Welcome To Postmodern Authoritarianism

On the urgent importance--for those of us who still hold out hope for the idea of America--not to give up on democracy or its language

In recent days, the Trump administration has violated the Constitution in ways that would have been considered shocking and even impossible only four months ago. The distinguishing feature of these extraordinarily anti-democratic moves is that they are all performed in the open. In the old days, we may have imagined that authoritarianism was something that happened in darkened rooms; in the silence of the oppressed. In these postmodern times, authoritarianism operates according to a different set of principles. Its proponents don’t need or want to break the law in private or through secret dealings. They want to do it as openly as possible, so that the public concludes on its own that the law no longer matters.

This is what President Trump, along with members of his administration, have done. Recent actions include defying a clear, explicit federal court order by sending migrants to Sudan without due process. Charging a sitting congresswoman with felony assault for attempting to observe an ICE facility. Expressing the belief that the president has the power to suspend habeas corpus at will—even though the Secretary of Homeland Security simultaneously exposed that she has no idea what habeas corpus is. And they have continued to peddle the lie that Qatar’s “gift” of a luxury flying palace to the President is not a bribe—and a transparently unconstitutional one at that.

These recent moves can be added to the administration’s unprecedented spree of anti-democratic and unconstitutional actions over the past four months, from executive orders that target the rights of individual firms and universities to the flagrant disregard for the plain meaning of court orders. The remarkable fact about all this is how little the administration has done to cover its tracks, right its wrongs, or express remorse or regret for actions taken. On the contrary!

And they are not just telling us what they are doing as they are doing it; they also told us ahead of time that these were their plans. Trump declared over and over again in his campaign that he would use the Department of Justice as a weapon of vengeance against his perceived enemies. He and his people promised to “smash the administrative state”—or destroy the key institutions of a functioning democracy—and that is what they are doing. Trump promised tariffs, and that is what he has delivered, in a disastrous fashion. He promised to abandon Ukraine and indicated his support for a dictator. He promised to use military power in an assault on immigrants.

The strategy here is to break the law in the open, over and over, until the law itself appears broken, ineffectual, and incapable of delivering consequences. The results of the 2024 election give Trump’s supporters good reason to think that the strategy works. Until the Supreme Court derailed the process, Trump faced highly credible (to put it gently) charges of involvement in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. But the 2024 election seemingly acquitted Trump of such charges. Either that, or it has convicted the system of justice, starting with the highest court in the land, of complicity in a partisan plot to return Trump to office.

That is the conclusion that the new, postmodern authoritarian wants you to reach. They want you to understand that all the words from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation about the Constitution and “rule of law” are just for show. The Constitution, they say or imply, just means whatever Dear Leader says it means. The “rule of law” just means that the leader is the law.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, Trump himself posted a paraphrase of a quote traditionally attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Whether or not Napoleon uttered those words, he certainly meant them. He came to power in a 1799 coup on the pretext that the French republic faced an apocalyptic emergency…sound familiar?

The rhetoric of emergency as a thin cover for lawbreaking has been a part of the MAGA coalition from the beginning. In an influential essay published pseudonymously in the Claremont Review of Books in 2016, the essayist and former speechwriter Michael Anton described the Clinton-Trump contest as “The Flight 93 Election.” A triumph for Clinton, he intoned, would be the moral equivalent of a terrorist attack on the United States. In the face of such a threat, any and all means of resistance were called for; it was time to rush the cockpit. Michael Anton, incidentally, now serves in the Trump administration as director of policy planning.

The same language reappeared in Project 2025, the 900-page blueprint for a conservative administration coordinated by the Heritage Foundation: The federal bureaucracy has been weaponized, the document warned, and the wokesters are on the cusp of seizing power; the next President has at most two years to save the country. Appearing on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation and a leader of the project, menaced that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution, which will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

To be sure, Trump and his allies are stoking irrational fears, moral panics, and identity-driven grievances among the rank and file. But these moves also suggest they want you to succumb to cynicism. Because if we all stop believing that the law can stop them, then the law will cease to be regarded as an obstacle to their actions.

This is why it is so urgently important for those of us who still hold out hope for the idea of America not to give up on democracy or its language. When Trump and members of administration defy court orders, deprive individuals of the rights of speech and habeas corpus, revive the old Jim Crow mentality with “anti-DEI” initiatives, destroy the institutions of a functioning government, and engage in epic levels of corruption—we must not give up on our determination to hold them to account.