Trump's Civil War

The United States is just a preview of an increasingly systemic conflict between authoritarianism and the rule of law that threatens all democracies

The images of Los Angeles in flames don’t depict a traditional civil war, but they represent the symptoms of a deepening, systemic conflict between authoritarianism and the rule of law—one that extends far beyond the United States.

The Trump administration’s strategy appears designed to inflame this conflict, deliberately stoking tensions and exacerbating political polarization. ICE has conducted overtly provocative raids at immigrant workplaces, forcibly removing workers from restaurants, supermarkets, and clothing stores before deporting them to undisclosed locations—often with complete disregard for their family obligations. Mothers have been arrested while picking up their children from school.

Social media platform X is now flooded with MAGA accounts proudly sharing videos of these arrests. As Tom Homan, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declared to reporters: “You're going to see more work site enforcement than you've ever seen in the history of this nation. We're going to flood the zone.”

The Language of Repression

The protests demand the rule of law—the very principle the administration is systematically undermining. Californians refuse to stand by while colleagues, neighbors, and local shopkeepers are dragged away by masked agents and deported without charges or due process.

After five months of policy failures, the administration needs to reframe these legitimate protests as acts of domestic terrorism. Every rock thrown at a police car, every vandalized robotaxi, every Mexican flag waved in the streets becomes a propaganda tool—ammunition for the narrative of cities under siege, allegedly invaded and overrun by criminals. This framing serves to justify extraordinary force and the concentration of exceptional powers.

Militarized agents and soldiers are deployed not only to intimidate peaceful citizens and suppress dissent, but also to provoke those most likely to respond with violence—fueling a process of self-selection that gradually shifts demonstrations toward their most confrontational participants.

In recent hours, Trump’s posts on Truth Social have become increasingly inflammatory. Yesterday, he wrote:

A once-great American city, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals. Now, violent and insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our federal agents to try and stop our deportation operations — But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I have directing [...] to take all necessary actions to liberate Los Angeles from the migrant invasion and put an end to these migrant riots. Order will be restored, the illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.

These words invoke a war that simply did not exist before ICE’s deployment—a manufactured conflict designed to justify repression, legitimize extraordinary powers, destabilize California's democratic institutions, and politically subordinate a wealthy, educated, and independently minded state.

As Timothy Snyder, one of the world's leading scholars of authoritarianism, observes, language is not merely a communication tool—it is a weapon of symbolic repression that provides clear early warnings of authoritarian breakdown:

When the state carries out criminal terror against its own people, it calls them the ‘criminals’ or the ‘terrorists.’

As Snyder explains further:

The first part of controlling the language is inverting the meaning: whatever the government does is good, because by definition its victims are the ‘criminals’ and the ‘terrorists.’ The second part is deterring the press, or anyone else, from challenging the perversion by associating anyone who objects with crime and terror. This was the role Stephen Miller played when he said yesterday in the White House that reporters ‘want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children.’

How to Recognize a Dying Democracy

The descent into competitive authoritarianism rarely occurs through dramatic coups. Instead, it typically unfolds through decisions that appear episodic or isolated—but when examined in sequence, reveal a coherent strategy.

In competitive authoritarian regimes, many citizens fail to recognize the true nature of the system governing them. This is precisely why understanding how to identify a dying democracy—and recognizing how the transition to authoritarianism begins—has become more critical than ever. This challenge extends far beyond the United States to encompass every contemporary democracy where autocratic leaders and populist movements are systematically eroding institutions from both within and without, against a backdrop of escalating political, economic, and social polarization.

Most 21st-century autocrats come to power through elections. Stephen Levitsky and Lucan Way explain that rather than silencing opposition through overt violence, today's autocrats weaponize state institutions—deploying the judiciary and law enforcement, tax authorities and regulatory agencies to punish political opponents and marginalize critical media and civil society. Citizens often fail to recognize they are living under authoritarian rule because attacks on dissent assume the form of ostensibly legal instruments: defamation lawsuits, tax inspections, and criminal investigations.

How, then, can one identify the moment democracy gives way to authoritarianism?

In a recent New York Times article, Levitsky, Way, and Daniel Ziblatt propose a simple yet effective criterion: measure the cost of opposition. In a democracy, citizens face no punishment for peacefully opposing those in power. They can express critical opinions in the press (including on social media), support opposition candidates, and engage in nonviolent protest without fear of retaliation.

In authoritarian regimes, by contrast, opposition carries a price. Individuals and organizations that speak out become targets of punitive measures. Politicians may face investigation or prosecution on dubious or fabricated charges. Media outlets may encounter defamation lawsuits or hostile regulatory decisions. Businesses may be subjected to tax audits or excluded from contracts essential to their survival. Universities and other civil society institutions may lose government funding or tax-exempt status. Journalists, activists, and government critics may face threats, harassment, or even physical violence from regime supporters.

When every instrument of state power—the FBI, CIA, ICE, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and now even the armed forces—has been transformed into a tool of repression, and when the cost of dissent becomes prohibitive for ordinary citizens, that line has already been crossed.

If citizens must hesitate before criticizing the government—knowing it might exact a price—then they no longer live in a genuine democracy.

The deployment of armed forces against American citizens is not an isolated aberration. It represents a warning sign—one more in an extensive and growing catalog—of a system sliding toward authoritarianism.

The Information Ecosystem and Authoritarianism

As Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat—a platform for investigative journalism and open-source intelligence—recently observed:

The conditions that have led to what’s happening in the U.S. today exist in democracies around the world. They are the inevitable outcome of our collective failure to adapt to fundamental changes in the information ecosystem on which democracies were originally built.

We built 20th-century democracies on the assumption that truth could be verified, that public discourse could be deliberated, and that those in power could be held accountable. But the system those assumptions relied on—made up of gatekeepers, shared facts, and institutional trust—is crumbling. And in some ways, rightly so.

In its place: an algorithmic chaos where every citizen is a broadcaster, every feed a battleground, and every truth contestable. We didn’t design for this. We didn’t adapt in time. And now the cracks are widening.

If we continue down this path, ignoring the collapse of shared reality, failing to rebuild the systems that stabilise truth, we will see democratic norms erode from the inside out. Not in a single catastrophic moment, but in a thousand small compromises.

People will no longer trust courts or political parties. They won’t believe evidence. They will be certain that their own side is right, no matter what reality says. That’s not disagreement—it’s an epistemic fracture. And once it sets in, it's almost impossible to reverse.

What comes next will not resemble the typical dystopia depicted in science fiction novels. It will look like a hollowed-out normality. Parliaments will still convene, and elections will still be held—but the playing field will be so distorted, and dissent so systematically repressed, that outcomes will be predetermined. Every aspect of free expression will fall under state control. The cost of dissent will become prohibitive.

This is not merely an American story—it serves as both preview and warning. In today’s world, every democracy faces a choice: actively resist the corruption of its information and institutional ecosystems, or passively allow itself to drift into authoritarianism.

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