Americans think they understand authoritarianism because they’ve studied it, until suddenly, they wake up living inside it.
I know differently because I’ve lived under a dictator. Dictatorships don’t announce themselves; they quietly steal your voice, gradually drain your choices, until freedom is only a memory.
The authoritarian playbook rarely changes. It always starts with elections stripped of meaning. Bashar al-Assad claims absurd victories— 93%, 97%, 99%.
Trump’s America won’t need these numbers; his unwavering 90% loyalty from a committed base already grants him enough power. What’s coming next is voter suppression, bureaucratic sabotage, and manufactured outrage, turning elections into meaningless rituals.
Soon dissent fades — not through midnight arrests but subtle erasures. Algorithms quietly bury voices; media companies silently fire effective critics; economic pressures isolate dissenters.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others aren’t town squares; they’re private, profit-driven platforms, tightly controlled and easily manipulated. Critics who remain are allowed because their words change nothing, but it maintains the illusion of freedom, which sustains control.
Scandals won’t matter. Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, blatant lies, or his open contempt for law. His base sees strength, not corruption. The Democrats, funded by the same donors, pretend to be the opposition while silencing their own boldest voices and feigning outrage.
Republicans quietly consolidate power behind closed doors, using tactics chillingly familiar to anyone who has lived under authoritarianism.
Thirty years ago in Syria, refusing to join the ruling Baath Party placed your name quietly on government watchlists. Back then, surveillance was manual, and informants were neighbors, colleagues, and family.
America today is infinitely more dangerous. Government databases, unified under Musk’s DOGE initiative and analyzed through Palantir’s AI, track every transaction, doctor’s visit, and highway trip — evaluating your risk, your loyalty, instantly.
ICE’s private army of pardoned extremists eagerly waits to disappear those selected by the AI with terrifying ease and impunity.
65% of those detained by ICE have no criminal record, and more than 93% have no violent convictions. Many are citizens or legal residents, stripped of their rights without due process, which is now just a fading memory of a right you used to have in America.
Perhaps you think, “That won’t be me. I’m white, my ancestry dates back to early settlers. I’m safe.”
ICE might never come for you. But disaster will.
In July 2025, catastrophic floods hit Texas. Due to corruption and deliberate neglect, early warning systems failed completely. 135 people drowned, including 37 children.
FEMA rescue teams arrived 72 hours too late, delayed by political apathy.
Money intended for emergency response went instead to private prisons — holding abducted immigrants at $60,225 per person annually.
No one faced accountability.
Your government, funded by your taxes, who you supported through its cruelty to others, abandoned you when you needed it most.
Soon, the government’s loyalty shifts fully from citizens to power. Corporations, serving the regime, will abandon consumer rights completely.
Everything in America will become like the private prisons industry; profiting openly from suffering, thriving without oversight.
Tanks aren’t required to erase you anymore; a government-controlled AI does it with a single keystroke.
Your money, your citizenship, and your rights, all can vanish overnight. Canadian truckers who protested had their bank accounts frozen instantly.
This is happening in America right now.
They are dismantling Democracy piece by piece.
Institutions collapse quietly. Brave voices are swiftly attacked and smeared. Everything is on the table from economic sabotage, humiliation, to isolation.
America is splitting. Privileged blindness leaves police brutality, voter suppression, and collapsing public services as ‘other people’s problems.’ Dictatorships thrive on citizens believing “it won’t happen to me.”
Until it does. Inevitably it always does.
In Syria, most eventually chose silent surrender. We had weapons, intellectual debate, free press, revolutionary history. But when the regime seized absolute power, resistance became impossible. Every act of defiance was met with crushing brutality, every media outlet became propaganda.
America is already dangerously close. Mainstream media bows to corporate greed, the courts grow weaker, and the military is purged of dissenting leaders.
The Department of Defense recently awarded a $200 million contract to Elon Musk’s Grok AI — the same AI that publicly dubbed itself “MechaHitler” just a week earlier.
Other agencies are quickly following suit.
Is it a far fetched thought for Trump to tweet strike orders to military drones in the near future. No generals needed and no Congressional approval. Power moves swiftly, without oversight.
Dictatorships rely on helplessness, apathy, and illusions of normalcy. They’ll placate you with comforts, distractions, and false civility.
Those who suffer most will be silenced first. Without swift, unified resistance, America’s democratic ideals may vanish for generations.
Dictatorships only fall through relentless resistance.
You don’t have much of a choice. It’s either silence or courage, passive acceptance or active defiance.
Your silence grants them permission. Your comfort sustains their power. If you think oppression won’t reach you, you’re wrong. It always does.
Losing rights for one group signals the beginning of the end, the moment when freedom disappears for everyone.
The choice you make today determines tomorrow’s reality. After today, you may never have that choice again.
Speak up. Organize. Protest. Resist.
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Image: AI Generated
Sources:
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