How close is Trump to full autocracy? New York Times examines 12 signs
October 31, 2025
ALTERNET
Using case studies from dead democracies, the New York Times editorial board compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied the collapse of democracies. According to the board, under President Donald Trump the United States is staggeringly similar to such cases.
First, a modern authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump and his allies have pressured television stations to stop airing comedians who hurt his feelings. He has also revoked the visas of foreign students for sharing their views on the genocide in Gaza and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups.
Second, autocrats use the power of law enforcement to investigate and imprison people who oppose them, similar to how Trump has ordered his Justice Department to target people who have made him angry with “dubious” accusations, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. Director James Comey. And Trump has also ordered investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), among others.
Third, a modern autocrat finds ways to neuter their nation’s legislature, similar to the way Trump commands a legion of lockstep allies in the modern Republican Party, who rubber stamp his every decision.
Number 4, according to the Times, is an autocrat’s need to use the military to control opposition in dissent. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, over the outcry of local leaders, and he has made similar attempts in Portland, Ore. and Chicago.
Likewise, the Editorial Board draws similarities to Trump’s defiance of national courts and his penchant for declaring national emergencies to a push his agenda. Like despots elsewhere, Trump has “vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service,” said the Board. “He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity.”
He has also labored to erase Black history by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects.
“At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed,” said the Board.
Also, like a despot, Trump rails against accurate information to guide decision-making, and he works to suppress inconvenient truths. He has already fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for truthfully reporting disappointing job growth, and he has shut down federal data collection efforts related to climate change.
Throw that in with No. 9: An authoritarian’s predictable effort to take over universities and suppress dissident scholars, which Trump has also begun to do by cutting millions of dollars in school grants and attempting to dictate hiring methods and school policies.
Nos. 10, 11, and 12 involve an authoritarian’s cult of personality; his effort to use government levers to personally enrich himself and his family; and his unending crusade to manipulate law to stay in power.
“Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws — or violate their spirit — to ignore term limits,” writes the Board, and although Trump’s biggest attempt to follow this playbook failed when he was “unable to undo his election defeat” in 2020, the Board says “he has shown worrisome signs of using his power to entrench the Republican Party’s hold on the government” through gerrymandering extremes and an executive order to interfere with state elections.
“These moves increase the chances that Republicans will keep control of Congress even if most voters want to oust them,” the Board writes, creating a one-party government similar to the single-party misery of the U.S.S.R, which eventually led to Putin.
“The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse,” the Board said.
Read the New York Times report at this link.
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Trump’s war on the Constitution is much worse than 'cancel culture' — here's why
During former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, "Real Time" host Bill Maher and "The View's" Sunny Hostin had some major disagreements on "wokeness" and "cancel culture."
Maher, who is a scathing critic of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement but also has an intense disdain for "political correctness," attacked "wokeness" and "cancel culture" as detrimental to the left and a departure from traditional liberalism. But Hostin objected to Maher using the word "woke," which originated in the African-American community, in a negative way and argued that "cancel culture" was really "consequence culture."
Following the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, many MAGA Republicans argued that retaliation against people who criticized Kirk wasn't "cancel culture," but rather, "consequence culture" — the same term liberal Hostin had used during the Biden years.
Quite a few Trump critics, both Democrats and right-wing Never Trump conservatives, are accusing Republicans of hypocritically promoting the type of "cancel culture" they accused liberals and progressives of. But The New Republic's Liza Featherstone, in an article published on October 24, stresses that the Trump Administration's assault on free speech is much worse than the "cancel culture" that came from the left in the past.
"The New York Times reported that in seeking to punish offensive speech, Republicans were 'trying to rebrand a practice they once maligned,'" Featherstone explains. "Former President Barack Obama made a similar comparison after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended amid the Trump Administration's threats to retaliate against media outlets. 'After years of complaining about cancel culture,' Obama wrote on X, 'the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level.'"
Featherstone continues, "Obama is right that the Trump Administration's attacks are 'new and dangerous,' but where he’s wrong — perhaps in a clumsy attempt to be evenhanded — is that they don't even belong in the same conversation as 'cancel culture.' This is organized state repression, veering crassly and thuggishly into a reign of terror."
Featherstone describes "cancel culture" of the past as "the prosecutorial and puritanical style of liberalism that became popular on the internet during the second half of the Obama Administration and intensified during Trump's first term."
"It was a bad vibe," Featherstone recalls. "Discursive mistakes — insensitive jokes, ill-conceived tweets — could attract a mob of internet denunciation. The term could be overused, at times seeming to imply that people were out of line in criticizing celebrities and other powerful people for abusive behavior. But at its worst, cancel culture undermined solidarities, encouraged the bullying of some vulnerable people, and drove others to the right. Even worse, some of its targets lost their livelihoods."
Featherstone continues, "As misguided as 'cancel culture' was, though, that’s not what Trump and his minions are up to today…. 'Cancel culture' never involved the machinery of the federal government, yet Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is banning journalists from the Pentagon who won't agree to government-imposed restrictions on their reporting, and has deemed these new rules — rejected by every legitimate news outlet — necessary to regulate a 'very disruptive' press. Speaking of the Pentagon, Hegseth is also presiding over McCarthyite investigations within the agency to root out employees who aren't fans of Charlie Kirk. Then there is the misuse of law enforcement powers to punish anti-Trump public figures."
Featherstone emphasizes that while "it's not outlandish to suggest that aspects of left 'cancel culture' contributed to what we're seeing today," Trump's war on the First Amendment is considerably more dangerous.
"Conservatives are now using the liberal term 'consequence culture' to argue that irresponsible speech should have dire consequences for offenders' lives," Featherstone warns. "But to equate Trump’s current repression with 'cancel culture' is to trivialize it. While cancel culture was intolerant and unpleasant, Trump's policies are making complaints about it seem quaint."
Read Liza Featherstone's full article for The New Republic at this link.
October 25, 2025
ALTERNET
During former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, "Real Time" host Bill Maher and "The View's" Sunny Hostin had some major disagreements on "wokeness" and "cancel culture."
Maher, who is a scathing critic of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement but also has an intense disdain for "political correctness," attacked "wokeness" and "cancel culture" as detrimental to the left and a departure from traditional liberalism. But Hostin objected to Maher using the word "woke," which originated in the African-American community, in a negative way and argued that "cancel culture" was really "consequence culture."
Following the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, many MAGA Republicans argued that retaliation against people who criticized Kirk wasn't "cancel culture," but rather, "consequence culture" — the same term liberal Hostin had used during the Biden years.
Quite a few Trump critics, both Democrats and right-wing Never Trump conservatives, are accusing Republicans of hypocritically promoting the type of "cancel culture" they accused liberals and progressives of. But The New Republic's Liza Featherstone, in an article published on October 24, stresses that the Trump Administration's assault on free speech is much worse than the "cancel culture" that came from the left in the past.
"The New York Times reported that in seeking to punish offensive speech, Republicans were 'trying to rebrand a practice they once maligned,'" Featherstone explains. "Former President Barack Obama made a similar comparison after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended amid the Trump Administration's threats to retaliate against media outlets. 'After years of complaining about cancel culture,' Obama wrote on X, 'the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level.'"
Featherstone continues, "Obama is right that the Trump Administration's attacks are 'new and dangerous,' but where he’s wrong — perhaps in a clumsy attempt to be evenhanded — is that they don't even belong in the same conversation as 'cancel culture.' This is organized state repression, veering crassly and thuggishly into a reign of terror."
Featherstone describes "cancel culture" of the past as "the prosecutorial and puritanical style of liberalism that became popular on the internet during the second half of the Obama Administration and intensified during Trump's first term."
"It was a bad vibe," Featherstone recalls. "Discursive mistakes — insensitive jokes, ill-conceived tweets — could attract a mob of internet denunciation. The term could be overused, at times seeming to imply that people were out of line in criticizing celebrities and other powerful people for abusive behavior. But at its worst, cancel culture undermined solidarities, encouraged the bullying of some vulnerable people, and drove others to the right. Even worse, some of its targets lost their livelihoods."
Featherstone continues, "As misguided as 'cancel culture' was, though, that’s not what Trump and his minions are up to today…. 'Cancel culture' never involved the machinery of the federal government, yet Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is banning journalists from the Pentagon who won't agree to government-imposed restrictions on their reporting, and has deemed these new rules — rejected by every legitimate news outlet — necessary to regulate a 'very disruptive' press. Speaking of the Pentagon, Hegseth is also presiding over McCarthyite investigations within the agency to root out employees who aren't fans of Charlie Kirk. Then there is the misuse of law enforcement powers to punish anti-Trump public figures."
Featherstone emphasizes that while "it's not outlandish to suggest that aspects of left 'cancel culture' contributed to what we're seeing today," Trump's war on the First Amendment is considerably more dangerous.
"Conservatives are now using the liberal term 'consequence culture' to argue that irresponsible speech should have dire consequences for offenders' lives," Featherstone warns. "But to equate Trump’s current repression with 'cancel culture' is to trivialize it. While cancel culture was intolerant and unpleasant, Trump's policies are making complaints about it seem quaint."
Read Liza Featherstone's full article for The New Republic at this link.
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