FOR THE FIRST time, Americans have elected a wannabe dictator as president. Donald Trump is committed to and now capable of ending democracy as we know it. Trump is the one the “new authoritarians” have been waiting for. What now?
First, as of January 2025, the United States is on track to become an electoral autocracy. Electoral autocracies have multiparty systems and independent institutions that over time lose sufficient power to hold the executive branch accountable for its corruption or restrict its lawlessness. The Republican trifecta in November was not the presidency, Senate, and House. It was the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court. This win enables what political scientists call “state capture” by anti-democratic forces.
Whatever else we do, we must reorient our political map. The range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept now mirrors policies of past and current fascist governments. We must guard against all attempts to fix future elections or introduce the idea that presidents don’t need to be elected at all. There’s no such thing as only being a dictator on “day one.”
Second, tyrants have only one tool for governing: fear. As Unitarian minister John Basil Barnhill said in 1914, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” We are afraid for good reasons. We are afraid that our neighbors — empowered by law enforcement — will turn on us because we are gay or transgender, immigrants, Muslim or Jewish, Black or brown, disabled, or women. During the campaign, political violence skyrocketed. A Pennsylvania man was shot to death during an assassination attempt. Bomb threats disrupted election offices. Hate groups terrorized Springfield, Ohio. The day after the election, hateful racist text messages were sent to the phones of Black adults and children in 30 states. Our fear is real. We must face and conquer it.
Third, we will all pay the price for Trump. As the president-elect implements his anti-democratic agenda, his repression will wallop increasingly wider swaths of Americans. Many MAGA voters dismissed Trump’s attacks on “minorities” and women as part of his act while trusting him to put more money in their pockets. In the short term, they might be right. But their families will not be shielded when “efficiency expert” Elon Musk defunds Medicaid and disability insurance or Title I financial aid vanishes with the Department of Education. The new authoritarians use nativist and economic populism to gain access to the constitutional shredder, remove checks and balances, and weaken self-sustaining democratic institutions. In the end, we are all in this together.
Fourth, we must follow Jesus. Because it’s what we believe, and because it may be an effective way forward. Too many Americans believe Christianity requires nothing more of them than wearing a necklace or being born in a Christian nation. Christendom, as Søren Kierkegaard critiqued it, is a “species of baptized paganism in which every respectable citizen can pass for a disciple.”
In No Rusty Swords, anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer outlined three ways a free church can act toward the state: as conscience, as a field hospital for its victims, or as a “spoke in the wheel itself.” The church must speak out boldly and unequivocally when the state fails to uphold the law, protect human rights, secure the commonwealth, and provide for the common defense. The church has an “unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society,” wrote Bonhoeffer. Even when laws change, the church may not withdraw from these responsibilities. Finally, when citizens are no longer able to curb state violence, the church must become an effective deterrent through “direct political action.” I would add that this strategic action must be nonviolent and bring a spiritual and moral reserve proportional to the state’s acts of inhumanity.
The new authoritarians amassing around Trump see themselves as Nietzsche’s “supermen.” But, as Nietzsche acknowledged, this ruling elite has an Achilles’ heel and there is a weapon that can target it: militant, unrelenting, overt, creative, and courageous Christian love and compassion. Jesus’ love ethic upends so-called “natural hierarchies,” inverting the values of wealth, health, beauty, greatness, power, violent masculinity, and individualism. It undermines what Nietzsche called “the will to power.” Christians must become a poison in the new authoritarian body politic.
As a country, we are better prepared than in 2017 to push back on an autocratic regime. Many civic institutions have been “Trump-proofing” their systems to maintain order and rule of law. Even our national security agencies have been preparing for an executive branch that refuses to uphold the Constitution. Our social movements are savvier about how to defend against modern autocracies and bring down their pillars of support. As political scientist Maria J. Stephan says, “Autocrats are always weaker than they appear, and we are often stronger than we might think.”
In his 1946 essay “The Fascist Masquerade,” theologian Howard Thurman issued a challenge: “The Church is irrevocably committed to a revolutionary ethic, but it tends to implement the ethic by means that are short of that which is revolutionary.” This is our new altar call. Now is the time to enact the revolutionary love ethic of Jesus. It undermines tyrants and drives out fear. And it always has.
Rose Marie Berger, a Catholic peace activist and poet, is senior editor of Sojourners magazine. She is author ofBending the Arch: Poems.
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