Happening Now: From Democracy to Authoritarianism

Why We’re Speaking Up

World Centric started in 2004 as a non-profit. Not to sell packaging—that came later.

We started in response to the Iraq War and the disinformation that led to it. Our mission was education and awareness on the critical issues facing our world: environmental issues, social inequalities, human rights, war and peace, economics, media control, and others which make us more aware.

The belief was simple: when people have accurate information, they make better decisions.

We became a sustainable packaging company because environmental destruction is one of those global issues. But we never stopped believing that awareness matters.

The warning signs scholars told us to watch for are no longer warnings. They are the daily news.

When Citizens Become Targets

On January 24th, 2026, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot dead by federal agents on a Minneapolis street.

Pretti, an American citizen who cared for veterans at a VA hospital, had gone to observe immigration enforcement in his neighborhood. Video footage shows him filming agents with his phone. When federal officers shoved a woman to the ground, Pretti moved to help her. He was pepper-sprayed. Multiple agents wrestled him to the pavement. According to video analysis by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, an agent appears to remove a gun from Pretti and step away. Moments later, another agent fired into his back. Ten shots over five seconds. Pretti died on the sidewalk.

The Department of Homeland Security immediately called Pretti a threat. Secretary Kristi Noem said he “attacked” officers and was “brandishing” a weapon. She claimed “this looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

Video footage shows none of this is true. Witnesses filed sworn statements that Pretti never brandished a gun. His phone was in his right hand. His left hand was raised above his head. The Minneapolis police chief confirmed Pretti had no criminal record beyond traffic tickets.

His parents released a statement: “The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting… Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded on social media: “Thank God for the patriots of @ICEgov—we have your back 100%. You are SAVING the country. Shame on the leadership of Minnesota—and the lunatics in the street.”

On January 7th, Renée Good, also 37 and also an American citizen, was shot three times by an ICE agent after she stopped her car to observe immigration enforcement near her home. She had just dropped her six-year-old son at school. The administration called her a “domestic terrorist” who was “stalking” agents. Independent forensic analysis by Index, using 3D reconstruction of video evidence, found that the agent was not in the vehicle’s path when he fired, was not struck by the vehicle, and shot from a position where he was not in immediate danger. CNN’s analysis confirmed that multiple cars—including one driven by the shooter himself—had driven around Good’s vehicle before the shooting, contradicting federal claims that she was “blocking” agents.

Two American citizens. Both unarmed. Both killed by federal agents while observing or documenting law enforcement. Both immediately labeled as violent threats by officials whose claims were contradicted by video evidence.

This is not normal. This is not acceptable. And this is accelerating.

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Wake Up: This Is What Democratic Collapse Looks Like

Let’s be direct about what is happening.

The Century Foundation’s Democracy Meter—a rigorous assessment of 23 indicators of democratic health— found that American democracy’s score dropped from 79/100 in 2024 to 57/100 in 2025. A 28% collapse in a single year. Their conclusion: “A democratic collapse has already occurred.”

The V-Dem Institute, which has tracked democracy globally for over two centuries of data, now classifies the United States as an “electoral authoritarian” regime. Not a democracy with problems. An authoritarian state with elections.

Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and one of the world’s leading scholars on democratic collapse, assessed the first months of Trump’s second administration as “the most aggressively and openly authoritarian case of democratic backsliding” he has ever seen.

These are not partisan talking points. These are assessments by scholars, researchers, and observers who have spent their careers studying how democracies die. They are telling us, as clearly as they can, that it is happening here. Now.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an extensive analysis comparing Trump administration actions to the “autocratic playbook” used by leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. These contemporary cases show how elected leaders can systematically dismantle democratic institutions without military coups—through legal and semi-legal means, step by step, while maintaining the appearance of democracy.

But the contemporary cases only show the process. The historical cases show where it can lead.

The “14 warning signs of fascism” framework was developed by studying seven regimes: Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, Suharto’s Indonesia, Salazar’s Portugal, and Papadopoulos’s Greece. Other authoritarian regimes, notably Argentina’s Dirty War (1976–1983), followed similar patterns of state violence, disappearances, and erasure of dissent.

These regimes didn’t begin with death camps and disappearances. They began with scapegoating, with the erosion of rights, with official lies contradicting observable reality, with citizens killed by state forces while witnesses were told not to believe their own eyes.

The distance between “soft authoritarianism” and historical fascism is not as far as we would like to believe. It is measured in years, not generations. And the direction of travel matters more than the current position.

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The Patterns Are Unmistakable

Scholars who study authoritarianism have identified consistent warning signs across different countries and eras. Every one of them is now visible in America.

Scapegoating and Demonization of Minorities

Fascist movements identify a group—typically immigrants, minorities, or political opponents—as the source of national problems. They are described in dehumanizing terms. Complex social challenges are reframed as the fault of these enemies.

Since May 2025, Human Rights Watch has documented that federal agents have targeted Latino communities at workplaces, restaurants, car washes, and parking lots. Agents arrive “without warning, in unmarked vehicles,” frequently “covered their faces,” and carry “military-style weaponry.” The raids have “inflicted devastating harm” on communities, tearing apart families and causing people to “live in fear.”

The July 2025 federal budget allocated an unprecedented $170 billion for border enforcement, detention, and deportations.

Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota was described by DHS as “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out”—2,000 federal agents deployed to a single metropolitan area. Governor Tim Walz now describes it as “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state.”

The detention system has expanded to record levels. As of January 2026, ICE was holding approximately 73,000 people—the highest number ever recorded, an 84% increase from the prior year. Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450% in 2025; by December, 41% of those in ICE detention had no criminal record, up from 6% in January.

Due process has been systematically dismantled. People appearing for routine immigration appointments— actively complying with the legal process—are now arrested on the spot. New policies deny bond hearings to anyone who originally entered without authorization, regardless of how many years or decades they have lived in the United States.

American citizens have been swept up in the dragnet. Documented cases include children, disabled adults, elected officials, and Puerto Rican and Indigenous people detained by agents who assumed undocumented status based on appearance. As of October 2025, the government was not tracking the number of detained or missing citizens. Families report being unable to locate detained relatives; the system that was supposed to account for everyone in custody has become a mechanism for disappearance.

More than 170 American citizens were detained at raids and protests in 2025. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year, the deadliest year in nearly two decades. At least six more have died in custody since January 1, 2026.

State Violence Against Civilians and Dissenters

According to tracking by The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and other outlets, federal agents have opened fire at least 27 times since Trump returned to office, killing at least eight people. At least five of those shot were U.S. citizens. The killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti are the most visible—both American citizens, both killed while observing or documenting federal actions, both immediately smeared by officials whose claims were contradicted by video evidence.

When citizens are killed by government agents for the act of bearing witness, and the government lies about the circumstances, we are not in a gray area. We are in dangerous territory.

The pattern of official lying is itself a warning sign. In authoritarian systems, the government’s narrative replaces observable reality. Truth becomes whatever officials say it is, regardless of evidence.

Erasure and Rewriting of History

Authoritarian regimes seek to control not just the present but the past. Inconvenient truths about national history are minimized, reframed, or physically removed.

This month, National Park Service employees dismantled exhibits about slavery at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia—a memorial to the nine people George Washington enslaved. Displays titled “Life Under Slavery,” “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” and “History Lost & Found” were removed under an executive order targeting content that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living.”

The administration identified nearly 200 words to limit or avoid on government materials, including “women,” “Tribal,” “disability,” and “race and ethnicity.” References to transgender people were eliminated from the Stonewall National Monument website—the site commemorating the 1969 uprising that launched the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Information about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad was targeted for removal. Tubman escaped slavery, then repeatedly risked her life returning to the South to guide others to freedom through a secret network of safe houses and allies. Her story is one of the most powerful examples of American resistance against injustice, which may be precisely why it’s being erased.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture was labeled “divisive.” Its director resigned.

A professor at Morehouse College observed: “It seems like we’re headed in the direction where there’s even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed.”

When a government erases its history of oppression, it is laying the groundwork to repeat it.

Consolidation of Executive Power and Contempt for Courts

Democratic systems depend on checks and balances—independent courts, legislative oversight, institutional constraints on executive power. Authoritarian leaders systematically weaken or bypass these checks.

Harvard scholars Levitsky and Chenoweth identified a troubling pattern: the government “ignoring federal court orders.” They noted that “in a democracy, if you win a lawsuit, you win and that settles the conflict. In a country that isn’t a democracy, when you win a lawsuit, you still lose.”

Congress has largely abdicated its oversight role. Institutions that should be checking executive power— corporations, universities, law firms—have engaged in what Levitsky called “a wave of acquiescence to authoritarian and illegal behavior.”

The Century Foundation assessment found that the category of “State Institutions”—the checks and balances that constrain executive power—collapsed in 2025. In 2024, these institutional safeguards were functioning imperfectly but substantially, at 73% of ideal capacity. By 2025, they had deteriorated to just 33%—a third of what healthy democratic institutions should provide.

Attacks on Voting Rights

The ability to remove authoritarian governments through elections is the last line of defense. Authoritarian movements work to erode this capacity before they can be held accountable.

In 2025, at least 16 states enacted 29 restrictive voting laws. Seven states enacted election interference laws giving partisan actors what the Brennan Center describes as “unprecedented authority over voting and election processes.”

The Voting Rights Lab reports that only one in three new voting laws in 2025 expanded access—”the lowest percentage we’ve ever recorded.”

The administration has demanded private voter data from states. The Department of Justice sued to compel disclosure of voter information including names, addresses, dates of birth, and partial Social Security numbers.

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The Question of Popular Support

Some will argue that the administration has democratic legitimacy and is doing what voters wanted. The reality is more complicated and more troubling.

Polling on immigration enforcement reveals a significant gap between abstract support and support for actual policies. There is strong majority support for “deporting criminals” (78%) and “border security” (74%). But when polls specify people “who have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record,” support for deportation drops to 42%, with 58% opposed.

The administration has majority support for what it says it’s doing, but minority support for what it’s actually doing.

But even this misses the point. Democratic legitimacy is not a blank check. An election victory does not authorize killing unarmed citizens. It does not authorize ignoring court orders. It does not authorize erasing history. It does not authorize the systematic violation of civil rights.

The question is not whether some people support this. The question is whether the rest of us will stop it.

Why Some People Support Authoritarianism

Understanding why a significant minority enthusiastically supports these actions is essential—not to excuse them, but to counter them.

Fear: The Engine of Authoritarianism

The research is extensive and consistent: fear is the psychological foundation of authoritarian support.

A massive 2025 study published in the Journal of Personality—analyzing over 84,000 people across 59 countries, the largest cross-cultural analysis ever conducted on this question—found that people who feel threatened by crime, poverty, or instability are significantly more likely to support authoritarian governance.

This pattern held across every global region studied. The researchers concluded that “the psychological connection between threat and support for strong leadership is a broadly human one.”

Critically, the study found this effect is stronger among people who identify as politically right-leaning. In Western nations, and particularly among those who identify as politically conservative, the psychological connection between feeling threatened and supporting strong authoritarian leadership was especially pronounced.

Fear is a deeply negative emotion. Many people convert it to anger, which restores a sense of agency and self- esteem. When that anger is shared by millions, and a leader promises to channel it against identified enemies, the psychological appeal is powerful. Granting that leader “authority” means believing they have not only the power but the right to do as they wish.

Research on the “authoritarian personality”—a concept developed after World War II to understand how ordinary Germans came to support Nazism—identifies a consistent cluster of traits: preference for order and hierarchy, submission to perceived authority figures, aggression toward out-groups, and rigid adherence to traditional values. These traits exist in all populations, but they become politically activated under conditions of perceived threat.

The key insight: people with authoritarian tendencies don’t necessarily behave differently in daily life, until they feel their world is threatened. Then they seek strong leaders who promise to restore order, punish rule-breakers, and protect “us” from “them.”

The Fear Landscape

Consider what many Americans have been told to fear in recent years: immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation; cities are crime-ridden hellscapes; traditional values are under assault; their children are being “indoctrinated”; their way of life is disappearing; they are being “replaced.”

For people already predisposed toward authoritarian responses—and research suggests this may be 30-40% of any population—these messages activate a deep psychological need for a strong leader who will restore order and punish the enemies responsible.

It doesn’t matter that violent crime has declined dramatically over decades. It doesn’t matter that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. It doesn’t matter that the threats are largely manufactured. Perceived threat drives authoritarian response, not actual threat.

And those promoting authoritarian policies understand this. They don’t need to make the threats real. They only need to make them feel real.

This is why rational argument often fails. You cannot fact-check someone out of fear. The fear came first; the “facts” were selected to justify it.

Status Threat and Economic Anxiety

Research consistently shows that perceived threats to social status and economic security make scapegoating narratives appealing. When people feel their position is precarious—economically, socially, culturally—the promise of restoring a previous order, and identifying who is to blame for its disruption, becomes powerful.

Immigrants and minorities become the primary scapegoats, while those who resist—whether elected officials, lawyers, universities, or journalists—face retaliation. Subpoenas have been issued against governors and mayors who criticized enforcement actions. Law firms representing immigrants have faced lawsuits. Universities have had funding threatened. The message is clear: opposition carries a cost.

Media Ecosystem Effects

Americans increasingly operate in separate information environments with entirely different factual premises.

The same event—Alex Pretti’s killing—is framed as murder by one media ecosystem and justified self-defense by another. People are not simply ignoring facts; they are receiving different facts.

When the Secretary of Defense tweets “Thank God for the patriots of ICE” after an unarmed nurse is shot in the back, he is speaking to an audience that will never see the real video evidence, or may see fabricated videos designed to support the official story.

When Secretary Noem calls Pretti a terrorist who “attacked” officers, millions of Americans will believe her, not because they’ve evaluated the evidence, but because they trust her and distrust the sources showing otherwise.

None of this excuses supporting state violence against civilians. But it explains why approximately 35-40% of Americans will support almost anything this administration does. That number is unlikely to change through persuasion alone.

The question is what the other 60-65% will do.

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This Is the Moment

The scholars who study democratic collapse are unanimous on one point: the window for effective resistance is early in the process, before institutions are fully captured, before opposition is suppressed, before the unthinkable becomes normal.

We are in that window now. It is closing.
What does meaningful resistance actually look like?

It would be dishonest to pretend that marching and voting, while necessary, are sufficient. Those in power have learned to tolerate symbolic dissent. As Alexander Haig once said, “Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.” The question is what actions can actually create change.

Economic Pressure and Disruption

General strikes, coordinated boycotts of companies that cooperate with the administration, work stoppages in key industries—these impose costs that symbolic protest does not.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott succeeded because empty buses cost money. When business interests feel pain, they pressure politicians.

Don’t expect business leaders, tech CEOs, or Republican politicians to suddenly discover moral courage. They were at the inauguration. They’re cozying up for contracts and tax cuts. They’ve made their calculation.

But calculations can change. Authoritarian regimes ultimately depend on cooperation, and cooperation can be made costly. Boycotts that hurt revenue. Shareholder resolutions that embarrass executives. Documentation of complicity that will matter when political winds shift. The knowledge that history is watching and will judge.

The question isn’t whether powerful institutions will do the right thing. It’s whether the rest of us can make the wrong thing expensive enough to matter.

Institutional Resistance at Every Level

Every state attorney general who files suit, every sheriff who refuses to cooperate with ICE, every city council that declares sanctuary, every school board that defies directives—each creates friction that slows consolidation. Federalism, designed to prevent tyranny, must be used for that purpose. States have tools: deploying legal resources, refusing cooperation, protecting their residents through state law.

Personal Courage at Scale

Renée Good stopped her car to observe federal agents in her neighborhood. Alex Pretti stepped between an agent and a woman who’d been pushed to the ground. Both paid with their lives. Most of us will not face that choice, but millions of small acts of courage, of non-cooperation, of bearing witness, of saying “no” when silence is easier, accumulate into something larger.

The uncomfortable truth: Effective resistance will require people to risk something—their comfort, their jobs, potentially their safety. It will require Democratic politicians to fight with a fraction of the ruthlessness their opponents have shown, rather than clinging to norms their opponents abandoned years ago. It will require those with privilege and resources to use them, and those without to organize collectively.

It will require us to stop waiting for someone else to fix this.

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What Happens If We Fail?

Brazil shows that recovery is possible when opposition mobilizes effectively—Bolsonaro was voted out and later barred from office. Hungary and Turkey, however, demonstrate that once consolidated, authoritarian systems can persist for years even with significant opposition; Orbán and Erdoğan remain in power.

But the historical cases—Nazi Germany, Pinochet’s Chile, Argentina’s Dirty War—show what happens when the slide goes unchecked. By the time people recognized the full scope of what was happening, the moment for effective resistance had passed.

No serious analyst is predicting America’s immediate future. But scholars who study authoritarianism note that the slide toward totalitarianism is rarely visible to those living through it. Authoritarian regimes didn’t begin at their endpoints—they began with scapegoating, with the erosion of rights, with official lies contradicting observable reality, with citizens killed by state forces while witnesses were told not to believe their own eyes. The patterns are consistent across countries and eras. Recognizing them early is the only way to stop them.

We are not yet at the point of no return. But we are closer than we were a year ago, and we will be closer still a year from now if nothing changes. The window is closing. What will we do while it remains open?

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What Future Will We Choose?

Two American citizens have been killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in the past three weeks. Both were unarmed. Both were observing or documenting law enforcement. Both were immediately labeled threats by officials whose claims were contradicted by video evidence.

Historical exhibits about slavery are being physically dismantled. Federal agents are conducting military-style raids in American cities. Voting rights are being systematically restricted. Courts are being ignored.

The scholars who have spent their careers studying how democracies die are telling us, in the clearest possible terms, that the warning signs are no longer warnings. They are the present.

Martin Niemöller, the German pastor who initially supported the Nazis before being imprisoned by them, wrote the words that have echoed through history:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
– Martin Niemöller

Niemöller wasn’t describing the Holocaust. He was describing the years before the Holocaust, the incremental steps, the gradual normalization, the moments when intervention was still possible but people chose silence. By the time the death camps were operating, the window had closed.

Alex Pretti saw a woman pushed to the ground by federal agents. He moved to help her. He wasn’t trying to be a hero. He was a nurse, someone who spent his life caring for others. In that moment, he did what felt right.

Most of us won’t face armed agents on a street corner. But all of us face choices: to speak or stay silent, to act or look away, to accept the unacceptable or refuse.

Pretti’s life asks us not to match his sacrifice, but to honor it—by not letting his death, or Renée Good’s, or any of this, become normal.

The window is closing. What will we do?

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