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hannah arendt
The No Kings Protests Proved That Seeing and Naming the Problem Is Not Enough
What do we do when 7 million people can see clearly and it changes nothing? When recognition is no longer power but only knowledge of the condition we are trapped inside?
Oct 20, 2025
In March 2023, anticipating his indictment, Donald Trump stood before a Conservative Political Action Conference audience and delivered what seemed like two speeches at once. "I am your warrior, I am your justice," he declared. "And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution." The crowd roared. But in the same breath, he pivoted to grievance: The radical Left was "indicting me in a disgusting witch hunt." Within minutes, he had performed both triumph and victimhood, the strongman and the martyr. His supporters saw no contradiction. His poll numbers surged.
By October 2025, over 7 million Americans took to the streets in the largest protests in the nation's history. The "No Kings" demonstrations erupted in every major city and hundreds of smaller towns, a collective outcry against government overreach and authoritarian drift. Millions saw the danger clearly enough to leave their homes and march. They named it. They refused it. They made it visible.
Trump's response deployed the same contradictory logic. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called it a "hate America rally" funded by George Soros and the Communist Party. Fox News warned of "Antifa terrorists descending on American cities." Yet when protests remained peaceful, those same outlets pivoted within hours. The demonstrators were "pathetically small," just "crybabies." A White House spokesperson's official response: "Who cares? Cry more, libs." The protesters were both too weak to matter and too dangerous to ignore, often in the same sentence.
What happened next revealed something darker than hypocrisy. Seven million people saw clearly, organized, and marched. And they discovered that seeing changes nothing when power no longer requires coherence. The contradiction is not a flaw. It is the performance itself.
We are not living in a failure of awareness. We are living in the space after awareness, in the gap between recognition and power, and that gap is where the system has learned to thrive.
How he got there reveals the pattern. Two years before those protests, Trump had been trailing badly. Two-thirds of voters said he should not run again. Primary challengers drew real support. His legal troubles should have finished him. But the contradiction that should have destroyed him became the engine that restored him. The party was remade not despite the oscillation between victim and victor, but because of it.
Hannah Arendt saw this coming decades ago. Writing in 1951 after fleeing Nazi Germany, she observed that "the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true." Totalitarian propaganda discovered that its audience no longer demanded consistency. When confronted with proof of falsehood, people would not abandon their leaders. They would take refuge in cynicism and admire the leaders for their "superior tactical cleverness."
Trump embodies this contradiction instinctively, moving between narcissistic wound (he is persecuted, silenced) and narcissistic grandiosity (he is unstoppable, the sole force capable of restoration). But figures like Stephen Miller have systematized what Trump performs on instinct. Miller's invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act shows how emotional oscillation becomes policy. The law, designed for wartime, was reframed as defensive necessity: a persecuted administration forced to use emergency powers because "radical judges" tied their hands. Victimhood becomes justification. Dominance becomes outcome.
The mechanism works because it offers psychological completion. Most political movements offer either victimhood or triumph. Grievance movements mobilize through persecution but risk feeling powerless. Triumphalist movements mobilize through strength but alienate those who feel left behind. This offers both simultaneously. Followers never have to choose between feeling wronged and feeling victorious. They get the emotional satisfaction of grievance and dominance at once. Umberto Eco observed that in fascist ideology, "The enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak." The contradiction structures belief itself.
In September 2025, that belief became policy, enacted on bodies in the middle of the night.
Residents of a Chicago apartment building were woken by helicopters overhead. Hundreds of armed federal agents swarmed the building, some rappelling from Black Hawks. They kicked down doors, deployed flash-bang grenades, overturned mattresses. By dawn, dozens of Venezuelan nationals had been detained. But American citizens were swept up too. Residents were forced from apartments at gunpoint, zip-tied, marched outside in whatever clothes they had been sleeping in. Families were separated. One witness described an agent forcibly removing an infant from its mother's arms.
Chicago's mayor protested: "This was a show of authoritarianism, a forceful display of tyranny." But the images had done their work. They circulated on Fox as proof of law and order restored. Yet even as children were separated from parents and citizens detained without cause, Trump's social media performed pure victimhood. He posted about persecution by Democratic mayors and radical judges. The contradiction traveled through separate channels, reaching separate audiences, never forced into the same frame. Fox broadcast strength. MSNBC covered constitutional violations. Truth Social performed grievance while Homeland Security performed dominance. Both worked.
The same logic framed the No Kings protests. Before they began, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declared the peaceful demonstrations would be "part of Antifa." When millions showed up and remained peaceful, the narrative pivoted instantly. Newsmax dubbed it, "No Kings, Just Crybabies." But the framing went beyond weakness. It extended into psychiatric territory. Commentators called protesters "deranged," "unwell," "delusional." The language recycled an old tactic: Discredit protest by diagnosing the protester. In the 1960s, diagnoses of schizophrenia spiked among Black civil rights activists. The DSM was revised to include "hostility" and "aggression" as symptoms. Men demanding rights were labeled schizophrenic. In 2025, Minnesota legislators introduced a bill classifying "Trump Derangement Syndrome" as a formal psychiatric condition. It did not pass. It did not need to.
The paradox persists because it never occupies a single frame. Media fragmentation ensures different audiences encounter different versions of reality. Fox broadcasts the strongman: Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, military flights, executive orders. Mainstream outlets emphasize grievance: persecution narratives, legal battles, claims of being silenced. Algorithmic systems ensure most people encounter only one version. The contradiction never gets forced into the same space where it would have to be reconciled.
Social media algorithms reward emotional extremes. A message declaring, "We are wronged" enrages opponents, who boost its visibility by arguing. The same message proclaiming, "We will prevail" energizes supporters who share it widely. A single post can simultaneously trend on Truth Social as evidence of persecution and on Twitter as evidence of dominance, the two narratives never intersecting. The administration posts images of people in chains, then hours later claims of censorship. Both spread efficiently. Both accomplish their purpose.
This creates exhaustion that functions as a weapon. Every news alert feels like whiplash. He is persecuted. No, he is ordering deportations. He is under attack. No, he is deploying troops. Courts rig the system against him. No, he appoints the judges. The exhaustion hardens into cynicism: "Both sides lie." "It's all performance." "I'm checking out." When the exhausted middle withdraws, they stop bearing witness. When people stop expecting coherence, accountability disappears.
Arendt wrote that totalitarian movements thrive when people believe nothing. Followers "do not particularly object to being deceived because they hold every statement to be a lie anyhow." The lie is not a problem. Its exposure creates no crisis. What matters is emotional alignment, belonging, shared enemies. The leader who can be both victim and victor is winning on multiple levels simultaneously.
When power no longer requires coherence, accountability becomes impossible. How do you hold someone responsible for contradictions when supporters admire them as tactical brilliance? The administration passed a reconciliation bill allocating $170 billion for immigration enforcement through standard procedure. Democratic forms persist. Democratic substance drains away. This is not a coup. It is a hollowing.
Dissent faces a trap with no exit. When protesters wept at family separations, they were mocked as "liberal tears." When activists cited asylum law and statistics, they were dismissed as coastal elites. When silent, they were accused of complicity. When marching, they were cast as mobs. Every response is pre-discredited. Emotion is hysteria. Reason is elitism. Silence is complicity. Action is extremism.
The asymmetry reveals where power lives. When the Tea Party filled town halls with rage in 2009, their anger was received as patriotic conviction. When college students mourned the 2016 election, "liberal tears" became memes within days. Conservative anger is always righteous. Liberal grief is always weakness. Power decides whose feelings count and whose pain gets laughed off stage.
Seven million Americans marched in October 2025 believing that visibility would matter, that naming the threat clearly would create accountability. They understood exactly what was happening. The problem was that understanding provides no protection when power has learned to function without requiring coherence.
The No Kings protests represented the largest collective act of recognition in American history. Millions simultaneously saw the danger, named it accurately, organized around shared perception, and took to the streets. And they discovered that recognition without power is the new condition. The system continues not because it has convinced them, but because it operates in the space between recognition and action, in the gap between seeing and being able to stop what you see. The administration does not need to hide. It does not need to persuade people that contradictions make sense. It only needs to ensure that recognition alone cannot interrupt the machinery.
This is what the protests proved. Not that Americans are unaware or complicit. Millions are paying attention. They see what is happening. They name it correctly. They refuse it loudly. Yet the system continues. We are not living in a failure of awareness. We are living in the space after awareness, in the gap between recognition and power, and that gap is where the system has learned to thrive.
The strongman's paradox is not really a paradox. It is the logic of authoritarian power when truth has become optional, when coherence is no longer required, when contradiction works better than consistency ever did. To see with clarity that coherence no longer governs, that the contradiction is the point, that demanding truth from power is the wrong question—this is not despair. It is the beginning of sight.
Then we face the harder question. What do we do when 7 million people can see clearly and it changes nothing? When recognition is no longer power but only knowledge of the condition we are trapped inside? The protests made one thing certain: We are living in the gap between recognition and power. The question is not whether we see. The question is what we build in the space where seeing is not enough.
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Are We on the Road to a Totalitarian US?
In important ways the Trump brand of authoritarianism contains hallmarks of totalitarianism in seeking to ensure that there is only one permissible way to think.
Oct 07, 2025
Americans of a certain age are well acquainted with the idea of totalitarianism—a regime or form of government that exercises total control over all aspects of life in society. We were bombarded with warnings about the totalitarian Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. George Orwell’s 1984 showed us a world where people could never escape the all-seeing eye of “Big Brother.” If they acted in any way the Party considered suspicious or subversive, they would be brainwashed or vaporized.
The United States was widely assumed to be the counterweight to these totalitarian systems, given the principles of liberalism—government limited by the individual rights of people with protections against the arbitrary exercise of power—that legitimized our constitutional system of government. Yet, Orwell himself was critical of Western groupthink during the Cold War, and the US had launched the long era of post-WWII imperialism and consumer-driven capitalism.
We are currently living under an authoritarian regime. At the national level, we live in a one-party state. Each of the three branches of government are controlled by the Republican party–checks and balances are meaningless or ignored. The president rules by his self-serving personal whim. He has assembled an administration of misfits and incompetents who will never challenge his views in public. Donald Trump's rule is by definition arbitrary rule. Rather than giving sound reasoning and evidence to support his claims, he just makes stuff up. He got where he is by ridiculing and attacking others, particularly those who are vulnerable.
Back in 1951, as the Cold War cast a huge shadow over American life and the Red Scare was taking off, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism, focusing on Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Here are three brief quotations from Arendt:
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
I ask you, do these words remind you of anything going on under the Trump administration?
Authoritarianism relies on keeping the people isolated, divided, and fearful—which underscores the importance of communities coming together, protecting valued institutions, and raising our voices effectively. Yet in important ways the Trump brand of authoritarianism contains hallmarks of totalitarianism in seeking to ensure that there is only one permissible way to think.
Thus the intimidating attacks on universities, seeking to rewrite their curricula and admissions policies to conform to the administration’s “values.” Thus, too, the intimidation of corporations, especially the mass media, including efforts by Trump henchmen to take ownership of CBS and CNN. Also efforts to ostracize, if not imprison, critics of Israel—to say nothing of critics of Trump himself. Thus, too, the Department of Government Efficiency's effort to access individuals’ social security data and the Republicans’ quest for voting data. And of course, corporations have for years been gathering data on gullible consumers. Even our phones can be used to spy on our thoughts and conversations.
After spewing outrageous claim after outrageous claim before the United Nations General Assembly (not to mention the military brass), Trump declared, “You [the other nations of the world] are going to hell.”
The reality is the United States under Trump totalitarianism is going to hell. Policies his administration has imposed will inevitably lead to a rapid decline of the quality of life in the United States and elsewhere around the globe. The short-sighted stupidity of boosting fossil fuels and eliminating renewable energy as much as possible, and of slashing funding for scientific and medical research—these will result in untold numbers of people needlessly dying from illnesses, epidemics, or increasingly horrific environmental disasters.
And of course, there are the special targets of the Trump agenda. Not only does his administration make clear their intention of making life miserable for anyone who is economically or socially vulnerable in this country, the Republicans are actively cutting them off from voting. Arendt refers to these targets of totalitarianism as “superfluous people.”
In the end it’s up to us, the American people, to come together around a vision of a humane, fully democratic society, and rise up in determined opposition to these forces who so perilously threaten our world.
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The Real-Time Demise of American Democracy Under Trump
Our democracy is no longer guaranteed—from Wall Street to the White House, power is slipping into the hands of a few oligarchs at the expense of working people and ordinary families.
Oct 06, 2025
For generations, Americans have been taught that the United States is the world’s beacon of democracy. Politicians across the spectrum speak of the nation as a “shining city on a hill,” a place where freedom and the rule of law set the standard for the rest of the world. But the truth is harder to swallow: the U.S. is drifting away from liberal democracy and toward authoritarianism.
A survey of more than 700 political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch in 2020 found that the vast majority believe the U.S. is rapidly moving toward some form of authoritarian rule. Scholars rated American democracy on a scale from zero (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy). After Donald Trump’s first election in November 2016, they gave it a 67. Several weeks into his second term, the score had plunged to 55. Elections, rights, and freedoms are under attack—and America is running out of time to save its democracy. The experts’ warnings are not abstract; they reflect a country where voter suppression, gerrymandering, corporate influence, a compliant Supreme Court, and executive overreach are eroding the foundations of democratic governance. When citizens are uninformed—or choose not to vote—the systems of power tilt toward elites, making it easier for authoritarian forces to consolidate control. Authoritarian forces also thrive on fear—fear of immigrants, political opponents, or anyone deemed an outsider—turning Americans against one another and eroding the inclusive ideals that once defined the nation as a melting pot.
One of the hallmarks of authoritarian systems is the concentration of power in a single office. In the US, the presidency has been steadily amassing authority for decades. Presidents of both parties have expanded executive power—from Woodrow Wilson, who during and after World War I oversaw a massive expansion of federal authority, centralized control over the economy, and signed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to suppress dissent, to more recent administrations. After September 11, 2001, Congress handed the executive branch sweeping powers through the Authorization for Use of Military Force, essentially giving presidents a blank check for war. Since then, presidents have increasingly governed through executive orders and “emergency” declarations, bypassing Congress altogether. Barack Obama further expanded executive authority through extrajudicial drone strikes, targeting individuals abroad without judicial review or due process, demonstrating that executive power can be exercised unilaterally and with limited accountability. Meanwhile, Congress has been paralyzed by polarization and gridlock, leaving lobbyists and corporate donors to fill the vacuum. The Senate’s structure, which gives Wyoming and California the same representation despite a 70-fold population difference, allows minority rule to dominate national policy. Gerrymandering and voter suppression further hollow out electoral accountability. A government that concentrates power in the executive while undermining the voice of ordinary citizens is not functioning as a democracy.
Wake up, America! It’s one thing to recognize the nation’s slide toward authoritarianism and complain about it—it’s another entirely to take action.
Authoritarian governments also justify extraordinary powers in the name of “security.” The U.S. is no exception. The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs, exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013, revealed a government that watches its citizens on a scale once unthinkable. At home, local police departments increasingly resemble military units, rolling out armored vehicles and tear gas against peaceful protesters. We saw this during Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter uprisings. The deployment of force against citizens exercising their constitutional rights should alarm anyone who values democracy. Yet the normalization of militarized policing has created what philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote as a “state of exception”—where emergency measures become everyday tools of governance.
Yes, Americans still enjoy constitutional rights—but too often these rights exist more on paper than in practice. Free speech? Tell that to whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Snowden, or Reality Winner, who were prosecuted under the Espionage Act for revealing government misconduct. Voting rights? They’ve been under relentless attack, especially since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted protections for minority voters. States have since imposed strict voter ID laws, purged voter rolls, and closed polling places in Black and Latino communities. Even fundamental rights like reproductive freedom are being stripped away. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, unleashing a wave of state-level abortion bans. Millions of women and people who can become pregnant no longer have control over their own bodies. That’s not democracy; that’s state control of private life.
Another clear sign of authoritarian drift is the domination of politics by wealthy elites. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, corporations and billionaires have been able to pour unlimited money into elections. Political campaigns are dominated by super PACs and billionaire donors. Our democracy is no longer guaranteed—from Wall Street to the White House, power is slipping into the hands of a few. Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found in 2014 that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” leaving ordinary voters almost powerless to shape the laws that govern them.
The authoritarian character of the United States cannot be understood solely within its borders. With more than 750 military bases worldwide and a defense budget larger than the next ten nations combined, the United States functions as a global empire. Military interventions—from Iraq to Afghanistan to drone strikes across the Middle East and Africa—have often been launched without meaningful Congressional approval. Empire abroad normalizes authoritarianism at home. Militarized policing, mass surveillance, and a bloated national security state are justified by the logic of “permanent war,” which also benefits defense contractors, private security firms, and other corporate interests that profit from endless conflict. As Hannah Arendt wrote, imperialism abroad often requires repression at home. That warning has become reality.
The United States still holds elections and maintains a written constitution, but appearances are misleading. The US still calls itself a democracy, but in practice, authoritarian forces are calling the shots. What makes American authoritarianism distinctive is its velvet glove: it is not a dictatorship in the classical sense but a regime where democratic symbols cloak undemocratic realities. Its most effective disguise is the illusion of freedom itself—an ideology of free market capitalism that promises choice while consolidating power in the hands of a few. Americans are told they live in the land of opportunity, yet the choices available to them—whether in the marketplace or at the ballot box—are increasingly constrained by corporate monopolies and two political parties beholden to the same economic elites. Recognizing this drift is the first step toward reversing it. Unless structural reforms are undertaken—curbing corporate power, restoring voting rights, protecting civil liberties, and demilitarizing both foreign and domestic policy—the United States risks cementing its place not as the defender of democracy but as an exemplar of its decline.
It is a bitter irony that 66,000 living World War II veterans—who risked everything to fight authoritarianism abroad—now witness the creeping authoritarianism at home and the steady erosion of the freedoms they fought to secure. Their sacrifices are a reminder that democracy is fragile and must be actively defended.
Unless structural reforms are undertaken—curbing corporate power, restoring voting rights, protecting civil liberties, and demilitarizing both foreign and domestic policy—the United States risks cementing its place not as the defender of democracy but as an exemplar of its decline.
Democracy is not self-sustaining. If Americans care about preserving freedom, they must act: vote in every election—from school boards to city councils to state legislatures—and recognize that their power extends beyond the ballot box. As consumers and shareholders, they can choose carefully which corporations they support, amplifying businesses that align with democratic values while withdrawing support from those that undermine them. Citizens can also engage directly with elected officials, starting meaningful discussions to make their voices heard, and volunteer with nonpartisan nonprofit advocacy organizations and watchdog groups that protect the democratic process, civil rights, and corporate and government accountability and transparency. Pushing for structural reforms that rein in executive power and corporate influence, challenging fear-mongering narratives, and defending the rights of marginalized communities are all essential steps to reclaiming and preserving democracy.
We each have a role to play. Wake up, America! It’s one thing to recognize the nation’s slide toward authoritarianism and complain about it—it’s another entirely to take action. Be no bystander; democracy depends on participation. We ignore its demise at our peril.
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