Two takes on the state of the development of authoritarianism in the US – one of them clear and urgent, the other from Barack Obama

Philosopher Jason Stanley, an authority on fascism and a critic of current authoritarian trends in democracies, gives a succinct and clear diagnosis of the current state of the fascist process the Trump 2.0 Administration is currently pursuing. (1)

Stanley is pointing to real threats to democracy and calling clearly for serious efforts to counter them.

Here is a longer discussion that former President Barack Obama held for his Obama Foundation. It’s three times as long as Stanley’s 10-minute interview and has only a fraction of the substance of Stanley’s. (2)

The focus of their discussion there is Hungary and Poland, with activists affiliated with the foundation discussing the situation in those countries in broad language. Just after 11:00, Obama himself has this to say:

Well, see if I'm hearing some of the themes that you're talking about correctly,

The way I describe it is that the liberal democratic market-based order that was dominant post World War II in what was then called the West, and then, subsequently, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, then spread throughout Europe.

A big challenge is that the governments themselves, whether center right or center left, we're losing touch with people and we're delivering on some of the basic hopes and dreams of people. And so you get frustrated with government, period. That obviously then opens the door for right-wing populism, anti-immigrant sentiment, anger, grievances

And so what I'm hearing is that - and you see this a little bit [sic!] in the United States, this promise to go back to the way things were. But you might win an election, but you're not going to win a majority to really move forward, unless you're able to address some of the failures of the old system. Right?

During his first term in office, Obama pushed for a Grand Bargain in which Democrats would make permanent cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republicans agreeing to increases in tax on the wealthiest – increases that Obama knew very well Republicans would reverse at their first opportunity.

He continues:

So that's one big piece of business. 

And the second thing is that how we engage people in this new era with social media and with huge gaps in wealth and the complexities of the modern economy, people feel as if they don't have control and they feel as if their politicians often don't have control over all the different forces there. And we haven't figured out, alright, what are the new forms of participation that can engage people and make them feel empowered so that when they act, it's going to make a difference for them and their families.

And then the last thing, which is the point you made about working local. It's a broader principle, which is how do we rebuild social trust? Because the thing we've learned is social media is very good at making people fearful of or angry about those who don't agree with them. What we haven't figured out is how do we get people to be able to work together despite not agreeing on everything?

Actually, Obama’s remarkably successful 2008 Presidential campaign’s Obama for America organization was based on a community-organizing model directed by Marshall Ganz, a former senior organizer for the United Farm Workers. (He discussed the UFW experience in a 2009 book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Strategy, Leadership, and the California Agricultural Movement.)

His 2008 campaign actually did bring a diverse coalition together to elect the first African-American President. But after being elected, he folded the Obama for America group into the Democratic Party apparatus and abandoned the successful community-organizing mode. He also replaced Howard Dean as Democratic National Committee chair and abandoned Dean’s “t0-state-model” to reinvigorate the state Democratic Party organizations nationwide.

Obama continues:

But when you think of, alright, what would be the vision that you think could excite and engage people? When you think of, here are one or two things that make it difficult for people to have faith and confidence in government and the results of democracy.

And so as a consequence, if we fix one or two of these things, it wouldn't solve all the problems, but it would be a good step forward.

And he talks after 19:20 about his ideas on pushing back on authoritarianism:

You build good habits and you raise people's expectations about what's possible.

And that's the beginning of, then, that contrast creates the possibility at some point of transformation at the national level as well.

Yes, Mr. President, I think we can all agree that it would be a good thing to create “the possibility at some point [sic!] of transformation at the national level.” It was in 2008 that the Democratic Presidential nominee repeatedly invoked "the fierce urgency of now."

He continues, “But you have to break the initial cynicism that ‘everything's the way it is, and there's nothing that we can do about it’.” Kind of like the fierce urgency of now – without the fierceness or the urgency.

One of the panelists, Sándor Léderer, inserts:

And if I may add one, learning, I think from this 15 years of anti-democratic rule [referring presumably to Poland and Hungary], and also I think it applies a bit to what's going on in the US currently, is that politics has much more power than we thought.

So these guys actually exploit politics unfortunately for the worst, but they show that there is much more energy and potential into what a government can achieve if they want to do something. It's unfortunate.

Obama picks up on the point to make what sounds like a vague plug for the milktoast “abundance” agenda that Ezra Klein has been pushing lately, which comes down to bold reformist ideas like, uh, loosening local building codes.

It's an interesting question that I'm grappling with obviously because I'm watching what's happening now. And it goes to the point about not returning to exactly what was being done before, where things were stuck.

Here he’s referring to the political frustration that “things are stuck” under democratic government that contributes to the rise of authoritarianism. In the US, Donald Trump’s coming to power in the election of 2016 came after, well, eight years of Barack Obama’s timidly moderate Presidency.

The challenge we have, right, is that authoritarians can get things done just by breaking things. They hadn't shown themselves to be particularly good at building things. But they can tear things down, remove constraints on their actions, and empower themselves in a small group.

Now, in terms of being able to solve some of the big problems around healthcare or education, there, not so much, because that does require creating new structures. It is not just a matter of getting a cut and taking a piece of whatever is being done and making sure your friends are rewarded and your enemies are punished.

But I do think the insight it speaks to - if we are renewing, reforming, recreating a democracy for the 21st century, that some of the old impediments have to be cleared away. So, in the United States, for example, there will need to be laws that are changed so that action can be taken more effectively, more quickly to respond to problems in a lawful way.

But I think what we've seen is that when people are frustrated, they're willing to take any kind of action, even if it's unlawful, because at least there's a sense of, well, something's happening. And that's something that I think everybody has to internalize at this point.

It’s worth recalling here that Obama’s handpicked successor, Joe Biden, promised wealthy donors that under a Biden Presidency, “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change.” (3)

To be fair to Biden, despite that stone-conservative instinct, he actually got more substantive progressive economic legislation passed than Obama did as President.

Obama is justly famous for his eloquence, although it’s only mildly apparent here. And all politicians try to frame their proposals in a way that different constituencies can understand them as being in line with their preferences. Like here; who’s in favor of preserving “old impediments”? Who’s against changing laws ”so that action can be taken more effectively, more quickly to respond to problems in a lawful way”?

But does that mean that the Democrats should flush the Senate filibuster rule the next time they have a majority instead of allowing a Republican minority to block important programs that will benefit large number of working people and not just billionaire donors?

But does that mean that the Democrats should flush the Senate filibuster rule the next time they have a majority instead of allowing a Republican minority to block important programs that will benefit large number of working people and not just billionaire donors?

Also, what the hell does Obama mean when he says “authoritarians can get things done just by breaking things”? Like what? What have the Trump/Stephen Miller/Gestapo Barbie crowd gotten done by “breaking things” other than, you know, hurting people unnecessarily, ignoring their duty to uphold the rule of law, laying the groundwork for suppressing votes, and staging S&M theater to give cheap thrills to Trump cult members following it all on social media?

The list of sad and/or bitter ironies in Obama’s history of appealing to voters with soaring rhetoric while delivering little of substance is a long one. Obama’s response to the Supreme Court’s reactionary Citizens United decision in 2010 that opened US election campaigns to practically unlimited floods of billionaire cash into election campaigns came during Obama’s first term. And as President, he immediately and rightfully criticized it.

But his only substantive response was to make a half-hearted attempt to pass a legislative fix. Democrats had a clear majority in both the House and the Senate in 2010 when the Court made its Citizens United decision. The effort failed, and the Democratic Party ever since has relegated the issue to a stock item on the e-mail fundraiser lists.

Joe Biden’s and the Democrats’ bill that would have remedied the Supreme Court obliteration of the Voting Rights Act also included remedies against the Citizens United decision. It won a majority in both Houses, but two of the most worthless Democratic Senators ever elected blocked it by upholding the Republican Senate filibuster against it:

The Freedom to Vote: John Lewis Act would address some of this, by ending dark money in elections and requiring full disclosure of campaign spending. It passed the House and had a Senate majority — as did an earlier bill just focused on campaign finance — but was killed by a Republican filibuster, this time aided, as we know all too well, by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). (4)

The filibuster is a Senate rule. It can be abolished completely, or suspended for a single vote, by a majority vote of the Senate. I’ve never believed for a second that Manchin would have voted to kill the Voting Right Bill if Biden had applied any serious pressure on him over it. And Sinema was such a flake that she would never have been the sole vote to block the restoration of the voting rights act if that other nominal Democrats Manchin hadn’t voted to kill it, too.

Obama himself always manages to sound eloquent and concerned. And, like in that Obama Foundation presentation, he tries to ruffle as few feathers as possible. That is, unless he’s scolding Democratic voters and activists for not embracing the most accommodating stance toward the Republicans on a given political issue.

I’m not at all sure that a vague message like the one Obama delivers there, calling for removing “old impediments ,,, so that action can be taken more effectively, more quickly to respond to problems in a lawful way,” is received by almost anyone, certainly not by serious Democratic reform activists, as anything other than a call for passivity and resignation, one that will not generate confidence in the Democrats’ ability to meet the moment.

I would much rather see him warning people that the Republicans want to suppress voting in Democratic precincts in 2026 by using soldiers and masked ICE agents to intimidate voters in old-fashioned Southern-segregation style. And reminding cops and soldiers that they are obligated to disobey illegal orders. Calling for useful reforms like Medicare for All would be a good idea, too. But it’s hard to even imagine Obama the Stalwart Moderate ever endorsing such a thing.

Notes:

(1) ‘A coup is happening’: A new warning against Trump’s authoritarian slide. MSNBC YouTube channel 10/12/2025. <https://youtu.be/mk3Dzq7AptI?si=02HpAoge0fR_BVgu> (Accessed: 2025-12-10).

(2) How to stop authoritarianism across the globe: a conversation with President Obama. Obama Foundation YouTube channel 10/11/2025. <https://youtu.be/gRNaIMR00Fc?si=K1e8Cd--3KZ8PXIG> (Accessed: 2025-12-10).

(3) Joe Biden 2020: 'Nothing Will Fundamentally Change'. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert YouTube channel 06/21/2019. <https://youtu.be/w_q2LBA38NI?si=fzYrsOUUFPuhiP3c> (Accessed: 2025-13-10).

(4) Waldman, Michael (2022): Obama Was Right About Citizens United. Brennan Center 04/12/2022. <https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/obama-was-right-about-citizens-united> (Accessed: 2025-13-10).