Senator Joseph McCarthy, who used the Cold War fear of communist subversion to promote blacklisting, censorship, and book banning, enjoyed wide backing among the American public. At the height of McCa...
The Trump administration also mounted efforts to sideline key players in the political system. President Trump’s rhetorical attacks on critics in the media are an example. His repeated accusations tha...
Most often, the capture of the referees is done by quietly firing civil servants and other nonpartisan officials and replacing them with loyalists.
It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority - 30 or even 40 percent - of the country. We often tell ourselves that America's...
Uma coisa que distingue autocratas de líderes democráticos contemporâneos é sua intolerância à crítica e a disposição de usar seu poder para punir aqueles que - na oposição, na mídia ou na sociedade c...
America’s democratic norms, then, were born in a context of exclusion. As long as the political community was restricted largely to whites, Democrats and Republicans had much in common. Neither party...
The strength of the American political system, it has often been said, rests on what Swedish Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal called the American Creed: the principles of individual freedom...
The Tea Party questioned President Obama’s very right to be president.
When gatekeeping institutions fail, mainstream politicians must do everything possible to keep dangerous figures away from the centers of power.
I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money….So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, wh...
Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is t...
The second category in our litmus test is the denial of the legitimacy of one’s opponents. Authoritarian politicians cast their rivals as criminal, subversive, unpatriotic, or a threat to national sec...
Backed by a small but growing group of loyalists, Gingrich launched an insurgency aimed at instilling a more combative approach in the party. Taking advantage of a new media technology, C-SPAN, Gingri...
Two events were critical in this regard. The first was the infamous Compromise of 1877, which ended the 1876 presidential election dispute and elevated Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency...
Building on Linz’s work, we have developed a set of four behavioral warning signs that can help us know an authoritarian when we see one. We should worry when a politician 1) rejects, in words or acti...
Knowing how citizens in other democracies have successfully resisted elected autocrats, or why they tragically failed to do so, is essential to those seeking to defend American democracy today.
Deberíamos preocuparnos en serio cuando un político: 1) rechaza, ya sea de palabra o mediante acciones, las reglas democráticas del juego, 2) niega la legitimidad de sus oponentes, 3) tolera o alienta...
President Trump also attacked judges who ruled against him.
Day after Hitler became chancellor, a prominent conservative who aided him admitted, I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world...
In his 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, historian Richard Hofstadter described the phenomenon of status anxiety, which, he believed, is most likely to emerge when groups’ social sta...
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