Every authoritarian in history seized the press — Mussolini stormed newsrooms, Goebbels licensed editors, McCarthy demanded loyalty oaths, Putin jails critics. The thread through it all: the Strongman must control the narrative. It's not new.
And Hegseth is already hamstringing Pentagon reporters.
When the illusion cracks, the Strongman falls. That’s the real fear behind gag orders, loyalty pledges, and silenced critics.
New Splitroot essay coming soon: The Illusion of Strength.
Until then, my piece on Hegseth discusses some of this: splitrootwrites.substack.com/p/pete-hegse...
That’s why Kimmel’s gone. That’s why Trump rages at comedians. That’s why his own speech is laced with ridicule. Authoritarians need the illusion of strength, because it’s the only way they can rule.
The Illusion matters more than the truth.
Authoritarians can be called corrupt, cruel, even criminal. What they cannot survive is mockery — being laughed at, being made a fool of. The Strongman Illusion depends on fear. Strip that away, and weakness shows.
Trump shrugs off “evil.” What he can’t bear is being a joke.
🧵
This echoes every authoritarian regime in history, from Mussolini to Putin.
"Democracy doesn’t survive when the truth itself has been outlawed. This pledge makes journalism conditional on obedience, and it is designed to leave the public permanently in the dark."
open.substack.com/pub/splitroo...
But as they say, if the shoe fits?
And this admin is Cinderella.
It's getting more and more blatant. Hegseth is now demanding Pentagon reporters sign a "loyalty oath". I dropped my current project to pump out a piece on that real quick today, just shared it. It's getting horrifying. For a while I was afraid to call them Fascists because its such a loaded term...
Hegseth just replaced the First Amendment with a permission slip. Reporters must sign a Pentagon loyalty oath — swearing not to ‘obtain unauthorized info, even if unclassified’ — or lose credentials.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
#Hegseth #Pentagon #Politics #Authoritarianism
The firing of Erik Siebert is not a personnel change, it's conquest. My new article on Substack breaks down how loyalty is replacing law and what it means for American Democracy.
open.substack.com/pub/splitroo...
#ErikSiebert #DepartmentofJustice #Democracy
Fascism thrives on helplessness. It wants people to believe it’s inevitable, that resistance is pointless. But what it fears most isn’t chaos, it’s an organized public that refuses its worldview. Every time we link arms and push back together, we remind it that inevitability is a lie.
Also new to bluesky, but it appears judging from your username, we might have similar interests. Gave you a follow.
But yes, I do think it largely stems from the right (and the data backs that up too). I just think we've also been complicit for allowing it to go this far. Democratic norms have degraded so far, I'm not sure we can rebuild them. I'm seriously horrified for the next months/years.
Excellent Reuters special report on the exact nature of this current wave of RWE. I touched on a lot of this in my recent piece as well, but Reuters did a deep dive into what exactly this means. The key is that it's not one ideology, but a "salad bowl" of ideologies.
www.reuters.com/investigates...
I'm afraid we're watching the Republic wither and die around us, and half the country is cheering it on because it's their guy leading the charge. We're all partially responsible for allowing violent rhetoric to define politics for at least a decade now. I just hope it's not too late.
I've just started writing under this psuedonym, I was posting some political stuff under my name until people started contacting my family. So I've locked that down and created this account and a few others under this same name. The risk of doxxing is crazy these days.
Yup. We're honestly ALL to blame for allowing it to get this far without consequences. At the risk of self promotion, I just dropped an article on this topic and Charlie Kirk on my Substack a couple days ago--how rhetoric creates violence, and it's the right thats largely been fueling this rhetoric.
The people elevate that leader above all others, and he ends up with exceptional power. He eliminates all opposition, and uses fear, division, and violence to cement control. What began as freedom in democracy ends in the absolute rule of Tyranny by the demagogue... Sound familiar yet?
Plato also said that democracy fails when maximum freedom begins to undermine respect for authority, order, and expertise. The state stops discriminating between qualified/unqualified and power is handed to those who cant wield it. In this chaos, a demagogue appears who promises order and defense.
We’re dealing with a new kind of extremist. Yes, largely right-wing, but it’s more a “salad bowl” of ideologies than a single label. What unifies them is the toxic political rhetoric that fuels extremism on the right. Reuters has a deep dive here:
www.reuters.com/investigates...
The same people screaming about the violence now are the ones who created the environment where it became possible. They've spent the last decade framing politics with "war-time" rhetoric, and now they act shocked when people act violently. Its a predictable consequence of rhetoric and vitriol.
people will take it literally. And some will take it as permission for whatever violence they want to commit. We’ve let this rhetoric fester until violence feels inevitable. I actually just published a Substack about this 2 days ago.
Our politicians and media set the stage for this. The culture war is framed as an existential battle, and the media keeps us in a state of permanent outrage. In that climate, violence stops feeling abnormal. When a leader tells half the country to “beat the hell out of” the other side, some...
The road to political violence is a tragedy in three acts: Rhetoric, Radicalization, and Ruin. My new Substack article breaks down the ecosystem that made the assassination of Charlie Kirk feel inevitable—and what could come next.
#CharlieKirk #Politics #Extremism
Just getting settled in on Bluesky. I'll soon be posting my own content (mostly long form political commentary), and look forward to finding a community for real discussion here.