The Backlash is Coming: A Key Moment in the Fight Against Authoritarianism

There's an energy building against the authoritarians. We need to seize it.

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At the end of last week I released an episode of Audio From A Collapsing State talking about the emotional toll of the first few days of the Trump Administration. I think it was pretty obvious that it was designed to be a blitz of executive orders and action intended to assert power. Authoritarianism is weaponized abuse and as it is realized it communicates to the subject an inability to stop the will of the authoritarians and reinforces a sense of powerful isolation.

Well. We made it through the first week. It was hard. It was painful. And I’m sure some of us are worse for wear.

I want to emphasize once more the need for self-care. Any attempt to organize and fight back begins with protecting yourself and ensuring you’re all right, energized, and prepared for the next onslaught. Talk to people you can trust. Establish actual reality outside of this nonsense they’re peddling. Remember to continue thinking about a better future. Limit the time authoritarians can affect you by logging off and sealing yourself off. And try and find things that bring you joy and, if possible, produce tangible artifacts that demonstrate how projects that take time and energy lead to things.

Considering the toll, I do want to take a moment today to discuss something hopeful. That’s difficult, of course, when the President of the United States is joking about seeking a third term between cutting off federal funding, flagrantly violating the law multiple times, attacking the Constitution, attempting to expel transgender people from the military and culture writ large, and immigration raids are ongoing.

I’m sure that paragraph alone was tiring, because of course it is. Never mind that it doesn’t even begin to cover the things that have happened in just the past couple of days. But that feeling, as powerful as it is, also leads us to the subject of hope. Because it is overwhelming, because it is exhausting, because it is chaotic and unarguably wrong, we are beginning to see signs that this will not continue on unabated and unopposed.

The Backlash

It’s necessary sometimes to put yourself in the shoes of the authoritarian. This helps in understanding key components of the ideology, but also in anticipating what directions they might go. I’ve been doing this for years now and I can admit it isn’t fun in any way, shape, or form. Regardless, it does pay dividends.

When it comes to the implementation of authoritarianism, there are different strategies. You could roll it out slowly, which we have seen to some extent over the past few years. Then, there are moments in which things speed up. Sometimes this comes after an especially painful and motivating crisis, like the burning down of the Reichstag or a terrorist attack. In these situations, things change very quickly.

The emotional experience of authoritarianism riding on the back of a crisis is chaotic-making and, as we’ve seen in the 21st century, it can lead to insane scenarios like the bipartisan backing of the so-called War on Terror. But, presently, we’re in a different place.

Donald Trump’s presidency already feels like it’s lasted several months. This is a result of a flurry of action that runs counter to how most administrations tend to ease into place and take a measured, careful approach. Instead, Trump is carrying out the agenda given to him by the think-tanks and institutes run by his billionaire benefactors, engaging in gleeful cruelty, destroying any government projects that don’t benefit the wealthy, and handing everything over to the oligarchs who have bought him.

This is a vulnerable period for authoritarianism as it is a stark departure from what we have seen in the past. The blitz was meant to push us kicking and screaming into a reality of their choosing, but the haphazardly aggressive nature of the push gifts us an incredible opportunity. If we can manage to get out of the dirt, dust ourselves off, and begin to look for openings, we might very well find purchase we thought, and that feels, nearly impossible.

The Nonexistent Mask

To begin, control by the oligarchy is stupidly obvious. It has benefited the Republican Party for decades now to keep a polite, public distance from their benefactors. It helps to have plausible deniability, of course. You can pretend to be the new party of the “working class” while robbing them of everything they own. But the arrogancy of the oligarchs in having completed this takeover of the presidency has made it all way, way too transparent.

In part, this was unavoidable. For decades the tech oligarchs have been blatant and fame-seeking. They are so insulated from the rest of the world that they forget we can hear them, see them, and that there are consequences for their actions, even if they rarely feel them due to that insulation. In this environment, people like Elon Musk have grown so disastrously haughty and become such a megalomaniac that he sees no danger in wielding his power and influence however he feels.

What we are seeing now, in his capture of the U.S. government, is something he is trying to replicate around the world. He has inserted himself into every political environment in liberal democracies in the Global North, from America to Great Britain to France to Germany. His obscene wealth and reach have empowered him to push for Reform in the UK and now Alternative For Germany (AfD), a party that has disturbing ties to Neo-Nazis. This past weekend, Musk addressed the AfD, stressing the importance of “German culture and heritage,” barely doing anything to hide his white supremacist beliefs and fascistic ideology.

Europe has taken notice and leaders there, having seen what happened in the U.S. and reading the writing on the wall, are already gathering and discussing how they can begin to push back. This is a departure from what we’ve seen here. Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party couldn’t even utter his name and the gathering threat even as he obviously bought a controlling share in MAGA. That’s, in part, due to the Democratic Party’s relationship to corporate and billionaire donors, but also because they were completely unwilling to regulate these oligarchs when they had the chance. Europe, however, recognized the need.

Though this is hopeful, it is also on the nation state level, where you and I have little control. In our organizing and resistance efforts, however, the oligarchs have made it easier for us. Most Americans despise these people and see the threat they represent. Most Americans understand that historic wealth inequality is dangerous. That they have been at Trump’s side and obviously piloting so much of this, and that they have made it so obvious, benefits our cause in ways I’m not even sure we can quantify yet.

When discussing all of this, move away from discussing Trump. Focus on the oligarchs, who are almost universally hated. People recognize what they are and what they’re about. And this administration has already given us more than enough examples of how it is dedicated to serving them.

Conversations

Along these lines, I am gaining a great sense of hope from how our discourse has reacted around Trump’s presidency. In part this took off following the murder of HealthcareUnited’s CEO and the cultural reaction, but to even parse through public conversations now is to wade through discussions regarding the true aspects of capitalism and the rise of oligarchy.

These things can be censored, obviously, and they can be changed through force. But Trump’s actions are pushing the issue and seeding discourse with real and accurate discussions about the nature of power and wealth. Our media is worthless. This is, again, because it is controlled by the very wealth class that helped create and is benefitting from this whole thing. But at the level of the citizen, there is already a brewing reaction and awareness.

Just in my experience, I am already hearing so many stories about people bringing together coalitions in their communities and online. Organizing is not only effective, its contagious. And, at the level of government and downstream from federal programs, we are hearing about organized resistance that’s being realized despite ongoing threats and harassment.

I am constantly stressing the need to organize with friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors, and rather than simply accepting what is happening and greeting it with shared pessismism, we have to continually address how wrong this is, how destructive it is, and how we deserve better. Fortunately, we are seeing this discourse take shape in the large public square.

Feckless “Resistance”

To call the Democratic Party “disappointing” would be an insult to the word. Presently, Democrats are either trying to figure out how to jump aboard the MAGA agenda or simply missing in action. For the former, go to hell. For the latter, every moment that you waste is more proof we need to find a better class of politician.

Watching the party is an exercise in futility. Hakeem Jeffries certainly helped the situation with his “Presidents come and Presidents Go. Through it all. God is still on his throne” nonsense. Chuck Schumer, supposedly one of the most powerful Democrats, has made a repeated full of himself, including his clueless support of AI in the face of China’s release of DeepSeek.

Of course, the AI project is a farce. The oligarchs have absolutely nothing to offer anyone anymore besides meaningless fantasies of a future of their design that they can’t build, and so they’re relying on state power to continue funneling more and more money and resources to their preferred and flawed faith. Everyone paying attention understands this, and the AI mirage is just a stand-in for corporate competition masquerading as state-level cold war.

But the reaction to Schumer and Jeffries was swift. We can see a spell of sorts being broken in this and many people are losing faith that the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, is capable or willing of resisting any of this. That feels bad. It certainly pisses me off. But there’s something good here. Something hopeful.

The Democratic Party has failed us. Joe Biden’s presidency ultimately failed us. Neoliberalism has failed us over and over again. Corporate dominance of unipolar consensus has absolutely devastated us. And people are losing their taste for anything that says otherwise. This is part of the reason our corporate media is collapsing and why members of the party actually standing up are being venerated. Alexandria Occasio Cortes has met the moment. JB Pritzker has refused to bow down to Trump. And, as the immigration raids intensify, we are doubtlessly going to see governors, mayors, representatives, and, more importantly, local leaders, who show up and fight. This will include politicians, but we should also start looking for labor leaders and leadership of emerging coalitions to pick up the slack of these failures.

The Damage Done

I want to start here by saying I do not believe that the most diehard MAGA acolytes will suddenly realize they backed the wrong horse when the consequences of Trump’s action take form. That’s not how any of this works. They hold a religious dedication to him and are inundated constantly with enough of mis and disinformation and propaganda to override any cognitive dissonance. Economic troubles and even the eradication of programs that specifically affect them will be blamed on the “Deep State” or insidious conspiracy theories. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

But Trump’s orders to pause federal funding, slash programs, and the general dysfunction and chaos leading to consequences (including his weekend spat with Colombia affecting prices) will change the paradigm with some. There are many individuals, from all walks of life, who are going to be negatively impacted. This includes the funding of studies, experimental drugs and treatments, any number of other downstream effects will touch people’s lives. Some people are going to die. And, when you add that to the upcoming trauma of seeing friends and neighbors and community members, including children, being rounded up by aggressive mobs of ICE officers, it will generate backlash.

For some, this will be stuff they read about on the news, but for so many people this is going to be lived experience that affects their daily lives. Federal employees are already feeling it and the people associated with their programs have had enough in the first week. Now, we’re getting into god knows how many ongoing programs that are going to be cut or decimated. This is going to exacerbate pressure in so many workplaces and communities, and the catharsis Trump is offering his dieheards - the pleasure of seeing “elites” and vulnerable communities inflicted with pain - will have no reward whatsoever for them. Instead, it will be real material conditions.

Despite what Trump and the oligarchs behind him think, there are ripples from all of this. We’re likely to begin seeing labor strife, community uprisings, and a changing of the tide. The furious nature of it all, not to mention how dysfunctional and unprofessional Trump and his billionaires are, only makes mistakes more inevitable and for consequences to mount. The question now is how this will be answered. And authoritarians are quick to violence and suppression.

What Next?

So how will we respond? This moment now is fraught with possibilities and dangers. The moments as authoritarianism is coagulating and consolidating power is when it is most vulnerable and most erratic. We must be prepared for opportunities when they arise and fundamentally choose to be proactive over reactive. This means, we don’t just wait around waiting on mistakes. We create the conditions so that those mistakes will be met with organized action and appropriate responses.

The pressure is building now. There will be moments where it runs over because there is no reality in which this just goes forward unabated and without resistance. The question is whether we will meet those moments or if we will be changed by them in a way the authoritarians would prefer. You cannot continue at this pace as an authoritarian without incidents and moments that fuel the fire and allow widespread suppression of building pressures.

Just briefly, I want to invite you to imagine all of this like a boxing match. One fighter came out of the corner at the beginning of the fight throwing every punch they could and exerting every ounce of strength and conditioning. They’d been waiting years for this moment. And, when the storm of blows calmed, the other fighter was still standing opposite an opponent that had winded himself and left himself vulnerable.

You survived the opening salvos, though they are still ongoing. We can feel the energy growing in response, we can see it if we just look through eyes that refuse terrified pessimism and calming doomerism. The elements and ingredients are there. This is combustible and has been for a long time.

Find the people you can trust. Take care of yourself. And be prepared.