s rallies famously take on a quasi-religious fervor, with loyalty oaths, chanting of slogans (“Build the wall!”, “Drain the swamp!”), and public denunciations of enemies. These rallies broadcast a clear message: you are either inside the faithful community or cast out as an unbeliever (Dunning, 2018). The psychological pressure to conform is intense, especially among Republicans who have seen dissenters like Liz Cheney swiftly excommunicated. It is telling that even as tariffs harmed many red-state constituents (farmers, manufacturers), few Republican lawmakers dared to challenge Trump’s trade war. To do so risked being labeled a traitor to the cause and facing a primary challenger fueled by Trump’s base. Thus, through disinformation and social coercion, the media machinery of Trump’s movement corrals elites and masses alike into fearful submission or silence.
In essence, control of the narrative - through propaganda, censorship by noise, and demonization of dissent - is the brain of the authoritarian blueprint that directs the brute force of economic and institutional power. It creates the alternate reality in which the regime’s actions, however destructive, are always justified and any opposition is tantamount to treason.
Institutional Suicide: The Complicity of Courts and Legislatures
Authoritarian takeovers often succeed not simply by top-down imposition, but through the active or passive complicity of the institutions that are supposed to check executive power. Trump’s blueprint has relied on this complicity to an alarming degree, with examples of what can be called institutional suicide: branches of government and bureaucratic organs undermining themselves from within.
Legislative Abdication: The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate trade and tariffs. Yet, over decades, Congress delegated vast trade authority to the executive - via laws like Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Trump exploited these levers to impose tariffs unilaterally under dubious “national security” pretenses (Pierce, 2019). Instead of reasserting its authority, the Republican-controlled Congress largely cheered or acquiesced. By 2018–2019, as Trump’s trade war escalated, some senators murmured about reclaiming tariff powers, but no serious legislative push succeeded (Rocca & Wang, 2025). In effect, Congress surrendered one of its core economic powers without a fight, enabling Trump’s destabilizing agenda. This echoes historical precedents: the Reichstag in 1933 voting for the Enabling Act that transferred its legislative functions to Hitler’s government, or the French National Assembly in July 1940 dissolving itself and granting Marshal Pétain full powers. In both cases, a legislative body fatally wounded democracy under the guise of solving a national crisis. We see shades of that in the U.S., where Congress’s failure to impose any meaningful check on emergency tariff abuses or other overreach (like diverting funds by emergency declaration) constitutes a slow-motion institutional suicide (Adler & Walker, 2019). Even as tariffs harmed constituents (farm layoffs, higher consumer prices), partisan loyalty and fear of crossing the President kept lawmakers docile. The result is an emboldened executive that regards Congress as a rubber stamp - precisely the dynamic in autocracies where legislatures exist only to ratify the leader’s will.
Judicial Erosion: The judiciary is often the last bulwark against authoritarian excess. Here too, we observe troubling capitulation. Trump managed to appoint over 200 federal judges and three Supreme Court justices, tilting many courts in his favor or at least instilling a partisan bent. More overtly, the Supreme Court delivered decisions expanding executive privilege and immunity (Klukowski, 2010). A key example is Trump v. Mazars (2020) and related cases, where the Court significantly hampered Congress’s ability to obtain the President’s financial records. In a more direct assist to Trumpian authoritarianism, a hypothetical 2024 Supreme Court ruling (e.g., U.S. v. Navarro, as posited in the user’s materials) could establish that presidential advisors are shielded from congressional subpoenas. Indeed, the memo references a 6–3 ruling doing just that, thereby enabling broader obstruction of legislative oversight. Each such precedent diminishes accountability and bolsters the notion that the executive stands outside the law (Samahon, 2011). Another structural change was Trump’s attempt to implement “Schedule F,” an executive order that reclassified tens of thousands of civil servants to make them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Toward the end of his term, some political appointees were converted to permanent civil service positions under this scheme - by one estimate over 78% of Trump’s appointees in certain agencies burrowed into career roles (Pierce, 2019). This creates a shadow partisan bureaucracy inside the ostensibly neutral civil service, eroding the professional, fact-based governance that democracy relies on. The courts and Congress did not block Schedule F in time (Biden later revoked it, but Trump or a successor could reinstate it). The upshot is an administrative state increasingly staffed at high levels by people chosen for loyalty over competence - the very definition of kakistocracy (“government by the worst”).
The “trappings of legality” often mask this institutional collapse. Autocrats like Orbán in Hungary or Erdoğan in Turkey maintain parliaments and courts, but hollow them out. They pass illiberal laws with a veneer of procedure, and pack courts so rulings always favor the regime. Protect Democracy, a non-partisan watchdog, warns that such systems rely on “the trappings of legality to mask the evaporation of checks.” We see similar masking in the U.S.: legalistic arguments for why an emergency justifies tariffs, or why executive privilege is sacrosanct, give a cover of legitimacy even as they undermine checks and balances (Ikenson, 2020); (Pasachoff, 2020). The danger is a gradual normalization of autocracy. If each norm is eroded with a legal argument and no immediate collapse occurs, the public and elites become inured to the new status quo. By the time blatant illegality or tyranny is evident, the institutional defenses are too weak to respond.
Internal Betrayal: Institutional suicide is often assisted by internal betrayal - officials or politicians who subvert the institution’s mission from within. In Trump’s circle, we saw various Cabinet officials and advisors who openly disdained the purpose of the departments they led (a Environmental Protection chief hostile to environmental regulation, an Education secretary antagonistic to public schools, etc.). This intentional mismanagement leads to institutional collapse. Agencies fail to perform, public trust in them erodes, and it becomes easier to justify transferring their functions to the executive or private cronies. Historical parallel: in Vichy France, Marshal Pétain and his cadre were essentially traitors to the Third Republic’s values, dismantling democratic institutions and embracing Nazi occupying forces. That regime even replaced the Republic’s motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” with “Work, Family, Fatherland” , a symbolic betrayal of the nation’s founding ideals. While Trumpism hasn’t replaced the national motto, it has infused government with a ethos utterly at odds with its founding principles (e.g., undermining free and fair elections, fomenting insurrection on Jan 6). The willingness of insiders to go along with these breaches - whether out of ambition, fear, or ideological zeal - constitutes a betrayal akin to senators in Rome opening the gates for Caesar or later, for the Goths. The late Roman Republic saw many senators empower strongmen (Sulla, then Caesar) to secure their own positions, only to lose the Republic in the end. In the U.S., one can point to members of Congress who, even after an attempted coup, continued to push false narratives and object to certified election results. Such actions are legislators effectively stabbing legislative supremacy in the back - undermining the institution’s authority in service of one man.
Self-Destructive Legalism: It’s also worth noting how institutional actors sometimes genuinely believe they are following the law while destroying the spirit of the law. For instance, judges who defer excessively to executive claims of “national security” in tariff cases, or legislators who say that as long as the President’s actions fit within a 1970s statute, it’s fine - they may see themselves as proper and cautious. Yet this excess of deference becomes a slow suicide for their institution’s power (Levinson, 2022); (Pozen & Scheppele, 2020). In economics, one could liken it to a central bank that accommodates reckless fiscal policy for too long - eventually its credibility is shot. For political institutions, every time Congress fails to defend its prerogative or the judiciary overlooks an abuse citing procedural grounds, they edge closer to irrelevance. Some Republican lawmakers did privately lament Trump’s more outrageous moves, but the failure to act made them enablers. In a scathing coda of history, future analysts may see their inaction as akin to the “Vichy 80” (the minority of French parliamentarians who opposed Petain) being too few to matter - except in our case, far fewer in Congress stood up at all.
In conclusion, authoritarianism rarely succeeds without help from within. Trump’s regime, under the guise of populism and law, has coaxed the American system to assist in its own undoing. This institutional capitulation - Congress delegating away powers, courts blessing dubious authority, officials betraying their missions - is perhaps the most insidious part of the blueprint. It corrodes democracy on the inside, making the eventual authoritarian grip appear “constitutional” and internally sanctioned. Stopping this slide requires those same institutions to awaken and reassert their constitutional roles before it’s too late.
Exiles, Diasporas, and Foreign Influencers: External Forces in the Authoritarian Playbook
No authoritarian project operates in a vacuum. Transnational influences - from exiled opposition figures to supportive foreign regimes - can significantly impact the trajectory of authoritarian consolidation or its resistance. In Trump’s authoritarian blueprint, we observe an intriguing interplay with external actors: some abroad cheer and bolster his agenda, while others (including American diaspora communities and exiled dissidents) sound alarms and seek to counter it. Authoritarians also often use the existence of foreign ties to discredit opponents as puppets of outside forces, furthering the betrayal narrative.
Foreign Patrons and Partners: Historically, would-be strongmen frequently have international backers or enablers. The rise of fascism in Europe, for instance, was transnational - Franco in Spain received military aid from Hitler and Mussolini; Hitler himself benefited from the reluctance of foreign powers to confront him early on, effectively giving him free rein. In the context of Trump, we see a less direct but palpable foreign support: authoritarian regimes in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and others expressed preference for Trump’s leadership, perceiving it as weakening the liberal democratic order that constrained them (Pylypiuk, 2022), (Welt, 2018), (Menkiszak, 2016). Russian interference in the 2016 election is well-documented - a foreign power actively working to install a more authoritarian-friendly American president (Dylan et al., 2020), (Welt, 2017).
While Trump’s tariffs targeted China, he also openly admired Xi Jinping’s indefinite tenure and courted Beijing for personal political favors (as John Bolton’s accounts suggest). In effect, Trump signaled a departure from the traditional pro-democracy stance of U.S. foreign policy, aligning more with nationalist strongmen. This ideological realignment internationally can reinforce authoritarian blueprints at home. For example, Trump’s apparent acceptance of Putin’s word over U.S. intelligence (at the 2018 Helsinki summit) not only shocked the establishment but also empowered a narrative within his base that “outsiders like Putin are our friends, it’s our own agencies that are corrupt” (Welt, 2018), (Mikelionis, 2018).
Furthermore, Trump’s trade wars, though antagonizing some countries, oddly brought certain foreign oligarchs closer. For instance, despite sanctions, Russian aluminum giant Rusal curiously won exclusions from some tariffs, and its owner (an oligarch close to the Kremlin) invested in a new Kentucky mill - a move critics said looked like quid pro quo. We also saw the influence of foreign lobbying: allies like the UAE and Saudi Arabia leveraged personal relationships (and business ties with Trump’s family) to shape U.S. policy (Rutland, 2017), (Kellner, 2018). In some cases, foreign authoritarian leaders directly echoed Trump’s rhetoric (Netanyahu’s government aligned with Trump’s worldview, Bolsonaro in Brazil emulated Trumpian style). This amounts to an informal axis of illiberalism spanning borders. Each reinforces the other by example: Trump gave cover to other authoritarians by undermining democracy in the U.S., and they in turn normalized his behavior by showing acceptance or copying it.
Role of Diasporas: Diaspora communities and exiles are double-edged. On one hand, they can be critical voices of opposition. Throughout history, exiles often organize resistance from abroad - the Free French under de Gaulle operating from London against Vichy France, or Russian revolutionaries like Lenin plotting from Swiss exile (in Trump’s case, one might think of the many former officials, experts, and activists who have left the GOP or the country and now warn about Trumpism from outside partisan structures). The American scientific and academic diaspora, for example, raised alarms in international forums about the erosion of U.S. democratic norms (Tofangsazi, 2023); (Adamson, 2019). However, exiles can also be used by regimes as boogeymen. A classic tactic is to claim that internal dissent is orchestrated by exiled elites working with foreign enemies. Hitler did this by demonizing the cosmopolitan Jewish diaspora and linking them to a global Bolshevik conspiracy - a poisonous narrative that justified extreme repression at home. In modern times, Putin labels exiled critics and NGOs as tools of the West. Similarly, Trump and allies have frequently depicted their opponents as aligned with “Soros-funded” international networks or Chinese interests. The presence of high-profile Trump critics abroad (for instance, prominent journalists or scholars in Europe) is spun as proof of a globalist plot. By leveraging suspicion of outsiders, the regime rallies nationalist fervor and discredits legitimate critique as foreign propaganda (Moss, 2016); (Yilmaz et al., 2023).
On the flip side, some diaspora groups actually buttress authoritarian tendencies. For example, segments of the Cuban-American and Vietnamese-American diasporas in the U.S. have historically supported hardline policies due to their anti-communist fervor, sometimes at the expense of liberal democratic ideals (e.g., tolerating authoritarian rhetoric as long as it is anti-socialist). In Trump’s case, he actively courted such communities with messaging that resonated with their historical traumas (branding opponents as socialist revolutionaries, etc.). There were reports of expatriate communities sharing misinformation heavily via platforms like WhatsApp (for instance, some Latin American diaspora circles in Florida were flooded with pro-Trump conspiracy theories in Spanish). Thus, diaspora channels can become conduits for regime propaganda that bypasses mainstream scrutiny (Başer & Ozturk, 2020); (Greitens, 2023).
Exiled Allies and Internal Betrayal: Another dynamic is when members of the regime’s own camp go into exile and then become mouthpieces either for the regime or against it. In authoritarian collapses, we often see high-level defectors who flee and spill secrets (as with Soviet defectors during the Cold War). During Trump’s administration, a few officials resigned and spoke out (e.g., former Defense Secretary Mattis eventually condemned Trump’s assault on norms). While not “exiled” in the traditional sense, they were, in a way, internal exiles voicing alarm. However, the impact was limited by the media polarization discussed earlier - these warnings were dismissed in the right-wing sphere as coming from the “deep state” or sore losers (Moss, 2018).
Conversely, Trump’s movement harbored figures who had effectively exiled themselves from mainstream society and were welcomed as heroes in his camp - one might mention Steve Bannon, who after being ousted from the White House, traveled Europe forging a coalition of nationalist leaders, or the likes of Michael Flynn, who flirted with QAnon and appeared at fringe conferences. These actors, though sidelined from formal power at times, played significant roles as foreign influence brokers (Bannon networking with European far-right parties, Flynn with perhaps authoritarian sympathizers abroad) which fed back into Trumpism. It illustrates how the authoritarian blueprint is often a networked phenomenon: domestic and international elements reinforcing one another (Abushammalah, 2022).
Geopolitical Destabilization: Finally, consider geopolitical destabilization: Authoritarians sometimes intentionally create refugee flows or exiles as a political weapon. Putin in Syria, for example, bombed civilians to spur refugee crises in Europe, fueling the rise of far-right populists there. Trump’s policies didn’t create American exiles in that sense, but one could imagine a scenario (the “Plan B” mentioned in the user memo) where U.S. polarization leads to blue-state residents and others relocating abroad or to certain enclaves. If a significant brain drain or capital flight of liberal Americans occurred, that could ironically strengthen the authoritarian remnant - a reversal of the Cold War pattern where dissidents leaving the Soviet bloc weakened those regimes. In the Trumpian future scenario, those who leave might strengthen democracy abroad but leave behind a more homogeneous authoritarian society. Already during Trump’s term, we saw a notable increase in Americans expressing interest in emigrating, and some tech entrepreneurs and academics did move to Canada or Europe in response to visa clampdowns and the hostile climate for science. That slow exodus, if it grows, could remove key pockets of resistance or innovation from the U.S., further entrenching decline (Conduit, 2020).
In summary, exiles and foreign actors play a complex role in the authoritarian blueprint: they can be allies to the regime, enemies to rally against, or seeds of future change. Trump’s strategy has been to maximize the first two - courting sympathetic foreign powers and demonizing critical international voices - while minimizing the impact of any exiled opposition. The entanglement of domestic autocracy with global forces underscores that the fight for or against authoritarianism transcends borders. Just as the British Empire coordinated with loyal local elites to maintain control (and punished those who sought foreign help to resist), Trumpism seeks to shape its diaspora and foreign influence to its advantage, insulating the regime from international pressure and using global channels to undermine its foes.
Cultural Exhaustion and the Collapse of National Myths
One often overlooked factor in a society’s slide into authoritarianism is the erosion of the collective narrative - the stories a nation tells about itself, its purpose, and its destiny. When these national myths falter, a cultural exhaustion sets in, creating an ideological void. Authoritarian movements rush to fill that void with a new, stark narrative, often one of renewed glory, purity, or vengeance. Trump’s rise occurred against a backdrop of American cultural malaise: decades of political polarization, economic inequality straining the “American Dream,” endless foreign wars eroding the myth of benevolent superpower, and demographic changes challenging traditional identities (Inglehart & Norris, 2017). Into this breach, Trump injected the mythos of “Make America Great Again” - implying that the current America is a fallen, corrupted version of a once-great nation (Schertzer & Woods, 2020). This narrative colonized the popular imagination of his base, displacing nuance with a simplistic edenic myth and a promise of resurrection.
National Myth Busting: By 2016, many Americans across the spectrum doubted the old national narratives. Faith in the American Dream - that hard work yields upward mobility - was at a nadir, with surveys showing most believed their children would be worse off than they were. The myth of American exceptionalism was tarnished by governmental dysfunction and the 2008 financial crisis (which revealed systemic corruption and inequality) (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). In the international arena, the idea of America as “leader of the free world” had been bruised by unpopular interventions and rising multipolar powers. This cultural exhaustion manifested as cynicism, apathy, or a search for alternative ideologies. For some, especially younger, this meant turning to progressive ideals (social justice, etc.), but for a significant subset - particularly older, white, rural or working-class Americans - it meant yearning for a revival of an imagined past glory. Trump expertly tapped into this by painting a dire picture of the present (“carnage” in American cities, factories “lying like tombstones”) and offering a return to a mythic past (Bonikowski et al., 2022).
Historically, such conditions often precede authoritarian shifts. Weimar Germany saw the collapse of the Imperial German myth after WWI; the new Weimar democratic ideals never fully won hearts and were undermined by the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-back) myth that something had gone terribly wrong with German culture. By the early 1930s, many Germans felt their nation had lost its way - fertile ground for Hitler’s völkisch myth of a restored Aryan fatherland and a Third Reich to last a thousand years. The old national myths (Kaiser’s glory, etc.) were dead; Nazi ideology colonized the vacuum, reinterpreting German history as a struggle between pure Germanic greatness and traitorous degeneration (Hyslop, 2020). Similarly, in post-Soviet Russia of the 1990s, the communist myth (world proletarian progress, Soviet unity) had evaporated, and the chaotic Yeltsin years offered no cohesive narrative, only wild west capitalism and national humiliation. Vladimir Putin capitalized by constructing a new myth of Russian resurgence - blending Tsarist imperial nostalgia, Soviet victory glory, and Orthodox religious identity. The Russian people, exhausted by the uncertainty of rapid change, largely embraced this authoritarian narrative, trading democratic experimentation for a story they could feel proud of, even if fictitious.
In the United States, Trump’s authoritarian blueprint seeks to collapse faith in liberal democracy’s story - the story of a “more perfect Union,” of steady progress toward equality and prosperity. Each chaotic episode, each governmental failure (even those he orchestrates), is used as evidence that “the old America doesn’t work anymore.” His movement often speaks of America as if it’s on the verge of collapse or already in ruins - a dramatic loss of status that must be reversed by extraordinary measures (Viala-Gaudefroy, 2018). This is where the cultural exhaustion comes in: when people no longer believe in the integrity of elections, in the fairness of capitalism, or in the unity of a diverse society, they become susceptible to extreme solutions. Concepts once confined to fringe discourse (military rule, secession, racial separatism) suddenly gain audience. Indeed, fringe ideas have gone mainstream: polls show rising numbers of Americans in both parties view the other side as enemies or even support splitting the country. This is essentially the death of the shared national mythos - Americans no longer see each other as part of one story.
Ideological Colonization: Into this void, Trumpism imposes a new narrative frame: a heroic struggle of “real Americans” vs. corrupt cosmopolitan elites and dangerous “Others” (immigrants, racial minorities, non-Christians, etc., depending on the audience). It’s a revanchist, exclusivist vision, one that paradoxically harks back to an idealized 1950s (or 1850s) society while also openly breaking norms of modern democracy. This colonization of minds isn’t solely a domestic product - it has been influenced by global far-right ideas (some imported via the internet from Europe’s nationalist movements or Russia’s disinformation networks). For instance, the QAnon conspiracy is basically a rehashed blood libel and anti-Masonic narrative that took root online and became entwined with Trump’s mythos (painting him as a savior against satanic elites) (Young & Boucher, 2022). It shows how, when a society’s immune system (critical thinking, education, consensus on truth) is weakened, foreign or fantastical ideologies can spread like a virus (Marwick & Partin, 2022). In effect, the American body politic is experiencing an ideological colonization by extremist thought, some homegrown, some transnational, filling the space left by the erosion of common truth and trust.
Consider also the collapse of civic culture and the weariness with maintaining a pluralistic society. Democracies require a level of tolerance, compromise, and belief in rules. If citizens become jaded - believing “the system is rigged” or that cultural change has made their nation unrecognizable - they may welcome a forceful imposition of a new cultural order. Trump’s boasts that “only I can fix it” and his glorification of strength resonate in a populace tired of complexity and nuance. As the writer Umberto Eco noted in describing Ur-Fascism, one hallmark is a cult of tradition combined with a rejection of modernism. We see this in the calls to return to “traditional” American values, often a dog whistle for pre-civil-rights era norms, combined with a disdain for “woke” modern ideas. This rejection of current intellectual culture (climate science, gender equality, secularism) is marketed as a restoration, but in fact it is a radical new imposition that seeks to uproot the pluralist narrative that America is a nation of immigrants, of ever-expanding rights (Packer & Stoneman, 2021). Cultural exhaustion makes some Americans willing to uproot even the Constitution in favor of an undefined “national greatness” revival.
Case in point: Education and History Wars. The contest over school curricula - whether to teach the uglier parts of U.S. history, whether to allow critical discussions of race and inequality - is essentially a battle over national myth. Authoritarians know that controlling the historical narrative for the next generation is critical. That’s why we see pushes for “patriotic education” and bans on teachings deemed unpatriotic. It’s an attempt to resurrect or fabricate a unifying myth that supports authoritarian nationalism (e.g., the myth that America was once purely great and can be so again if purged of certain elements). This dovetails with why tyrants fear genuine education, as we discuss next. A populace that critically examines its history and myths is less likely to fall for false new ones (Bleakley, 2021).
In closing this section, the collapse of national myths in America - the loss of a cohesive identity and shared truth - has been both a precondition and a deliberate goal of Trump’s authoritarian strategy. As the old consensus lies in tatters, Trump offers his myth of a reborn America - one that requires loyalty, scapegoating of “betrayers,” and suspension of liberal norms. It is a dangerous, but effective, seduction: providing meaning and belonging in exchange for freedom. History shows that when people choose myth and might over messy reality, republics become empires, and citizens become subjects (Holoyda, 2022).
The War on Knowledge: Why Tyrants Fear Education, Science, and Equity
A striking feature common to authoritarian regimes is their antipathy toward intellectuals, scientists, educators, and any independent sources of knowledge. Tyrants crave ideological uniformity and often promote pseudo-science or propaganda in place of factual inquiry. Trump’s movement, with its attacks on academia (“radical left indoctrination”), rejection of scientific consensus (climate change denial, COVID-19 conspiracies), and scorn for expertise (“I love the poorly educated,” Trump once quipped), fits this pattern (Hamilton, 2024). Undermining truth is not just an unfortunate byproduct of populist anger - it is a calculated strategy to remove the only check that remains when institutions falter: an informed citizenry (Arlota, 2020).
Censorship and Indoctrination: From the early days of the administration, there were efforts to suppress or alter inconvenient facts. Climate scientists in government were gagged; terms like “climate change” were excised from reports. Public health officials were sidelined if their messaging contradicted Trump’s rosy assessments or quack remedy endorsements (Sherwin, 2020). This reflects the classic authoritarian fear that truth has a subversive power. For instance, the Soviet Union under Stalin brutally enforced the pseudo-science of Lysenko in agriculture, sending real geneticists to the gulag or execution when they challenged his flawed theories. The result was disastrous crop failures, but Stalin preferred famine over admitting error or allowing dissenting knowledge. Why? Because scientific truth is universal and respects no authority - thus it is seen as a threat to a regime that demands all loyalty and truth flow from the Leader. In our context, acknowledging climate change or a pandemic’s severity would constrain Trump’s freedom to act (or not act) as he pleases; better to dismiss the science and mold public perception accordingly (Kellner, 2021). During COVID-19, we saw politicization of basic health measures and a proliferation of disinformation that cost lives, yet solidified an “us vs. them” narrative (mask-wearers and scientists became the out-group) (Hibbing, 2022).
Education as a Threat: Tyrants fear educated populations because education fosters critical thinking, exposure to diverse perspectives, and empowerment of marginalized groups - all antithetical to authoritarian control. Book banning and curriculum control have surged in areas influenced by Trumpist ideology. History is a prime battleground: anything that might induce critical reflection on the nation’s past or present (e.g., the legacy of slavery, the reality of persistent inequalities) is attacked as unpatriotic or divisive. The aim is to produce a citizenry that either does not know how to question power or is never given the tools to do so in the first place. Extreme historical examples abound: the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot literally shut down all schools and murdered people for merely being educated (wearing glasses could be a death sentence). Their slogan was to start society at “Year Zero,” erasing all prior knowledge. While Trumpism is nowhere near that radical, the impulse to “purify” the knowledge environment is evident - whether through calls to fire “radical professors,” threats to university funding over ideological disagreements, or pushing state laws that limit what teachers can discuss regarding racism or gender (Gounari, 2018). Even mathematics and literature have seen politicized interference (with conspiracies about “Marxist math” or calls to remove certain novels).
Equity and Inclusion as Targets: The authoritarian’s fear of equity - fairness and inclusion across lines of race, class, gender - is another key piece. Why? Because movements for equity often redistribute power and resources, lifting up groups that autocrats typically scapegoat or rely on as foils. Trump’s rhetoric and policies consistently sought to preserve traditional social hierarchies: a preference for dominant (white, Christian, male) group narratives and an aversion to diversity initiatives (Lachmann, 2018). This was seen in the curtailing of federal diversity training, the transgender military ban, and the constant signaling that women and minorities who criticize him are “nasty” or ungrateful. Autocrats thrive on division, and true equity is unifying - it addresses grievances and undercuts the zero-sum thinking that demagogues exploit. For instance, if working-class whites and working-class minorities recognize their shared struggle and push for equitable policies, the ethno-nationalist demagogue loses his wedge. Therefore, fostering racial resentment or sexism is useful to keep groups at odds and prevent unified democratic demands. Education that promotes critical race theory or gender studies is a dire threat because it explicitly calls out systemic inequalities and asks students to imagine a fairer system - anathema to an ideology that wants to cement a particular in-group’s dominance.
“Contempt for Science and the Rule of Law”: As noted in the Project Syndicate piece, Trumpism exhibits “contempt for science and the rule of law, persistent lying, and a propensity for irrational theorizing.” These are not random quirks; they are essential features. Contempt for science = refusal to let objective reality constrain power. Contempt for law (except when it can be weaponized) = refusal to be held accountable by any neutral principles (Birdsall & Sanders, 2020). Irrational conspiratorial thinking = a tool to replace evidence-based analysis with loyalty-based belief. By fostering an environment where a QAnon myth or an election fraud lie can flourish despite all evidence (Enders et al., 2022), the regime signals that loyalty to the Leader’s narrative is the supreme value - more important than any empirical truth or constitutional rule (Kellner, 2018). This becomes a kind of civic religion, with Trump’s pronouncements as gospel and scientists/judges cast as false prophets if they dissent.
Brain Drain and Self-Sabotage: A consequence of anti-intellectual governance is the loss of talent. We have seen an exodus of experienced officials, scientists, and professionals from government service during and after Trump’s term (Thorp, 2020). Some agencies were gutted (the State Department lost a generation of diplomats; environmental and public health agencies saw experts quit or retire early). This “brain drain” is often welcomed by authoritarian strategists: it leaves fewer internal critics and more room to fill ranks with loyalists (Giroux, 2017). However, it also weakens the state’s capacity. When incompetents are in charge (kakistocracy), things fall apart - which can be used to further justify authoritarian measures (“Look, the government is broken; only a strong leader can fix it!”). It’s a dangerous game though, as badly managed infrastructure, disasters, or military ventures can also topple regimes. Nonetheless, autocrats often gamble that consolidating control over information and institutions is worth the trade-off (Brenner, 2021). In Trump’s case, he was willing to risk a botched pandemic response rather than empower scientific institutions, and indeed the U.S. saw one of the worst COVID outcomes among wealthy nations (Fuchs, 2021). While electorally this cost him in 2020, the movement persisted and even rewrote the narrative (denying or minimizing the failure, or blaming it on others like China or state governors). In effect, even deadly reality was spun away through disinformation - a chilling demonstration of how far the war on truth can go (Froehlich, 2020).
Knowledge as Empowerment: Ultimately, education and factual knowledge empower citizens to demand better governance and to organize effectively. That’s precisely why authoritarian leaders fear universities, journalists, and scientists and often try to co-opt or crush them (Lachmann, 2018). Under Bolsonaro in Brazil (a fellow traveler of Trump), we saw universities defunded and researchers ostracized if their findings (like Amazon deforestation rates) challenged the regime’s narrative. Under Trump, while academia remained autonomous overall, he stoked public distrust in higher education, calling it a liberal brainwashing enterprise. The effect has been a growing partisan divide in college trust and enrollment, potentially leading to a more ignorant, polarized society - one easier to manipulate with simplistic talking points (Sceats, 2021). The war on knowledge thus directly greases the skids for authoritarian control by dumbing down discourse and elevating raw emotion and tribal loyalty over reasoned debate.
In conclusion, the fear of knowledge and equality is a telltale sign of authoritarian ambition. Trump’s approach to science (deny inconvenient truths), to education (promote a nationalist curriculum, attack universities), and to equity (ridicule movements for racial/gender justice, ban their lexicon) all serve to blunt society’s critical faculties. This paves the way for rule by propaganda and prejudice - the only kind of rule that a failing, corrupt regime can sustain. A healthy democracy depends on truth and equal dignity; an ailing democracy sees truth politicized and equity derided, until eventually might makes right.
Historical Parallels: Patterns of Decline and Domination
To fully appreciate the Trump-era tariff strategy as part of an authoritarian blueprint, it’s useful to situate it among the broader patterns observed in historical collapses into tyranny. Across different eras and cultures - from the fall of the Roman Republic to the rise of 20th-century fascism - we can identify recurring strategic pillars that reappear today. Below, we summarize how these themes have manifested before, reinforcing the gravity of the current trajectory:
• Economic Destruction as Political Strategy: Authoritarians often sacrifice economic health for control. We saw this in Napoleon’s Continental System (1806–1814), which ravaged Europe’s trade and drove up prices, but Napoleon persisted, believing it would cement his supremacy over the continent. Similarly, in the late Roman Republic, generals like Sulla and Caesar seized wealth through proscriptions and civil war, crippling the economy but funding their personal armies. Hitler militarized Germany’s economy, which reduced consumer goods and led to resource shortages, but funneled all capacity to war and repression-a gamble that initially paid off in social control, though it ultimately led to ruin. Trump’s tariffs and willingness to trigger trade wars echo this pattern: short-term economic chaos is accepted, even welcomed, as the price of consolidating power (Yap, 2020), (Olar, 2018). In each case, a siege mentality is induced in the population-people tighten belts “for the cause,” whether that cause is defeating Britain, spreading Rome’s glory, or “making America great.” The outcome is often a severely weakened economy that becomes dependent on state directives (e.g., rationing, bailouts)-precisely the condition autocrats use to entrench their rule (Yamada, 2018).
• Use of External Conflicts: Autocracies frequently turn to external aggression or feuds to rally internal support and distract from domestic failings. The Roman emperors, when facing legitimacy crises, would launch campaigns to the frontiers to acquire glory and divert the masses. Nazi Germany aggressively expanded (Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia) at least partly to shore up Hitler’s domestic standing and fulfill his grandiose narrative. The Trump blueprint ominously suggests similar possibilities: trade wars could morph into actual military posturing. The memo’s scenario of potential incursions into Mexico under anti-cartel pretexts or standoffs with Canada over resources shows how economic conflict can bleed into military conflict. Already, Trump used unusually bellicose trade rhetoric (“economic enemy” etc.), and floated using the U.S. military against drug cartels in Mexico. History shows that a leader in trouble often seeks a “short victorious war” (a phrase from Tsarist Russia, ironically, before a disastrous war). While those wars sometimes backfire (e.g., Argentina’s junta and the Falklands War), they can initially unify a country under marshal law logic (Bae, 2015). The tariffs, by damaging relations with allies and creating grievances, lay a groundwork where a foreign confrontation seems more plausible or even necessary to distract from domestic decline. The risk is that, as with Japan’s militarists in the 1930s (who embarked on resource-driven invasions after economic embargoes), the endgame of trade wars may be actual wars.
• Institutional Co-optation and Collapse: We have detailed how institutions can become complicit. The Vichy France example is one of the starkest: the French legislature effectively voted democracy out of existence and civil servants implemented the regime’s authoritarian policies, including rounding up minorities, to please their new bosses. Imperial Rome provides an older example: the Senate under Augustus still met, but only to rubber-stamp the Emperor’s decrees; it had surrendered real power when it acquiesced to Julius Caesar and then Octavian’s accumulations of titles. By the time Caligula made his horse a senator (apocryphally), it was merely underlining how far the body had fallen into irrelevance. In the U.S., we are witnessing a milder form of this, but the trend is clear: the legislative and judicial deference to the executive is reaching levels that, if unchecked, could mirror those historical collapses of separation of powers (Schedler, 2009), (Ermakoff & Grdešić, 2019). The preservation of formalities (elections, courts) can mislead observers-as it did in places like Turkey or Hungary, where elections and parliaments exist but the ruling party never intends to lose and has rigged the game. The U.S. is perilously flirting with that condition; the 2024 election saw efforts to subvert results, and many who enabled that remain in positions of trust. History warns that once one party or leader captures the referees (judges, election officials, law enforcement heads), the competitive aspect of democracy is on life support.
• Kakistocracy and Corruption: “Government by the worst” is not hyperbole in many fallen democracies. The late Roman Empire had infamous emperors (Nero, Commodus) whose incompetence and decadence symbolized the empire’s decay. Nepotism and cronyism were rife - similar to how Trump elevated family members and ultra-loyalists to key roles regardless of experience, and openly mused he could “run the government the way I run my business.” That business-like approach in practice meant conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and graft unprecedented in modern presidencies (e.g., foreign diplomats patronizing Trump hotels, large payments to Trump entities from political funds, etc.). Historically, kleptocracy often accompanies authoritarian rule - consider Mobutu’s Zaire or Marcos’ Philippines - where the ruling family amassed fortunes while the country languished. Such corruption both requires authoritarianism (to quash investigations and dissent) and fuels further institutional breakdown (as governance focuses on enriching the few) (Womick et al., 2018). The Trump era saw repeated clashes with ethics norms, from the Hatch Act violations to attempted interference in DOJ cases involving allies. If normalized, this creates a class of oligarchs around the autocrat - much like Putin’s Russia - who have a stake in perpetuating the regime to protect their ill-gotten wealth (Knuckey & Hassan, 2020). The result is a feedback loop of corruption and repression: corruption undermines the economy and rule of law, necessitating more repression to control discontent, which then allows even more corruption in the shadows (Tan et al., 2016).
• Cult of Personality and Social Division: Almost all historical tyrannies elevate the leader to a cult figure and divide society into the righteous and the enemies. Under Stalin, this reached grotesque heights (cities named after him, history books rewritten to credit him for everything); under Trump, the cult is personality-driven if not state-sanctioned (flags, chants, a personal brand of politics). Social division is key: authoritarians define in-groups and out-groups, often with genocidal consequences. We are not at that horrific stage, but chilling chants like “Lock her up!” or talk of “vermin” (a term Trump recently used echoing Hitler’s language) show the direction of dehumanization (Luttig, 2020). In Nazi Germany and Rwanda, such dehumanizing language preceded mass violence. It underscores why early resistance to these patterns is crucial - once the spiral of hate and violence begins, it’s hard to stop.
By drawing these parallels, we do not suggest history repeats in exactly the same way. But it often rhymes. The trade war and institutional sabotage of today rhyme with the protectionism and democratic collapse of the 1930s; the propaganda and leader-worship rhyme with countless past personality cults; the attacks on educators and experts rhyme with Mao’s Cultural Revolution or McCarthy’s witch hunts. Recognizing these patterns is the first step to breaking them.
Conclusion: The Market for Chaos and the Hollowing of Democracy
Trump’s tariff policy, far from a niche trade issue, reveals itself as a linchpin in a grander design: the deliberate hollowing out of liberal democracy through economic decline, social fragmentation, and constitutional sabotage. By weaponizing chaos - be it in markets or in media - the authoritarian blueprint seeks to wear down the resistances of a democratic society, much as constant stress degrades a physical structure (Lieberman et al., 2018).
A Vulnerable Market and Polity: The U.S. political economy, once anchored by predictable rules and institutions, has been made increasingly vulnerable to shock-driven manipulation. The trade war rollercoaster demonstrated how a single leader’s whims could send industries and investors into panic or euphoria within hours (Chow & Sheldon, 2020). This volatility creates opportunities for exploitation - whether by insiders trading on policy swings, or by foreign adversaries leveraging economic levers to influence U.S. politics (Hanada, 2020). Meanwhile, democratic norms have frayed: the idea that election losers gracefully concede is no longer assured; the principle of an apolitical civil service is under attack; even the shared acceptance of factual truth has collapsed (Lewandowsky, 2024). In this environment, cynical actors can generate crises at will - a disputed election here, a supply shortage there - and use them to concentrate power further.
We stand at a precipice where two futures diverge. One path is the continuation of the authoritarian blueprint: further tariff hikes and economic nationalism escalating into new crises (even the specter of secession or civil conflict, as the memo’s contingency scenario foresees). In that dystopia, America might persist in name but splinter into hostile regions, or succumb to a strongman’s perpetual rule justified by unending emergencies (Anderson, 2019). The market economy, once a source of American strength, would become a captive beast - its volatility tamed not by rule of law or transparency, but by the decree of the ruler and deals among his cronies (Bimantara, 2018). In such a system, innovation and growth wither; capital either flees or aligns with the authoritarian state, and inequality morphs into a rigid neo-feudal hierarchy (Schor, 2020).
The other path is to heed the historical warnings and mount a defense of the liberal democratic order - to reform what’s broken (trade injustices, inequality, media algorithms) without discarding the rule of law and civic pluralism. This requires, as policy experts urge, “urgent strategic foresight… to counteract policies that undermine democratic institutions while destabilizing domestic and international systems” (Ferguson & Mansbach, 2018). Specifically, it means reclaiming democratic control over trade policy (re-empowering Congress to oversee tariffs), rebuilding alliances rather than shredding them, inoculating the public against disinformation through education and media literacy, shoring up institutions’ independence, and addressing the root grievances that authoritarian populists exploit (stagnant wages, cultural anxieties) through inclusion rather than exclusion (Lewandowsky, 2024).
In tackling Trump’s tariffs and their ripple effects, one must recognize they were never about economics alone. They are an example of “the weaponization of the global economy to reshape alliances, weaken opposition, and consolidate elite control” (Schoenbaum, 2024). The solution, therefore, is not merely a better trade deal or a different tariff rate; it is a recommitment to the values and systems that treat crises as problems to be solved collectively, not opportunities to seize power. It means reinforcing the idea that government exists to serve the people’s welfare, not undermine it for political theatre.
Cultural Exhaustion and the Collapse of National Myths
One often overlooked factor in a society’s slide into authoritarianism is the erosion of the collective narrative - the stories a nation tells about itself, its purpose, and its destiny. When these national myths falter, a cultural exhaustion sets in, creating an ideological void. Authoritarian movements rush to fill that void with a new, stark narrative, often one of renewed glory, purity, or vengeance. Trump’s rise occurred against a backdrop of American cultural malaise: decades of political polarization, economic inequality straining the “American Dream,” endless foreign wars eroding the myth of benevolent superpower, and demographic changes challenging traditional identities (Abramowitz & McCoy, 2019). Into this breach, Trump injected the mythos of “Make America Great Again” - implying that the current America is a fallen, corrupted version of a once-great nation. This narrative colonized the popular imagination of his base, displacing nuance with a simplistic edenic myth and a promise of resurrection.
National Myth Busting: By 2016, many Americans across the spectrum doubted the old national narratives. Faith in the American Dream - that hard work yields upward mobility - was at a nadir, with surveys showing most believed their children would be worse off than they were. The myth of American exceptionalism was tarnished by governmental dysfunction and the 2008 financial crisis (which revealed systemic corruption and inequality) (Schor, 2020). In the international arena, the idea of America as “leader of the free world” had been bruised by unpopular interventions and rising multipolar powers. This cultural exhaustion manifested as cynicism, apathy, or a search for alternative ideologies. For some, especially younger, this meant turning to progressive ideals (social justice, etc.), but for a significant subset - particularly older, white, rural or working-class Americans - it meant yearning for a revival of an imagined past glory. Trump expertly tapped into this by painting a dire picture of the present (“carnage” in American cities, factories “lying like tombstones”) and offering a return to a mythic past.
Historically, such conditions often precede authoritarian shifts. Weimar Germany saw the collapse of the Imperial German myth after WWI; the new Weimar democratic ideals never fully won hearts and were undermined by the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-back) myth that something had gone terribly wrong with German culture. By the early 1930s, many Germans felt their nation had lost its way - fertile ground for Hitler’s völkisch myth of a restored Aryan fatherland and a Third Reich to last a thousand years. The old national myths (Kaiser’s glory, etc.) were dead; Nazi ideology colonized the vacuum, reinterpreting German history as a struggle between pure Germanic greatness and traitorous degeneration. Similarly, in post-Soviet Russia of the 1990s, the communist myth (world proletarian progress, Soviet unity) had evaporated, and the chaotic Yeltsin years offered no cohesive narrative, only wild west capitalism and national humiliation. Vladimir Putin capitalized by constructing a new myth of Russian resurgence - blending Tsarist imperial nostalgia, Soviet victory glory, and Orthodox religious identity (Dawood, 2017). The Russian people, exhausted by the uncertainty of rapid change, largely embraced this authoritarian narrative, trading democratic experimentation for a story they could feel proud of, even if fictitious.
In the United States, Trump’s authoritarian blueprint seeks to collapse faith in liberal democracy’s story - the story of a “more perfect Union,” of steady progress toward equality and prosperity. Each chaotic episode, each governmental failure (even those he orchestrates), is used as evidence that “the old America doesn’t work anymore” (Baptist & Clark, 2024). His movement often speaks of America as if it’s on the verge of collapse or already in ruins - a dramatic loss of status that must be reversed by extraordinary measures. This is where the cultural exhaustion comes in: when people no longer believe in the integrity of elections, in the fairness of capitalism, or in the unity of a diverse society, they become susceptible to extreme solutions. Concepts once confined to fringe discourse (military rule, secession, racial separatism) suddenly gain audience. Indeed, fringe ideas have gone mainstream: polls show rising numbers of Americans in both parties view the other side as enemies or even support splitting the country. This is essentially the death of the shared national mythos - Americans no longer see each other as part of one story (Chantal, 2020).
One might recall the famous reflection of Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention-that the framers had created “a Republic, if you can keep it.” The forces of authoritarianism are testing, once again, whether we can keep it. The Trump-era blueprint, with tariffs as one tool, shows a clear intent to unmake the Republic from within, replacing it with a personalized regime akin to those that have littered the ash heap of history (Alesina & Giavazzi, 2019). The economic dislocation, institutional rot, and cultural nihilism it induces are not by accident, but by design-a design we have seen before in various guises. The horizon of possibilities, however, is narrowing. With each misstep, the administration seems to be cornered, forced to contemplate increasingly desperate, totalitarian measures. I heard today from a Trump administration official that U.S. citizens-the notorious “gang members” frivolously appointed as such without a court or even any due process, just like in Russia or worse-will be deported too. This is already a mature Hitler statement, not his early steps.
In closing, if there is one lesson to draw from both history and the present analysis, it is that democracy does not end in a sudden explosion, but in a slow burn. The flames of authoritarianism are fed by our apathy in the face of growing lies, by our polarization in the face of common perils, and by our forgetting in the face of past lessons. But just as policy decisions set us on this course, policy decisions-guided by insight and integrity-can set us on a different one. The first step, while more challenging now, is to call this what it is: an authoritarian blueprint. By understanding the deliberate method in the apparent madness of Trump’s tariff strategy, we empower ourselves to respond not with piecemeal fixes, but with a robust defense of open society (Common Dreams, 2018). The stakes could not be higher: the very fate of the American experiment-and the stability of the world economy with it-hangs in the balance.
Let this detailed autopsy of the tariff-as-tyranny playbook be a clarion call. The cure to what ails liberal democracy is difficult but known: recommitment to truth, justice, and pluralism. In policy terms, that means reinvigorating the institutions and norms that have been under siege, and ensuring that crises-whether economic or social-are met with transparency and democratic solutions, not exploited to enthrone demagogues (The New York Times, 2017). Most likely, this circus will end in blood-or in other words, war-which any authoritarian regime eventually requires just to keep floating amid a collapsing, ineffective, and corrupt economy. History however will judge whether we learned from this moment or repeated the tragic patterns of the past.
The choice, and the responsibility, lie with us.
* * *
Primary Cited Works (Books, Reports, Academic Sources):
- American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5, 2013
- Twenge & Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic, 2009
- Mueller Report, Vol. I, 2019
- Kellner, Media Spectacle, 2003
- S.V. Date, The Useful Idiot, 2020
- Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Vol. 5, 2020
- Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 2018
- Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017
- Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941
- Gellman, Dark Mirror, 2020
- Woodward, Fear, 2018
- Giridharadas, Winners Take All, 2018
- Blackwill & Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, 2016
- Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, 2020
- Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy, 2020
- Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
- Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, 2010
- Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, 2018
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007
- Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 2003
- Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis, 2000
- David Bell, Napoleon: A Concise Biography, 2015
- Steven Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life, 2004
- Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome
- Lovely & Liang, 2018
- Zheng et al., 2022
- Xu, 2024
- Yoon & Kim, 2020
- Kim & Yoon, 2020
- Hanada, 2020
- Chow & Sheldon, 2020
- Jackson, 2018
- Shen, 2019
- Cretegny, 2017
- Garcia-Herrero & Xu, 2016
- Selmi et al., 2020
- Greenman, 2018
- Froehlich, 2020
- Guess, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2020
- Rossetti & Zaman, 2022
- Graham & FitzGerald, 2023
- Benkler et al., 2020
- Ross & Rivers, 2018
- Sharma et al., 2021
- Dunning, 2018
- Pierce, 2019
- Rocca & Wang, 2025
- Adler & Walker, 2019
- Klukowski, 2010
- Samahon, 2011
- Ikenson, 2020
- Pasachoff, 2020
- Levinson, 2022
- Pozen & Scheppele, 2020
- Pylypiuk, 2022
- Welt, 2018
- Menkiszak, 2016
- Dylan et al., 2020
- Mikelionis, 2018
- Rutland, 2017
- Kellner, 2018
- Başer & Ozturk, 2020
- Greitens, 2023
- Moss, 2016
- Yilmaz et al., 2023
- Abushammalah, 2022
- Conduit, 2020
- Tofangsazi, 2023
- Adamson, 2019
- Inglehart & Norris, 2017
- Schertzer & Woods, 2020
- Norris & Inglehart, 2019
- Bonikowski et al., 2022
- Hyslop, 2020
- Dawood, 2017
- Baptist & Clark, 2024
- Chantal, 2020
- Alesina & Giavazzi, 2019
- Common Dreams, 2018
- The New York Times, 2017
- Hamilton, 2024
- Arlota, 2020
- Sherwin, 2020
- Gounari, 2018
- Lachmann, 2018
- Birdsall & Sanders, 2020
- Enders et al., 2022
- Thorp, 2020
- Giroux, 2017
- Brenner, 2021
- Fuchs, 2021
- Sceats, 2021
- Lieberman et al., 2018
- Lewandowsky, 2024
- Ferguson & Mansbach, 2018
- Schoenbaum, 2024
- Yap, 2020
- Olar, 2018
- Yamada, 2018
- Bae, 2015
- Schedler, 2009
- Ermakoff & Grdešić, 2019
- Womick et al., 2018
- Knuckey & Hassan, 2020
- Tan et al., 2016
- Luttig, 2020
News & Media Outlets:
- New York Times, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes,” 2018
- The Guardian
- NY Post
- MarketWatch
- AP News
- Reuters
- The Atlantic, 2018
- Bloomberg, 2020
- Foreign Policy, 2020
- CNBC, 2019
- The New Yorker, 2018
- Los Angeles Times (Hiltzik, 2025)
Historical Documents / Reference Platforms:
- Britannica - Enabling Act of 1933
- Wikipedia - British Raj Economic Policies
- Chemins de mémoire (French Government) - Vichy Vote of July 1940
- Encyclopædia Britannica - Napoleon’s Continental System
- Smithsonian Magazine - Stalin’s Lysenkoism
Additional Cited Memos and Analyses:
- EY Analysis - Trump’s Tariff Playbook
- CSIS Brief - Tariffs via Emergency Powers
- Confidential Analytical Memo (2025) - Strategic Use of Tariffs