The insurrection at the capitol and Trump’s second acquittal are proof that white supremacists are the best stealth authoritarians [1]. Their attempted coup is a clear example that our political system lacks mutual toleration – the idea that political opponents aren’t an existential threat. In their New York Times Best Seller, How Democracies Die, Levitsky and Ziblatt articulate that:
“When norms of mutual toleration are weak, democracy is hard to sustain. If we view our rivals as a dangerous threat, we have much to fear if they are elected. We may decide to employ any means necessary to defeat them – and therein lies a justification for authoritarian measures.” [2]From When Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt
The authors continue to explain how in the absence of mutual toleration, the Spanish Republic fell apart. They note that in nearly all of the cases they’ve studied, would-be authoritarians justified consolidating their power by labeling their opponents as existential threats. Using this same strategy in pursuit of their twisted policies, white supremacists have become perhaps the most well-trained stealth authoritarians in the Union. It comes as no surprise to many Americans that white supremacists hold some of the most prestigious and powerful positions in our country, it is common in American history. Though it is new history, the right’s violent reaction to the 2020 presidential election and the Republican Party’s ongoing attempt to acquiesce these ideological bigots in order to maintain their core voting bloc is not surprising history. Our beloved union is in the midst of a cold civil war. A battle fought through legislation and courtrooms and academic discourse and television specials and social media platforms in which the weapons of choice are the words we choose to send, receive, and believe. It is a great flaw that the discipline takes for granted the United States’ high level of mutual toleration, likely attributable to the lack of diversity amongst Political Scientists. Despite the last few years, it is my assessment that the United States has perhaps the greatest level of mutual toleration we have ever had, and that it is exactly this newfound toleration for difference that has spurred a violent reaction by white supremacists. They view a pluralist, multicultural, democracy as an existential threat to their “true” America. And they have made clear they won’t stop until they think this perceived threat is eliminated.
The idea of weaponized communication offers us a great way to understand the way in which white supremacists enact their stealth authoritarianism. According to Mercieca, weaponized communication is when you strategically use communication as an aggressive means to gain compliance and avoid accountability [3]. In this cold civil war currently facing the United States, we see dangerous demagogues seeking to bend America’s moral arc away from justice. These rhetorical soldiers sling weaponized communication to reject and weaken commitments to democratic norms. Our news cycle is overwhelmed with absurdities and misinformation to the point that white supremacists can storm the capitol building and for some reason it seems like nobody knows who to blame. This chaos is intentional and part of a long-term strategy. The fallout from the capitol insurrection and Trump’s months of baseless election fraud claims have set the stage for a much more subtle siege.
In statehouses across the country, Republican lawmakers are using this stolen-election myth to fuel a campaign to rewrite election rules and limit future voter turnout in predominantly BIPOC communities. The New York Times reports that in Iowa, the State Legislature voted to cut early voting by nine days, close polls earlier, and tighten rules on absentee voting. Likewise, they call out Georgia Republicans for seeking to limit early voting on Sundays in an attempt to prevent Black voters from engaging in “souls to the polls” church services and those in Wisconsin trying to limit ballot drop boxes to one per municipality. All the while, Trump has resurfaced peddling more lies about a stolen election and even taunting the idea of a 2024 run. Republicans are actively playing constitutional hardball as they work within their current positions to legislate election rules that will maintain their power at the expense of democratic participation. All the while their demagogue spews more and more misinformation about the election being stolen to embolden the party’s base to support these undemocratic reforms. Republicans’ failure to convict Trump based on weak legal arguments is another example of their constitutional hardball strategies. The morally correct thing to do would have been to convict, but instead they poorly argued that they don’t believe they can impeach a president who is already out of office, excusing themselves of any real accountability and rejecting the spirit of the impeachment process laid out by the constitution they claim to love so much.
This kind of stealth authoritarianism has long been a tool of white supremacists. After all, the very constitution itself was written by dangerous demagogues seeking to obscure their newly formed slavocracy as a true democratic republic. Nearly 100 years later their carefully crafted words led to a violent civil war. In the last few decades, we have seen white supremacists enact policies, such as the failed war on drugs, that specifically target lower-income communities of color. The prison-industrial-complex is perhaps one of the greatest examples of this type of stealth authoritarianism. With about 25% of the world’s incarcerated population in American prisons, some private companies see the $35 billion spent on imprisonment as a means to bolster the American economy and line their pockets. The Republican party has spent the last few decades placating to white nationalists. Now their base is losing its rhetorical power because we recognize what they’re doing. In the original civil war citizens were asked to choose sides, slavery or abolition, so too are we called to defend our nation against bigotry and racial hatred. And the most important thing to recognize is that we must be an existential threat to these old notions of America if we are to actually achieve our nation’s promises of liberty and justice for all.
This realization fuels the work of abolitionists looking to dismantle oppressive systems such as policing and prisons. This realization fuels the work of anti-racism activists and queer activists and women’s organizations looking to expand rights to these marginalized groups. This realization fuels the work of the next generation of politicians and government officials working to maintain our national trajectory on a course toward justice. Our chances for a truly multicultural democracy are at risk, and now more than ever we must take a stand.
Notes:
[1] Varol, Ozan. 2015. “Stealth Authoritarianism.” Iowa Law Review 100(4): pp. 1673-1742. Parts I, II and III. [2] Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown. Chapter 5. [3] Mercieca, Jennifer R. 2019. “Dangerous Demagogues and Weaponized Communication.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 49(3): pp. 264-279.
White supremacists are contributing to the downfall of American democracy. Although they may not be the most dominant cause, their efforts seek to undermine democratic norms that have guarded the values of American democracy. While the author views white supremacists as stealth authoritarians, a threat to democracy, I argue that white supremacists endanger democracy because they foster divisions in society. Although white supremacists may support authoritarian figures as James argues, the evidence he provides is not sufficient to justify the argument.
First, James fails to define what a “stealth authoritarian” is in his article, which according to his cited article “stealth authoritarianism serves as a way to protect and entrench power when direct repression is not a viable option” (Varol). Stealth authoritarians generally use the laws to maintain superiority and prevent legitimate challengers. While Trump may fall into this category, as James argues, through Trump’s election fraud claims, that does not make all white supremacists stealth authoritarians.
Furthermore, the insurrection at the capitol is not an example of stealth authoritarianism as much as it is a sign of a lack of mutual toleration, or the idea that political opponents are not an existential threat. The author’s claim that the United States is at its “greatest level of mutual toleration” is ill founded due to increased polarization accompanied by higher rates of immigration and income disparity among Americans (Piketty and Saez). The greatest level of mutual toleration could be said to be during the time of the least polarization because political parties are closer in ideological distance. The closer the ideological distance, the more compromise between parties and acceptance of each other’s legitimacy, which is not the current condition of the United States government.
Therefore, the author’s claim that increased toleration has led to violent reactions of white supremacists is contradictory. Increased toleration is more conducive to compromise while decreased toleration leads to more egregious reactions from opposing parties, such as the storming of the capitol. Additionally, the author describes the Republicans and Democrats to be at a “cold civil war” which refutes his claim that the United States is at the greatest level of mutual toleration it has seen. A cold war may not mean open “warfare”, but the threats of warfare certainly decrease toleration of the other party.
Speaking in regard to the failure of the Senate to remove Trump from office after being impeached, the author posits “the morally correct thing to do would have been to convict, but instead they poorly argued that they don’t believe they can impeach a president who is already out of office.” The author sees the failure to impeach as “constitutional hardball.” However, it is more so an example of stealth authoritarianism because it allows Trump to potentially continue his political career and represses the impeachment from the House of Representatives. The few examples of stealth authoritarianism provided are not adequate evidence to claim that white supremacists are “the best” stealth authoritarians.
Although the author misperceived the threat of white supremacists, they still endanger democracy in other ways. White supremacists encourage cleavages in the United States because they are opposed to demographic change, want more restrictive immigration laws, and try to undermine the rights of minorities. Their intentions bolster nationalist sentiment because their objectives seek to further inequality among citizens which is already high and could cause more discontent with the governmental system.
White supremacists tend to be a part of the far-right wing of the political spectrum and support the Republican party. The supremacists’ resentment for the Democratic party’s position on immigration creates further ideological distance between Democratic and Republican parties, a sign of democratic backsliding (Levitzky and Ziblatt). Polarization also contributes to the distrust of the opposition and the information that they provide. The distrust between parties leads to citizen’s skepticism of information provided, such as fake news, and weakens authority. Furthermore, they violate the democratic norm of mutual toleration because they do not accept that the opposing party has an equal right to exist, compete for office, and govern (Levitzky and Ziblatt). For example, the birther conspiracies against President Barack Obama, regarding the legitimacy of Obama’s American citizenship, was a common speculation among white supremacists and other citizens. Skepticism of his right to govern could be due to his race or the abhorrence of more open immigration policies of the Democratic party. Either way, both contribute to questioning the systems of democracy in the United States and weaken the government’s authority.
In order to prevent further polarization in the United States, white supremacy must end and more incorporative practices must be adopted. Once nationalist sentiment decreases and there is less hostility toward immigrants, democratic norms will be able to restore and propel the United States toward polyarchy. As Robert Dahl explained, the path towards polyarchy is rarely a straight line. Although the United States has regressed, it has not reverted to authoritarianism and can still be en route to a successful democratic government and, eventually, polyarchy.
Works Cited
Dahl, Robert. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Illustrated, Yale University Press, 1972.
Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown. Chapter 5.
Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. “Income Inequality in the United States.” Berkeley, Feb. 2003, eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf.
Varol, Ozan. 2015. “Stealth Authoritarianism.” Iowa Law Review 100(4): pp. 1673-1742. Parts I, II and III.
White supremacy has been around for centuries and as the author has noted, the notion of supreme “power” is continuing to be a threat to the American people. Systematic Racism exploits white oppression, but white supremacists often feel like it is their duty and right to protect it. The author defines A Stealth Authoritarian as one that acts as Chief Executor who labels opponents as existential threats. In layman’s terms, any particular race or individual who does not “agree” with their actions, is considered to be an outsider.
The authors claim that White Supremecy has been around 100 years is a valid point. To this day, we are still fighting a War On Drugs and the prevention of minority youth who are projected to be a part of the Prison to Pipeline number projections. In this current day, many Americans are still in disbelief that the US Capital was raided by so-called “White Supremacists”. Sadly, many of the guilty parties believed that it was their American right to protect what is rightfully theirs as an American Citizen. However, Don Lemon made a valid point when he stated “If it was a group of Blacks that stormed the Capital, there would’ve been tear gas, dogs and bombs.” This is definitely an example of “White Supremacy”. If we don’t dismantle this idea of this power, it will contribute to the erosion of American democracy.