All it took was over 500 political scientists to confirm what many Americans have suspected and felt: the United States is declining quickly from liberal democracy toward authoritarianism. The democracy rate plummeted, and websites scoring democracy label the U.S. decline in democracy a “severe threat,” clearly showing the same patterns seen in Hungary, Turkiye and Weimar Germany before their own democracy failed.
However, this doesn’t characterize the U.S.’ current government as dictatorships such as those under Hitler or Mátyás Rákosi. It’s just a recognition that similar mechanisms exist and are appearing by which many democracies have died.
Executive overreach
Going back to Mr. President’s first 100 days in office, he signed 143 executive orders; in his first year, he signed 225, which exceeded his entire first term. That’s going over the border of governing and creeping into bypassing legislative processes that define democratic governance.
The parallel to Hitler’s exploitation of Weimar’s emergency powers is instructive not because Trump is Hitler but because the tactic is nearly identical. The system’s own rules are being used to take that very system apart. The Nazi Party used the legalities already in place within a democratic framework until those became instruments of autocracy. Trump is following the same idea: death by a thousand executive orders with each one chipping away at the balance of powers and distracting from the real issues.
Suppression of freedoms
This is a pattern clear across any structure of a democratic society. Universities face threats to research grants and federal funding for political compliance. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) attacks media business models using tactics directly from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, where independent journalism was systematically taken away, and the government controls a majority of media outlets. Their civil service faces mass firings and, coincidentally, those who replace them happen to be loyalists.
This mirrors both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, where independent institutions were and are destroyed; judges, professors and journalists become targets. When institutions serve leaders rather than the country as a whole, ‘democracy’ becomes a performance.
In September 2025, a federal judge already ruled Trump violated federal law when deploying troops in Los Angeles. This violation matters less than the precedent it set,s with laws becoming more like suggestions, as seen with ICE, when the executive branch refuses to be bound by them.
Immigrants as the enemy
Every authoritarian regime needs an enemy, and Trump has chosen immigrants, as seen by declaring “invasions” and ordering mass deportations.
Fascism’s common factors, as scholars write, include “cleansing of all those deemed not to belong—foreigners, ethnic minorities, ‘undesirables.'” Stalin executed ethnic deportations. Nazis targeted Jews and Roma. Trump targets immigrants and birthright citizenship. This pattern repeats because it tends to work: dehumanize a population and then use that placed distrust and hatred to take control.
The path to authoritarianism is being built on the backs of people who can’t protest or defend themselves, as intended.
The military against the citizens
The deployment of National Guard and military forces to American cities for domestic law enforcement crosses a line that separates democracy and autocracy. The use of the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime measure, during peacetime, added to the invocation of emergency powers, creating a permanent state of exception to the laws.
Authoritarian regimes turn the military inward because external threats are negotiable and internal populations are not. When soldiers patrol streets to enforce political objectives rather than defend against foreign attacks, something has to be changed.
School readings
Public school students read the following books for a reason. “Animal Farm,” read in middle school, demonstrated how revolutionary promises became authoritarian reality through propaganda: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” mirror that selective application of law, where January 6 rioters receive pardons while political opponents face prosecution. As a freshman, “Night” documents how ordinary Germans become complicit through incremental normalization. Elie Wiesel’s account shows that genocide begins not with death camps but with the dehumanization of a targeted population, exactly what mass deportations and “invasion” rhetoric accomplish. In sophomore year, “The Handmaid’s Tale” combined actual historical tactics into fiction: declare an emergency, suspend laws, scapegoat vulnerable populations, install loyalists and militarize public enforcement. Atwood included only events or practices that occurred somewhere at some time. They aren’t tales about distant places. They’re warnings for recognizing authoritarianism while it can still be stopped. These are also books that, some of which, have been banned in parts of the U.S.
The casual Rule of Law
Trump pardoned over 1,500 January 6 rioters: people who violently attacked the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He attempts to end birthright citizenship through executive orders, dismissing constitutional amendments as instances. Lawyers face being barred from government buildings based on their political views.
This is sending a message that publicly opposing the government now comes with a cost. Fear of retribution spread through society through others’ punishments. You don’t need to punish everyone when punishing a few gets everyone else to comply.
International affairs
Trump openly admires dictators; Viktor Orbán, who transformed Hungary from a democracy to an authoritarian state through manipulation and institutional capture. Trump even has a picture of himself and Russian ‘president’ Vladimir Putin hung up in the White House. The U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement shows retreat from international accountability.
When American influence recedes, and the country turns isolated, autocrats come to life, in the U.S. and maybe even other places. If the U.S. can dismantle its democracy through legal means, why can’t others?
Economic fear factor
Nazi voting surged from 2.6% in 1928 to 37.3% by July 1932, driven by the Great Depression’s devastation of Germany. Economic despair creates demand for strong leadership, even if they’re a dictator. As long as they promise better times ahead if they’re chosen. Trump’s appeal again follows this pattern: promising order during chaos and then using that chaos to justify his methods.
Economic issues become justifications for any kind of political control.
Theater of democracy
What’s happening in the U.S. isn’t a dictatorship, but it’s important to recognize how quickly it can become one. Elections still happen, and institutions still function independently. But the playing field is being tilted toward the ruling party. Opposition still exists, but cannot always effectively compete with apparent legal restrictions. Democratic aesthetics are still maintained.
Trump’s governance represents populism as a method of control: a direct appeal to the people to bypass institutional constraints and then weaponize those same institutions against any opposition. Democracy won’t be thrown away by way of a dramatic coup, but it will slowly decay as most don’t even realize it’s happening.
Technology especially amplifies this. Modern propaganda doesn’t require any state control of the media when algorithms and social media platforms can be manipulated to serve authoritarian messaging.
The point of no return
“We’ve slid into some form of authoritarianism,” Harvard professor Steven Levitsky said. “It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.”
‘Relatively mild.’ ‘Certainly reversible.’ For now. These phrases matter because they identify the current state of the country: somewhere between post-democracy and pre-dictatorship. The patterns are in place and certainly recognizable with history as a map.
The question isn’t whether parallels exist because they do. The question is whether Americans will act on the warning signs before something mild becomes severe, as many have already labeled it, before reversibility becomes permanent. Democracies can die in pieces, until the people wake up one day and realize they’ve been governed by something else entirely.
What many don’t realize is how close that day may really be.
