The American Democracy Leadership Contradiction

A Hard Lesson- Democracy and Being Smitten with Authoritarianism Cannot Coexist

Apr 23, 2024

We are in 2024, an election year, a year I call “the Year of the Precipice” for our democracy. To better equip Americans to exercise their civic duty this year, we have begun a series in Democraticus examining important ways of thinking and belief systems, such as those pertaining to leadership, which can have a major impact on our democracy’s future.

At Times Democracy Can Seem “a Bit Messy”

Let’s face it, for all its positive attributes, there are times democracy can be, to use current phraseology, a bit like “herding cats”. This is particularly true when a democracy’s citizens turn their attention to electing their leaders. It is then that it becomes apparent that we are full of contradictions as to what type of leadership we think we need to govern and maintain democracy, as opposed to the type of leadership to which many Americans find themselves attracted.

This is especially true in times of either actual or perceived great change or great threat (or both). When it happens, the leader’s rhetoric not only can become authoritarian, but we can also begin following them as an almost proverbial “pied piper”.

Want proof? Read on.

The Leadership Type Americans Must Learn to Run From

On July 21, 2016, then candidate for the Republican presidential nomination Donald Trump ascended to the podium at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to accept his party’s nomination. The words of his words of acceptance speech were, in part:

“I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, (dramatic pause with audience laughter), which is why I alone can fix it.”[1] (emphasis mine)

As Yoni Applebaum of The Atlantic, listened to Trump’s words and watched this unfold, he later recorded his observations about them:

The most striking aspect of his speech wasn’t his delivery, even though his tone often strayed over the line, from emphatic to strident. It wasn’t the specific policies he outlined, long fixtures of his stump speech. It was the extraordinary spectacle of a man standing on a podium, elevated above the surrounding crowd, telling the millions of Americans who were watching that he, alone, could solve their problems.

And the crowd cheered.[2] (emphasis mine)

A Former President’s American Apocalypse

Former president Trump’s 2016 nomination acceptance speech described an apocalyptic United States, with decaying infrastructure, social chaos, violence, crime, massive illegal immigration, and civil disorder running rampant. Barbara McQuaide, citing the work of Donald A. Barclay on disinformation, describes the strongman technique that Trump is using here. It is called declinism, “…a belief that society is going downhill and things were better in the past.”[3]

However, Trump himself, as he stated in his acceptance speech, would transform this apocalypse beginning on the date of his inauguration as president.[4] According to Trump, he was the only one that could accomplish this because he “knew the system”. As McQuaide correctly notes:

“…If people can be convinced that the country is falling apart, they can be persuaded that they need a strong and fearless leader to fix it, even if certain values must be compromised.”[5]

A Seismic Tremor with Aftershocks to American Democracy

For large numbers of Americans at the time, this was indeed a moment that shook our democracy to the core of its foundational principles. Trump’s inauguration speech surprised many Americans, including former president George W. Bush, who “…described it as weird shit.”[6] Author Ruth Ben-Ghiat opines regarding Trump’s inauguration speech, that as a nation that had not ever endured a dictatorship or a foreign occupation, we were now getting what she calls “firsthand experience of the authoritarian playbook.”[7]

Yet, if we had been familiar with this “playbook”, what Trump said in his inauguration speech “…was perfectly normal in the context of authoritarian history.”[8] Ben-Ghiat expands on this “authoritarian playbook” saying that, while we may not have seen it at the time of Trump’s acceptance speech or inauguration address, soon other common authoritarian traits became apparent:

“…At the heart of strongman rule is the claim that he and his agents are above the law, above judgment, and not beholden to the truth.”[9] (emphasis mine)

What makes Americans, a people who pledge allegiance to a country founded on democratic principles, so willing to cheer on and follow a leader who could care less about democracy and democratic norms? Kahlenberg and Janey point to the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haight political scientist Karen Stenner for an answer. Haight and Stenner’s research suggest “…the ‘authoritarian button on our foreheads’ is pushed when people believe society is ‘coming apart”.[10] (emphasis mine)

Our “Authoritarian Activation Button”

The fact that, in times of economic or social turmoil, it is so easy to activate what Haight and Stenner describe as the “authoritarian button on our foreheads”, is probably not a surprise to the reader. However, what may be surprising, given our national history of fighting and resisting repressive government going all the way back to the American Revolutionary War, is how easily we Americans gravitate towards authoritarianism, oligarchs, autocrats, and demagogues. During the 1930s in this country the American pro-fascist movement sympathetic to Hitler and Mussolini gained surprising numbers of followers and supporters.[11]

Even those of us who can remember our parents’ or relatives’ stories of fighting against Hitler’s or Tojo’s dictatorship in World War II can have this “button” pushed. Moreover, we allow this button to be pushed with strategies that have been used by authoritarian leaders for many years. These strategies are not new, although, based on the Trump presidency, our ability to detect them with any degree of discernment appears to be highly suspect.

The “Strongman’s Playbook” has been Fully Opened Upon America

We allow this authoritarianism to be exercised upon us with strategies that Jonathan Baird cites from the work of strongman scholars Jason Stanley (author of How Fascism Works) and Ruth Ben-Ghiat (author of the book Strongmen).[12] These well-known strategies include the leader touting their nation’s “…mythic past, propaganda, suppressing and demonizing the media, victimhood and polarization through creation of a demonized-out group.”[13]

The authoritarian’s use of a national mythic past, through our tendency to be attracted to nostalgia, can be a particularly effective way for them to attain and retain power. But, according to Anne Applebaum in Twilight of Democracy, it is not attraction to what Russian essayist Svetlana Boym calls reflective nostalgia, where one misses and dreams fondly about their memories. Instead, it is restorative nostalgia, a nostalgia that does not just miss the past, but yearns to rebuild whatever is seen as former glory lost (for example, a nation’s former power and status in the world). This restorative nostalgia easily converts into national myth making and a nationalist image that a political party projects (as an example, “Make America Great Again”).[14] (emphasis mine)

Fear is another favorite authoritarian strategy, such as in the case of immigration, that autocrats use to convince their “followers” to support loss of civil liberties to “promote law and order”. This strategy has been used of late to great effect by Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban.[15] Historian Jon Meacham, in his book The Soul of America, explores the use of fear by leaders in American politics. Meacham quotes Aristotle’s work Rhetoric where the philosopher defined fear’s cause as “…whatever we feel has great power of destroying us, or of harming us in ways that tend to cause us great pain.” As Meacham puts it, those who are “…masters of such politics are adept at the manufacturing or, if the fear already exists, the marshaling of it at the expense of one believes pose a threat to one’s own security, happiness, prosperity, or sense of self.” [16]

Seeking Simplicity in and Dependency on a Leader

However, it is more than the authoritarian leader’s strategies that activates our “authoritarian buttons”. According to Steve Taylor, Ph.D., senior psychology lecturer at Leeds Beckett University in the U.K. It is also due to the way we humans are “wired” to perform what Taylor describes as the “abdication syndrome”. This is when we are seeking not “…enlightenment, but a return to a childhood state of unconditional devotion and irresponsibility.”[17] We abdicate responsibility for own lives and hand it over to the leader. The leader will, we believe, protect, and take care of us. Once we abdicate this responsibility to a leader, Taylor describes us as finding it difficult to believe anything negative about the leader.[18] As Ben-Ghiat describes it, to his followers the authoritarian (in this case Trump) is a father figure for them, saying:

“He’s Daddy,…And once they bond to him, they feel protected. But they’re also protective of him because he’s also the victim. It’s highly effective, this manipulation of emotion.”[19]

Additionally, Applebaum contends, citing the work of Karen Stenner, that authoritarianism “…appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity: there is nothing intrinsically ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’ about this instinct at all. It is anti-pluralist. It is suspicious of people with different ideals. It is allergic to fierce debates. Whether those who have it ultimately derive their politics from Marxism or nationalism is irrelevant. It is a frame of mind, not a set of ideas.”[20]

This meshes with Ben-Ghiat’s observation of authoritarianism holding appeal “…when society is polarized, or divided into two opposing ideological camps, which is why they (i.e., the authoritarian, or strongman) do all they can to exacerbate the strife.”[21]

What is Old is New Again

Is any of this sounding familiar? It should. Authoritarian leadership has been in our midst in America far more than some of us may realize.

That is why next we will drill down further to become even more specific as to what authoritarian leadership has been looking like in the United States from 2016 to the present. Stay tuned…

We will continue exploring topics like this that are not given near enough time and emphasis in our civic education efforts, if they are even taught at all. Democracy is so important. But it’s hard to keep, and it’s easy to lose. It’s up to us, and only us, to protect it. Support democracy, become a Democratist! Spread the word! For more information, go to www.tomthedemocratist.com

[1] Excerpt from Donald Trump 2016 Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech, July 21, 2016, Politico, https://www.politico.com/video/2020/08/20/trump-at-2016-rnc-i-alone-can-fix-it-085403

[2] “I Alone Can Fix It”, by Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic, July 21, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/trump-rnc-speech-alone-fix-it/492557

[4] Donald J. Trump Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech, July 21, 2016, https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/DJT_Acceptance_Speech.pdf

[5] Attack from Within, How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, by Barbara McQuaide, pg. 28, Ibid

[7] Strongmen, How they Succeed and How they Fail, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, pg. 255, Ibid

[8] Strongmen, How they Succeed and How they Fail, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, pg. 255, Ibid

[9] Strongmen, How they Succeed and How they Fail, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, pg. 253, Ibid

[10] “Putting Democracy Back into Public Education”, by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Clifford Janney, The Century Foundation, November 10, 2016, Ibid

[11] American Nazism and Madison Square Garden | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans (nationalww2museum.org)

[12] “Reckoning With Authoritarianism”, by Jonathan P. Baird, Concord Monitor, January 1, 2021, 2:10 PM, https://www.concordmonitor.com/reckoning-with-authoritarianism-37821463

[13] “Reckoning With Authoritarianism”, by Jonathan P. Baird, Concord Monitor, January 1, 2021, 2:10 PM, Ibid

[17] “The Abdication Syndrome, Why We Are Vulnerable to Authoritarian Leaders, Corrupt Gurus, and Cults”, by Steve Taylor, Ph.D., September 12, 2020, Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bolg/out-of-darknes/202009/the-abdication-syndrome

[18] “The Abdication Syndrome, Why We Are Vulnerable to Authoritarian Leaders, Corrupt Gurus, and Cults”, by Steve Taylor, Ph.D., September 12, 2020, Psychology Today, Ibid

[19]“Authoritarianism Expert Explains Why Trump Fans Love ‘Daddy’ So Much”, by Lee Moran, April 12, 2024 04:22 EDT, HuffPost Latest News

[20] Twilight of Democracy, the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, by Anne Applebaum, by Anne Applebaum, pg. 16, Ibid

[21] Strongmen, How they Succeed, How they Fail, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, pg. 8, Ibid

Democraticus- The Democratist

Discussion about this post