The Ephemeric

Ultimately, I think this is really what people are getting at when they talk about fascism potentially taking hold in America. Is there repression of speech and rights? Is the law subject to political pressure? Is there forceful suppression? And do the people still hold the ultimate power by electing the leaders and decision makers?

The first of these is perhaps the pillar that has been most visible in media coverage, which makes sense since it directly impacts those media organisations. America has long presented itself as the paragon of free speech, protected by inalienable constitutional rights, but is that still the case? 

The President has long clashed with the media, describing them as the enemy of the people and calling for greater restrictions on what they can and cannot say. These attacks have taken on an even greater severity during his second term, with increased political pressure being placed on news networks to silence or fire unfavourable commenters, including threats to revoke broadcasting licenses from those who refuse. We saw a new front in this conflict in just these past few weeks with the White House press ban against outlets viewed as unfavourable to the President.

To be clear, other American presidents have clashed severely with the press and political dissenters since the nation's founding. Major historical precedents include John Adams passing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Abraham Lincoln shutting down newspapers during the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson’s Espionage and Sedition Acts during WWI, and Richard Nixon’s direct wiretapping of journalists and attempts to block the Pentagon Papers. 

What makes these latest clashes historically significant are the extent to which the current regime seems willing to place unilateral force to ensure compliant speech. Rather than pursuing the appropriate legalistic or regulatory avenues, this regime has indicated a willingness to leverage the full authority of government to get what it wants, coercing through threats which include everything from blocking corporate mergers to IRS investigations. It's also notable that the historic examples were generally framed as a (arguably extreme) response to a specific threat, whereas in this instance these restrictions are being enforced for no reason other than to control the discourse.

It is worth noting that most of the regime's attempts to restrict speech have failed. The courts ultimately lifted the White House ban, and most of the attempts to force suspensions of unfavourable journalists ultimately went nowhere. But some have proven fruitful, most notably the quid pro quo to have talkshow host Stephen Colbert fired as part of the terms of the Skydance merger.

So on the first pillar, I would say that free speech remains largely intact, despite the best efforts of the regime. The courts have demonstrated a willingness to intervene, and the media remains largely free to criticise the government, despite increasing pressure. But there's a catch. The administration has seemingly found a loophole: rather than directly censoring speech, it can leverage the powers of government to pressure private organisations, who are not themselves bound by the First Amendment, to do the censoring for it. And even when those efforts fail, the threat alone can be enough to encourage self-censorship. The result is a troubling erosion of free speech, even without any formal change to the constitutional protections that underpin it.

This second pillar is arguably the most underreported. A free society relies on an equal and unbiased application of the laws. The moment the state has the right to enforce the law at will, on those it chooses, is the moment that democracy starts to tilt into authoritarianism.

In this regard, there have been some immensely troubling developments under the current regime. Trump has long suggested that the law should not be enforced against members of his party. But, once again, his second term has taken this political dictum to a new extreme, with political prosecutions being made against those who oppose him, often under flimsy or non-existent pretenses. 

This is before we even get into the political pardons, which includes the dozens of criminal charges that were made against Trump's allies in connection with Russian election interference, as well as thousands of violent insurrectionists who committed political violence and murder on January 6th.

It is shocking to me that this isn't receiving greater coverage in the media. While the politically motivated use of criminal prosecutions is hardly without precedent in American history, the increasingly open willingness of the current administration to pursue its political opponents through the justice system should be of deep concern to all. The silver lining is that the courts have continued to impose limits, with several prominent prosecutions being tossed out at the first hurdle. That doesn't necessarily mean that the damage has been undone. But it does demonstrate that the executive branch has not yet succeeded in bending the entire justice system to its will.

Let's not beat around the bush here. This was an armed, violent attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government. People died, and there was the will to kill even more people on that day, including Trump's own Vice President and members of Congress.

There are some dark instances of state-sanctioned violence in America's history, but not since the civil war has there been such an act of political violence as this, such an attempt to subvert democracy.

You could argue that the attempt ultimately failed. Democratic will was ultimately upheld. But the fact that it happened at all is bad enough. The fact that the perpetrators have largely avoided consequences will forever be one of America's greatest shames.

Inaction has consequences. That this act of political violence was ultimately allowed to pass has only emboldened those responsible to use further force under the current regime. This is most apparent in the military occupations of American cities that took place during 2025 and 2026.

There have been various pretexts provided for these occupations: anti-immigration raids, suppression of protests, but the result in all cases has ultimately been an ongoing and often violent military presence in America's cities, with seemingly no objective other than to suppress dissent and intimidate political opponents.

Fortunately, as with many of the incidents described earlier, these efforts have largely been blocked by the American courts, though that will come as scant comfort to those who have lost loved ones over these past two years.

There are various forms of democracy. You can have direct democracies where the people vote on specific laws, or indirect democracies where they elect leaders to decide those laws. Sometimes you can have a mix of the two. But ultimately, in a democracy it is the people who decide who leads them and guide the future of the nation.

This is also one area where I need to push back a little on the suggestion that this is a new problem that has arisen in the Trump era. It isn't. America has long been a very flawed democracy, whether it's because of the millions of disenfranchised Americans living in Washington DC and Puerto Rico (among others), or the legal gerrymandering (a process where politicians literally choose their voters). These are not new issues, and it should not be forgotten that the 2016 election, before Trump ever came to power, saw Republicans take the White House alongside House and Senate majorities, despite  receiving fewer votes in all three contests.

With that said, it has clearly gotten worse. January 6 was, at its core, an attempt to throw out the vote of the people. It was also far from the only attempt to disregard the vote during that election or since. We also had the fake electors plot, the plot to ban mail-in votes in states which did not cede electoral control to the Trump regime, the plot to disenfranchise voters from the voter rolls, or Trump literally calling the Georgia Governor and asking him to make up votes.

These are very brazen attempts to quite explicitly end American democracy. But once again, the silver lining is that all of these attempts ultimately failed. Nevertheless, they keep trying, and the worrying thing is we don't know what they will try next. There has been some suggestion that the military occupations of American cities has been a trial run for a plan to obstruct elections.

There's a recurring theme appearing with these pillars, and it hearkens back to my earlier comment on the distinction between a fascist state and a fascist government. These are areas where the government is clearly attempting to shift the country in an authoritarian direction, restricting speech and applying the law politically. 

In that sense, I think there is little doubt that the current administration has authoritarian ambitions, and that those ambitions represent a very real threat to American democracy. But ambition is not the same as achievement. The key observation here is that, despite everything, the institutions of American democracy have continued to demonstrate a remarkable degree of resilience.

And that brings us back to the original question. Is America still a democracy? I would say so, at least for now. Elections still take place, the courts continue to impose meaningful constraints on executive power, and the government has not succeeded in establishing the unilateral political control characteristic of an authoritarian state. At the time of writing, the people still ultimately have the political control in America. There have been clear attempts to wrest that control away from the people, but so far that has not succeeded. Anyone who says that America is no longer a democracy, or that American democracy is dead, is objectively exaggerating, but their concern is not based on nothing.

We should be careful not to mistake resilience for invulnerability. The fact that an institution survives an attack does not mean it has emerged unscathed, and the repeated erosion of democratic norms can ultimately be just as consequential as their outright abolition.

The real test will be the upcoming election, although not necessarily in the way that people might expect. It isn't simply a question of whether Americans are permitted to vote, or even whether their votes are accurately counted. It is whether those votes continue to translate into meaningful political power, whether the government respects the outcome, and whether the institutions elected by the people retain the authority to hold the executive to account.

America remains a democracy. But democracy is not a permanent condition, bestowed upon a nation by its founders and guaranteed for all time by a constitution. It is something that must be continuously defended, by its institutions, its leaders, and ultimately by the people themselves. All eyes will be on America this November. If something unthinkable takes place, and under this regime it would not be for the first time, then it may really be the case that we have lost our republic.