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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
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As definitions go that's a pretty decent one, but if we adopt it then we have to recognize that Trump and his people arent really unique in being instruments of oligarchical control, only in how open they are about jt. The US has always been an authoritarian oligarchy, there were just a few decades when the ruling class found it useful to pretend otherwise. Now that those decades are ending, we can expect to see the same trumpian policy carried on and normalized by the same people who, not too long ago, were pretending to oppose him.
This is not to take the heat off of Trump and his coterie of tradcath fascist weirdos, but to extend it to the more "normal, respectable" fascists who also richly deserve it, but who we have been taught to view as lesser or necessary evils. Good cop, bad cop, ACAB.
Yes, that is pretty much the gist of it.
On ML, they often complain that "authoritarian" is a liberal buzzword to make foreign governments seem scary. And they do have a point here, because it is used like that in liberal discourse.
However, I think the word is still useful, as long as you don't selectively apply it and also use it to criticize liberal democracies.