The Dangers of Political Indictments and Authoritarianism

Is it okay to call Trump a “fascist”? Is our democracy itself really on the line next month? And what might our legal system look like after a second Trump term? We look behind the headlines to begin to examine the nuances of these questions in this first of several planned episodes on the current state of the American right.

• The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton (2004)

• “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Journal of Democracy (April 2002)

• They Thought They Were Free (full text), Milton Meyer (1955)

• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Timothy Snyder (2018)

• Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, Peter Pomerantsev (2015)

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