SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
political violence
Is the US on the Path to Becoming a Failed State?
The deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.
Jun 09, 2025
The United States has entered a phase that resembles the early stages of state failure. What once seemed impossible in a country with vast resources and robust democratic traditions now appears increasingly plausible.
The signs are evident. A government that has turned inward and become both self-protective and vindictive. An economy that is straining under a combination of political hubris and international estrangement. A population facing widening inequality and the fraying of social bonds. Historical examples of state collapse reveal that such trajectories, once set in motion, become difficult to reverse. For centrist Democrats who have long believed in the resilience of American institutions, it is essential to understand the historical precedents and the structural forces at play.
State failure is not typically marked by a single event. It is a process that begins with the corrosion of political legitimacy and ends in the disintegration of central authority. In the United States, this erosion of legitimacy can be seen in the deliberate politicization of the civil service and the Justice Department, the relentless attacks on the press and civil society, and the hollowing out of regulatory agencies through mass firings and loyalty tests. Historical parallels can be found in the final years of the Roman Republic, where the Senate’s inability to manage domestic discontent and external pressures created a vacuum for strongmen like Julius Caesar to exploit. In a more modern example, Weimar Germany’s democratic institutions were systematically undermined by the combined effects of economic crisis and political extremism, leading to the Nazi seizure of power.
The United States has survived grave challenges before, but its survival has always depended on a functioning state that could reconcile competing interests and adapt to new circumstances. Today, that state is being systematically dismantled.
Economically, the United States is facing a self-inflicted crisis. The decision to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and adversaries alike has triggered a trade war that has cut the country off from vital imports and provoked retaliatory measures. The stock market crash of 2025 is a direct consequence of these policies. Historically, protectionism in the face of global integration has often led to economic collapse. Argentina in the 1940s under Juan Perón embraced similar trade isolation and industrial autarky, leading to decades of stagnation. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, though a different context, was a catalyst for the downward spiral of the global economy in the Great Depression.
The military and security apparatus in the United States has also been turned inward. This is a hallmark of states on the brink of collapse. The administration’s decision to conduct loyalty tests for federal employees, to dismiss or sideline those deemed “insufficiently loyal,” and to demand public fealty to the president’s personal narrative mirrors the tactics employed by autocratic regimes throughout history. In the final years of the Soviet Union, a similar pattern emerged: The KGB was weaponized to target internal dissent as the economy faltered and the central government lost its grip on reality.
Domestically, the climate is one of deepening polarization and mounting distrust. The forced departure of civil servants, the targeting of universities and independent journalists, and the use of the Justice Department as an instrument of political retribution have weakened the structures that once mediated conflict and enabled compromise. In 1970s Chile, President Salvador Allende’s government was destabilized by economic sabotage and political violence. While the American situation is not identical, the deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.
Internationally, the administration’s decision to pursue annexationist policies—expressed in rhetorical claims to Canada and Greenland and actual negotiations over resource extraction in Ukraine—has isolated the United States from its historical allies and weakened its standing in the world. Such expansionist fantasies do not typically succeed in a world defined by interdependence. They more often result in international sanctions, economic isolation, and domestic overreach. This was the fate of Benito Mussolini’s Italy when it attempted to carve out an empire in North Africa, only to find itself diplomatically and economically encircled.
The cumulative effect of these policies is a government that no longer serves as an impartial arbiter of competing interests but as a factional tool of the leader and his inner circle. The normal functions of governance—delivering basic services, maintaining order, managing foreign policy—are subsumed under the political imperative of loyalty and control. This is the point at which states enter the final stage of failure. In 1990s Yugoslavia, the central government’s failure to mediate ethnic and regional disputes led directly to the violent fragmentation of the state. In the American context, this dynamic is playing out along lines of political affiliation, class, and race. The militarization of border policy, the collective punishment of protest movements, and the repeated targeting of minority communities reveal a state that is no longer willing or able to accommodate the diversity of its population.
The question of when collapse occurs is not easily answered. Historical examples show that once a state has entered the spiral of delegitimization, economic contraction, and political repression, collapse can follow within a few years. The Soviet Union’s dissolution took less than three years from the final economic crisis of 1988 to the official end in 1991. Yugoslavia’s collapse began with constitutional disputes in the late 1980s and culminated in violent disintegration by the early 1990s.
The timeline for collapse in the United States is likely to be similarly short if current trends continue. The economy, already battered by tariffs and retaliatory measures, will see further contraction as foreign investment dries up and domestic confidence evaporates. Political violence, already simmering, will become more organized as the state’s capacity to maintain a monopoly on violence wanes.
For those who have long believed that the American system is immune to these forces, it is time to reconsider that assumption. The United States has survived grave challenges before, but its survival has always depended on a functioning state that could reconcile competing interests and adapt to new circumstances. Today, that state is being systematically dismantled. The institutions that once checked presidential power are being turned into instruments of that power. The economy, once buoyed by global integration, is being sacrificed to nationalist fantasies. The courts and the press, once the guardians of democratic accountability, are being brought to heel or driven into irrelevance.
There is still room to change course. Historically, states have a narrow window to reverse the downward spiral once it begins. In some cases, a determined opposition or a political realignment can restore legitimacy and rebuild the social contract. In others, collapse proceeds until the state is no longer recognizable and must be rebuilt from the rubble. The examples of Spain in the 1930s, where collapse was narrowly averted but civil war followed, and of Greece in the 1940s, where foreign intervention postponed state failure, show that external shocks and internal realignments can interrupt the cycle of collapse, though at a high human cost.
What lies ahead for the United States is not yet written in stone. But the pattern is clear and the examples from history are stark. State failure is not a single moment but a cascade of failures that begins with the corruption of political institutions and ends with the disintegration of social order. The evidence is already present in the hollowing out of the federal government, the weaponization of law enforcement, the trade isolation, and the embrace of expansionist policies that have no place in the modern world. If these trends are not reversed, the United States will become another entry in the long history of states that lost their way and collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions.
Keep ReadingShow Less
After an Abortion Provider’s Murder, Clinics Became Safer; Let’s Not Undo That Progress
Rolling back protections in the name of political ideology puts lives at risk and undermines decades of work to keep patients and staff safe.
May 31, 2025
May 31 marks 16 years since Dr. George Tiller—an abortion provider and reproductive justice advocate in Wichita, Kansas—was assassinated by a radical anti-abortion extremist outside his church. Dr. Tiller’s murder is a stark reminder of the violence and hatred that abortion providers face daily, and was a tipping point that led to better security measures for health centers.
In the wake of Dr. Tiller’s assassination, health centers across the country strengthened their security, determined to protect patients and staff from violence. Now that protection hangs by a thread. In March, the Trump administration announced that it would stop enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a federal law that prohibits the threat or use of force, obstruction, and property damage to reproductive health care centers and protects people like Dr. Tiller and clinic escorts who try to ensure patients’ access to care. Rolling back these protections in the name of political ideology puts lives at risk and undermines decades of work to keep patients and staff safe.
Let me tell you what this looks like in real life.
As we remember and honor Dr. Tiller's life, I urge Congress to uphold the FACE Act. Dismantling this critical legislation sends a message that condones political violence.
As a volunteer escort with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, I try to help patients feel safe when they come to access healthcare. I do it because, regardless of the care patients are seeking, they are needlessly subjected to name-calling, shaming, and harassment. Sometimes I use a large umbrella to visually block protestors filming patients without consent. Sometimes I help someone park farther away, where it is quieter and feels safer. I do what I can to offer warmth and dignity during a moment that can feel vulnerable, stressful, and deeply personal.
In return, I have been screamed at, had my photo taken by strangers, and have been threatened. I am not alone.
Attacks against reproductive healthcare centers, staff, and clinic escorts are not an anomaly. In the United States between 2023 and 2024, there were 621 incidents of trespassing in reproductive health centers; 296 death threats or threats of harm to abortion providers, patients, and clinic escorts; and at least 37 incidents of stalking. Behind these numbers are providers and volunteers like me and Dr. Tiller, who put their lives on the line to ensure that patients receive the care they need.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, states throughout the Southeast and Midwest have enacted extreme abortion bans. Patients drive to our Ohio health centers with license plates from all over the country for vital reproductive healthcare. I help them find secure parking spaces away from protestors so they can enter and exit their vehicles safely. My fellow volunteers and I distract patients from the vitriol that protestors throw their way as they walk from their cars to enter our health centers. We all show up because we believe everyone deserves access to compassionate, quality care without harassment.
The people shouting at our patients do not speak for the majority. In 2023, Ohioans voted decisively to protect reproductive rights in our state constitution. Voters sent a clear message: We believe in bodily autonomy, privacy, and access to healthcare. Yet the federal government is abandoning us at the doorway where we are most vulnerable.
The FACE Act matters. It protects patients and providers facing harassment and threats just for seeking or providing healthcare. This is not abstract policy—it is about our neighbors, friends, and family. Everyone should be able to access medical care without fear.
As we remember and honor Dr. Tiller's life, I urge Congress to uphold the FACE Act. Dismantling this critical legislation sends a message that condones political violence. Ensuring safety is the bare minimum we can offer to the doctors, nurses, and volunteers who make great sacrifices to keep our communities healthy. We cannot let personal feelings and political ideology override public health and safety.
We all deserve to feel safe when we seek medical care. And those of us who help make that care possible deserve to be protected, too.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Repressive Governments Never Let an Assassination Go to Waste
The murder of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C. has all the elements to enable increased persecution of U.S. citizens and residents who advocate for the safety and rights of Palestinians.
May 24, 2025
On November 7, 1938, Polish Jew Herschel Feibel Grynszpan shot diplomat Ernst vom Rath in the German embassy in Paris.
Grynszpan’s family had been made stateless by German and Polish governments, and were stranded in miserable conditions along with thousands of Jewish refugees at the Polish-German border.
The shooting of vom Rath provided the trigger for the Nazi pogrom across Germany of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass”—attacks of Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. This date is thought to mark the progression from German persecution of Jews to the beginning of the Holocaust.
The poisonous identification of Jewish identity with the Jewish supremacist state of Israel—with its knee on the neck of Palestinians—to proclaim Judaism cognate with murderous nationalism—has its victims.
Today’s moment, the murder of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C. at an event sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), has all the elements to enable increased persecution of U.S. citizens and residents who advocate for the safety and rights of 2 millions residents of Gaza, and the rest of occupied Palestine.
Just as with Grynszpan’s crime, the effect of this killer’s decision will be out of his hands, and the cause of his desperation will only matter to those who already care.
The wretched, amoral lunatics who have command of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will have a clear field to “investigate” the curriculum of universities that host Palestinian studies, and criminalize the slogans “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”
We can count on crimes being committed by Pam Bondi (DOJ) and Kash Patel (FBI) in exploitation of this moment. The crocodile tears of this Proud Boy-aligned Christian nationalist government as they express solidarity with Jews against “antisemitism” will challenge our gag reflex.
The conflation of protesters for Palestine with “terrorists,” already in full force by the Departments of State and Education with expulsion of international students who have spoken out and organized, will be untrammeled by due process. Or due process will be twisted with the power of a state unbound by ethics in their determination to “make an example.”
The day following the Washington shooting, the AJC’s Ted Deutch was on MSNBC’s afternoon “Dateline White House” program, instructing that permitting campus demonstrations for Gazans’ right to live allows us to “tolerate hatred and antisemitism that leads to this violence.” Deutch made the rounds of Fox and CNN also.
In his morning MSNBC program appearance, he said, efforts must “double down” to insure that “what we saw last night never happens again and that words of antisemites, incitement that we’ve seen at too many places around the world, be treated as it is, that this could be the deadly result if we don’t act.”
The AJC, once fully cognizant of the dangers of turning the heterogenous Jewish people spread across the world in to a nationality, made sure in the aftermath of these pointless deaths that suppressing “delegitimization” of Israel was the focus, not Jewish rights to safety in their countries.
Since October 7, 2023, the world has watched the methodical torture of 2 million people in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, month after month of civilian displacement; destruction; hunger; disease; and killing by bomb, artillery, drone, and bullet. U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell, in February 2024, immolated himself in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington to protest America’s assistance in the misery. In December 2023 and September 2024 fatal self-immolations were enacted in front of Israel’s consulates in Atlanta and Boston.
The world watching—protesting, agonizing in helplessness—the horror of premeditated and systematic destruction of the people of Gaza has the obvious hazard of endangering Jews. A gossamer sense of object permanence is exhibited when Zionist advocacy at one moment proclaims Israel the state of the Jewish people, and the next decries hostility to Israel a symptom of some mysterious eternal human disease of antisemitism.
It is certain that the Washington killings will be used to maximize the sense of dread and siege in Jewish spaces, shaped to legitimize the Zionist stance that Israel is rational and her opponents crazed, irrational, bloodthirsty.
After the 9/11/2001 attacks, journalist James Bennett contacted Benjamin Netanyahu, then out of office.
That evening, I tracked down Benjamin Netanyahu, the once-and-future Israeli prime minister, to ask what the attack meant for U.S.-Israeli relations. “It’s very good,” he replied, with startling enthusiasm. Then he caught himself. “Well, it’s not very good, but it’s going to generate immediate sympathy.”
The poisonous identification of Jewish identity with the Jewish supremacist state of Israel—with its knee on the neck of Palestinians—to proclaim Judaism cognate with murderous nationalism—has its victims. Today, Zionist partisans in the United States of America, in and out of government, have their “bloody shirt.” Mazel tov!
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular