Fourteen Steps to Tyranny: How Autocratic Breakthrough Happens — And How We Can Stop It

Autocrats follow a predictable playbook. Learn how we can disrupt their rise before revolution or civil war become the only solutions...

The Trump administration has arrested a mayor, a judge, a member of Congress, and beaten a United States Senator to the ground. They’ve deployed the military, over the objections of the governor and mayor, into a major American city. We just experienced a political assassination.

The nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, DHS Secretary Noem, asserted:

“We are staying here to liberate the city [of Los Angeles] from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

The president demanded a military parade for his birthday and is threatening to revoke broadcast licenses from television networks. The Trump regime is ignoring court orders, including one from the Supreme Court, and Trump’s press secretary says:

“The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.“

What does all this mean?

“Autocratic breakthrough” is a phrase you’ll be hearing more and more about in coming months. It refers to the moment in time when a wannabe dictator and the oligarchy that supports him push a democratic country toward authoritarianism so far that its political systems “break through” into full-blown autocracy/dictatorship.

My article yesterday about how Republicans in Congress are trying to slam shut the courthouse doors to democracy advocates is one of many indicators that we’re solidly in the middle (second stage) of this process.

It’s a deeply dangerous sign.

Autocratic breakthrough is characterized by 14 steps that typically happen in three stages.

It can be stopped at the first and second stage, although it gets progressively more difficult; when the third stage is reached, reversing autocratic breakthrough requires something akin to a revolution; it typically involves the death or overthrow of the autocrat or a full-blown civil war.

That’s exactly what happened here in the US the last time this happened, in fact, as I’ll detail toward the end of this article.

The first stage of autocratic breakthrough, in my analysis, is referred to as “democratic erosion” or “soft authoritarianism,” and includes:

1. Demonization of political opponents, using dehumanizing language like “traitors,” “enemies of the people,” and “scum,” and the delegitimization of dissent and protest as “anti-national” or “terrorist.”

2. Attacks on the press, with claims that the media is “fake news” or “the enemy” and the appearance of new press outlets, typically owned by oligarchs who believe they will profit from the end of democracy, who flood the public sphere with propaganda and disinformation. Historically mainstream media outlets are sued for libel or defamation when reporting on the growing autocracy, often putting them out of business or allowing oligarchs to buy them, and those that aren’t killed by lawsuits are attacked by regulators and can lose their licenses to broadcast over the public airwaves.

3. Politicization of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Police and intelligence agencies are captured by the autocrat and his agents and become tools of the ruling party. They then, in turn, target critics, protesters, and civil society groups with surveillance or raids.

4. Elevation of the executive above co-equal branches of government. Proclamations and executive orders are used to rule by decree, bypassing legislative authority. Typically “emergencies” are declared to amplify executive power while avoiding congressional or parliamentary constraints.

5. Election manipulation. The ruling party makes it progressively more and more difficult for members of opposition parties to vote, legislative districts are rigged or gerrymandered to guarantee power is retained regardless of the will of the people, and elections that go against the ruling party are discredited or even nullified. Nonpartisan election officials are replaced by loyalist agents of the regime and election systems are seized so outcomes can be altered without discovery.

I refer to the Second stage of autocratic breakthrough as “Approaching Democratic Breakdown,” and it is signaled by signs that normal institutional guardrails are failing. It includes:

6. Judicial capture, characterized first by the regime packing the courts with lawyers and judges who put their loyalty to the leader over their oath to the nation and its laws. Judges critical of the regime are first criticized and harassed and those who can’t be intimidated are ultimately purged.

7. Criminalization of the opposition begins by disqualifying or even prosecuting rival politicians on dubious charges, and the use of legal mechanism like foreign agent laws to shut down non-governmental organizations (NGOs and nonprofits) and to weaken or discredit opposition political parties.

8. Militarization of domestic law enforcement involves converting police agencies into groups that look and function more like occupying armies, a process that’s typically followed by the actual federal army inserting itself into policing functions. At this stage, the military is openly politicized with rallies and speeches demonizing the political opposition; soon thereafter previously independent paramilitary groups sympathetic to the regime are drawn in with official or semi-official approval and begin terror campaigns against “dissidents.”

9. Fusion of party and state is a critical step in which open loyalty and fealty to the regime or party becomes necessary for state employment, and government media becomes indistinguishable from party propaganda.

The third and final stage is full autocratic breakthrough; at this point there’s no going back without a crisis. Elections may still occur, but they are no longer meaningfully democratic. By this time there’s a general consensus that the autocrats have taken over and the consequences of resistance will be draconian. It’s characterized by:

10. Abolition or nullification of meaningful elections, postponing elections indefinitely, or only allowing pre-approved candidates to run for office. Rigged elections are characterized by intimidation, mass disinformation, and/or falsified counts.

11. Loss of civil liberties including freedom of assembly, speech, and movement, all of which are either suspended or heavily restricted (typically with an “emergency” justification). Protesters are jailed, beaten, and disappeared.

12. Constitutional overhaul or emergency rule signal the end of a truly constitutional order as new constitutions are written and laws are passed to entrench autocratic power. Term limits are removed and elections become a mere formality as their outcomes are predetermined.

13. Exile, imprisonment, or assassination of opposition begins when key dissenters are forced into hiding or silenced permanently. At this point, political violence has become normalized, including stochastic terrorism by independent agents sympathetic to the regime.

14. Strongman cult of personality replaces institutional legitimacy as the Dear Leader is elevated as the embodiment of the nation or will of the people. Loyalty to that person becomes necessary and paramount; dissent is considered treason.

Autocratic breakthrough doesn’t happen overnight. It often looks legal, feels temporary, and is always justified as necessary to “restore order” or “protect the nation.” That’s what makes it so dangerous and so hard to reverse.

All 14 stages of autocratic breakthrough happened once before here in America, although most citizens are unaware of it because the history of that era has been so successfully sanitized and rewritten by the “Lost Cause” mythos.

As I detail at length in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, by the 1850s the cotton oligarchs in the South had completed this process that began in the early-1820s as the cotton gin altered the economic landscape of that part of America.

— People opposed to slavery — and there were many, particularly among poor white men in the South whose employment opportunities were damaged by competition from enslaved people — were routinely beaten, run out of town, and even lynched. Violence and intimidation had became common tools to silence dissent.

— Politicians who posed an actual threat to the ruling oligarchs and didn’t flee to the North were intimidated into silence, bought off, or prosecuted and imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

— By the early 1850s all of the pro-democracy and/or anti-slavery newspapers in the South had been shut down; many of their writers and publishers had been imprisoned or run out of the region. People suspected of disloyalty to the Confederacy were extensively surveilled, often by the slave patrollers or other local law enforcement.

— Elections were rigged and the right to vote was typically limited to those white men who could prove they paid taxes or owned land. By 1855 even the mail was routinely inspected by Confederate police to try to find dissidents, and religious leaders who refused to preach in support of slavery were stripped of their right to a congregation.

Illinois' US Senator Stephen Douglas’ 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the ban on slavery north of the 36°30′ line and led to the “Bleeding Kansas” violence and the “Sacking of Lawrence” Kansas in 1856, signaled the final transition into the third phase of autocratic breakthrough across the South.

Charles Sumner, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, was caned nearly to death on the Senate floor in 1856 by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina after giving an anti-slavery speech titled “The Crime Against Kansas.” This violence provoked the creation of the anti-slavery, pro-democracy Republican Party that year as the then-pro-slavery Democratic Party became the sole political power in the South.

The Confederacy, then just beginning to emerge, would become a full-blown militaristic and fascist political movement dedicated to “God and Our Native Land” that had seized total control of 11 states within a mere five years.

John Brown’s Retaliation, also known as the Pottawatomie Massacre (May 1856) led to open armed conflict across many of the border states, which went nuclear with Chief Justice Roger Tawney’s 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision.

By 1859 the conflict over slavery was no longer just political; it was armed and existential and the nation was headed toward war. When Kansas finally entered the Union as a free state in 1861 following Abraham Lincoln’s election as president, the Civil War had already begun.

As you can see, the last time a portion of the United States — the 11 states of the Confederacy — transitioned through the entire process of autocratic breakthrough it took the bloodiest war in American history to reverse the process.

Which is why it’s so critical today that we educate people about the process and this history today so we can stop the process now, while it’s still possible.

Tag, we’re it: share this as far and wide as possible.

Louise’s Daily Song: “Autocratic Breakthrough”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
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