Twelve Steps to National Collapse: A Blueprint for How Democracies Die

A historian’s alarm: when these twelve familiar steps appear in a nation, the result is often irreversible—unless citizens rise up and demand otherwise…

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” —Abraham Lincoln

“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people. To render us again one people, acting as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot.”—Thomas Jefferson

People are baffled. Why are Trump and his Republican lickspittles so intent on gutting our government, destroying our alliances and reputation around the world, and screwing working class people while transferring over $50 trillion from them to the morbidly rich?

Historian Kevin M. Kruse captured the zeitgeist brilliantly, reflecting widespread public bewilderment when he posted over on BlueSky:

“We’ve had fuckups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a fuckup. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn’t be doing anything different.”

So, let’s engage in a simple thought experiment. If you or I were hired by Putin, an angry group of billionaires who want to end democracy, or a wealthy serial killer, and our orders were to tear our country apart and make us vulnerable to foreign takeover, what would we do? What steps would we take?

As I mentioned a few days ago, if we follow the Dictator’s Playbook there actually is a simple, twelve-step formula to make that happen.

The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income, and whether we live in cities or rural areas.

In Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795), he described the first three strategies that “despotic moralists” use to rip apart the fabric of a society. They were Fac et excusa (“Act now, and make excuses later”), Si fecisti, nega (“If you commit a crime, deny it”), and Divide et impera (“Divide and conquer”). Thomas Jefferson perhaps inspired Kant when, in 1787, he wrote, “Divide et impera [is] the reprobated axiom of tyranny…”

When Hitler claimed that Jews, Gypsies, and queer people weren’t “real Germans,” he was invoking that principle. Joe McCarthy tried to divide us by political ideology; David Duke said we should be separated by skin color.

Its most recent invocation was just last week when Trump and Hegseth told our nation’s generals that most Black, Hispanic, and female officers were only in their positions because of their gender or skin color. “Whiskey Pete” was blunt, claiming that Reagan’s invocation of America’s traditional belief that “our diversity is our strength” was an “insane fallacy.

Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’d been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream.

That strategy would include several steps:

— Destroy unions that bind workers together with their employers and raise standards of living.
— Gut programs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, including high-quality universal public education, low-cost college, and inexpensive access to healthcare.
— Ship manufacturing overseas to low-wage nations while using incoherent, ever-changing whim-based tariffs to batter the domestic economy.
— Build media operations that demonize “the other,” telling them Blacks, Hispanics, queer people and women are the cause of their troubles.
— Ban books that embrace diversity and teachers who use them.
— Spread hate and conspiracy theories via powerful social media and search engine algorithms that make them seem normal, coarsening the entire culture.
— Throw people off programs offering healthcare, student debt repayment, and housing subsidies.

Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news. Loudly proclaim that it all has a “leftwing bias” and can’t be trusted, that reporters are elite “enemies of the people,” and attack the media relentlessly.

Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories. Convince citizens to stop taking commonsense steps to protect themselves and their children including vaccinations, precautions against airborne diseases, or measures to slow climate change. Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.

Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.

Sixth, fracture citizens’ faith in their elected officials and the government itself. Legalize the practice of morbidly rich people and giant corporations buying legislation and the loyalty of politicians with cash by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” “dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”

Seventh, turn the military and police forces of the nation against its own people, making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men in the streets, kicking in their doors at midnight. Start with vilified minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.

Eighth, demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villainizing its leadership.

Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.

Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions — corporations, universities, law firms — into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.

Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws like the Hatch Act that forbids the use of any government agency or property for political or commercial purposes.

Force agencies to make illegal, partisan statements denigrating the opposition party and defy anybody who calls out that naked criminality. Sneer and laugh at those who demand that people committing crimes in office should be held accountable.

Twelfth, turn the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under the rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.

All of these twelve simple steps have been used by every despot in history, from the ancient Roman Empire through the kings of the Dark Ages to the fascists of early 20th century Europe to today’s strongmen including Orbán, Putin, Erdoğon, El-Sisi, Maduro, Netanyahu, and Modi.

Whether Trump has put America on this road at the insistence (or by the payment from) Putin, rightwing American billionaires, or just his own authoritarian impulses and with strategies he’s learned from Orbán and Putin, it doesn’t have to end with America resembling today’s Russia or Hungary.

The good news is that multiple countries have elected men to leadership who tried to run through this list and were stopped before they could finish the job. Instead of letting their leaders turn their nations into permanent autocracies, the people rose up and took the power back for themselves and their democracies.

They include Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Korea, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Gambia, Malawi, Moldova, and South Africa.

History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question — the only question that matters now — is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along, like the citizens of those countries listed above have done in the recent past.

If they can do it, so can we. Tag, we’re it!

Louise’s Daily Song: “Twelve Steps to Dismantle a Republic”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink is now availble in bookstores nationwide.
You can follow me on Blue Sky here: https://bsky.app/profile/thomhartmann.bsky.social