I didn't take Tea Party, Trump seriously. Now I worry about the rise of authoritarianism.

How do you know when you are voting in your last election?   

The mind is not well designed to recognize signs of pending radical change. To help prime the brain to think in different ways, Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs would often ask: “What time is it on the clock of the world?” 

The United States is facing an authoritarian crisis. This is more than a tagline or an epithet. It is reflective of deep structural trends. We must first decide to understand what is happening, and why it is happening — and then we must, collectively, decide to take strong actions in defense of our democracy.  

How authoritarianism rises 

How can we better perceive the real-time threats we are facing? We have to start connecting the dots. The interconnected signs of growing authoritarianism are all around us, if we have the right frames of understanding.  

Truth is the first victim of authoritarianism. From “alternative facts,” to election denialism, to normalizing serial lying in presidential campaigns, a common narrative fabric no longer binds the country. It is in this frame that we have to place book bans, fights over school curricula and the manufactured specter of critical race theory. 

Next comes the normalization of violence. Violence is an unavoidable consequence of extreme othering. Domestic terrorism now ranks as one of the greatest threats to national security. Those that engaged in political violence on Jan. 6 are treated as martyrs in some circles, and former President Donald Trump promised some of them pardons. More than 20% of Americans believe that violence may be necessary to secure political objectives in 2024. 

What may surprise many is that issues of gender are also essential to understanding rising authoritarian trends. Whether within a frame of White Christian Nationalism or off-the-shelf philosophies of fascism, rigid patriarchy is a central part of the equation. For example, Nazi Germany excluded women from political and academic life, stressing their role in the home as wives and mothers, producing the next generation of Aryan children.

A strong role for traditional family values and a subordinate role for women are key pillars of authoritarianism. Now, we can connect the dots from the reversal of Roe v. Wade to efforts to prevent access to the abortion pill mifepristone, to the hysteria over extending rights to transgendered individuals.

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Why it’s happening 

Political circumstances call forth authoritarian leaders, authoritarian leaders do not create their own autocracies. 

What are the root causes for the growing wave of authoritarianism?  

We start with skyrocketing inequality. Economic inequality in America has increased dramatically over the last 40 years and is now at levels not seen since the 1920s. The acid of inequality is the wellspring of despair and cruelty. 

White Americans have always been in control in this country. Democracy plus demography now threaten this historic fact. For some white Americans, economic hardship plus the loss of political dominance presents an existential crisis, and white supremacy, White Christian Nationalism and white entitlement are ready-made containers to hold, channel and amplify these toxic forces of white fear, anxiety, anger and resentment.  

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We have to defend our multiracial democracy  

These growing authoritarian trends are a backlash to the steps we were making towards a more robust multiracial democracy, as embodied in the presidency of Barack Obama. If there was no Obama, there would be no Donald Trump.  

I will be the first to admit that I did not see it coming. I laughed at the Tea Party and their tri-corner hats. I did not take Trump’s 2016 campaign seriously. I never thought Roe v. Wade would be overturned. I never thought the U.S. Supreme Court (contrary to clear language in the constitution and centuries of tradition) would hold that the president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” performed in office. 

What time is it on the clock of the world? It’s time to wake up and see current events for what they are. There is a real risk that we are seeing the end of democracy in the United States, and the irreversible rise of White Christian Authoritarianism.   

How do you know when you’re voting in your last election? In 2024, it will be up to us.  

Peter J. Hammer is the A. Alfred Taubman Professor of Law and Director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School.