The US will not rise up against an authoritarian leader

Great Debates
1

In P&E, there’s a thread about how the GOP could engineer staying in power in the House even if they should lose a majority based on the actual vote. At least two posters claimed that, if that were to happen, the people would rise up or the states would secede.

I say that will not happen. The USA today is very well off, most people have enough to eat, have a place to live, etc. There isn’t mass unemployment, and there’s not a surplus of idle men. Countries in much worse shape than the US (for example, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, to mention recent examples) slid into authoritarianism without breaking up, no civil war, no violent uprising.

Right here in the US, during the Jim Crow era, many southern states became authoritarian towards Black people and that lasted for decades with few or no violent uprisings, and no northern states seceding.

Here’s a list of countries that are currently experiencing democratic backsliding, without violent uprisings, secessions, or civil wars:

The US is on the list. Most or all of the other countries are far poorer, with more unemployment, etc., than the US has.

All that ignores the fact that 40% of the US would encourage and support a right-wing authoritarian takeover. I would gather than at least 20-30% more would be “meh” about it.

I’ve been incandescent about what has happened in the US since 2025, but what have I done about it? I’ve marched in a No Kings protest. Wow. In the meantime, the US government is already attacking media outlets that report on things it doesn’t like, it is already rounding people up into detention camps and harming or killing people who protest those actions.

We’re only a little step away from where Turkey is, and we’re shambling along, the market is up, bond yields aren’t spiraling, the dollar is pretty much fine.

Anyway, that’s my position – fat, dumb, and happy countries like the US is today are simply not going to risk it all because an authoritarian government takes over.

ETA: I’m back to add that I welcome historical parallels that support or dispute my position. I know this is all a hypothetical, so this will involve a lot of “yes it will” “no it won’t”, so maybe some of you who know more about history can set me straight.

2

I agree, but I’ll add one other point. A persistent trope in American gun culture is that one of the virtues of citizens being armed to the teeth is that they can “rise up against tyranny”. This is a myth that originated from the time of the Revolutionary War. Anybody who thinks they can defeat the US military today with their pop-guns is seriously deluded.

It wouldn’t matter if 95% of the population was adamantly opposed to an authoritarian regime. Beyond causing some damage and chaos, there’s not a damn thing they could do about it. That’s why the bulwarks of democracy that Trump is so busily dismantling are so critically important, not the illusory power of rifles and handguns.

3

And, I’ll add to your point that, even if they were useful, the majority of the hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of Americans belongs to people who would welcome a right-wing authoritarian government.

4

I agree because of what I’ve seen Trump get away with throughout his 2 terms, the highlight being how he not only got away with outright sedition in 2020, but was actually re-elected in 2024 despite it all.

5

Today. And the reason for that is that we have a stable government that’s stood the test of time and operates on the rule of law, which permits economic stability and few obstacles to trade. For the government to abruptly throw democracy out the window and declare that it will now rule by decree pulls the rug out from under that whole system. Businesses fail. The stock market plummet. Bank runs happen. Commerce becomes snarled by mass protests, former allies cutting off trade, and resource shortages. Suddenly, practically overnight, you’ve got millions of unemployed, broke, hungry people pissed at the government.

Except that all of those countries HAVE risen up against authoritarian leaders. The Russians threw off the czar, and then 70 years later the Soviet Union collapsed because an authoritarian coup lead to mass protests and secession. Hungary literally just defeated an authoritarian regime at the ballot box. Turkey (which itself exists because the people rose up against the sultanate) has had multiple authoritarian regimes overthrown since then. The fact that the most recent uprising failed is an outlier.

You mean the literal largest protest in American history?

Meanwhile, while you’re writing that off, people have ALREADY been actively resisting the administration’s overreach. ICE fled Minneapolis with its tail between its legs and their goons have to hide their faces because they know their reputations will be ruined if their friends and family know what they’re doing. Trump can’t show his face at a basketball game without being booed relentlessly. People aren’t taking this laying down and there’s no reason to think they’d just give up if the Republicans imposed a dictatorship.

The latest polls put support for Trump in the low thirties. Those aren’t good numbers for an aspiring dictator.

Let’s look at another such country - Korea. When the president suspended parliament and declared martial law in 2024, the people didn’t go on playing video games and ordering takeout. They took to the streets by the thousands in the middle of the night. They broke through police barricades. Legislators scaled walls to call an emergency session at 4 AM. Within hours, the decree had been lifted and the president removed from office and he’s now doing a life sentence.

Americans fundamentally do not like being told what to do and they are especially fond of the idea that the government works for them and not vice versa.Take that away from them and things get ugly. Six years ago we nearly had a civil war because people weren’t allowed to go to Applebee’s for a few months and riots were breaking out nationwide because other people were tired of the police going too far. An angry mob tried to storm the Capitol and kill members of Congress merely because they THOUGHT their vote had been taken away from them. ACTUALLY taking it from them? The country is closer to tearing itself apart than it’s been since the 1860s, and that would be the spark that sets it off.

6

I agree that after several decades of authoritarian rule, it might be overthrown. You were claiming in the other thread that it would be minutes, but let’s say that was hyperbole.

This wouldn’t take weeks or months to happen, it would take years. Trump is already doing this with his on-again, off-again tariffs, ruling international trade by decree, tearing up agreements that were years in the making, that lasted for decades. Sure, after several years or decades of authoritarian rule, the US might be where tsarist or Soviet Russia was after decades.

The examples you gave were years in the making, other than SK. But, in that case, it was parliament that saved things, not protests, and certainly not violent protests and civil war. In this country, our version of parliament is on the side of the authoritarian. The whole pretext of the other thread was that the House does something to prevent the newly elected Dems from being seated.

You’re making my case for me.

7

The market reaction to the end of American democracy would make 1929 look like a minor correction. Especially once the bank runs start.

The protests were what made it possible for parliament to act.

When people thought that Congress was doing something to prevent the winner of the 2020 election from being reelected, they stormed the Capitol and nearly pulled off a coup. Do you think the left is incapable of the same kind of spontaneous action as the right?

8

I would be interested to see some supporting evidence for this position. So far it’s just an assertion, which you make as if it is blazingly obviously true.

Observing current conditions, businesses are doing fine, the stock market is breaking records, in spite of inflation and rising unemployment. Businesses seem to have no problem with at least some authoritarianism as long as it isn’t directed against them – and they don’t get what they want through democracy, these days they usually get it by subverting democracy and buying influence.

If you are expecting authoritarian takeover to look like an emperor riding a white horse, that’s not the way it will look. It will just be more shabby politicians telling the same kind of blatant lies they are telling now, just without anyone allowed to show up the lies in public.

I don’t especially agree with the OP that there will be no effective reaction, but I think your view of things is even less likely.

9

Since I’m one of the people you seem to refer to here I will respond. What I said is

I will stand by that statement. I don’t see how states could successfully secede but I don’t see CA, IL, NY or any other Blue states just sitting by if DJT and cronies decide to refuse House seats to Democrats who won their races.

There is a very active demographic of progressives and other activists who will undoubtedly be in the streets if the GOP-MAGA party tries this. There would be huge protests in Blue states and I doubt DJT would sit by and not take action. It would only take a few people being injured or killed at the hands of the Trump thugs for things to get out of hand quickly.

There have been several situations in history where authoritarian governments reacted with violence to street protests and had the normally complacent public turn on them with a fury. The reaction to the ICE murders in Minnesota are a recent one in this country. Violent suppression of protesters in half the country would provoke a reaction bigger than you think.

Also, most of the fat, dumb and happy folks I see these days are MAGA fools who largely live in Red states. In Blue states and cities I’m seeing angry, energized young people.

10

Right-wing social media was calling for 1/6 long before the event. How else could people have come across country to join in? It was about as “spontaneous” as gravity.

Arguments that no action would be taken int he event of a coup are mostly spurious. That armed insurrectionists wouldn’t gather in the streets is no doubt accurate but also irrelevant. The 1/6 mob technically were not “armed” in the sense that they merely carried other weapons than guns because area around Trump’s speech was ironically a gun-free zone. That does not imply that other means of mass protests - rallies, strikes, boycotts, road blocks - using physical bodies wouldn’t be immediate. Or that social media wouldn’t be flooded with calls for action of various types.

Nor does the argument that states won’t secede - which they won’t - carry any more weight. By definition, this coup would only be necessary if the House lost its majority. (Not by losing the popular vote - that’s only in Presidential elections, but by getting fewer members elected.) That gives incentive to virtually every state, since all but a few elect no Democrats. States have power and the bluer states - which include many of the wealthiest in the country - will strike back in other ways.

Speaking of wealth, even tech billionaires do not want a Republican coup. Trillions of dollars would be put at risk: the stock market would plummet, the bond market would go crazy, the value of the dollar would fall, world trade would be disrupted. Every thing that is possible to hurt the value of money would explode into fragments like shrapnel.

Joe Morrelle, who was the Representative who started talking about this scenario, is my congressman. I hadn’t thought him an idiot before, so maybe he’s saying this idiocy in public just to put the bigger idiots inside the right on notice that they shouldn’t go a step beyond their masturbatory fantasies. Because that’s all this is.

11

As Expano says below this post;

The reason the economy is doing well is because, despite Trump acting arbitrarily at times, we still have a stable government with rule of law and functioning courts that can compel the government to follow those laws. Replace that with a system where all power is now vested in the whims of a single, mentally degrading old man, and you destroy the guarantee that corporations can rely on the law to have their back, international businesses see no reason to risk doing business here, and the value of the dollar crashes. Nobody wants to risk doing business in a country where the dictator can seize all your assets anytime they want.

12

I wouldn’t say Morelle is even close to being an idiot. And I would agree part of his talking about this could well be to let the President and his MAGAts know this is not a viable option. But it is one that could create a lot of chaos and I am grateful Morelle is on top of it.

13

The protest was organized. Actually storming the Capitol was spontaneous. The point is, it’s absurd to think that the left wouldn’t respond to an actual antidemocratic takeover with the same fervor the right did for an imaginary one.

14

This is the sort of things Americans may do. It the election margin is high enough, terrible dictators sometimes do give up. Indira Gandhi, after the India Emergency, is a favorite example of mine.

This is a good example for you.

There must be some point where Americans would get there. I just do not think we are at all close. Stealing control of the House of Representatives is inside baseball to median voters. Now, clearly and unambiguously stealing a presidential election – then we might go full Korean.

15

I disagree. It’s crossing the Rubicon. It would be a fundamental abrogation of the core principle that this country is founded on - that it is a Union of co-sovereign partners governed by representatives chosen by the people thereof and deriving its authority from the consent of the governed. To declare that no, you don’t get to pick your representatives, we decide who represents you, is to declare that the states are subjects and not partners, that authority is imposed from above instead of conceded by the people, and that the only sovereignty the states have is that which the central regime permits to them. It’d essentially be a declaration that the United States of America no longer exists, the Constitution is null and void, and you have no rights unless the regime grants them to you.

There’s no going back from that. It would break the country like the 1991 coup broke the Soviet Union.

16

The Velvet Revolution in (then) Czechoslovakia and the People Power Revolution that overthrew Marcos in the Philippines are examples of protest movements that started peacefully but once the authoritarian governments killed non-violent protesters things went south in a big way for the authoritarians.

The events and reactions to the killings this year during the authoritarian ICE raids make me confident people in Blue states will be much less likely to sit at home being fat, happy and dumb if election results are rejected.

17

And the Syrian Civil War, although that one took a long time for things to go south for the authoritarians, and it’s still not all that great there.

18

I fully agree with @Smapti so take my comment below as a platform for my disagreement with the posters saying the people will do nothing, because they’ve never done anything before.

Korea and, in fact, the majority of other countries in the world are societally different in that the center of government, population, media, and business are all one city. Capturing the government and media and either fighting off or subverting their police meant taking control of the country.

America is more like China and India in that the various centers are dispersed. There is no heart to attack, not even a soft underbelly. Modi has used this fact for years to beat back any opposition. The recent Cockroach Movement mobilizing social media for country-wide protests, even in his equivalent of red states, is rattling him badly. Whether Modi will accede to their demands or just resort to violence will be critical to watch.

A 2026 coup attempt will produce at least a reaction of this size. Social media will help spread it nationwide. Plus, the power of individual states is far greater than subdivisions almost anywhere else. It would not be hapless individuals being put put down outside the Capitol but states with GDPs as large as most other whole countries taking a stand against an illegitimate government. “Fight like hell” indeed.

19

My view as a Canadian living permanently in Australia would be that individual states may take a stand ( California notably ).

California’s economy ranks as the fourth-largest in the world with a GDP of approximately $4.3 trillion, surpassing the entire country of Japan. If it were an independent nation, California trails only the United States as a whole, China, and Germany

Rather than a citizen movement ala eastern Europe and others. US states have a lot of power both physical and economic. If New York and few other big progressive states joined in…it could dwarf the US right wing economy.

I don’t see a popular uprising tho. FWIW

20

I agree with the OP. In the past decade, I’ve heard countless breezy aw-shucks claims of, “Oh, if it came to that, Americans will rise up and revolt.” And nope, aside from meaningless No Kings protests, nothing has happened, and there’s no reason there would be an uprising if things worsened as long as they didn’t get too bad.

I’d point out also that this failure to resist would go the other way, too. I’ve heard so many right-wing gun owners claim, “If a liberal government comes to snatch our guns, it means revolution, or that the agents who come to my door to confiscate the guns get shot!”…Yeah, no. If the ATF really did show up going door to door taking their guns away, nearly all of those right-wingers are just going to meekly give in while protesting feebly.