What the Dictator Wants: The Normalization of Violence and Oppression

Trump is openly calling for the execution of his political enemies. We've stepped into a new chapter of this crisis

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On Thursday morning President Donald Trump reacted to a video posted by Senator Elissa Slotkin and fellow Democrats urging members of the military to disobey unconstitutional orders by calling their actions seditious, treasonous, and then reposting all manner of replies urging him them killed or hanged.

We have, of course, watched for years as Trump has promised to imprison his political rivals. One of the bedrock campaign promises in 2016 was that Trump, if given power, would have Hillary Clinton arrested. It was during this period, as I reported from Trump rallies, I heard his supporters begin to want more. “Hang the bitch,” a man near screamed at a July rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Soon, the calls for murder were everywhere. I could barely have a conversation with the MAGA faithful without the desire to kill Democrats, reporters, scientists, academics, and every conceivable participant in the “Deep State conspiracy” to destroy America.

Of course, that evolved. By 2020, the QAnon conspiracy theory had spread like a conflagration, preparing people for either the possibility of mass executions or promising them that the criminals had already been murdered and replaced by clones or lookalike doubles. It’s no coincidence that with the normalization of this ideology, and its merging with the Republican Party, that Trump’s 2024 campaign included more overt promises to jail his enemies. It wasn’t just Clinton. It was everyone who had “wronged” him. The investigators. The politicians. Barack Obama. The list went on and on and on.

Trump’s unhinged outburst is most certainly fueled by his panic that the worsening Epstein scandal means his worst and most odious crimes might be revealed. Insecurity is, after all, the most frightening thing for an authoritarian figure. Their lives and their worldview are informed by a desperate desire for control. They have been raised in environments of abuse and activation, propelling them into adulthood with a twitchy and ceaseless need for safety they will never find. That terror is inside them and rather than confronting it, they instead search the outside world for any possible threat, using their power and wealth and influence to control everything they can. Authoritarianism, for all its posturing of strength, is defined by its brittleness. This is why Trump cannot brook even the most friendly criticism from fellow Republicans or allies or propaganda networks like Fox News. This is why he betrays everyone who attempts to get close to him.

Authoritarians do not come to power in stable times. There has to be a deep-seated fear within a society for the ground to be prepared for the authoritarian. This feedback loop, which was obvious during the initial 2016 run, is a continual give-and-take between the supporters desiring an authoritarian and the authoritarian themselves. People already wanted what Trump was going to offer in 2016 and now in 2025. It was his willingness to give it to them, to put to words what was already fomenting inside of them, that meant the desire would grow and come to define the degenerating political environment.

Those of us who grew up proto-MAGA households and communities recognize this. We heard people around us, especially men, voice the exact same desires and hatreds that Trump now embodies. He did not appear and weave a magical and hypnotic trance. He was birthed by a growing want. What matters here is that the emergence of a demagogue with the most transparently fascistic instincts means that those opinions and desires will not be silenced or suppressed but continually encouraged.

Everything Trump does merely advances the ongoing decline and escalates previously existing problems. Sending the military into cities was something rural Americans had dreamed of for years, even if they weren’t able to articulate or were suppressing their hopes out of shame. Trump, in his shamelessness, simply made the possibility a reality, creating an environment in which the next step and the next step and the step after that are possible.

Now, we are staring into the face of a country where political enemies are fair game for violence, intimidation, and even execution.

When Trump has visited other dictatorial figures, including Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and even when he has sat, as recently, with Mohammed bin Salman, the reason he is so obviously more comfortable with them than liberal democratic leaders is because they are cut from the same cloth. His sojourn to North Korea was punctuated with bizarre confessions that he wished for the same murderous power as Kim and a media slavishly devoted to him. He has excused the violence and oppression of MBS and Putin because he desires it himself.

Among his supporters, from the very beginning, there has been a parallel want for Trump to assume a dictatorial position. To become a Caesar or a king. This is because they share the same psychological profiles as Trump and Kim and MBS and Putin, or at least a shadow of that profile. They were waiting on someone to call for the imprisonment of the people they hated. They were waiting on someone to broach the possibility of executing them.

What Trump and his supporters share is a need to use violence and power to silence any conflicting voices or opposition in order to feel “safe,” even though there is no point at which they will ever feel that safety, even if all opposition is eliminated. After all, by glancing at Kim, MBS, Putin, and any other authoritarian that has ever existed, there is never a moment of relaxation or safety. It is a continuous, self-destructive cycle that couldn’t even stop if they were reduced to the last living being on the planet. It’s a compulsion. And that compulsion drives these authoritarians and it drives their supporters and sycophants as well.

Calling for these Democrats to be executed for posting a video is yet another step and escalation. That Trump has done this and will suffer no consequence whatsoever means that the feedback loop will only strengthen. It is now, regardless of how outraged we are, how disgusted, how alarmed, accepted for the President of the United States of America to not just harbor these desires but to give voice to them in public. That means the possibility of these desires being acted upon now becomes more likely and, depending on circumstances, yet another escalation seems certain.

As long as a Trump exists, as long as the environment is fertile for an authoritarian, and as long as the institutions remain unable or unwilling to stand in his way, and unless we make our stand as democratic individuals, that feedback loop will continue. Trump, or the succeeding authoritarian, will continue to pervert our laws and norms until he is able to carry out these desires, all while continuing to give voice and normalization to the worst desires of his supporters, and random threats on a Thursday to hang rival politicians will either result in actual hangings or a stunned, frightened silence because they will know it can and would happen.