Understanding the Anti-Democratic Movement in the United States
Ms. Stewart has reported on the religious right for more than 15 years. Her most recent book is "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy."
They told us they would smash the institutions that safeguard our democracy. And that is exactly what they are doing.
Many Americans chose not to believe what they were saying. Will we now believe what we are seeing?
To be clear, "they" are not just Donald Trump and his billionaire co-pilot. Over the past half-century, an anti-democratic movement has coalesced in the United States. It draws on super-wealthy funders, ideologues of the new right, purveyors of disinformation and Christian nationalist activists. Though it pretends to revere the founders and the Constitution, it fundamentally rejects the idea of America as a modern pluralistic democracy.
The natural tendency in a functioning democracy is to look for ways to "work across the aisle" and "agree to disagree." But appeasement now would be a mistake. This anti-democratic movement has no interest in compromise. Any concessions will help consolidate the powers of a lawless presidency and entrench a new, kleptocratic, authoritarian form of government in the United States.
It is also bad politics. The Trump administration has charted a course for eventual catastrophic failure. Those who attempt to work with it will go down with it. We must work instead to safeguard our democratic institutions, communicate the threat to the many sectors of the American public that have yet to understand it and prepare for a major cleanup operation in years to come.
Democracy isn't just about the results of the most recent election. Without a system of justice that applies equally to all citizens, you're voting for the next elected despot. That is why the leaders of the anti-democratic movement made clear well before the election -- in documents such as the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which sought to provide Trump with an aggressive right-wing agenda he could just pick up and run with -- that they intend to demolish the system of justice as we know it and replace it with a form of policing in service of the ruling party and its chosen leaders.
In its first two and a half weeks, the Trump administration has delivered on that promise. The stream of transparently lawless executive orders -- to make it easier to fire federal officials, to freeze spending that the president cannot freeze, to take away a right to citizenship that is written into the Constitution, to name just three -- tell us in no uncertain terms that this administration has no intention of respecting the law or the Constitution. (And if you are comforting yourself with the idea that the administration will respect injunctions from judges, which it has in the past, I invite you to consider Mr. Trump's recent behavior in court.)
The decapitation at the F.B.I., the sidelining of individuals at the Department of Justice and the de facto shuttering of the foreign aid agency U.S.A.I.D. all serve the same purpose. It means that Mr. Trump and his favorites of the moment will find it much easier to operate with the kind of immunity that the Supreme Court has already granted the president.
Tellingly, the most galling indicator of the administration's lawless intentions actually came early: the blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol, even those who attacked Capitol Police officers, which provides Mr. Trump with a powerful recruiting tool for elements that might wish to support him with political violence.
Democracy relies equally on a professional government, staffed with individuals who are subject to ethics constraints and act on the basis of reason and evidence in accordance with the law. That is why the leaders of the anti-democratic movement declared war long ago on what they jeeringly call the "administrative state." Project 2025 promised a brutal assault on what it maintains is a "weaponized" and "woke" civil service bent on persecuting conservatives, and proposed purges.
Russell Vought, a leading figure behind Project 2025 and now Mr. Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget for the second time, promised to put government employees "in trauma." The new-right intellectuals behind the anti-democratic movement draw heavily on crackpot writers like Curtis Yarvin, who condemns "the cathedral" -- his term for the people and institutions that sustain a functioning modern state -- and openly champions monarchical rule.
In its first weeks, the Trump administration has delivered on that promise. The probably illegal firing of inspectors general throughout the federal government; the tawdry "buyout" offer for federal employees; the commandeering of highly sensitive government data by Elon Musk's DOGE minions; and the ongoing dismantling, firings and deletions of data at multiple federal agencies -- these are not ways of making the government accountable to the voters in the last election, as partisans falsely suggest. They are about making sure that the people can never hold the president and his cronies to account. They also have nothing to do with "efficiency." We are about to witness administrative dysfunction on a grand scale.
Democracy also depends on a corporate sector and a media sector that work independently of the government in power. That is why the leaders of the anti-democratic movement essentially opened a storefront in advance of the inauguration and began inviting corporations and wealthy individuals to prove their loyalty to the ruling party with inaugural fund contributions. Then came the meme coins that allow anyone to enrich the president and his wife, at least in theory, by purchasing digital tokens with no intrinsic purpose or value.
This proved to be one of the easiest parts of the process. The leaders of Meta, Amazon, JP Morgan, Google, OpenAI and a long list of other corporate titans seem to be making it clear that if protecting their profits means appeasing a corrupt autocratic regime, then that is what they will do.
Democracy relies on something softer, too, namely a sense of unity and shared purpose that allows people to work with one another despite their differences. That is why Rule No. 1 of the authoritarian playbook is to divide the populace. Mr. Trump, of course, is a renowned expert in that department. It is hard to think of another American president who would have taken advantage of an airplane tragedy to push hateful rhetoric about D.E.I. To be sure, reforming policies on diversity is not inherently unreasonable. But the administration's total war on anti-discrimination law has nothing to do with "merit" and everything to do with stoking division.
Similarly, immigration policy is and ought to be debated. But in the past weeks, the administration has made clear that it will use its powers not to solve the many real immigration issues but instead to perform stunts intended mainly to reinforce the myths that helped get Mr. Trump elected (like the myth that immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans or the myth that the previous administration encouraged bands of these immigrant-criminals to roam free).
Why are they so desperate to weaken or even destroy democracy? Mainly, because they know that our system of justice, a functioning government, an independent economic sector and a united people stand in the way of unearned wealth and privilege. But it is important to understand that the anti-democratic movement is not monolithic. In fact, it isn't even coherent.
One part of the program answers to the oligarchs -- that is, the leaders of tech oligopolies and the most narrow-minded of our nation's billionaires. These people are betting that the deconstruction of the administrative state means no pesky government oversight on their economic activities, plus tax cuts as well as privileged contracts. They may fatten their pocketbooks in the short term, but the idea that wreaking havoc on our democracy will enhance their wealth is tragically mistaken.
Another part of the program is the work of fanatics. I do not use the term loosely. If you take the trouble to read the writings of the thought leaders of the new right, who form a good portion of the brain trust of the anti-democratic movement, you will discover a group of men who really hate women, admire Nazi political theorists such as Carl Schmitt and believe in the existence of an insidious, all-controlling monster called "the woke," which apparently works out of diversity, equity and inclusion offices in the back of "the cathedral." They are acting out their fantasies now, taking revenge on imaginary enemies, and the American republic will be the principal victim.
The Christian nationalist ideologues who supply much of the rest of the ideology of the movement are no less extreme. Just listen to Doug Wilson, the powerful pastor from Moscow, Idaho, whom Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has praised. Mr. Wilson is among the growing contingent who say that women should not have a right to vote. Or Lucas Miles, senior director of Turning Point USA Faith and the author of "Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity," who has called progressive Christianity "heretical." In a promotional video at December's AmericaFest, an annual convention sponsored by Turning Point USA, Mr. Miles said, "I want to see woke church defunded."
The left, "recognized early on," Mr. Miles added, "that they knew they needed a vehicle to carry this progressive ideology, this Marxist agenda, and the best vehicle is the church. ... It's been going on since the 1700s that progressive thought has been creeping in."
Still another part of the movement, which usually gets the most attention even though it has the least power, is the mass of voters who remain faithful to Mr. Trump. They come in many different varieties. No doubt some saw a vote for him as a vote against "Biden-flation" and the sharp rise in the cost of living. Some may really believe that the 2020 election was stolen or that public schools are indoctrination camps forcing gender change on students. Some did not understand the threats to democracy, others did not take them seriously and some simply don't value democracy.
What is to be done? Let's start with that dread word: messaging. In the coming months and years, the anti-democratic movement will cause many people to suffer real harm. We need to make sure these people know who did this to them -- and who will fight for them.
As people lose their jobs or have to pay more as a consequence of needless tariffs, as they lose out on the benefits they earned and government services they deserve, as the Trump administration prioritizes buffoonish stunts over sound policy, as our most trusted allies abandon us, as women find more of their rights at risk, as people who don't fit the regime mold find their careers faltering, and as the oligarchs behave ever more outrageously, we need to say, over and over: They did this.
But there is much more we can do. Now is not the time to curl up in despair. We have institutions to protect, pro-democracy organizations to support, and elections in less than two years. We have lawsuits to pursue, corruption to expose. In normal times, it is the duty of democratic citizens to help a newly elected president succeed. In the present circumstances, it is our duty to protect our democratic republic from a lawless president and the profoundly anti-American movement he leads.
Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" and "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism."
