A Deadly Cycle: The Authoritarian In Crisis

What you first have to understand is that Donald Trump is an authoritarian.

Not by choice, but by instinct and personal nature.

When Donald Trump wakes up in the morning he doesn’t make a choice to be an authoritarian, he is one by the very act of breathing and living. Being raised with immense personal privilege and completely shuttered off from any consequences, both by the law and in the world of economics, his entitlement has grown more than nearly any American in history and has mutated into a delusion so great he has lost the ability to tell the difference between reality and his own lies.

What you must next understand is that that delusion is a fragile structure and is constantly on the verge of collapse. Authoritarians are both frighteningly self-assured and simultaneously deadly insecure. Trump’s natural instinct, as an authoritarian, is to react to any broach of his delusion or proof of his incompetence with angry outbursts, violence, and relentless denial.

In a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s condition is a nightmare scenario. Authoritarians, because of their insecurity and constant need to be worshiped by sycophants, are incapable of creating meaningful and operative organizations. An actual task force or alliance to address something like the coronavirus would need a group of individuals capable of telling Trump the hard truth about the virus but, especially, as to his own personal failures. This cannot happen for Donald Trump or any authoritarian. This is why they hate experts. Experts deal in hidden knowledge the authoritarian simply doesn’t have, even if the expert is trying to impart that knowledge.

The need for an expert, any expert, reveals the authoritarian doesn’t possess ALL knowledge, and that is unacceptable.

Instead, authoritarians like Trump surround themselves with sycophants and yes-men. In the corporate world, this is why Trump failed. Why he declared multiple bankruptcies. Why he is surrounded only by his own family and criminal elements. They are the only ones willing to continually feed Trump’s ego and obsessive need to be right.

Needless to say, these things don’t add up to a successful defense against anything, in particular a virus. A pandemic demands scientific and organizational expertise, all of the things that Trump is inherently incapable of doing and will always, always, always sabotage because of his deep insecurity.

And now, here we are.

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Something odd is happening on Fox News.

Just a week ago Fox News was calling the coronavirus threat a “hoax,” a Democratic scheme, something Americans shouldn’t worry about or else they’d let “them” win.

Now, Fox News is taking it deadly serious.

The pivot arrives with Trump’s new means of addressing the issue as something that could take months and lead to widespread death. The change was necessitated because there’s simply no denying the scale or danger anymore.

In this authoritarian cycle, authoritarian inevitably cause disasters. They ruin the economy. They start border crises. Wars. Immigrant crises. Problems that could have been avoided by anybody but an authoritarian. By their very nature, authoritarians are tirelessly incompetent and begin so many problems that eventually they have no choice but to admit the problem exists and find somebody to blame.

Of course, Trump took his cues from Fox News in the 00’s in regard to this tactic, but only because the two were simpatico with their gut instinct to blame society’s ills on immigrants and people of color. Instead of actually the problems of Republican created inequality or corporate America’s cruel structure, Fox News and Republicans told middle America’s population, the population they had actively harmed, that the real threat came from the border and the inner cities.

Along with this acceptance that the pandemic is dangerous, Trump and Fox News have now agreed on a messaging strategy.

This fits snugly in the authoritarian cycle as authoritarians, in the midst of a crisis of their own making, always shift the blame for their wrongs and failures to another group. In this case, China is the current target. This plays along with Senator Tom Cotton’s continued allegation that coronavirus is a biological weapon intentionally loosed on the world. This fits within the New World Order/Deep State conspiracy theory reasoning and would be at home on Alex Jones’ Info Wars broadcast, and this is because the Right has long tested the public’s acceptance of these conspiracy theories on the margins and on Jones’ shows.

The China/Wuhan conspiracy does a lot of work for Republicans. It shifts blame away from their malfeasance, organizes national fervor and anger, and turns a domestic emergency into footing of war. It also, in a post-pandemic environment, frees the Republicans, Trump, and Fox News to create a war-like setting with what is sure to be a competitor in the reviving economy.

It will not end here. There’s a possibility this conspiracy theory will sate the Right, but as more people die the authoritarian in Trump will make him blame everyone. Those underneath him. Democratic leaders. “Traitors” in the country. Immigrants. People of color. Authoritarians lay blame until there’s no one to blame on besides themselves.

Trump’s blame will blanket the world like a pandemic all of its own.

And if that isn’t upsetting enough, the authoritarian reacts to failures not just by blaming, but by destroying democratic institutions around him. He could deal with all of this, every bit of it, if only the government weren’t in his way. And so he destroys it. Every possible check and balance. He’ll cancel elections. He’ll suspend constitutional rights. He’ll use every possible measure of power to deflect blame for his own mistakes.

Another truth: authoritarians, once in power, once granted emergency powers, once granted power beyond the grasp of institutions, do not relinquish that power willingly.

Remember that in the next few terrifying days.

Jared Yates Sexton is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, Newsweek, and elsewhere. His new book American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People is available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. He is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast and currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University.