The real struggle is now between Authoritarianism and Democracy

For most of my life, I’ve thought that, despite its reductiveness, Left vs Right is a fundamental axis of difference in human social values, so it makes sense that politics be organized around it. After all, “Left” represents the impulse for collective wellbeing while “Right” represents the impulse for individual advancement. From these two impulses come political differences over the size of the welfare state, the rates of the top and bottom tax brackets, the degree that trade be free or regulated, etc.

However, this is true only under democratic governance, where collective decisions on where to be on this Left-Right axis are made through rational public debate and voting. When a country’s democratic culture is strong, her people will be able to accept each other’s differences as natural and thus can live together peacefully and productively through negotiations and compromises.

Authoritarianism is unfortunately now on the rise in many parts of the world. Authoritarians are not interested in public debate, negotiation, or compromise. For authoritarians, might makes right. This is not to say authoritarians do not have a well-development discourse on why they are morally right. They all do. In fact, they almost always up the ante to claim absolute morality. To think like them is to be absolutely “Good” and the slightest deviation is absolutely “Evil”. There is no grey area. And they always leverage their self-proclaimed moral rectitude to justify their use of power and violence. In their minds, might makes right the norm. Without the use of might, evil will reign.

Authoritarianism has both a Left and a Right variant. China’s Cultural Revolution is Left Authoritarianism. USA’s McCarthy era is Right Authoritarianism. There are even more variants. For example, the Spanish Inquisition is Religious Authoritarianism. Authoritarian movements have some common characteristics. They all have:

1. A well-developed absolutist moral philosophy
2. At least one, frequently several favorite means of violence (be they physical, economic, social, etc.)
3. An obsessive need to sniff out and crucify heretics and canonize saints
4. One, or a cabal of high priests, in whose hands power is concentrated
5. A majority of their adherents do so out of fear or ignorance, baring naturally a small number of real zealots (who are never in power), and a sizable number of opportunists jostling to gain some of that power

Authoritarian states have been very welled studied in political science. They are not my focus here. The examples I gave are not of authoritarian states, but of authoritarian movements that arose within either an authoritarian or a democratic state. China’s Cultural Revolution for example was unleashed by Mao as an extra-governmental mass movement, and counted many local, provincial and even national government leaders among its victims. McCarthy might have wielded some state power from his position as an US senator, but a Senate censure also ended his reign of terror.

A caveat: Shapiro wrote a very bias book on authoritarian movement. I use the same terminology but do not share his belief that there is no right authoritarian movement, only left ones. I believe there are now in the US, authoritarian movements in both left and right, plus religious ones too. Trumpism is a right authoritarian movement. Wokism is a left authoritarian movement. And Dominionism is a religious authoritarian movement.

One crucial difference between authoritarian state and movement is that the authoritarian state have access to much more resources to perpetuate its rule whereas the authoritarian movement tend to have less access to these resources. As a result authoritarian movement tend to be shorter lived. Their leaders tend to lose control and the movement become less coherent over time. Opportunists in the movement compete with the central cabal by stretching the moral philosophy to greater and greater extremes, employ violence with less and less calibration, became sloppy in their declaration of heretics and saints, eventually, they shoot themselves in the foot and turn the masses’ fear into derision, hatred, and resistance.

However, if authoritarian movements manage to capture the state, they then gain access to vast state resources and could eventually morph into an authoritarian state. Trumpism is now fracturing but it had captured a large swarth of the Republican party, and its many opportunists are making their own bids for state and federal positions. It is still an open question whether or not it can again capture the state. Most observers agree that if it succeeds a second time, it will be far more competent and entrenched than the first time.

Similarly, Wokism has captured parts of the Democratic party. However, unlike Trumpism where the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, etc., are clearly the movement’s opportunists gaining power, Wokism’s opportunists do not have that kind of reach, at least not yet. While wokism still need to rely on internet mobs to cancel individuals they deemed heretics; DeSantis can simply leverage state power to cancel “gay”.

Nonetheless, it is very worrying that both major parties have within them authoritarian movements that stand a chance of gaining state power one day. Not to mention a religious one that is closely associated with the Republican party and very close to winning a supreme court victory. If any one of them succeeds in capturing and entrenching themselves into the state, it will likely spell the death of democracy.

Again, this is not to say that America has a great democracy. A well-known Princeton University study characterized it more as an oligarchy. However, at least freedom of thought and speech had been a long cherished tradition, and due process before the law is still the norm. If McCarthyism reigns again, then anyone can be destroyed simply by the whisper of “communist”, or “gay”, or “bigot”, or “libtard”, and we will all be in trouble, regardless of your preference on the Left vs Right axis. Why? Because purges are never really the purging of heretics, they are really the purging of independent thought and potential challenges to the central power. When opportunists mouthing absolute morality wield state power, no honest person is safe.

Some might say, since the Right authoritarian movement is stronger and has already gained some state power, why not support the Left authoritarian movement to fight it? This is like the CIA funding Al-Qaeda to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. US foreign policy is replete with such genius moves. They never end well.

To conclude, more than Left vs Right, the clear and present danger now comes from authoritarian movements. Independent thinkers of both Left and Right stripes need to recognize this common enemy within our own ranks. We need to be alert and not, willy nilly, be taken along for the ride. Otherwise, we will be handing power to our oppressors while helping them braid the whip.