How many of us are mostly sympathetic to authoritarianism and its corruption?

Waaay back on Feb. 12, 2025 I posted an analysis of whether it is possible to build some form of a kleptocratic authoritarian regime within the confines of the US Constitution. The essence of the analysis was that yeah, kleptocratic authoritarianism can exist within the confines of the US constitution:

The U.S. Constitution's ambiguities, combined with certain Supreme Court interpretations, provide a landscape where authoritarian and kleptocratic tendencies could flourish. The balance between democracy and authoritarianism largely depends on the political culture, the integrity of elected officials, and the vigilance of the judiciary and the public in upholding democratic norms and values. While the Constitution provides a framework for democracy, its effectiveness in preventing authoritarianism or kleptocracy relies heavily on the interpretation and application of its principles by those in power.

Even farther back in time, when carnivorous dinosaurs still roamed the streets of Buffalo and elsewhere and chased people, eating those that got caught (Jan. 2025), NY, I posted about a comparison of democratic conservatism with MAGA authoritarianism. Bottom line, more or less:

While democratic conservatism and authoritarianism share some economic and social policy preferences, their approaches to governance, civil liberties, elections, and the rule of law diverge significantly. Democratic conservatism operates within a framework that values democratic principles, individual liberties, and the rule of law, but just with a conservative interpretation. In contrast, authoritarianism, as exemplified by movements like MAGA, prioritize central control, order, and the maintenance of power, usually at the expense of democratic norms and civil liberties.

Other posts here, e.g., this one and this one, basically accord with those frightening findings. Also in the scary mix are other the ever-present, toxic factors like corruption and mental entrapment by authoritarian DFS (dark free speech). 

Well now, all of that is sobering stuff. Anyway, in the eons since those fine posts, the dinosaurs have gone extinct and the question du jour is how many of us are willing to support some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism? Perp in deep research mode:

Q: What portion of people in modern democratic societies are mostly supportive of authoritarianism and the corruption it usually entails? Is that proportion about the same as in "advanced" dictatorships or kleptocracies like China, Russia and Iran? Does the portion change with changing social circumstances and moral values?

A: Key Findings
Approximately 30–40% of individuals in democratic societies exhibit measurable support for authoritarianism, with higher proportions observed among specific ideological and religious subgroups. In advanced authoritarian regimes like China and Iran, overt public support for the government often exceeds 50–70% in state-controlled surveys, though anonymous studies reveal significantly lower genuine approval (e.g., 50–60% in China). Corruption tolerance varies inversely with regime type: authoritarian systems institutionalize graft as a tool of control, whereas democratic societies generally reject systemic corruption but tolerate it when linked to perceived efficiency. Social crises—economic instability, polarization, and perceived cultural threats—increase authoritarian sympathies in democracies, while authoritarian regimes leverage propaganda and repression to stabilize support.

   

Authoritarian Support in Democratic Societies
Quantifying Authoritarian Leanings
In the United States, 43% of adults score high on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWAS), which measures preferences for social conformity, security, and deference to authority 5 13. Among Republicans, this figure rises to 67%, with Trump supporters showing the strongest alignment (75%) 1 3. Globally, Pew Research Center data from 24 nations indicates that 26% of respondents endorse a system where a “strong leader operates unchecked by legislatures or courts,” with higher approval in younger democracies like India (55%) and Indonesia (53%) 9. These figures reflect a baseline susceptibility to authoritarianism that persists even in established democracies.

Subgroup Variations
Religious Affiliation: White evangelical Protestants in the U.S. exhibit the highest authoritarian tendencies (64%), followed by weekly churchgoers (55%) 13.

Economic Anxiety: Individuals reporting financial instability are 15–20% more likely to support authoritarian leaders, prioritizing economic security over democratic norms 16.

Authoritarian Regimes: Dissent and Managed Consent
The Illusion of Uniform Support
State-sponsored surveys in authoritarian regimes often report overwhelming public approval. For example, China’s official polls claim 90% support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 7. However, anonymous methodologies reveal a stark contrast: list experiments show genuine approval drops to 50–70%, with urban residents particularly skeptical (41% support) 7 14. Similarly, a 2023 survey of 158,000 Iranians found 81% rejecting the Islamic Republic, preferring secular democracy or constitutional monarchy 8.

Corruption as a Regime Tool
Authoritarian systems institutionalize corruption to consolidate power. In China, anti-corruption campaigns under Xi Jinping have punished over 1.5 million officials since 2012, yet these efforts primarily target political rivals rather than systemic reform 3 6. By framing selective crackdowns as moral stewardship, the CCP has bolstered public perceptions of competence, with 68% of citizens approving anti-corruption measures despite unchanged graft levels 6 12. Russia and Iran similarly use patronage networks to reward loyalists, embedding corruption within state structures while publicly condemning it 12. [Does any of that sound familiar? It sure does to me] 

.... long analysis .... 

Conclusion
Authoritarian support in democracies, while significant, remains context-dependent and reversible through institutional reforms. In contrast, advanced dictatorships rely on coercion and performative anti-corruption to mask declining legitimacy. Both systems face pressures from generational change: democracies must address inequality and polarization to retain youth engagement, while autocracies risk destabilization as digital connectivity undermines propaganda. The persistence of corruption in all regimes underscores its utility as a tool of control, though its manifestations reflect fundamental differences in accountability and power structures.

So between the roughly 43% of Americans who are sympathetic to authoritarianism and attendant corruption and the other ~6.8% who were conned by maga's DFS (lies**, slanders, crackpottery, etc.)  and/or cult socialization, that was enough to put deeply corrupt djt and equally corrupt MAGA elites back in power by a plurality of votes in 2024, i.e., 49.8%.

** For example, maga lies about inflation and high costs generally being all Biden's fault and therefore also Harris' fault were quite effective in getting votes for djt and maga elites. Poll data indicates that maga's inflation lies where among the top three vote-getters for djt in 2024 (resentments about woke/DEI and weak border control were the other two).

Well now, that American pro-authoritarianism sentiment data is also rather scary. We can all hope that Perplexity's analysis is wrong. But I doubt it. The numbers it cites are in accord with my own understanding from various news and science research sources. 

Finally FWIW, the Perplexity analysis is based on 58 references. Here's some of them:

https://www.wfd.org/what-we-do/resources/how-not-engage-authoritarian-states 

https://www.gu.se/en/news/dictatorships-advancing-globally

https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/593c09a7-4185-4d41-b4c5-dd7080541f8d

poll data: https://www.prri.org/press-release/survey-four-in-ten-americans-are-susceptible-to-authoritarianism-but-most-still-reject-political-violence/

anonymous China poll data: https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/chinese-communist-party-support-lower-when-surveys-anonymous/

Iran poll data: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202302036145

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes-authoritarianism-and-how-do-they-want-to-change-their-government/

social science research: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2022.2062324

social science research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11601049/

political science analysis: https://jackson.yale.edu/news/understanding-authoritarianism/

social science research: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-023-00161-4

political science analysis: https://www.princeton.edu/~lwantche/Corruption_in_Autocracies

political science analysis: https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/how-do-dictatorships-survive-21st-century/

news article: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/pew-democracy-poll-authoritarianism-b2504148.html

https://www.gu.se/en/news/the-world-is-becoming-increasingly-authoritarian-but-there-is-hope

https://www.ifes.org/publications/authoritarian-collaboration

Russian public opinion data: https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/russias-authoritarian-regime-and-the-radicalization-of-the-anti-war-opposition-134402

Russia's hybrid totalitarianism: https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2022/04/putins-war-has-moved-russia-from-authoritarianism-to-hybrid-totalitarianism?lang=en

large Russia study: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorrow/reluctant-consensus-war-and-russias-public-opinion/

European news article: https://www.euronews.com/2022/11/30/more-countries-are-moving-towards-authoritarianism-report

26 Latin American and Caribbean Country authoritarianism poll data:  https://worldjusticeproject.org/news/rule-of-law-surveys-latin-america-caribbean-authoritarian-trends

global authoritarian violence: https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-authoritarian-violence-drives-20th-consecutive-year-decline-democratic

authoritarian threat index data: https://protectdemocracy.org/threat-index/

Well, maybe my dinosaur extinction data 

has a flaw in it

🤪

Mourning the end of democracy, rule of constitutional law and civil liberties

 This afternoon, I was contemplating the end of our democracy, collapse for respect for facts and our freedoms in the face of MAGA's gigantic demagogic onslaught. I planned to post a couple of music videos with their lyrics. Then Ron, 'lil stinker that he is, posted this a couple of hours ago while I was contemplating this post:

La Marseillaise

Arise children of the fatherland

The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies

See your triumph and our glory!

La Marseillaise, the national anthem of France, was written in 1792 in bloody French Revolution times. Centuries later, it was adopted as the rallying call to the French resistance to Germany. It was was a form of resistance by being sung in defiance of the Nazi occupation, but usually not openly.

OK, that's way better than anything I've got. I give up.

The now obviously pipsqueak points I wanted to make were safe modern times stuff. So nah, I've got nothing to say that doesn't stain those noble sentiments and that horrific level of Nazi threat. 

Maybe I'll save my pipsqueakery for another time or just stop thinking about the concept of trying to translate music to politics. Others have been there, done that and done that about a trillion times better than me.

But hope springs eternal. I listened to La Marseillaise and instantly understood where it was coming from and how grave the threat was. In time people who still respond to that call to arms will die off. People like me and Ron will be gone. I hope something else takes our place in the endless fight against authoritarian darkness, whatever form it comes in.

No more Jack Daniels

 Lord have mercy, but Canadians do know how to play nice, don't they?

No more Jack Daniels on Ontario shelves. No more Jack Daniels going to British Columbia, nor to Quebec.

THAT ought to teach that Trump a lesson.

At least the Premier of Ontario is now putting a surcharge on electricity to the US and threatening to cut power entirely. Trouble is, the pain will be felt by two Democrat states, NY and Minnesota.

How about stopping ALL exports of potash to any state for now? How about cutting out all oil and gas and lumber exports, for now?

How about reaching a free trade agreement with China? How about denying American military aircraft access to Canadian airfields? There is one near where I live and I see their military planes flying there all the time. Cut 'em off.

How about stopping ALL imports of fruits and vegetables from the US? Can't be done? Nuts, I went shopping last week and checked labels, and in Canada there are more fruits and vegetables on the shelves from Mexico that from the US.

How about restricting all travel to the US? Tell all those Snowbirds that love to prop up the Florida economy, either come home or don't expect any protection of your American neighbors turn nasty.

And finally, unrestrict Jack Daniels, this American expat is missing his fix too much. 

End of  rant. 

Chronicling the fall: Reasoning behind some of the illegal immigrant support for djt

A NYT opinion (not paywalled) based mostly on an interview with two illegal immigrants, Aldair Mata and Jose, who support djt exemplifies that description of the human mind faced with complex politics:

Jose has been whipped into quiet panic this winter by President Trump’s threats of mass deportations. He’s still turning up for his shifts at a wood-finishing factory — he can’t afford not to — but most of his co-workers have stopped coming. His wife is afraid to go to her factory job, and they’re keeping the 11-year-old home from school. Jose was nervous in the restaurant, curling his posture inward and eying the street outside.

One more detail about these friends: They are both fans of Donald Trump. Mr. Mata voted for Trump, and though Jose can’t vote, he tells me that Mr. Trump “has courage.”

But Jose doesn’t hold Mr. Trump responsible. Neither does Mr. Mata. They both blame “the Venezuelans,” which is shorthand for the more than 50,000 migrants (about 30,000 of them Venezuelan) who’ve poured into Chicago since 2022. Most of them came by bus from the Mexican border, dispatched by Republican officials eager to teach the sanctimonious sanctuary cities a lesson. Jose complains that “nothing matters” to the migrants, that some of them commit crimes and receive coveted work permits despite being “lazy.”

“If they hadn’t come,” he said darkly, “none of this would have happened.”

The migrant buses were not just a meanspirited stunt. They worked magnificently well — better, I suspect, than the plan’s architects could have hoped. Wave upon wave of disoriented, often traumatized migrants were unceremoniously deposited in the city, costing Chicago a fortune (nearly $640 million since 2022), infuriating Black and Latino residents who already felt neglected and sowing community resentment that ultimately moved votes.

Many people in Chicago name the buses as the single outstanding factor inspiring record numbers of the city’s Latinos — including those who sneaked across the border themselves or who count undocumented immigrants as their nearest and dearest — to vote for Mr. Trump.

I’ve written before about America’s disingenuous mismanagement of its refugee system. The scale of that failure is demonstrated by this confounding fact: Chicago has thrived and grown strong on illegal immigration. It was legal immigration that destabilized the city. 

If Mr. Trump deports 11 million people, as per his threats, he’ll make history with an unforced error of stupendous scale.

The more migrants came, the more scandalized Mr. Mata became. Venezuelan women approached him at the supermarket, he says, offering to pay for his groceries on prepaid cards they’d been given if he’d pay them half the price in cash. Mr. Mata understood this as evidence of outsize, unnecessary public largess.

He also came to think that — just as Mr. Trump says — the new arrivals were driving up crime. This perception is contradicted by statistics indicating that crime has fallen in Chicago. But Mr. Mata heard stories of late-night train robberies, of Venezuelan women who danced with men at the Mexican bars and then stole their money and phones, of street fights erupting in gunfire.

These anecdotes may or may not be true, but a large majority of Chicago’s migrants haven’t committed any crimes. They are keen to work and are being absorbed into the economy like every preceding wave of immigrants. True, they got plenty of help settling down: hotel rooms, meals, health care, cellphones and, most significantly, work permits — in stark contrast to many Mexican immigrants who still lack legal status even after quietly working, paying taxes and obeying the law for decades.

They believe Mr. Trump is right to deport people — so long as it’s the right people.

“A lot of innocent people are going to end up in Mexico for other people’s fault,” Mr. Mata conceded. “That’s what hurts me. People who pay taxes, who work. Very good people.”

Mata: Voted for djt but fears that “a lot of innocent people

are going to end up in Mexico for other people’s fault.”

Who was at fault, not djt voters, but the Dems, 

other illegal immigrants, both, or neither? 

What a tragic mess. The Dems did not come up with a rational immigration policy. Biden and the Dems blew it. That failure was catastrophic. Current evidence indicates that illegal immigration was a major, necessary factor in kickstarting the current US transition from corrupt democracy to kleptocratic (even more corrupt) authoritarianism. 

One can see the reasoning behind deep resentment emotion triggered in RIIs (resident illegal immigrants) when lots more new illegal immigrants were bussed in and treated well. One can also see the effect that false beliefs in MAGA lies have on instilling false RII perceptions of reality and flawed reasoning, i.e., the new illegals are all criminals. RIIs fear what djt is threatening to do to their lives and families, but nonetheless support him.

As Andre Vasquez, a Chicago alderman explained: “If you feel as a citizen that neither party is serving your benefit — well, Republicans may not line up with you ideologically, but there are people in dire straits, in pain, disenfranchisement. They’ll take a gamble on a carnival ride.” 

Well, now we're on a carnival ride.

Oopsie doodle, carnival ride gone wrong