I didn’t imagine this is what authoritarianism would look like if it got to our doorstep.
It turns out it’s not, as I might have thought, tanks on the streets or martial law (yet), but instead it’s showing up in the creeping, incremental decisions made by individuals and organizations to try to survive increasing federal repression on liberty and speech.
Day by day, I have talked to more and more people who are deciding to cancel travel across borders, limiting what they say publicly, changing their organization’s digital presence, worrying about their loved ones who do not have U.S. citizenship and stockpiling critical medicines. These are courageous people who are mostly veterans of work to advance racial or social justice while also having marginalized identities — and they are scared.
I put a call out for people to share these stories, and while I received a bunch, it was telling and heartbreaking that the people most directly targeted did not feel like it was safe to talk publicly about what they were experiencing for fear of government retribution — not even with their identities protected.
To be clear, this country’s history is full of centuries of repression, violence, enslavement, incarceration and segregation against people of color and other marginalized people. But what we are witnessing now is important to name and understand, even while recognizing that many dark periods have preceded this one.
With everything changing so fast, it has been hard to wrap my head around how what we are seeing fits into a national and global historical context.
To understand more, I reached out to Scott Radnitz, the Herbert J. Ellison professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies. Radnitz’s research deals largely with the post-Soviet region and addresses disinformation, protest movements and authoritarianism.
I asked Radnitz how he would characterize the administration’s actions right now.
“In the sense that the Trump administration is seeking to act without constraints, is seeking to bulldoze over existing democratic norms and it claims not to recognize checks on its power, I would say that’s the definition of authoritarian,” he said.
Radnitz said the administration’s fast and aggressive approach out of the gate is also part of the authoritarian playbook.
He said authoritarians want to make sure people know the rules have changed as a way to show power and domination.
“They want to make people feel like their choices aren’t simply of their own volition, that they need to take the politics into account when they make decisions in their own lives,” he said. “And what’s especially challenging for people living under authoritarianism is that they oftentimes don’t know what the red lines are, what is acceptable and what’s not.”
Authoritarian regimes often leave those lines ambiguous because it makes people afraid and insecure and makes people second-guess their choices, while the government moves the red lines back and forth to keep people off balance, he said.
Radnitz said the administration’s strategy of targeting huge and powerful institutions like Ivy League universities or white-shoe law firms helps convey the message that if they can effectively target the rich and powerful, what chance does an average person or especially a more vulnerable person — like an undocumented, trans or LGBTQ+ person — have?
He said it’s notable that the primary lever the administration is using to threaten its most powerful foes is withholding money, in contrast to other governments where physical and mortal threats are used to get people to bend. He said this makes it even more surprising that in a country where power is dispersed between local and state governments, and that has independent media, the intimidation tactics have been so effective.
Even for a scholar of history, Radnitz said what has been happening has surprised him. “Honestly, I and other political scientists have found it shocking how quickly and rapidly and easily so many institutions, independent of the government, have given in to Trump’s demands.”
Canceling the visas of hundreds of people and going after green-card holders are examples, he said, of classic authoritarian techniques.
In particular, the targeting of green-card and visa holders over their speech is a horrifying escalation, he said. Of all the things the Trump administration has done so far, “that’s the kind of naked coercion that should be very alarming.”
Under repressive governments, most regular people “simply try to keep their head down, figure out where the red lines are and stay on the safer side of that and hope that they never accidentally cross it.”
As with everything else, it’s going to be those without privilege or power who are going to be harmed the most by the actions of this administration. On the flip side, you might be someone who has enough privilege to not know anyone who feels threatened right now.
One South Seattle resident is not one of those people.
The resident, who is a biracial, neurodivergent, gender-fluid and gay person, said “I don’t feel safe enough to be here.” They asked that their name not be disclosed for fear of government retaliation.
Given everything going on politically, they said they are planning to sell their South Seattle house and move abroad, likely to Taiwan, a country they lived in before.
Even though Seattle is a progressive area, they said it doesn’t mean we won’t see the impacts here. “I want to fight it, but at the same time, I’m like, this is not my fight. I have been fighting my whole life just to be heard because of all of the minority things that I’ve had to struggle with on my own.”
They had already thought about leaving the U.S. before, but the actions of the Trump administration have increased the urgency.
“It has ignited the desire to leave because, as I said, I don’t feel safe. You know, we’re talking about actual history with World War II and what happened (with the Japanese American incarceration),” they said. “A lot of the rhetoric is the same as back then. And it’s not just rhetoric. It’s the consequences of that rhetoric.”