The Authoritarianism We Were Not Taught to Recognize
The warning signs often appear while public offices, legal documents, elections, and local institutions still look familiar.
How Authoritarianism Works Now, Chapter 1
Most Americans were taught to recognize authoritarianism by studying history.
The familiar images come from the first half of the twentieth century: Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, mass rallies, party uniforms, police terror, banned opposition parties, censored newspapers, and a leader claiming the nation as his own.
Those histories still warn us, but they do not show every way authoritarianism begins.
The old model seized the state. The new model often repurposes it.
And because we live in modern times, we have to notice different things than in history to recognize authoritarianism in its modern form.
Authoritarianism does not always begin with an announcement that democracy has ended.
More often, it begins with a quieter change: the institutions meant to protect democratic life start serving a different purpose.
A court still uses legal language, but the law becomes a weapon against opponents. A legislature still passes bills, but the rules begin narrowing who can participate. A public agency still administers programs, but access to help or funding becomes tied to political obedience. A local office still performs its daily work, but its authority is redirected toward a larger agenda that the public did not clearly approve.
That is the change this article concerns.
The danger is not only that democratic institutions might be destroyed. It is that they may keep their names, their procedures, and their official language while they stop doing the work democracy requires of them.
The question is not whether an institution still looks democratic. The question is whether it still performs a democratic function.
The history we learned does not show every beginning
Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 through a political system that had not yet fully collapsed. The machinery of public life still had recognizable parts. There were government offices, legal decrees, police authorities, newspapers, political parties, courts, and a public accustomed to seeing power expressed through official acts. What followed was not merely a change in leadership. The Nazi government turned those official powers toward dictatorship, dismantling individual freedoms, eliminating real political opposition, directing police authority toward Nazi goals, and using propaganda and terror to enforce obedience.
That history matters because it shows how quickly a government can become something else once public authority is subordinated to a ruling movement. It also creates a problem for people trying to understand the present. When authoritarianism is remembered mainly through its final, fully consolidated form, people may wait for the most obvious signs before recognizing the earlier conversion. They may look for banned parties, open censorship, mass arrests, uniformed officers in the streets, or a formal declaration that democracy has ended.
The earlier stage can be harder to see because it often begins as a change in what public authority is allowed to protect. A modern example is the firing of federal inspectors general. Inspectors general are not famous public officials. Their work is usually in the background: reviewing agency conduct, investigating fraud or abuse, and giving the public some assurance that government power is being watched from inside. When more than 17 of them were fired in early 2025, the issue was not only whether a president could replace personnel. The deeper question was what happens when offices created to check misconduct are made easier to remove by the officials they are supposed to scrutinize. Nothing about that kind of action announces the end of democracy. It seems like a personnel decision. But if an oversight office ceases to be a safeguard against abuse and becomes another position dependent on loyalty, the institution has already begun to serve a different purpose.
That is the gap this article is meant to address.
Legal-looking pressure can still be coercion
Another recent example came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture funding case decided in June 2026. According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal USDA funds from states unless they complied with administration policies involving immigration enforcement, transgender people, and other issues. The states challenging the requirements argued that the conditions threatened more than $74 billion in annual USDA funding, including money connected to nutrition programs such as SNAP, school lunches, and WIC.
The case is useful because the pressure did not begin as a police raid or a public ban. It began as a condition attached to money. That makes the coercion easier to defend in official language. A federal agency can say it is protecting the integrity of public funds, enforcing compliance, or ensuring that money is spent in accordance with federal policy. Those claims may sound ordinary because the government does have a legitimate interest in how public money is used.
The harder question is what the condition requires and whether it is tied to the program’s purpose. Food assistance funding exists to help people eat. School lunch funding exists to feed children. WIC exists to support women, infants, and children. The issue was not whether the federal government had a role in administering public money. It did. The issue was whether money meant to support food assistance and related public programs could be used to pressure states into accepting unrelated political demands. Nothing about that kind of condition announces the end of democracy.
That is what makes the example important for understanding new authoritarianism. It uses administrative language, attached to money, with the appearance of ordinary federal oversight. But if the purpose of the funding shifts from helping people eat to forcing political compliance, the institution has already begun doing different work.
Public money can become a leash.
State law can be written in neutral language while narrowing democratic choice
Senate Bill 4 in Kentucky offers a different example. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in April 2026 that the Kentucky House and Senate approved a bill that would stop Tyler Murphy, chair of the Fayette County Board of Education, from running for reelection. The bill said that board members in large school districts could not also be employees of a board of education if their job required them to work more than 100 days per year. Murphy, who also teaches in Boyle County, appeared to fall within the rule. The bill sponsor told the Herald-Leader that Murphy could serve out his term but would not be able to run after that.
A rule like this can be defended as a conflict-of-interest measure. Legislatures write eligibility standards for public office, and some restrictions are legitimate. The public has an interest in knowing whether an officeholder has competing duties, financial conflicts, or divided obligations. A statute can protect the public when it is written clearly, applied evenly, and connected to a genuine standard of public service.
The concern begins when a rule that sounds general appears to operate with unusual precision against a particular officeholder or political situation. In that circumstance, the fact that the rule is written like a neutral eligibility standard does not settle the issue. A rule that changes who may appear on the ballot changes more than the career of one official. It changes the choices available to voters.
The Murphy example shows how the language of eligibility can become the language of exclusion. The law need not state that a particular person is being removed from political life. It can simply redefine eligibility in a way that makes continued service impossible. The legislature may have used the ordinary process for passing a bill, but the democratic question remains: are voters being protected from a real conflict, or are they being deprived of a candidate by a rule designed to achieve that result?
A democracy can lose something when neutral-sounding language narrows the choices available to voters.
National power can change the local government’s purpose
Oldham County gives Kentucky readers a local example of how national enforcement priorities can enter daily public administration. In April 2025, WDRB reported that residents questioned a change at the Oldham County Detention Center involving ICE. The issue, according to the report, was a shift from a 72-hour hold for people arrested by ICE to a full-time hold. WDRB also reported that Oldham County Jailer Jeff Tindall said he had signed a memorandum of agreement, while Oldham County Judge-Executive David Voegele said the county cooperates with federal law but that the jailer made the decision to participate in the ICE 287(g) program.
This kind of story can disappear into administrative language if residents do not slow down long enough to ask what changed. From the outside, the jail may look as if it is doing the same work it has always done, because the daily routines continue and the public explanation sounds procedural. But a shift from a short-term ICE hold to full-time detention is not routine housekeeping. It changes the purpose of custody and ties a local jail more directly to federal enforcement.
The danger is not that every jail contract is authoritarian. The danger is that the public may treat a major change in function as routine administration. When residents cannot see the agreement, cannot get clear answers about authority, or cannot tell whether county revenue depends on detention, the institution’s motion can hide the moral and civic stakes. The danger is that residents may be told this is ordinary jail administration when the county has actually accepted a different role in federal immigration enforcement.
That is how repurposing can look ordinary. And how authoritarianism begins to gain a toehold in an institution.
Open records can become a gatekeeping tool
Open records laws exist because public authority is supposed to be visible to the people it governs.
One example comes from Shively. After a deadly high-speed police pursuit in 2020, the Louisville Courier-Journal requested records from the Shively Police Department. The request was denied because the case involved a pending investigation. For the public, that denial did more than postpone access to a file. It kept residents from examining how police power had been used in an incident that ended in death.
That is where the open-records system itself becomes part of the story.
A police department has legitimate reasons to protect some information during an active investigation. Witness safety, confidential informants, and evidence integrity can all require care. But a pending investigation cannot serve as a blanket term that closes the public record whenever scrutiny would be uncomfortable. If that happens, the open-records process changes purpose. It no longer helps residents inspect the public authority. It helps the agency control when, how, and whether its own conduct can be reviewed.
The Kentucky Supreme Court later rejected that broad approach. The court said police agencies must show actual harm before denying records under the law-enforcement exemption. A pending investigation, by itself, is not enough.
That ruling matters to the premise of this article because it clearly shows the institutional change. The open-records law was created to make public power inspectable. When a public agency can turn an exemption into a general shield, the law begins doing the opposite of what democracy requires. The statute still exists. The request process still exists. The denial letter may cite legal authority. But the practical effect is to place the agency between the public and the evidence of its actions.
That is gatekeeping.
The public is not only denied a document. It is denied the ability to judge whether public power was used lawfully, responsibly, or dangerously.
That is why open records belong in this article. The new authoritarianism does not only depend on changing the purpose of public offices. It also depends on making that change harder to see. When open records work properly, they let residents test official claims against public evidence. When they are narrowed down to a controlled doorway, residents are left with the agency’s explanation rather than the record itself.
A safeguard becomes a gate.
That is why records are not a side issue. They are part of democratic defense.
Recognition comes before resistance
This is why recognition has to come first. A public action may appear lawful, ordinary, or procedural even as it changes who holds authority, who can challenge power, and who is expected to comply. Waiting for the old signs can leave people arguing over labels after the damage has begun. The work starts earlier, with noticing when an institution created to serve the public begins serving a narrower power instead.
Not every bad policy is authoritarian. The warning sign is when a public authority is used to concentrate power, punish dissent, or make challenges harder.
That question will guide the rest of this series.
The next articles will look more closely at the methods: public money as leverage, law as a tool of control, local offices in national enforcement agendas, pre-compliance, disinformation, public records, and the Dispatches method for reading a public decision.
The purpose is recognition, not panic.
Democracy is defended earlier than most of us were taught. It is defended when people still have time to read the document, attend the meeting, request the record, question the public official, support the public servant, and insist that public offices serve the public.
Direct sources
Barbara McQuade, The Fix, University of Michigan Law interview:
https://michigan.law.umich.edu/news/5qs-mcquades-new-book-details-fix-democracy-us
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Nazi Terror Begins”:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-terror-begins
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Benito Mussolini: Rise to Power”:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Mussolini/Rise-to-power
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Nazism: Totalitarianism and Expansionism”:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Nazism/Totalitarianism-and-expansionism
Reuters, “Judge blocks Trump administration’s attempt to link USDA funds to compliance with other policies”:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/judge-blocks-trump-administrations-attempt-link-usda-funds-compliance-with-other-2026-06-06/
Lexington Herald-Leader, “Bill passed by KY lawmakers would bar Fayette school board chair from running again”:
https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article315265257.html
WDRB, “Oldham County residents question jail’s new policy to indefinitely hold illegal immigrants”:
https://www.wdrb.com/news/oldham-county-residents-question-jails-new-policy-to-indefinitely-hold-illegal-immigrants/article_7ff5b586-6714-4327-b34d-248b207b3070.html
Kentucky Attorney General, Open Records and Open Meetings:
https://ag.ky.gov/Resources/orom/Pages/default.aspx
Hoptown Chronicle, “Kentucky Supreme Court: Police agencies must show actual harm before denying records requests”
https://hoptownchronicle.org/kentucky-supreme-court-police-agencies-must-show-actual-harm-before-denying-records-requests/
Kentucky Supreme Court opinion, Shively Police Department v. Courier Journal, Inc.
https://appellatepublic.kycourts.net/api/api/v1/publicaccessdocuments/604c4e1f50386199376b9ac201f7569c7398278fe9a652e23dfbe13d905d9c18/download
Politico, “Adam Schiff: Trump ‘broke the law’ in firing inspectors general”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/26/schiff-trump-inspector-generals-00200633
The Guardian, “US inspectors general fired by Trump sue to win jobs back”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/12/inspector-generals-fired-trump-lawsuit