This is a Righteous Gemstones bit come to life
Senior Correspondent at Vox covering the crisis of global democracy. Author of The Reactionary Spirit, a book on that topic — available for purchase now! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/zack-beauchamp/the-reactionary-spirit/9781541704411/?lens=
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This is a Righteous Gemstones bit come to life
Must-read piece.
Great piece. A reminder: if you’re a journalist who is not using every word you write to raise the alarm bells on Trump’s attacks on democracy, you’re not doing your job.
My 4 year old on the playground: “my pink laser killed Joker” Me, in Batman voice: “We don’t kill Joker“ Her: ”Why?” Me: Uh, well, that’s a good question actually
This @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social piece pulls it all together nicely. www.vox.com/politics/462...
the first person to push it was james lindsay — i'd bet TCW took it from him. of course, that merely strengthens your point
I think it's probably tempting to think that a democracy ends when elections are cancelled. @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social's writing has been really valuable (for my own thinking) in showing how much more there is to think about and watch out for. www.vox.com/politics/462...
At Vox, @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social on the authoritarian playbook and why he thinks there's still time to block some of what Trump, Vance & co. have in store:
"We are where Hungarians were in 2010, where Russians were in 2000, and where Germans were in 1933. Those places’ futures were not inevitable; had elites and even ordinary people made different choices, catastrophes could have been avoided. "Ours still can be too."
I appreciate Zack going through the *how* of how we'd lose our democracy. It's not canceling elections or troops in the streets, it's takeover of media platforms and either buying off or silencing dissenters.
Must-read; important to interpret recent events in terms of how Trump could turn the US into a competitive authoritarian state where the government abuses its powers to undermine the opposition even as elections continue to be held
Crucially, there is STILL TIME TO STOP THIS. The Trump administration has proven legally incompetent and vulnerable to concerted pushback. But this only works if people who care about democracy refuse dooming, and realize they still have agency. www.vox.com/politics/462...
Prior to Charlie Kirk's death, Trump had taken only halting and ineffectual steps to punish the political opposition. Now they're threatening liberal NGOs and billionaires with federal investigations, using similar tactics to those that brought Columbia to heel www.vox.com/politics/462...
I saw, during my reporting in Hungary, how much putting friendly oligarchs in charge of the media matters in authoritarian consolidation. That's starting to happen in the United States. www.vox.com/politics/462...
The puzzle pieces are starting to fit together — Trump's individual authoritarian policies adding up to a concrete system that could render elections durably unfair www.vox.com/politics/462...
The past week has shown us something scary — the concrete and specific outlines of a durable authoritarian state in America. Here's what this state would look like, and the precise policy levers Trump is pulling to get there from here. www.vox.com/politics/462...
Well the last time multiple age cohorts were fucked up by a global pandemic was...immediately following World War I. Nothing bad happened in those 30 years, right?
I fear Nate's brain was well and truly broken by 2020 and Covid, and it's not an uncommon affliction
President Trump said most networks only give him “bad publicity” and suggested their licenses may need to be “taken away.” Dominic Patten and @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social Zack Beauchamp join @anacabrera.bsky.social to share their reactions to Trump’s suggestion. www.msnbc.com/ana-cabrera-...
I was born in the US. My partner was born overseas to an American father (and eventual immigrant-to-US mother). My elementary schooler came home upset today b/c he's learned about "ICE Police" taking away the parents of kids at his DC school b/c they have immigrant parents.
ideally, one of the continents, one of the immediately important countries, and one of the main city where our street urchin thief learns that she is magic
Poland's recent experience is a rich case study. This article about the "post-illiberal trilemma" is excellent www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/dem...
This is an evil sentiment, get the hell out of my mentions with this immoral garbage
Hey, I wrote this!
The loser energy that radiates off "it's illegal not to like me" shit like this is palpable bsky.app/profile/zack...
If a single Democrat says that Kimmel is a "distraction" from health care costs I am going to lose my mind
It's not just the authoritarianism — it's how shameless, how *gleeful* this administration is about it
The details of the Jimmy Kimmel situation reveal that Trump has adopted one of Viktor Orbán's most effective weapons against the free press www.vox.com/politics/461...
Whenever I see a TV news clip now, I feel like I'm watching the opening scenes of a zombie movie where the broadcasters are "getting reports of individuals acting in a disturbing fashion" right before the apocalypse breaks out
"There may be no democracy to save a year from now," says a sitting Senator.
Another absolute banger from @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social this morning. The only thing I think I’d add to this piece, which I may have missed on first reading are the myriad examples of prominent right-wingers celebrating or making light of violence against the left. Otherwise, no notes.
Totally, there's a linkage between "staunchly pro-Israel" and "taking anti-Semitism seriously" that needs to be broken (and I think some groups are actively working to break)
The intra-right dispute over Israel is tough, because the Tucker Carlson types who are correct on the immediate policy issue (Gaza) have arrived there because they're antisemites
we have a metered paywall, where you get a certain number and type of articles for free (there's an algorithm) and then it requires membership
What Trump is doing right now isn't "cancel culture." It's a modern version of the Red Scare. www.vox.com/on-the-right...
I know you're writing in the UK context, but everything in the US recently supports this case (as does the Bartels book on Europe) press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Wrote a whole piece on this www.vox.com/politics/458...
the problem for miller here, imo, is that his work has been focused on immigrants, who are definitionally not protected in the same way as citizens are. he's moving from targeting people trapped in the zone of necropolitics to targeting people/speech at the dead center of constitutional protection
Now he is very openly promising to crush civil liberties in order to "save civilization." This is naked fascist talk
The Stephen Miller factor is really important. He is the White House policy king, and has been previously bending resources towards immigration enforcement in ways that actually undermined their efforts to attack democracy. Post-Kirk, he has openly declared his mission is repressing the left.
What is happening right now is an extinction-level threat to liberalism in America. Act like it.
What if the second Red Scare, but Joe McCarthy was president
Stephen Miler is open about what's coming: a federal law enforcement crackdown on its political opponents
Please join me @velshimsnbc.bsky.social 10a-1p w/ @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social @davids.house.gov @michaelemann.bsky.social @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social @profmmurray.bsky.social @adamsmith.house.gov Jim Cavanaugh #Velshi 1/2
It is possible to recognize the damage Charlie Kirk did in life without lapsing into apologia for his murder www.vox.com/politics/461...
This isn't one of those cases where the shooter left out a lengthy and straightforward manifesto. It's a handful lines that that could be interpreted in any number of ways. It's just not enough to say much with confidence yet (other than that he played Helldivers 2).
A lot of folks here are convinced he's an irony-poisoned gamer with no discernible ideology. My X feed is full of people convinced he's an antifa member radicalized by anti-Trump rhetoric. All based on four short, opaque sentences!
You can see, in real times, two fundamentally opposed narratives about the shooter emerging from the same (very thin!) evidence base
On today's show: - @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social on nat'l politics - NYS State Sen. James Skoufis on live events ticketing reforms - @sophiepedder.bsky.social on France news - How restaurant culture is changing w/tariffs, GLP-1s, etc. Tune in at 10AM, 93.9FM, AM820 & wnyc.org
The polarization of the United States’ political parties and President Donald Trump’s aggressive power grabs put America on shaky ground following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. More from @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social: voxdotcom.visitlink.me/yQx0ip
Charlie Kirk's murder has plunged us into a democratic crisis www.vox.com/politics/461...
We must stand resolutely against political assassination and political violence of all kinds, and just as resolutely against everyone who exploits acts of violence as the pretext or excuse for political repression of political opponents.
Very, very bad stuff coming from leading right-wingers
1/ Beauchamp is the best political pundit in America. Here, he doesn't invoke Kuhn but I think his argument can be summarized as: the Establishment Dems are acting like Kuhnian normal politics puzzle solvers in the midst of a paradigm shift that has made politics anything but historically normal.
I'm going to say this as many times as it's necessary: you shouldn't kill your political opponents
Awful.
congrats!!!!
The shutdown debate is really about two competing visions of how to fight Trump — between Team Normal Politics and Team Abnormal. I wrote about why I'm (mostly) on the latter www.vox.com/on-the-right...
these are some very well-thought out criticisms for someone who calls himself "the fool"
In his newsletter, @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social plugs Keidrick Roy’s American Dark Age: “I just loved American Dark Age. . . .I appreciated Roy’s excavation of the Black liberal tradition in American thought—giving voice to a group whose ideas deserve a renewed look in our own anti-democratic moment.”
absolutely, i thought that was a really sharp part of your piece
that's how lucan (way) describes it to me when we talk, though i prefer the less catchy "delegative democracy trending towards authoritarianism"
Republican discourse becoming increasingly indistinguishable from Loki's "you will always kneel" speech in The Avengers
So was Trump’s peace effort (just give him a prize already) all a lie to bait negotiators into a location where they could be killed, thereby undermining any peace negotiation he ever attempts? Or did Israel use his peace efforts to attack, an embarrassment from one of his few international allies?
There's something so telling about the Trumpist right's insistence that using a slur for people with a disability is a sign of bravery
The origin story is interesting. The WSJ didn't publish it from their own files; the drawing came from House Dems, who got it from Epstein's lawyers. That's a meaningful accomplishment for a minority party.
They published it, and it's even worse than I thought www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...
We’re baaaack! With an all-new show this week 📻📻📻 Check it out: @jamisonfoser.bsky.social on manufacturing consent for Trumps red city takeover, @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social on the MAGA weirdos and NPR-legend @debamos.bsky.social went to Ukraine! www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...
Trump just keeps losing www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...
this is still the single greatest intro ever made for an animated series, an absolute masterpiece on every level
This is a pretty consistent finding in the European politics literature — wrote about it here a few years ago www.vox.com/policy-and-p... Democrats who want their party to tack right on immigration need to explain why this logic doesn't apply here
An absolutely essential @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social article on 4 of the most influential people in the second Trump term. From the outset, it seems that these people hate the American Constitution, our traditions, and our culture. And then it gets even weirder. www.vox.com/on-the-right...
Hitler's chancellory is most dangerous period for Germany since the World War, warns Von Hindenburg
Extraordinary reporting from my colleague @dylanlscott.bsky.social
This tactic - pressuring corporations financially until they put a regime friendly voice in charge - is exactly how Orbán took over the free press in Hungary
lololololol
Every year, the Heritage Foundation puts out an "economic freedom" index, ranking every country in the world by (more or less) how lightly they're regulated. There are four Nordic countries in the top 15.
I spent two hours listening to four of the right's leading thinkers debate topics such as: -should Black men in Baltimore be indentured to churches? -should Ron DeSantis create a youth militant organization in Florida? -is the American public crying out for purges? www.vox.com/on-the-right...
what is this from
i spent the day watching yarvin talk for a piece and he would singlehandedly doom this entire show
love to see empirical validation for the core theory of my book
the DOJ atty (& 2x Harvard grad) who suggested Harvard showed "wanton indifference to antisemitism" once wrote a paper from the perspective of Hitler & expressed admiration for Mein Kampf stunning reporting from @hilaryburns.bsky.social @talkopan.bsky.social www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/m...
This thread is wrong on several particulars — your account of US media in particular is a complete caricature. It's also entirely mischaracterizing my position, which isn't "nothing to see here" but rather "we have an urgent window that requires acting *now*." You might read...anything I've written.
any argument that trump has fully consolidated authoritarian power has to contend with the fact that the government wants to deport kilmar abrego garcia to uganda but hasn't done so, because a judge told them not to
oh i'm pretty sure dan agrees with you!
I think that's basically right. This would probably be a good thing for us to discuss at length at one point!
This is the counter checklist to what I posted today. Again, I very much hope I am wrong and Zach is right. In practice, I think we probably agree on most stuff, but a) on what meets the threshold of competitive authoritarianism, and b) what counts as completing the checklist.
<3 <3
I wasn't going to write about Taylor Swift's engagement, but people kept asking for my take. So here's my take: it's totally unsurprising that a 35 year old woman would marry her boyfriend of 2 years. It means nothing about a cultural shift away from feminism www.cartoonshateher.com/p/women-marr...
Agree — that's big part of my book, actually! Key is looking at the granular *effects* of changes, de facto or de jure. I find the evidence of changes in US outputs are insufficient to say we've crossed the line into a regime where power alternation is not reasonably attainable through legal means
I think you're conflating undemocratic actions and intent with regime change. Or perhaps we're disagreeing about system definitions. But more broadly, I worry when anyone says that the answer to such an obviously complex and difficult question is "obvious."
That I heartily agree with! And what I’m saying, to be clear, isn’t that we can’t or won’t cross the line - we very well could. I just think we haven’t yet, largely due to lack of *effective* constraints on dissent and electoral fairness.
My view is that the Trump administration has arrived at delegative democracy - a form of constitutional breakdown which is distinct from autocracy. They want to go further, but it’s an open question whether they can bsky.app/profile/zack...
I've read it twice now! I just haven't read what it's responding *to* as closely, which means I'm not sure if I agree with their methodological critiques
These two grafs in the excerpt make my argument for me. If you look at the descriptions of CA and delegative democracy, I think the US at present fits the latter quite a bit better. That could change, though!
Well first, I'm not sure if I agree with the conclusions — I'm in the process of reading the U-turns literature more carefully. But more importantly, the paper is discussing states that at one point crossed the line into autocracy. And I'm saying we're not there *yet*.
reporting for duty editor sir! 🫡