Trump, Tyranny, and the Need for a People’s Program

EDITORIAL, 8 Sep 2025

#915 | Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service

Is Donald Trump a tyrant?  A dictator or would-be dictator?  Lots of anti-Trump politicians and commentators think so.  Minnesota governor Tim Waltz believes that the epithet is warranted, as do Senators Padilla of California and Merkley of Oregon, CNN anchor Jim Acosta, Yale historian Timothy Snyder, and bloggers too numerous to mention.  Former Veep and presidential candidate Kamala Harris labeled her opponent a “fascist” and “wannabe dictator.”  And 34 out of 35 legal scholars responding to a recent New York Times survey agreed that the current U.S. president is a “lawless authoritarian.”   (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/opinion/trump-constitution-rule-of-law.html)

This language raises a tricky question: are we meant to take it literally, or is it a form of partisan hyperbole, as when Trump calls ordinary Democrats “radical leftists” or describes media reports that he doesn’t like as “fake news”?  The answer may seem obvious, at least to MAGA opponents.  At this moment in my own city, masked ICE-men are seizing and detaining undocumented immigrants who work to support their families and have no criminal records, while uniformed National Guards arrest D.C. citizens, mostly young and non-white, for driving a car with a broken taillight or smoking a joint on the corner.  The anthropologist James B. Greenberg calls this sort of thing nascent fascism and notes the following signs:

Emergency powers used against protest. Justice Department prosecutions aimed at political opponents. Detention camps expanded inland. National Guard deployments ordered against demonstrations. Parallel courts—immigration tribunals or military panels—used to sidestep ordinary law. These are not abstractions. They have been proposed, rehearsed, and in some cases already carried out. (https://jamesbgreenberg.substack.com/p/forgetting-fascism-trump-orban-and?utm_ )

Prof. Greenberg concludes that Trump “is moving steadily toward a dictatorship, one built less on consent and more on fear and force.”  But I believe that the matter is more complex than this . . . and, more important, that branding him a would-be Hitler or Stalin does not generate a movement that can defeat him.  Although this president does have tyrannical tendencies and has abused his powers, he is far from being a dictator, and there is nothing inevitable about his becoming one.  The great question is how to end his political career and smash the MAGA movement, and focusing on his alleged dictatorial intentions does not produce a viable strategy for doing this.

Resisting MAGA policies in the courts and in the streets is necessary and admirable, to be sure, but what Democrats and other Trump opponents desperately need to do is to catalyze a social movement that can put MAGA and the Trumpers out of business once and for all.  To do this requires more than accusations of dictatorship, lawsuits, and street demonstrations.  It requires an inspiring ideology, problem-solving programs, and charismatic leaders – three essentials that the Democratic opposition currently painfully lacks.

Trump the tyrant: the use and misuse of historical analogies

If Donald Trump is a genuine tyrant or is determined to become one, we should probably not be talking openly about trying to defeat him in the next election.  We should be working to depose him “by any means necessary,” as Malcolm X used to say.  But no one who brands the president a tyrant dares to breathe the word tyrannicide or talk about violent resistance.  This reticence, it seems to me, is not just a result of fear that uttering such words could get the utterer arrested, it also reflects the fact that applied to a leader like Trump, terms like tyrant, dictator, and fascist belong to a category somewhere in the middle ground between literalism and hyperbole, something like calling abortion “child murder.”

These charges also involve a fear that the president’s ideas and behaviors, if extended to other groups and made permanent, could come to resemble those of despotic leaders like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.  This fear, it seems to me, is not ungrounded.  Trump’s narrow ethno-nationalism, love of coercive power, and disregard for legal limitations give us plenty to worry about.  Even so, our own history suggests that in some ways the concern is overblown and misleading.

Consider another historical analogy: that between Donald Trump and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Of course, in terms of ideology the leaders of the MAGA movement and of the New Deal are diametric opposites – but certain structural similarities are striking.  Recall F.D.R.’s enemies.  Responding to the president’s unprecedented expansion of executive power and his charismatic appeal, a wide array of adversaries, from U.S. senators and Wall Street financiers to the publisher William Randolph Hearst and the “radio priest” Fr. Charles Coughlin, branded him a would-be dictator, as well as a socialist and communist.  While he was none of those things, there were reasons for opponents to worry that he might be.  Elected in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, F.D.R. quickly became the most powerful president in U.S. history – a charismatic innovator who vastly increased the size and authority of the executive branch , created a panoply of federal agencies, persuaded or intimidated judges to uphold his regulatory schemes, mobilized popular support among workers and farmers, and used new media (especially radio) to establish a personal bond with his followers.

In the end, Roosevelt ran for unprecedented third and fourth terms of office (another violation of established norms) and led the nation into and through World War II.  The fear that he might become a dictator dissipated over time, in part because of his and his wife Eleanor’s demonstrated faith in democracy, and in part because he had to negotiate constantly with powerful popular organizations such as labor and farm unions, immigrant associations, urban machines, regional interests, and industrial groups.  Even so, to many critics there seemed little difference between his enormous discretionary power and that of the fascist and communist leaders then taking over many other nations.

Now recall Steve Bannon’s remark in 2016 that if Trump played his cards right, he could become “the Roosevelt of the Right.”  Twenty-first century USA was not much like in the 1930’s, when there was a genuine national emergency (the Great Depression) and the Democrats firmly controlled both houses of Congress.  Even so, in 2016 there was serious discontent among working people over a host of economic and cultural issues, and Bannon’s idea was to convince Trump to play the role of the anti-Roosevelt.  That is, he was to use the expansive power of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called the “imperial presidency” to direct mass anger against the administrative state originally created by the New Deal.

Over the next eight years, Bannon’s idea was picked up and developed by a phalanx of right-wing intellectuals and activists such as John Marini, Russell Vought, and Christopher Rufo, many of them connected with the Heritage Foundation.  Trump’s ideological mandate was to “deconstruct” the administrative state, privatize government services, deregulate industry, cut taxes, alter the terms of international trade, and disempower ideological opponents in the professions, the media, and the universities.  Like Roosevelt, he claimed to be acting on behalf of the common man against the elite.  But in Trump’s case the enemy targeted was not he capitalist oligarchs whose hatred F.D.R. said he “welcomed,” but the government officials, public service workers, professionals, and intellectuals branded a cultural (“woke”) elite.  This division of working people into “oppressed” and “elite” groups based on their education levels and cultural preferences was the key to creating a mass-based MAGA movement.

Trump’s first term in office was experimental, amateurish, and dominated by the COVID-19 plague.  It took him until his second term to do a convincing, if perverse imitation of Roosevelt’s First Hundred Days.  Beginning in January 2025, he proclaimed and enacted a series of shockingly new policies in a blizzard of laws and executive orders.  Roosevelt had his “Brain Trust” of left-leaning economists and social engineers; Trump had the Far Right’s Project 2025 and Elon Musk’s DOGE.  Even though the MAGA mission was to undo government regulation and cancel progressive social attitudes, the Roosevelt analogy suggests two insights often overlooked by anti-Trump forces:

(1)  To MAGA followers, executive actions that anti-Trump forces call tyrannical are simply innovative responses to the wishes of an electoral majority.  Yes, these actions do alter established norms of political behavior.  They often seem hasty, improvised, and experimental – or, as critics declare, ruthless, reckless, and inhumane.  But what happens when a movement with a serious program for change takes power is . . . it changes things!  The fact that New Deal helped millions of ordinary people to survive and prosper, while the MAGA program subjects them to domination by a ruthless, selfish oligarchy makes Trump a misleader who must be opposed and defeated.  It does not make him more of a “tyrant” than Franklin Roosevelt.

(2)  Like Roosevelt, Trump is much more than a lone wolf with charisma.  F.D.R. led the New Deal: a social movement supported by vast numbers of workers and middle-class people across the nation.  Despite his slavish devotion to the oligarchy, so does Trump.  Opponents who focus exclusively on his charismatic appeal and taste for personal power forget that while the Democratic Party remains a collection of competing interest groups and ideological sects, MAGA is a relatively coherent, highly motivated mass movement.  One can describe its ideology with much justification as ultra-nationalist, semi-theocratic, implicitly racist, and even fascistic (in the Mussolini “corporatist” style).  But Democrats will not defeat a genuine social movement, no matter how obnoxious it is, by calling its leader a tyrant, cult leader, or threat to democracy.  It takes a movement to defeat a movement.

What does it mean to “resist” Trump?

Here’s what will not work as a strategy to defeat Donald Trump – repeated complaints about his authoritarianism, and countervailing promises to “save democracy.”  It may or may not make sense to call Trump a tyrant, but trying to oust him because he is a disturber of the Constitutional peace repeats the losing electoral strategies of 2016 and 2024, when the Democrats presented themselves as the party of respectability and tradition – that is, as supporters of a vanishing status quo.  This is not how you get rid of a maleficent innovator like Trump or a regressive popular movement like MAGA.

People support a political leader for many reasons, but three motives are particularly important:

(1) They think the leader understands their grievances and will solve their problems.

(2) They identify with the leader personally and feel that he or she speaks for them.

(3) They recognize the leader as the chief of a movement they believe in and belong to.

Promising to restore threatened political norms like states’ rights with regard to public order or the separation of federal powers does not respond to any of these reasons and is not a recipe for electoral success.  In fact, a quick look at the three vote-motivators reveals why the Democrats find themselves up the political creek without a paddle.

 They think the leader will solve their problems.  Trump’s great advantage at present is that he and the MAGA Republicans have an innovative, semi-coherent program that purports to solve a wide variety of social and cultural problems, and they are vigorously implementing it.  Never mind that the problems are poorly defined, the solutions won’t work, and the implementation is sloppy and cruel.  There is a program, much of it described in Project 2025, and there is implementation, much if it in the form of executive orders and the misnamed “Big Beautiful Budget” law.

The next six to twelve months will reveal the consequences of adopting MAGA views on issues ranging from immigration, crime, cultural nationalism, and government services to tariffs, taxes, military expenses, energy policy, and foreign aid.  Meanwhile, if you ask Democrats to describe their problem-solving policies on any of these issues, many are likely to respond that Trump is exaggerating the nation’s problems, or that Joe Biden’s proposed solutions are still valid.

The embarrassing truth is that there is no coherent “progressive” program to speak of – no equivalent of Project 2025 – because to challenge the status quo from the Left as MAGA intellectuals have done from the Right would involve talking about topics that most Democratic chiefs consider taboo.  Shouldn’t oligarchs be prevented from using massive campaign contributions to buy elections?  In fact, shouldn’t there be a cap of some sort on their wealth and incomes? (Too “divisive”).  Couldn’t economic planning be used to guarantee wage levels and develop a rational, pro-labor immigration policy?  (Too “socialist”).  How about a Marshall Plan-style development program to end deep poverty and reduce urban and rural crime rates?  (Too “Great Society”).  What about slashing the trillion-dollar military budget (too “unAmerican”) and using taxpayer funds to finance a shift from fossil fuels to green industries without sacrificing jobs? (Too “woke”).

I don’t know the answers to such questions – but I’m certain that if they are not asked and discussed, the boundaries of US political thinking will continue to be defined by the MAGA pundits.  We need a program radical enough to solve systemic problems and common-sensible enough to command mass support.  In New York, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign is pointing in the right direction, but practical reform ideas like his must be deepened and developed with other constituencies and systemic problems in mind.

They identify with the leader personally.  This identification involves the leader’s charisma – a form of authority originally described by the sociologist Max Weber as based on someone’s personal characteristics rather than his/her office and as a force used to transform traditional norms of thinking and behavior.  Charisma isn’t a form of magical or hypnotic compulsion that somehow gets people to believe what they formerly considered a lie or to do what they don’t want to do.  On the contrary, it describes a relationship in which people feel that a political or religious figure is expressing their own deep fears, hopes, and ambitions and “representing” them in a direct, personal way.

As Trump’s rise shows, charismatic leaders don’t have to live exemplary lives according to conventional moral standards.  Most of them have been rebels of one sort or another and have had checkered careers.  They do have to exhibit a willingness to challenge traditional taboos and “walk the talk” politically – to run personal risks and make sacrifices to realize some intensely held vision of change.  From this perspective, perhaps the luckiest things to have happened to Trump were to be accused of being a Russian agent after his win in 2016, then to be prosecuted for questionable crimes, and, finally, to be almost assassinated before the 2024 election.  He really does seem to believe that God saved him from the would-be assassin to permit him to fulfill his vision of change (which includes punishing those who earlier “persecuted” him).  Trump’s followers may or may not share his theology, but they clearly appreciate – almost worshipfully – his all-consuming dedication to his cause.

Charisma, in short, does not mean being likeable, making a good speech, or acting like the CEO of a successful corporation.  It means convincing large numbers of aggrieved people to follow one’s lead in making risky, controversial changes.  Rather than being purely personal, the charismatic leader’s appeal is based on the connection between his/her personality and program.  Any number of Democratic politicians have appealing personalities and can make a good speech, but what has been missing for a long time in that party is the sort of substantive charisma represented by a figure like F.D.R. – or, more recently, by the first Bobby Kennedy.  We will have to see if the Democrats can field such a candidate in time to save the nation from J.D. Vance in 2028.

They recognize the leader as the chief of a movement they believe in and belong to.  The need for a social movement to counter MAGA brings us directly to the question of resistance.  When anti-Trumpers talk about opposing Trump’s multifarious “intrusive” policies, they generally have two strategies in mind: taking the administration to court to get these policies declared illegal, and mounting street demonstrations or taking nonviolent actions against them.  Both strategies are clearly justifiable and are useful within certain limits.  They publicize and obstruct this regime’s propensity to commit cruel, divisive, coercive acts of dubious legality.  They expand the political field beyond lobbying and elections.  And they bring MAGA’s opponents together in common activities.  But defining resistance primarily as anti-regime activity of either the legal or nonviolent action type, or as a combination of lawsuits and demonstrations, seems to me a serious mistake.

People are not going to turn away from Trump because he is a lawbreaker or an embryonic tyrant.  Resisting him effectively means offering them an alternative to MAGA.

The MAGA movement exists because a great many North Americans are aggrieved and believe that the promises of U.S. systems of politics, economics, and culture have not been realized.  In two presidential elections many working people turned to Trump and his cohorts for help because the Democrats didn’t seem to take their grievances very seriously and had no credible program to address them.  This failure, in turn, reflected the fact that the party had been “hollowed out,” as Philip Rocco maintains (https://jacobin.com/2025/08/democrats-ngos-jeffries-schumer-dealignment).  The Democratic Party had become a collection of interest groups and nonprofit associations allied with oligarchical interests, and had very little to say about systemic issues such as deindustrialization, wage stagnation, deep poverty, drug addiction, unaffordable homes, family instability, and host of other ills afflicting ordinary people in both cities and rural areas.  So, MAGA prophets appeared, dreaming of a past (largely fictitious) golden era when the Land of Opportunity seemed capable of solving all these problems, and offering an ideology, a program, and a leader that promised to revive and realize that dream.

The bottom line: MAGA will not be countered by lawsuits and demonstrations alone.  To vanquish it will mean offering US citizens a better ideology, program, and leadership than anything manufactured by Donald Trump and his Far Right backers.

• MAGA ideology makes the “administrative state” and “radical leftists” the villains. Our ideology will target the oligarchy and show that more powerful, more compassionate government agencies, democratically controlled by strong people’s organizations, can solve the problems that Trumpers have no way to deal with except by calling out troops.
• MAGA programs feature pseudo-solutions such as sending National Guardsmen to fight crime. We will offer credible, imaginative programs such as an anti-crime effort based on fully funded economic development, massive aid to schools, violence prevention, and community-supported policing.
• MAGA leadership rests in the hands of a deeply confused man unable to distinguish between his own personal interests (and those of his fellow billionaires) and the interests of his nation and the world’s peoples. Our movement will discover and advance leaders whose emancipatory programs are in harmony with their personalities, and who can be trusted to put the people first and their own egos and bank accounts last.

Meanwhile, we will resist Donald Trump’s tyrannical initiatives in the courts and in the streets.  But, understanding that judges alone will not bail us out, nor demonstrations alone create a movement, we can get to work now to create that urgently needed people’s movement.  Meeting in person and online, locally and nationally, interested North Americans of all ages and backgrounds can form “committees of correspondence” to develop the ideas, programs, and leaders that are the essential tools for reconstructing US politics.

It’s getting late.

What do you say?

__________________________________________

Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017).

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 8 Sep 2025.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Trump, Tyranny, and the Need for a People’s Program, is included. Thank you.

If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

There are no comments so far.