The recent Foreign Affairs piece on American authoritarianism fundamentally misses how AI will supercharge authoritarian power in unprecedented ways.

The Path to American Authoritarianism
What Comes After Democratic Breakdown
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way
February 11, 2025

While the authors correctly identify the risk of democratic breakdown, their analysis is unfortunately trapped in an outdated framework that fails to grasp two critical accelerants.

First, they underestimate how AI already weaponizes America’s buried atrocities. Unlike human narratives that often gloss over historical trauma, AI can instantaneously surface and connect centuries of state violence by normalizing it – from President Jackson’s genocidal Trail of Tears to President Wilson’s Red Summer of 1919 leading to Tulsa Massacre of 1921. AI doesn’t miss the subtext of racist deception in the Missouri Compromise or the brutally racist and illegal conquest of Texas and Florida to expand slavery. It can relentlessly illuminate how “America First” movements always consistently and repeatedly enabled American race-based authoritarianism since the late 1800s.

The authors vaguely suggest institutional guardrails could contain authoritarian power. But they fail to recognize how AI can weave foundational historical threads into devastating narratives that undermine faith in those very institutions. When AI connects the dots between a past of systemic state violence and the present institutional power of non-governmental “efficiency” (totalitarian) mercenaries called DOGE, it becomes much harder to believe in the protective power of courts or federalism.

Second, they dramatically underestimate the velocity of AI-powered narrative control. Their analysis feels like watching someone explain how decades of prior print media will hold the line on public opinion in 1933, while completely missing how the Nazi regime flooded radio waves and totally rewrote reality in just three months. 2025 AI is far more powerful than 1933 radio – it can generate, target, and amplify hateful messages at a scale that makes Hitler’s genocidal machines look primitive.

The authors worry about gradual institutional capture through bureaucratic maneuvering. But they miss how AI can simply flatten institutional resistance through overwhelming narrative force.

Why bother carefully pressuring judges and abiding by them when AI can flood every platform with unaccountable sock puppet messages demanding targeting judges to be eliminated if “woke” or opposed to “efficiency”? Already the White House has announced they will be “looking into” any judge who disagrees with “efficiency”. The speed and scale of AI-powered propaganda makes the old ways of careful institutional analysis feel quaint, like marching troops with slow-firing inaccurate muskets into a machine gun. Domain shifts are devastating to analysis that doesn’t account for what’s changed.

Therefore the Foreign Affairs assessment is not just wrong, it’s dangerously overconfident in the way that reduces opposition to mass unjust incarceration and death. By suggesting American institutions can weather authoritarian pressure through quaint concepts of traditional resistance, they underestimate how AI already fundamentally changes the game.

Quantum threats are basically here and some people still don’t know how to change their passwords.

Does anyone really think executive orders pumped out by the hundreds aren’t being written with software? Does anyone really not understand why a few college-aged kids who barely write software are being called “auditors” of “efficiency” on a highly complex financial system they can’t possibly understand?

They are feeding all, and I mean all, American citizen data into Elon Musk’s private unsafe AI infrastructure and asking it “what would Hitler do, in the voice of Goebbels?”

This won’t be a slow erosion of democracy through bureaucratic weaponization, waters creeping up on those who don’t have boats. It already is a tsunami-level warning of AI-powered narrative control that will catastrophically sweep away democratic institutions faster than any previous authoritarian transition.

The authors claim America won’t face “classic dictatorship.” But by failing to grasp how AI supercharges authoritarian power, they miss that we’re facing something potentially worse – a form of technologically-enhanced authoritarianism that could exceed anything in history. And this “Technocracy” disaster has been many decades in the making, a Musk family obsession since the 1930s as proven out in South African apartheid, not something political scientists today should be unfamiliar with.

In case Elon Musk’s encoded speech pattern is unclear, planet “Mars” is used (incorrectly) to promote open violation of the law and disobeying law enforcement, like saying America will finally be as good as Mars when the white men who occupy it can’t be regulated: Occupy Mars = Aryan Nation.

We all know the children’s tale about what comes next if we don’t understand the threat. The institutional safeguards appear as straw huts against a coming huff-a-puff wolf. We need to wake up to the true scale and speed of the threat before it’s too late.

The simple reality is this: AI-powered authoritarianism won’t respect and carefully navigate around slow democratic institutions – it will overwhelm them in raw narrative force at unprecedented speeds causing disasters to force surrender and complacency.

To put it another way, Nazi generals carelessly sped full speed into France to overwhelm their targets while leaving themselves dangerously exposed. The French capitulated and resolved themselves to occupation instead of rapid counter attack that would have destroyed the Nazis. General Grant understood this in the 1860s yet the French didn’t grasp adequately the domain shift tactics of radios, planes and trucks.

The Foreign Affairs authors are analyzing how to defend against 20th century authoritarianism while missing that an AI invasion force already has landed and is expanding. They’re not just wrong about defenses, they’re complacent and leaving America dangerously unguarded.

The Wannsee Conference on a cold 20th of January 1942 outside Berlin formalized what had begun years earlier (at least a million Jews already murdered) with carefully crafted language about civilian “resettlements” as a result of war.

Nazi officials drafted messaging about “temporary” measures, “work opportunities,” and “reconstruction” to dramatically expedite a gradual progression in order to formalize extremist “fringe” ideas into state policy through careful manipulation of bureaucratic processes.

Nazis plotted genocide of the Jews while sipping cognac…

The regime deliberately used euphemistic language and false promises to deceive people about their true intentions. They frequently described the deportations as “resettlement to the East” (Umsiedlung nach Osten) or “evacuation” (Evakuierung), presenting it as a temporary measure necessary during wartime devastation of homes.

Today, we’re watching a chillingly similar playbook, almost identical really, unfold with Trump’s proposals domestically and internationally. Arguably the extremist right-wing racists running the US government are using Gaza to trial death camp strategies they will then deploy at home.

The Nazi playbook starts with extreme statements followed by calculated rollback and moderation. Just as Nazi officials in the 1930s moved from direct antisemitic rhetoric to moderated euphemistic language about “population transfer” and “labor deployment,” we see Trump announcing permanent relocation of Gaza’s population, followed by officials walking it back to “temporary” measures and infrastructure focus.

The Nazis told their victims they were being sent to temporary camps or new settlements where they would be able to live and work better. They were often instructed to bring essential belongings and tools for their supposed new lives. At some camps, they even maintained the pretense by having deportees write postcards to their families with pre-written positive messages just before they were systematically murdered.

This deception was part of a broad system of bureaucratic and linguistic manipulation the Nazis developed to both mislead their victims and psychologically distance any perpetrators in order to greatly expand contributions to atrocities (falsely elevating themselves and those helping by framing mass deportations in terms of economic development).

Terms like “special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) and “final solution” (Endlösung) were used as code words for mass murder. Nazi propaganda presented concentration camps to the public as humane “reeducation centers” where prisoners would learn discipline through work. The infamous “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work sets you free”) signs at camp entrances were part of this calculated deception.

That playbook isn’t just showing up again for Gaza. While Trump talks about turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he’s also negotiating concentration camps in other foreign countries and expanding American detention infrastructure. Multiple populations are targeted simultaneously with the same deceptive language about temporary measures, efficiencies and economic benefits.

Goebbels understood that public acceptance required a dance of extreme proposals hitting as hard as possible followed by apparent moderation to create a ruse of concern while maintaining the core objective. In other words when Trump says he will shoot you in the street and you don’t object, you will be dead on the spot because you didn’t stop him then and there. But if you do object to being murdered, he will have others spin campaigns that you don’t get to judge him, and you will be relocated to a detention camp under a sign promising freedom.

The economic justification parallels between Gaza statements and Nazism are particularly striking. Hitler’s regime promised developments where Jews would find work and better conditions, just as Trump speaks of turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” The focus on reconstruction and development serves the same purpose now as it did then, to make population removal seem like it is beneficial to the very concerned Nazi rather than brutal to the victim. In both cases, economic promises mask inhumane explotative intentions.

The polls showing 70% of Israelis support population transfers echoes disturbing historical patterns of mob rule used to undermine basic humanitarian law. By 1938, German public opinion was carefully shaped by disgusting hate speech to accept increasingly extreme measures through similar tactical messaging meant to excuse genocide with popularity. Each step made the next seem more reasonable. What starts as support for “temporary relocation” for “reconstruction” is used to shift towards something far worse, once cracks in public resistance can be formed and expanded. Those reported 30% who stand opposed to Trump relocation tactics are 100% on the right side of history.

The strategic ambiguity used in today’s proposals are definitely cause for alarm as well. The lack of concrete plans, the use of contradictory statements to avoid accountability, are completely unacceptable and mirror the Nazi regime’s approach to testing boundaries while maintaining deniability. When Reinhard Heydrich floated the “evacuation to the East” at Wannsee, his broad statements and vagueness were very deliberate. Today’s officials similarly avoid specifics while floating trial balloons to gauge reaction and push towards plans of mass suffering.

Perhaps most disturbing is “negotiating tactic” framing of non-negotiable concepts. Just as Nazi officials hit people with extreme measures to make their lesser actions suddenly seem moderate, today’s observers suggest Trump’s population transfer proposals in drastic shock statements are staged as bargaining chips. This creates a false premise below actual norms and laws, where egregious human rights violations for “development” are marketed as acceptable compromises.

Majority support for killing a minority of the population doesn’t make such proposals any more acceptable, it actually invokes the lessons about someone ignorantly invoking violent mob rule, which makes it all far more dangerous. High polling support for population transfer should be seen as a warning sign of deteriorating safeguards against mass atrocities, not as legitimization of an immoral and historically backwards proposal.

The racist Nuremberg Laws didn’t stop being wrong by claiming popularity. The international laws against forced population transfers were created precisely because we’ve seen how majority support is faked, spun up, manufactured for mass atrocities through polluted messaging and gradual normalization of hate.

When a major power proposes displacing 1.8 million people while using historically familiar tactics of Nazi deception and normalization, we have a moral obligation to name it clearly.

Those calling for “moderate” discussion of such proposals should recall that moderation in the face of emerging atrocities is no virtue. Sometimes, protecting human rights requires speaking uncomfortable truths especially when 7 out of 10 would prefer not to hear the truth of the atrocities they would commit.

A group that played a key role in Donald Trump’s voter outreach to the Arab American community alongside his allies is rebranding itself after the president said that the U.S. would “take over” the Gaza Strip. Bishara Bahbah, chairman of the group formerly known as Arab Americans for Trump, said during a phone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that the group would now be called Arab Americans for Peace.

A bit late for these people to realize Trump hates them so much he intends to dehumanize and detain them far worse than Reagan or Nixon… but still better than never. However, the group really should have changed the name to Arab Americans against Trump, to truly admit making a grave error. Consider that the America First group ran propaganda to convince people it was for “peace”, which actually meant anti-semitic and pro-Hitler.

This is how to be far more clear in messaging:

“No Nazis, No Coup, No Fascist Shiba-Inu”

Or as they say in German schools…

History judges harshly those who saw the patterns but chose diplomatic silence, let alone facilitated them. We cannot claim ignorance of Nazism where these familiar steps can lead, whether at home or abroad.

Update Feb 21: just one month after the explanation was posted below, and almost two years after I explained Musk’s Nazi X fetish, this very large UK advertising campaign has started rolling.

What would Walt Disney do after seeing Elon Musk trying to normalize Nazism year after year?

We need not speculate, given this masterpiece from 1943.

That studio poster says the picture came from a rather pointed “song sensation”, as relevant today as it was then:

When Elon Musk says, ‘Wie ist der AfD in a race’,

We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in Elon Musk’s face!

Not’seeing love for AfD is a great disgrace, so

We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in Elon Musk’s face!

Disney pictures were such comedy gold that “Donald in Nutziland” won them an Oscar.

The deep and long-standing Nazi affinity of Tesla’s CEO has hardly been subtle – from the Nazis rallying around him, to Tesla’s extensively documented racist work environment, to the Nazi merchandise, to Twitter’s swastika rebranding that I pointed out way back in 2023 on day one, to an unmistakable pattern of Heil Hitler salutes (e.g. repeatedly using number “88” in Tesla docs and discussion).

That it took this public Nazi salute on a 2025 federal political rally stage for some to finally notice? A bit late, folks.

The comedians were right all along.

If only we had a Walt Disney here today being ordered to rouse public consciousness against fascism.

As Musk’s shadow lengthens, invoking his grandfather’s failed white supremacist global domination dreams, perhaps humor remains our most potent resistance to the millions of Swasticars being amassed into Nazi madness.

[Elon’s mother and family] came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathised with the Afrikaner government. They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff.

Meanwhile, Canada and Greenland are being marked for emergency Lebensraum. Will they be carved up in backroom deals and invaded by powers brandishing AI data center expansion plans, their fate echoing 1938 Poland?

Related: While I obviously never studied comedy, history is forever the key to accurately seeing and forecasting Nazism. I did earn a graduate degree in that from the London School of Economics (LSE), and was honored to be their 2024 commencement speaker based on my decades of security leadership in tech. And on that note Elon Musk just made a surprise appearance at a German AfD ultra extremist hate rally – a group so extreme their leaders have been jailed for Nazism and French fascists walked away to distance themselves – that he wants to erase history to enable the Nazi return to power.