Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

In the first year of his presidency, Trump had effected a remarkable shift in American politics—a shift of political audiences. In a representative democracy, a politician’s primary audience is their voters, the residents of their district, state, or country who will decide whether to bring them back to office in the next election cycle. In an autocracy, the politician’s primary audience is the autocrat himself, because he is the patron who apportions power and influence. In Trump’s America, Republican politicians perform for Trump—he is their primary audience—but his audience is his base, the people who come to his rallies and absorb his tweets. He distributes power by mobilizing these voters. As long as the Democrats are performing for the audience of their voters rather than for Trump, there is hope of reversing the autocratic attempt—but even now half of the country in which we are living is functioning, in the public space, like an autocracy.