Authoritarianism is unsustainable
They cannot win, they know this, and it terrifies them
Authoritarianism is not sustainable. That is the good news.
The bad news is that once it begins to take root, it can take decades to eradicate. It’s one of the worst invasive species of humanity.
Authoritarianism is not sustainable because its existence depends on denying reality.
Natural authority exists. Gravity exists. Electromagnetic radiation exists. Electric current exists. Molecules and atoms exist.
Our cars function. Water flows. Our computers and smart phones process information and display videos. The things we build depend on our knowledge of what is really, actually true.
When we provide healthcare, people are healthier. We can measure this. We can demonstrate this.
None of these things are arbitrary and all of them come crashing down if we attempt to disregard the laws of the universe. None of this depends on belief. The world marches on whether we agree with it or not.
Authoritarians try to take illegitimate and unnatural authority. They try to disregard the laws of the universe. And that is why authoritarianism is unsustainable. It requires massive amounts of energy to prop it up. Its power is illusory and lasts only as long as it has enough control to keep deploying massive amounts of energy to prop up its illusions.
That is why authoritarians lie. They cannot tell the truth because when the truth is known, in a flash, their illusion evaporates. Their knowledge, their abilities, their accomplishments, their special skills, their “negotiations”, their “walls”, their “trade agreements”, their “wonderful healthcare”, and on and on, it’s all smoke and mirrors, thin illusions, nothing substantial.
Authoritarians know that they don’t have the energy to prop up their illusions all by themselves. They know that they must get huge numbers of people to play along, willingly or as dupes. They do this by manipulating people’s fears and desires.
The most powerful weapon that authoritarians use is the false equivalence. This weapon is better than all the outright lies and “fake news” combined.
It’s a weapon that plays on fears and desires to turn everyday, average people into glassy-eyed zombies willfully denying that gravity exists, that people in marches can be counted, or that illegal votes require actual people to cast the votes, rather than figments of a fevered imagination.
False equivalence turns a statement that, “universal human rights should be protected,” into a statement like, “you violate my rights by saying I should not be able to advocate for arbitrarily killing you.”
Authoritarianism is unsustainable, but the human forces that can be whipped into obedient supporters are what props it up.
Fight authoritarianism by fighting what sustains it, not by fighting against the illusions themselves. Fight against false equivalences by highlighting the very clear boundaries that exist in reality.
Fight against the lies of authoritarianism by engaging people with the real world, not by contradicting, and thereby perversely empowering, the authoritarian’s lies. Write articles about the everyday lives of real people in cities that don’t have major crime epidemics rather than writing stories that just restate and contradict the authoritarian’s lies.
Build a rich tapestry of the real world that connects people to it, and at most factually restates the authoritarian’s contradictory lie. Never, ever use the authoritarian’s lie as the article’s title.
Remember, authoritarians have no valid, natural authority. They are hellishly fearful people attempting to fortify extreme cowardice and inadequacy. They are the useful idiots of the sociopaths that desire to exploit and abuse vast numbers of people for their own enrichment and amusement.
We should never underestimate the consequences or the efficacy of authoritarians. We must fight the things that support them. We must defeat them. But to start, we must understand the dynamics of authoritarianism.
