#authoritarianism

On the official WhiteHouse.gov website.

Not a campaign page.

Not an RNC graphic.

The government’s actual website.

They’re listing reporters by name.

They’re accusing news outlets of “offenses.”

They’re stamping “EXPOSED” over every independent newsroom.

They built a leaderboard for “repeat offenders.”

Like journalism is some sort of crime and sport.

This is not “messaging.”

This is not “spin.”

This is state-run media targeting,

and we have never seen anything like it in the United States.

Ever.

They’re calling Mark Kelly’s PSA “follow the law” sedition.

They’re calling journalists who report it criminals.

They’re building narrative infrastructure for repressing dissent

All while a former TV host is being accused of unlawful killings.

You don’t put reporters on a government enemies list unless you’re planning to do something with the list.

This is authoritarian architecture.

I’m hoping that this is as “angry” as I’ll get with a comic, but given how the world is shaping up politically at the moment, I fear that might not be the case.

It’s been incredibly eye opening to witness the degree to which some people I know are willing to bury their heads in the sand in order to avoid the reality of the awful things that are happening around them.  Awful things that they were told were going to happen.

In America, people are being black bagged and shipped off to El Salvador without due process to be held indefinitely in prisons, with the current administration now making social media posts cruelly boasting that they’ll never return. 

Make no mistake, if people are being kidnapped by the government, given no due process, and are shipped to a foreign nation to be held in prison with no intention to give them any legal recourse, we need to call these prisons what they are:

They are death camps.

The United States of America is rounding up “undesirables” and sending them to death camps. 

There are people in this country that voted for this.  No matter how nice they otherwise seem or claim to be, these people are evil to the core. 

There are also people who didn’t vote for this, but do provide social validation and acceptance to those who did.

If you are someone who thinks you’re against fascism, but you also accept fascists in your life, you are a fascist. 

There can be no acceptance of intolerance.  In the comic, the person I’m lampooning is the “Fake Trans Ally”, but you can swap out “trans” for any other group of marginalized people.  Frankly, just call this person “The Fake Ally.”

If you’re someone reading this and feel attacked because I’m calling you a fake ally, it’s time to do some soul searching.  When the history books are written about this period of American history, are you going to be someone who was unambiguously against hatred, or were you someone that treated hate as acceptable? 

Were you someone that invited hatred into your home?

Were you someone that shared a meal with hatred?

Were you someone that allowed hatred a safe haven?

If you’re someone that does that, you yourself are hateful. 

When you accept hate, you do so at the expense of those who are the target of that hatred.

"With Donald Trump set to take office after a fear-mongering campaign that reignited concerns about his desire to become a dictator, a reasonable question comes up: Can nonviolent struggle defeat a tyrant?

There are many great resources that answer this question, but the one that’s been on my mind lately is the Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers.  

At quick glance, the database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases — which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America — contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. What’s more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldn’t overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle.  

In a number of countries, the dictator had been embedded for years at the time they were pushed out. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, for example, had ruled for over 29 years. In the 1990s, citizens usually whispered his name for fear of reprisal. Mubarak legalized a “state of emergency,” which meant censorship, expanded police powers and limits on the news media. Later, he “loosened” his rule, putting only 10 times as many police as the number of protesters at each demonstration.  

The GNAD case study describes how Egyptians grew their democracy movement despite repression, and finally won in 2011. However, gaining a measure of freedom doesn’t guarantee keeping it. As Egypt has shown in the years since, continued vigilance is needed, as is pro-active campaigning to deepen the degree of freedom won.  

Some countries repeated the feat of nonviolently deposing a ruler: In Chile, the people nonviolently threw out a dictator in 1931 and then deposed a new dictator in 1988. South Koreans also did it twice, once in 1960 and again in 1987. (They also just stopped their current president from seizing dictatorial powers, but that’s not yet in the database.)  

In each case people had to act without knowing what the reprisals would be...

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign...

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025. Article continues below.

East Germany’s peaceful revolution

When East Germans began their revolt against the German Democratic Republic in 1988, they knew that their dictatorship of 43 years was backed by the Soviet Union, which might stage a deadly invasion. They nevertheless acted for freedom, which they gained and kept.

Researcher Hanna King tells us that East Germans began their successful campaign in January 1988 by taking a traditional annual memorial march and turning it into a full-scale demonstration for human rights and democracy. They followed up by taking advantage of a weekly prayer for peace at a church in Leipzig to organize rallies and protests. Lutheran pastors helped protect the organizers from retaliation and groups in other cities began to stage their own “Monday night demonstrations.”  

The few hundred initial protesters quickly became 70,000, then 120,000, then 320,000, all participating in the weekly demonstrations. Organizers published a pamphlet outlining their vision for a unified German democracy and turned it into a petition. Prisoners of conscience began hunger strikes in solidarity.

By November 1988, a million people gathered in East Berlin, chanting, singing and waving banners calling for the dictatorship’s end. The government, hoping to ease the pressure, announced the opening of the border to West Germany. Citizens took sledgehammers to the hated Berlin Wall and broke it down. Political officials resigned to protest the continued rigidity of the ruling party and the party itself disintegrated. By March 1990 — a bit over two years after the campaign was launched — the first multi-party, democratic elections were held.

Students lead the way in Pakistan

In Pakistan, it was university students (rather than religious clerics) who launched the 1968-69 uprising that forced Ayub Khan out of office after his decade as a dictator. Case researcher Aileen Eisenberg tells us that the campaign later required multiple sectors of society to join together to achieve critical mass, especially workers. 

It was the students, though, who took the initiative — and the initial risks. In 1968, they declared that the government’s declaration of a “decade of development” was a fraud, protesting nonviolently in major cities. They sang and marched to their own song called “The Decade of Sadness.” 

Police opened fire on one of the demonstrations, killing several students. In reaction the movement expanded, in numbers and demands. Boycotts grew, with masses of people refusing to pay the bus and railway fares on the government-run transportation system. Industrial workers joined the movement and practiced encirclement of factories and mills. An escalation of government repression followed, including more killings. 

As the campaign expanded from urban to rural parts of Pakistan, the movement’s songs and political theater thrived. Khan responded with more violence, which intensified the determination among a critical mass of Pakistanis that it was time for him to go.

After months of growing direct action met by repressive violence, the army decided its own reputation was being degraded by their orders from the president, and they demanded his resignation. He complied and an election was scheduled for 1970 — the first since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

Why use nonviolent struggle?

The campaigns in East Germany and Pakistan are typical of all 40 cases in their lack of a pacifist ideology, although some individuals active in the movements had that foundation. What the cases do seem to have in common is that the organizers saw the strategic value of nonviolent action, since they were up against an opponent likely to use violent repression. Their commitment to nonviolence would then rally the masses to their side. 

That encourages me. There’s hardly time in the U.S. during Trump’s regime to convert enough people to an ideological commitment to nonviolence, but there is time to persuade people of the strategic value of a nonviolent discipline. 

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign — the importance of which is also outlined in my book “How We Win.”  

As research seminar students at Swarthmore continue to wade through history finding new cases, they are digging up details on struggles that go beyond democracy. The 1,400 already-published cases include campaigns for furthering environmental justice, racial and economic justice, and more. They are a resource for tactical ideas and strategy considerations, encouraging us to remember that even long-established dictators have been stopped by the power of nonviolent campaigns.

Browsed my usual newspaper this morning and, except for the resignation of the six prosecutors, found nothing about the horrifying and ongoing situation in Minneapolis-StPaul.

Meanwhile a cursory scroll through Bluesky shows abundant video by citizen observers and non-corporate journalists showing the wildest scenes of paramilitary violence and oppression directed at people who are only exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights.

But the US Constitution is now a quaint document from yesteryear, happily ignored by an authoritarian regime and its masked & violent thugs--more than one of whom I expect has "We The People" tattooed on their forearms.