We’re probably past the point of sugarcoating where we are in America. The fear of authoritarian creep isn’t a fear anymore. Checks and balances, once the pride of our democracy, are failing. Congress has either abdicated its responsibilities or stood by in polite horror as the walls come crashing down. People are being disappeared into an El Salvadorian gulag. The courts are being ignored and judges are being arrested. Non-elected billionaires are shot-calling. Government is being dismantled. Universities are under assault. Cruelty is the point. Acquisition of power is the goal.
We’ve gone from “it can’t happen here” to “shit, it’s happening here” in record time—95 days, to be exact. It’s being broadcast live, memed into oblivion, and buried beneath a thousand algorithmic tantrums that are only fueling the inevitable. If we could turn ourselves into TikTok influencers or launch an overwrought Substack crusade, we would. Instead, we’re pointing you to five essential reads. The deepest of cuts for anyone trying to make sense of this rapid transition in American life. Why? Because what’s happening in America demands your full attention.
New York Times columnist (and former Republican) David Brooks wrote in his April 17 column: “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits, the scientific community, civil service, and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement.” But to understand what that movement is responding to, we need a guide. These writers have seen the future. They understand how propaganda distorts truth and how popular delusions bring democracies to the brink.
Think of these books as your literary go-bag for what’s probably coming next.
The origins of TOTALITARIANISM
by Hannah Arendt
Written in the long shadow of fascism and Stalinism, Arendt’s magnum opus is a brutal, unsparing autopsy of how democracies collapse into regimes of absolute control. She traces the slow corrosion of institutions, the weaponization of loneliness, and how lies—big ones, told often—metastasize into social truths. Arendt understood that authoritarianism doesn’t just seize power, it colonizes reality. Sound familiar? If you’ve ever wondered how a society talks itself into autocracy while insisting everything’s fine, this is your answer.
How Democracies Die
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
If Arendt gives you the philosophical framework, Levitsky and Ziblatt deliver the political autopsy. Drawing from global case studies like Chile, Hungary, Venezuela, they show how democracies don’t collapse with tanks in the streets, but with cowardice, complicity, and the slow normalization of the unthinkable. In other words: Everything we’ve been watching unfold four months into the current administration. Their central argument? Institutions don’t protect democracy, people protect democracy. And right now, those people are still in short supply.
Twilight of democracy
by anne applebaum
One of the most astute foreign policy minds of our generation, Applebaum is prescient and razor-sharp when it comes to identifying the “indicators” and “warnings” of democratic backsliding. A former neocon apostate, she maps how the intellectual and political elite—the cocktail circuit crowd—abandoned liberal democracy in favor of strongman fantasies. What makes this book essential reading isn’t just its analysis, but its intimacy. Applebaum names names, exposes betrayals, and shows that cultural decay isn’t driven by the mob alone—it’s engineered by opportunists who know better. This is what happens when democracy stops being profitable and starts getting in the way.
Fascism: A Warning
by Madeleine Albright
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright knew a few things about diplomacy and dictators. Born in Czechoslovakia and raised amid the rise of communist authoritarianism in Europe, she brought both lived experience and hard-earned pragmatism to her 2018 book Fascism: A Warning. This isn’t just a history lesson about the 20th century—it’s a signal flare for the 21st. Albright outlines all the telltale signs. The demonization of minorities, the rise of cults of personality, and the systematic erosion of democratic norms. What makes her warning so potent is that it isn’t just theoretical—it’s personal. She’s seen these patterns before. She’s been in the room when history tips and she saw that it’s not just happening again—it’s happening here.
This Is Not Propaganda
by Peter Pomerantsev
If you want to understand how the information war is being waged on your brain, corrupting your parents, or hijacking your drunk uncle, this is the book. Born in the USSR and raised in Britain, Pomerantsev has spent years on the digital frontlines of disinformation and psychological warfare. From troll farms in the Philippines to YouTube rabbit holes in Ohio, he exposes how truth has been fractured, distorted, and weaponized. Authoritarianism today isn’t just executive orders or immigration crackdowns—it’s chaos as control, delivered via your preferred platforms. As Pomerantsev so eloquently states, social media, “Is a sort of mini-narcissism engine that can never quite be satisfied, leading us to take up more radical positions to get more attention.” And this book shows how that chaos is engineered, amplified, and quietly reshaping our world.
Editors Note: “Authoritarian takeover” generally refers to a situation where a government, leader, or political group seizes power in a way that concentrates authority in the few hands of a few, often at the expense of democratic processes, individual rights, and checks and balances.
It typically involves things like:
- Weakening or eliminating independent courts, media, and elections
- Expanding executive power while sidelining legislatures
- Using laws, police, or military force to suppress dissent
- Limiting freedom of speech, assembly, and press
- Reshaping institutions to serve the ruling party or leader, not the public
In short: it’s when a system that’s supposed to share power and protect rights starts moving toward dictatorship—whether quickly or gradually.
Photo by Colin Lloyd
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