Which is it?
From the outside, it looks a bit like the Administration is torn about whether it wants old school authoritarianism or new.
September 29, 2025
“We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
I’m struck again, in light of recent events, how there seems to be a schism in the administration’s approach to holding power, roughly corresponding to the evolution of authoritarianism from the 20th Century to the 21st.
I have characterized the difference between the New Authoritarianism and the Old as the difference between exerting power through the regulatory state and exerting power through the state monopoly on violence. Brutality is no longer needed to overthrow a democracy.
But that remains a point where the Administration continues to run in two different directions. On the one hand, there is Portland, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has issued an order to federalize 200 National Guard troops, I guess to finally replace the Thompson elk and carry out other beautification projects like in DC.
Memphis is also on the troop deployment agenda; here is one resident’s take:
Nobody cares about Memphis. The entire state hates it and not in a “let’s fix it” way. So the governor just wants to jump on the federal bandwagon and add this to his legacy.
I think Memphis is low hanging fruit. I have a feeling Memphis will be superficial -- secure freight cars, claim victory for the 2+ years of reduced crime, and leave. We are already lowering crime (though not solving the problem) and they can claim that reduction. If it spikes after they leave, they can claim that, too.
At the same time, New Authoritarian efforts to use a compliant Congress to push through a dangerous consolidation of power in the executive branch continue, albeit less dramatically, at a furious pace. Dissent in Bloom had a good piece over the weekend about bills that would fundamentally change the State Department, and its relation to Congress and the Republic.
More comprehensively, the New York Times has a piece about Russell Vought and his efforts to inject steroids into the Executive Branch:
Mr. Vought has at last begun to put his plans into action — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration. His efforts are helping Mr. Trump exert authority more aggressively than any modern president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system.
Vought was a primary author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which was informed by input from the Hungarian Danube Institute, and which bears a notable resemblance to the New Authoritarian strategies epitomized by the rise of Viktor Orbán.
To me, the old-schoolish military threats seem performative, not terribly serious most of the time (though I am seeing how very wrong that might be). Except when I am really worried, I tend to vacillate between thinking they are a distraction from the real work of compromising democracy and a way of placating the President’s ego, enthralled as he is with creating a “strongman” image.
But there is another arena in which the tension between old and new is playing out, and that is in the treatment of dissent.
Rory Truex at the Civic Forum writes about “disguised repression”:
When the modern autocrat wants to silence a political opponent or dissident, they rarely just detain them outright for their speech or send in the thugs to intimidate them. This “blatant repression” is direct and too costly. It reveals the authoritarian nature of the regime and may even engender a backlash, if the wrong person is repressed.
More common is the use of “disguised repression,” where political enemies are taken down on non-political crimes. This might include things like tax evasion, financial fraud, corruption, or even sexual crimes like harassment or soliciting prostitution. The Chinese government does this approach all the time— see the cases of regime critics Ren Zhiqiang, Xue Manzi, Xu Zhangrun, Ai Weiwei, Dong Rubin, Di Xiaonan— to name a few. Alexei Navalny in Russia received similar treatment in Russia.
The “disguised repression” approach has two core benefits for the regime. First, it provides the autocrat the air of plausible deniability; they are not overtly arresting someone for their speech, but for something else. This makes the regime appear less repressive than it actually is, which is something most modern autocrats seem to strive for.
Second, and probably more importantly, the non-political crime serves to debase the accused person in society. The accusations and arrest, even if they don’t stick, raise doubts about the person’s character and make them less sympathetic. This reduces the likelihood that others will mobilize on their behalf.
The Comey prosecution is a textbook case of this, and might suggest the New Authoritarian faction at work, using the wires of the regulatory state to entrap and enmesh their enemies. But there also is no clear way, under the law, to go after political enemies through undisguised repression. And prior to an effective consolidation of power, even the Old Authoritarians must opt for cunning over brutality.
If the Comey indictment is a case of disguised repression to tamp down the appearance of autocratic intent, the torture memo suggests they will go straight for persecuting Americans for their political beliefs. Ken Klippenstein wrote a thorough analysis of this National Security Directive, including this:
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:
anti-Americanism,
anti-capitalism,
anti-Christianity,
support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
extremism on migration,
extremism on race,
extremism on gender
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
We don’t need Bob from Sesame Street to clarify that one of these things is not like the others. “Support for the overthrow of the United States Government” is the only indicia of violence here.
I suggested yesterday that the aim of the memo directing federal agencies to address domestic terrorism is less about securing prosecutions that break up terrorist networks than about creating mechanisms to harass and disrupt First Amendment-protected, everyday civil society activities. This list further suggests that targets will be identified based on political viewpoint, something difficult to defend in court. But Hoover’s Cointelpro project to disrupt activism and persecute its leaders operated for fifteen years without ever hearing the sound of a gavel.
We’re still in an early phase of the consolidation of power, when Old and New Authoritarians alike would need to be cagey about their intent. But the fact that there are obvious, surface manifestations of the menace that autocrats used to employ to maintain their grip on society is troubling either way. It could be that the aim is to give Trump the epaulets and general’s cap that he seems to crave, bringing us an older, more brutal form of dictatorship, an effort that would likely fail, but not in an easy or painless way. Or it may be that the menacing posture is just frightening enough and just enough of a distraction that Russel Vought pulls off a Hungarization of the American political system, leaving us with a country where we are relatively free, within limits, but no longer self-governing.
We have a Republic now, but as in Paul Revere’s Boston, we need to keep an eye on both sides if we want to keep it.