Authoritarianism rarely storms the gates with tanks on Day One. It metastasizes through language. Call dissenters “domestic terrorists.” Declare a “war from within.” Recast protest as invasion. Once that script is established, tyranny follows.
Most Americans lack living memory of despotism. That makes us susceptible to dismissing the warning signs as hyperbole. I studied the dictator playbook during my CNN tenure, and I distinctly recall that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s reign of terror did not begin with barrel bombs. It began by branding Daraa schoolchildren who scrawled anti-regime graffiti “terrorists.” Once protest was redefined as treason, the violence that followed became, in his narrative, self-defense.
Now, Portland is no longer simply my home — a city of roses, food carts and rain-slicked bike lanes — it is a pilot program for normalizing domestic militarization. Helicopters drone above leafy neighborhoods, and armored vehicles idle near federal buildings as a small group of protesters gather outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Portland has begun to resemble a domestic occupation and the front line of a war the president insists is already underway, even if, for now, only figuratively.
This week, President Donald Trump told a room of 800 generals and admirals that America’s true enemy is not abroad but here at home. “No different from a foreign enemy.” What was once unthinkable — that American streets might serve as training grounds for soldiers — Trump has now brazenly proclaimed.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has sued to block the federalization of roughly 200 Oregon National Guard troops ordered to Portland to “protect federal property.” It is rich, of course, to hear Trump deride Portland as a “war-ravaged” “Third World country,” phrases he spits out as insults, though the script he is following is lifted directly from the strongmen of those very nations.
The parallels abroad are instructive. Vladimir Putin first came to power through an election but would go on to reshape Russia’s constitution before carrying out the eradication of his opponents. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected as a nominal democrat and a hopeful reformer but then gutted Turkey’s judiciary before unleashing troops on protesters. Each move was justified as temporary or necessary; rationalized until resistance against the state itself became criminal.
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 and spent his term framing his rivals as a mortal threat to the nation’s survival. It was a campaign that ended in repeated claims of electoral fraud, which spurred supporters to storm Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023. Sound familiar? It should.
Some will argue America’s institutions are too strong to succumb. But Hungary’s Viktor Orban hollowed out his within a decade, and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made light work of abolishing presidential term limits, and reconstituting the Supreme Court until loyalty, not law, governed.
The swift bowing of television networks to government pressure over “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is anything but benign — it should terrify us. I recall covering news of Bassem Youssef, called “Egypt’s Jon Stewart,” forced into exile after his satire crossed the regime. In America, the same mechanics played out: intimidation, corporate capitulation, then muzzling. (Kimmel came back, not by corporate will, but by public demand.)
As a journalist, and a CNN “fake news” alumnus no less, I do not treat threats as abstractions. I keep my passport within reach and my pen ready, because the history of authoritarianism shows that those who speak and protest seldom receive safe harbor. Democratic backsliding is not a cliff. It is a staircase. Each step feels survivable until the floor disappears.
For now, my life here in Portland still feels blissfully ordinary. Farmers’ markets bustle, children ride bikes and volunteers serve the unhoused, but the city’s quotidian charm feels fragile under a gathering storm.
Today it is Portland. Tomorrow it could be Seattle or Atlanta. Each federal incursion tearing fissures in the bedrock of democracy. What is certain is that authoritarianism crumbles when met with collective defiance. We must assemble, peacefully, but forcefully, online, in courthouses and in the streets, and we must insist that this republic will tolerate no kings.
