In How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt summarize the current playbook for authoritarian rule in countries whose constitutions are officially democratic.

Note that canceling elections, banning opposition parties, and summarily arresting opponents are not in this playbook, because they are unnecessary and too risky for the perpetrators. Authoritarians have moved beyond such tactics, which tended to fail from 1985-2010. They have improved their success rate by becoming more sophisticated. The graph with this post, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, shows a disconcerting decline in the success rates of popular movements since 2010, which also illustrates that state repression has become more effective.

Key Trump loyalists like Russell Vought and Steven Miller have explicitly learned the current authoritarian playbook from its main practitioners. Their tactics are consistent with Trump’s personality and how he navigates life, so he doesn’t really have to learn them from the likes of Viktor Orban.

Here is the core:

[T]he government [can] selectively enforce the law, punishing opponents while protecting allies. Tax authorities may be used to target rival politicians, businesses, and media outlets. The police can crack down on opposition protest while tolerating acts of violence by progovernment thugs. Intelligence agencies can be used to spy on critics and dig up material for blackmail. Most often, the capture of the referees is done by quietly firing civil servants and other nonpartisan officials and replacing them with loyalists.

… Once the referees are in tow, elected autocrats can turn to their opponents. Most contemporary autocracies do not wipe out all traces of dissent, as Mussolini did in fascist Italy or Fidel Castro did in communist Cuba. But many make an effort to ensure that key players—anyone capable of really hurting the government—are sidelined, hobbled, or bribed into throwing the game. Key players might include opposition politicians, business leaders who finance the opposition, major media outlets, and in some cases, religious or other cultural figures who enjoy a certain public moral standing …

Players who cannot be bought must be weakened by other means. Whereas old-school dictators often jailed, exiled, or even killed their rivals, contemporary autocrats tend to hide their repression behind a veneer of legality. This is why capturing the referees is so important. …

Governments may also use their control of referees to “legally” sideline the opposition media, often through libel or defamation suits. … As key media outlets are assaulted, others grow wary and begin to practice self-censorship. …

Finally, elected autocrats often try to silence cultural figures—artists, intellectuals, pop stars, athletes—whose popularity or moral standing makes them potential threats. …

The quiet silencing of influential voices—by co-optation or, if necessary, bullying—can have potent consequences for regime opposition. When powerful businesspeople are jailed or ruined economically, as in the case of Khodorkovsky in Russia, other businesspeople conclude that it is wisest to withdraw from politics entirely. And when opposition politicians are arrested or exiled, as in Venezuela, other politicians decide to give up and retire. Many dissenters decide to stay home rather than enter politics, and those who remain active grow demoralized. This is what the government aims for. Once key opposition, media, and business players are bought off or sidelined, the opposition deflates. The government “wins” without necessarily breaking the rules.

Levitsky & Ziblatt 2018, pp. 78-85)

One appropriate response is to raise the price of subservience, as many tried to do when they dropped their Washington Post subscriptions after Jeff Bezos blocked a presidential endorsement. I am not against this strategy, but I do worry that it can inflict collateral damage (in that case, to journalists) and further encourage other organizations to stay out of view.

Thus I believe it’s at least as important to do the opposite: to assist individuals and groups that suffer selective harassment, so that they experience benefits as well as costs. For instance, we should subscribe to targeted publications, donate to nonprofits that are threatened with investigations or the loss of tax-exempt status, and make heroes out of people who are harassed.

Source: Levitsky, S., Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die. Crown. See also why autocrats are winning (right now); building power for resisting authoritarianism; strategizing for civil resistance in defense of democracy