Has the Eagle landed? Part 2

The top ten characteristics of an authoritarian regime..

To to answer the question, is there evidence that the current US administration is becoming more and more right wing to the extent that it now resembles an authoritarian, fascist regime, let's look at the work of Shelley Inglis, executive Director, University of Dayton Human Rights Centre, University of Dayton, who identified the top ten characteristics of Authoritarian regimes.

1. Extend executive power

In his first term as president, Donald Trump signed 220 executive orders, by passing congress and the senate, and in his first 100 days as current president, he signed 143.

If you need further evidence of the authoritarian nature of the Trump administration, one-third of President Trump's executive orders have faced legal challenges. This includes over 120 lawsuits challenging the legality or implementation of these orders. Furthermore, at least 44 court rulings have temporarily paused some of the president's initiatives. Nine executive actions have been fully blocked by the courts although several federal judges have claimed the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has failed to comply with court orders regarding foreign aid, federal spending and the firing of government workers.

2. Weaken government institutions

The mainstay of today’s authoritarianism is strengthening your power while simultaneously weakening government institutions, such as parliaments and judiciaries, that provide checks and balances.

I am certain that nobody needs this explaining but in case you are still unsure, this is what Elon Musk’s DOGE is all about! Naturally the administration hides behind the cover of cutting costs and waste but has so far been unable to provide any details of cost savings that stand up to rigorous examination.

Indeed Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service (PSP) , a nonpartisan research and advocacy group, told CBS News that DOGE's actions will cost $135 billion this fiscal year !

Some, but not all, of the additional expense arose with putting tens of thousands of federal employees on paid leave, re-hiring mistakenly fired workers and lost productivity.

PSP's estimate is based on the $270 billion in annual compensation costs for the federal workforce, calculating the impact of DOGE's actions, from paid leave to productivity hits. The $135 billion cost to taxpayers doesn't include the expense of defending multiple lawsuits challenging DOGE's actions, nor the impact of estimated lost tax collections due to staff cuts at the IRS. 

DOGE has sought to slash federal spending by urging government workers to accept a deferred resignation plan, which allowed many employees to retain full pay and benefits through September without working. Another 24,000 government employees who were fired as part of the reform effort have since been rehired after a court ruling. 

Other agencies also have rehired some workers after mistakenly firing them, such as bird flu experts who were dismissed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Federal workers have also had to take on tasks such as documenting their weekly accomplishments, which has lowered productivity.

3. Use legal means to legitimise the power grab.

Extreme forms of this include abolishing presidential term limits, which was done in China; and regressive constitutional reforms to expand presidential power, like in Turkey. Both being proposed by the current president. Not only is this a key indicator of the regime’s authoritarian blueprint, it is such a blatant attack on democracy that the US constitution is legally entrenched as the supreme law. The Constitution is more powerful than the office of the President. No law, even one enacted by Parliament, can supersede the Constitution. 

The President's powers are defined and limited by the Constitution, meaning the President cannot act in a way that violates the Constitution. The Constitutional Court has the power to review laws and actions of the government, including the President, to ensure they are consistent with the Constitution. 

For example, the President cannot issue an order that contradicts the Constitution or violates the Bill of Rights. Any such order would be considered unconstitutional and could be struck down by the Constitutional Court.

The ongoing legal crisis over Donald Trump’s rapid-fire and controversial moves that have ranged from banning birthright citizenship to firing 18 inspectors general means the US president has shown a greater willingness than his predecessors to violate the constitution and federal law, some historians and legal scholars say.  Pointing to other Trump actions they say blatantly broke the law, such as freezing trillions of dollar in federal spending and dismissing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), even though they were confirmed by the Senate and had several years left in their terms.

Laurence Tribe, one America’s leading constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School had this to say;

“Without any doubt Donald Trump is the most lawless and scofflaw president we have ever seen in the history of the United States,”.

 4. Repress dissent and citizen efforts to hold the government accountable.

As discussed, Donald Trump has displayed a penchant for evading the democratic process, using executive orders to install some of his more populist policies. I have already also mentioned that he has shown a similar penchant for ignoring the US court system. Judicial decisions calling for the administration to reverse or pause some of these policies have been greeted by Trump and some of his senior colleagues (including Musk and the vice-president J.D.Vance), with noisy complaints at judicial interference in government. Even, in some cases, calls for the impeachment of judges who rule against the government.

Not only did the administration ignore the court’s ruling that suspended the forced expulsion of Venezuelans to El Salvador, some of whom were in the US legally, but Trump attacked the judge on social media calling him a corrupt “radical left lunatic” and called for his impeachment.

It isn't just the court's authority that Trump has ignored. His administration has also launched an attack on another key tenet of a free and fair democracy, press freedom. Trump has expelled established news organisations from the Pentagon, curtailed access to press events for the esteemed Associated Press, and taken control of the White House press pool, sidelining major media outlets.

Many of us will have watched in bemusement as Majorie Taylor Greene, the house representative from Georgia attempted to deflect attention from a Sky News journalist’s question about the appalling ‘signal gate’ security breach. Choosing instead to attempt somewhat bizarrely to deflect on to the Biden administration, then on to the US's border problem and finally, in a remarkable act of contortion, on to "all the women that are raped by migrants" in the UK.

These actions mark a significant downgrading of press freedom in America. They are undermining the role of independent journalism in their key function of holding power to account. By restricting access and silencing critical voices, his administration has raised concerns over transparency and the free flow of information in the domestic media landscapes.

5.  Capture elite support and, when needed, demonize them too

I know right! You almost don't need me to write this section and thinking about what I'm going to write feels like writing a work of fiction!

Let's leave the more obvious, Elon Musk aside for now and look at some of the other Billionaires linked to the current presidency

In December 2024, a CNN analysis of federal campaign records showed that over thirty of President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to serve in his incoming administration donated to his campaign or to the deep-pocketed outside groups that worked to elect him! 

Linda McMahon, recently appointed secretary of education, has donated over $16 million to Trump or his campaign groups.

The biggest contributor is Timothy Mellon, who donated over $75 million. Heir to the family banking fortune, Mellon wrote in his 2015 memoirs that ;

“ black voters were awarded freebies in exchange for delivering votes and that  black Americans became more belligerent and slaves of a new master, Uncle Sam”.

What was that about the best politicians money can buy?

Before we turn to the elephant in the room, let's consider the case of Steve Feinberg. CO-founder and CEO of Cerberus Capitol Management, Feinberg was recently appointed as deputy secretary of defence.  Cerberus is a major investor in US department of defence contracts. No conflict of interest there then?

It's not just the desire to be part of Trump's  government and the influence that brings that appeals to billionaires. Most economists saw the election as much as Corporations v Billionaire technocracy as they did republicans v democrats.

The President himself has portrayed his administration as anti corporation During the presidential campaign, Trump proclaimed that he would break up “the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C.”  But, as a report by Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization  found, Trump’s anti-industry bluster has largely dissipated, and he is hiring the same corporate lobbyists he denounced, giving industry representatives a dominant role in making policy decisions.

In particular, far from implementing his populist policies, as the report found,  Trump has handed huge advantages to the following sectors:

• Wealthy People: In his campaign, Trump promised to significantly reduce taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans, and to ask the wealthy to pay more. But an initial tax proposal from Trump would deliver massive benefits to the wealthy.

• Autos:  At the behest of the automakers, Trump traveled to Detroit to announce his administration would postpone a decision on whether to enact previously planned increases to fuel efficiency standards. These Obama-era rules would raise the average vehicle’s official gas mileage to more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025.

•  Chemicals: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overturned staff experts’ recommendation to ban a dangerous insecticide and watered down a key bipartisan toxic substances law.

• Defense: Trump previously criticized Lockheed Martin’s F-35 and Boeing Co.’s plans for a new Air Force One as glaring examples of government waste. He then proposed a budget plan that would enrich those same contractors with an increase to military spending of $54 billion per year.

• Education: Trump’s U.S. Department of Education is working to roll back rules established during the Obama administration that protect students from predatory private colleges and student lenders.

• Energy: The Trump administration is delaying, weakening or repealing numerous clean air rules or policies that benefit public health and the Earth’s climate. Trump is favouring fossil fuel-based energy producers over the fast-growing and clean renewable energy sector.

• Financial Services: With bankers and bank industry lawyers now controlling policy and regulation, Trump has begun dismantling the guardrails that are meant to protect the public from Wall Street and has reversed course on his promise to reestablish Glass-Steagall protections.

• Food: Trump has catered to the demands of corporate food producers and agribusiness at the expense of food safety and children’s nutrition.

• Pharmaceuticals: After casting himself as an opponent of pharmaceutical industry greed during the campaign, Trump has fully caved into the industry. The White House is now working to reduce patient protections and strengthen the industry’s monopoly power.

• Prisons: Trump’s extreme anti-immigration rhetoric on the campaign trail was music to the ears of the for-profit prison industry, which now has been rewarded with policies that would increase the number of incarcerated people and permit for-profit companies to house federal prisoners.

• Telecom:  Trump signed legislation that permitted the telecom industry to sell consumers private internet browsing data. His Federal Communications Commission has proposed ending net neutrality protections approved in 2015 that bar internet providers from blocking or slowing internet traffic, a measure taken to prevent larger internet providers from steering customers to their own sites.

Billionaires in Trump's inner circle have also benefited from the President’s erratic and seemingly, strategy free economic decisions.

The recent, multiple u-turns performed by the President regarding tariffs, led to his opponents accusing him of insider trading. Whilst insider trading can be difficult to prove, there is no question that market manipulation has taken place with Donald Trump  facing accusations of market manipulation after posting on social media that it was a “great time to buy” just hours before he made a dramatic U-turn on his trade war that led to big rises in stock markets around the world.

Shortly after US markets opened on Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”.

Less than four hours later, he shocked investors by announcing a 90-day pause on additional trade tariffs on most countries except China, sending share indexes soaring!

Indeed Several investors have used volatility in the stock market in recent weeks as a buying opportunity. The Guardian newspaper recently reported that the US representative for Georgia, Republican and Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, disclosed that she had made several purchases on 3 and 4 April – days when there were sharp market falls after Trump first detailed his “liberation day” tariffs on 2 April – including shares in Amazon.com and Apple. Shares in the technology companies rose by 12% and 15% respectively on Wednesday.

Economic growth and prosperity are critical to retaining elite or oligarchical support for autocratic leaders. Whether through state-owned businesses, media conglomerates or more sophisticated connections between governments and free-market corporations, money and politics, translated into government favors for the rich, can be a toxic mix for democracy.

As mentioned, demonisation of their technocrat backers is another common feature of autocrats. The recent Trump v Besos spat over Amazon's plans to show their customers the impact of tariffs on prices is a perfect example of this with The White House accusing Amazon of committing a “hostile and political act” by planning to list extra tariff costs on its website and even accusing the online retailer of partnering with a Chinese propaganda arm!

It is not at all difficult to make the case that the current and previous Trump administration have displayed almost all of the tendencies of autocratic, authoritarian regimes when dealing with oligarchs.

Now. Let's tackle the oligarchal elephant in the room. Elon Musk.

The Starlink, Tesla and X owner is very much like Marmite. People either hate him, or love him. Most whilst having no idea of who he really is so lets take a look at his background.

Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman was born in Minnesota in 1902 but grew up mostly in Saskatchewan, Canada. In the nineteen-thirties, he joined the quasi-fascistic Technocracy movement, whose proponents believed that scientists and engineers, rather than the people, should rule. He became a leader of the movement in Canada, and, when it was briefly outlawed, he was jailed, after which he became the national chairman of what was then a notoriously antisemitic party called Social Credit. In the nineteen-forties, he ran for office under its banner, and lost. In 1950, two years after South Africa instituted apartheid, he moved his family to Pretoria, where he became an impassioned defender of the regime. Indeed it was the move to South Africa that paved the way for Musk's father Erroll to build the family fortune. Although Erroll himself prefers to speak of his success in the automotive and construction sectors, it was his dealings in Emeralds that put him on the path to becoming wealthy.

Whilst Elon Musk has previously denied that his father was involved in the Emerald trade, Erroll himself set the record straight in an interview with the MacG Podcast where he stated that after receiving 118 uncut emeralds as part payment for a Cessna aircraft, he realised that, as the construction industry struggled, the trade in uncut gems was thriving. As part of the interview he gave this quote;

“I started to buy uncut emeralds from numerous sources, dealing only in cash.

The industry was so dangerous that the transactions happened in the street instead of in a building, where people feared being robbed or harmed.

“Everything was cash. Even when I sold emeralds to the jewellers, it was always cash,” Errol said.

 Should we really be surprised that someone whose formative years involved Fascism , technocracy and very questionable business ethics should, whilst championing the merits of technology over humanity,  in 2025 be seen to make a gesture that looks very much like a Nazi salute whilst championing a resident who himself has a very murky financial history.

Remember that Trump has bankrupted 6 businesses and admitted that on 4 occasions he used certain laws, Chapter 11 bankruptcy,  that allowed him to wipe away debt, whilst continuing to trade. 

Indeed having fought to keep his tax returns secret, when he eventually agreed to publish them the House Ways and Means committee revealed that Trump reported millions in negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

The returns also show Trump had numerous foreign bank accounts between 2015 and 2016, including in China, the U.K., St. Martin and Ireland, which is a well-known tax haven

Suddenly the veneer of the self styled ‘ man of the people’ begins to appear somewhat tarnished.

As for Elon Musk himself, he became the face of DOGE. Claiming to be focused on fighting corruption and governmental waste, it has since transpired that what this means is, removing officials responsible for regulating Musk’s own businesses and seeking to replace existing systems with his own.

The tradition of demonising billionaires was used against Musk too! Before he stepped back from working with DOGE, Musk responded to criticism by Peter Navarro, Trump's top adviser on trade and tariffs, calling the white house adviser, “a moron, dumber than a sack of bricks”!

Clearly the Trump billionaire strategy comes right out of the authoritarian leaders handbook!

In part three of this series, I will explore the next 5 characteristics of an authoritarian leader and ask whether the Trump administration fits the bill with these 5, as clearly as it does those discussed in this article.