authoritarianism 
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SOURCE: We've Got Issues Podcast
7/22/2022
Thomas Zimmer: Slide Toward Authoritarianism on Right is Accelerating
Historian Thomas Zimmer tells Joshua Holland that there is a consensus among experts that American democracy is teetering on the brink of collapse -- but there is a reason for hope.
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SOURCE: Substack
7/24/2022
Trump's Reelection Threatens a Politicized Civil Service
by Heather Cox Richardson
Since 1883, the federal civil service has been protected from the old spoils system by rules for merit-based hiring and promotion. Trump has threatened to revert to a system of rewards for loyalists and punishment for enemies, without regard for performing the public's business.
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7/8/2022
The Dictatorship of the Supreme Court
by Christine Adams
Six judges, who are impervious to public opinion and majority rule are exercising arbitrary control over American society, jeopardizing the very legitimacy of the government.
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7/3/2022
Where Will America Be by 2030?
by Ed Simon
The right's agenda is for a white, Christian, patriarchal nationalism that simply can't be achieved by majority rule. That's what the Supreme Court and 400,000,000 privately owned guns are for.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
6/25/2022
Trump's Incitement Against Shaye Moss over the Georgia Vote Count Carries on a Dark American Tradition
by Tera W. Hunter
Whether for casting ballots or counting them, Trump was quick to blame Black Americans for his defeat, carrying on an ignominious tradition of casting Black political participation as illegitimate and dangerous.
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SOURCE: New Statesman
6/30/2022
Seeing Through America's "Crisis Industrial Complex"
by Nikhil Pal Singh
While the elite media class indulges in lurid fantasies of an armed breakup of the nation, those who live precarious or impoverished lives find themselves already enmeshed in a civil war; the real red/blue conflict is about who will control the infrastructure of repression built up over the last half century.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/19/2022
Bringing CPAC to Hungary Betrays the Roots of the Conservative Movement
by Lauren Lassabe
It is a bitter irony that the postwar American conservative movement was energized by the anti-Stalinist Hungarian revolution of the 1950s; today the movement takes inspiration from a repressive regime and its autocratic leader.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
4/29/2022
Tim Snyder Discusses Putin's "Big Lie" about Ukraine on Maddow
Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale University and author of "Bloodlands," talks with Rachel Maddow about the manipulative power of a "Big Lie" and why it's so difficult to untangle a person from a Big Lie once they've bought into it.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/30/2022
Putin's Far from the Only Autocrat Abusing History
by Katie Stallard
"As Putin is currently demonstrating, questionable historical narratives in faraway autocracies are a problem for democracies too."
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SOURCE: Politico
4/16/2022
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: How History Says Trump's Cult Will End
"The other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level. These states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas."
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SOURCE: The New Republic
4/11/2022
Authoritarianism Isn't Just About Personality Cults
Recent books on "strongmen" reduce the problem of authoritarianism to the phenomenon of charismatic leadership and ignore many of the structural factors contributing to democratic collapse.
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
3/20/2022
Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women
by Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks
"Fully free, politically active women are a threat to authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning leaders—and so those leaders have a strategic reason to be sexist."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
3/17/2022
Now is the Time to Revisit Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism
by Anne Applebaum
The political and economic supports for stability and prosperity in the developed world are more precarious than ever; the revival of authoritarianism that Arendt predicted may be at hand, making her work more vital than ever.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
2/14/2022
Trolling History: Social Media Harassment From Abroad
by Alexandra F. Levy
In authoritarian regimes there are fewer and fewer safeguards for historians whose work challenges nationalistic myths; often harassment has a green light from the state.
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SOURCE: Truthout
1/28/2022
Fascism's "Legal Phase" is Here, and the Threat is Real
by William Horne
The authoritarian right has identified the institutional weak points in American institutions and is preparing to exploit them to seize power and excuse political violence. This happened before, with Jim Crow the result.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
1/25/2022
The Other Pentagon (We Don't Think About)
by Andrea Mazzarino
The creation of DHS in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was a profound reorganization of the government that created a prodigiously-funded "security" apparatus that views threats to Americans through the dangerous lens of "insiders" vs. "outsiders".
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/20/2022
The End of Democracy won't Look Like You Think It Will
by Tom Nichols
The authoritarian right isn't motivated or organized enough to create the kind of dystopia some fear. But federalism means that significant chunks of the Formerly-United States will turn the clock back to the late 1950s.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
1/19/2022
Now or Never to Stop US Descent to Authoritarian Rule
by Thomas Zimmer
The Republican Party has operated on the core propositions that the Democratic opposition and its core constituencies are fundamentally illegitimate long before Donald Trump. Biden's victory shouldn't obscure how close they are to establishing permanent minority rule.
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SOURCE: Substack
1/18/2022
Orban and Putin Don't do Debates Either
by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
The news that the Republican National Committee will boycott the Commission on Presidential Debates echoes the actions of authoritarians who reject the principle of political toleration and the very legitimacy of the opposition.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/20/2022
Trump's NPR Interview Shows the Hazard of Giving Him Airtime
by Federico Finchelstein
The history of fascism shows that it's a mistake for the news media to treat propagandists as honest actors. They'll exploit the free press to promote their ideas, but crush independent journalism at the first opportunity.
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