Project 2025 and America’s Authoritarian Decline: Parallels to History and a New Class War
Introduction
In the past decade, American democracy has been in a downward spiral that many never imagined possible. From the 2016 campaign through today, we’ve watched the United States drift toward a form of authoritarianism once thought unthinkable in a nation built on democratic ideals. The signs are everywhere: the erosion of institutional checks and balances, the demonization of immigrants and other marginalized groups, and a public beaten down by constant chaos. In this conversational overview, we’ll break down how much of the Project 2025 agenda has already been realized, examine the extreme decline of U.S. democracy in recent years, and draw clear parallels between what’s happening in America and dark chapters in history. We’ll also discuss how the current administration’s tactics aim to wear out the public, and how even the opposition, notably the Democratic Party, has at times been complicit through performative politics. Ultimately, it’s becoming clear that American politics is devolving into a class battle hidden behind a partisan façade, putting the country at risk of outright authoritarianism and even the unthinkable targeting of “othered” groups. Let’s dig into the details, with first-hand sources to back up each point.
A Blueprint for Autocracy: What Is Project 2025?
To understand the current moment, we have to start with Project 2025. This is not a conspiracy theory or some fringe idea; it’s an openly published plan by influential conservative organizations (spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation) detailing how to radically reshape the federal government in favor of an authoritarian executive. In fact, Project 2025 is a 920-page manual on how to turn American democracy into a conservative, authoritarian nation, weaponizing the presidency to dismantle checks and balances and replacing federal agencies with loyalists. The plan unabashedly envisions sweeping away many of the guardrails that restrain abuse of power. It would eliminate personal freedoms, roll back vital safety nets, hike taxes on the middle class, and concentrate presidential power across the board. In short, it’s a playbook for one-party rule from the Oval Office.
Project 2025 rests on four key pillars (which read like steps to autocracy):
A Detailed Policy Manual: A comprehensive guide (all 920 pages of it) outlining an extreme-right governing agenda and how to implement it.
Loyalist Staffing Plans: A massive database of pre-vetted “conservative loyalists” to install throughout the federal bureaucracy, ensuring agencies answer to the president’s ideology rather than the public.
Training for Power: An online training program for future appointees, essentially coaching conservative activists on how to wield government power to advance this agenda.
The 180-Day Playbook: A still-unreleased, step-by-step game plan for the first 6 months of a new administration, aimed at rapidly overhauling federal agencies to carry out the project’s most extremist aspirations.
In essence, Project 2025 lays out a ready-made blueprint to dismantle the professional civil service, concentrate authority in the White House, and push through hard-right policies with minimal oversight. It even talks about exerting presidential control over agencies that are meant to be independent (like law enforcement or the Federal Reserve) and “weaponizing” departments like the DOJ to carry out the president’s agenda. This is a vision of an imperial presidency unchecked by the usual balances of our system. Alarmingly, much of this blueprint isn’t theoretical. Elements of it have already been put into practice or are visibly underway.
Breaking Democratic Norms: From the Trump Campaign to the Capitol Attack
To see how we got here, let’s rewind to the first Trump administration (2017–2021) and even the 2016 campaign. Many of the warning signs of authoritarianism were evident from the start. Donald Trump ran for president on demagogic appeals, openly scapegoating immigrants and religious minorities and even encouraging violence at his rallies. Once in office, he began a “relentless barrage” of attacks on democratic norms and institutions. Policies that shocked the conscience became routine. For example, in 2017 Trump attempted a “Muslim ban,” barring travel from several Muslim-majority countries. Not long after, his administration implemented a family separation policy at the southern border, tearing children away from parents, as a grotesque deterrent to asylum seekers. He frequently referred to the press as “the enemy of the people,” undermining a free media, and admired authoritarian foreign leaders openly while blasting America’s allies. Actions that once seemed unimaginable (brazen loyalty tests, the dismantling of oversight mechanisms, and wielding state power as a political weapon) quickly became defining features of his government.
Even the U.S. military and federal law enforcement were not off-limits for use against Trump’s domestic opponents. A notorious example came in June 2020: peaceful racial justice protesters in Washington, D.C. were violently dispersed by federal officers with tear gas, batons, and helicopters, all so Trump could stage a photo-op with a Bible in front of a church. This willingness to turn the tools of state violence on citizens exercising First Amendment rights was a hallmark of Trump’s approach. By late 2020, the ultimate test of Trump’s anti-democratic impulses arrived: he lost the election and refused to accept the results. He propagated the “Big Lie” of a stolen election and pressured officials at every level to overturn the outcome.
When those efforts failed, he incited an angry crowd of supporters on January 6, 2021, who went on to storm the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the vote. This was an unprecedented attack on the peaceful transfer of power in America. In the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, there was a brief moment of clarity. Many assumed this would be a breaking point, a wake-up call that would force the system to hold the perpetrators accountable and shore up our democracy. Unfortunately, that mostly did not happen. No sweeping prodemocracy reforms were passed in Congress, and no key political figures who tried to overturn the election faced real accountability. After a few weeks of outrage, the political establishment largely moved on. This lack of consequences and deeper reforms meant the stage was set for an attempted comeback, the very threat to democracy that America had just barely survived was paused, not eliminated. As one political scientist noted in mid-2021, with Trump out of office the deterioration of democracy was “on pause,” but without structural changes “the worst may be yet to come.”
Authoritarian Acceleration in 2025: A Fast-Forward to Autocracy
Indeed, the worst did come. Fast forward to the present day. Donald Trump (or a like-minded successor) has returned to power in 2025, and what’s happening now is the rapid implementation of the Project 2025 vision. Observers describe the current onslaught on American democratic norms as breathtaking in speed and scope “it reads like a checklist of milestones on the road to autocracy,” as one report put it. In just the first several months of this new administration, we’ve seen shockingly authoritarian moves that echo the darkest chapters of other nations’ histories. For example:
Criminalizing Dissent: A succession of opposition figures, including a sitting U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, have been handcuffed and arrested by heavy-handed law enforcement for little more than voicing dissent. The clear message is that criticizing the regime can land even elected officials in cuffs.
Intimidating the Judiciary: In one incident, a state judge was arrested in her own courthouse and charged with assisting a defendant in evading arrest, a highly unusual move that many see as retaliation for a judge not toeing the line.
“Snatch Squads” on the Streets: Masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles have been grabbing people off the streets with no identification or explanation, then spiriting them away. A tactic deliberately used to instill fear. Critics note this “evocative of dictatorships” approach is designed to make the public feel that anyone could be next.
Militarized Crackdowns: The president has even deployed the U.S. military against civilians on dubious legal pretenses. When people protested the administration’s mass roundups of undocumented immigrants, troops were sent in to confront them. This militarization of a domestic law-and-order issue is unprecedented in modern U.S. history and was done over the objections of local authorities.
Suspending Fundamental Rights: Perhaps most disturbing, senior officials in the administration have floated the idea of suspending habeas corpus, the basic legal right to challenge one’s detention in court. Suspending habeas corpus is something that has only happened in America during the Civil War, yet now it’s being talked about as a tool to remove any judicial interference with mass arrests.
Taken together, these developments mark a swift descent into authoritarian rule that even pessimistic observers didn’t think would happen so fast. “Trump is throwing authoritarian punches at a much greater rate than [other autocrats] in their first year in power,” says Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist who has studied democratic breakdown around the world. Other experts note that Trump’s moves in 2025 have “outpaced even Putin” in how quickly he’s eliminating democratic freedoms. One survey of political scientists (Bright Line Watch) recently rated the United States at 53 out of 100 on a democracy scale: the lowest score since they began tracking in 2017, closer to a flawed or failing democracy than a healthy one.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. It directly follows the script laid out by Project 2025 and mirrors steps taken by other authoritarian-leaning regimes. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manual explicitly plots how to “dismantle America’s system of checks and balances to impose an extreme, far-right agenda”, potentially paving the way for a full-blown authoritarian future. We’ve seen analogous strategies succeed elsewhere. In Hungary, for instance, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán systematically purged independent civil servants and installed party loyalists throughout the government, which destroyed professional oversight and entrenched his power. Today in the U.S., the same playbook is in effect: career officials are being removed or sidelined and replaced with loyalists devoted to the president’s agenda, no matter how extreme. Agencies that are supposed to be nonpartisan (even the Justice Department) have been filled with hand-picked allies who will bend or break the rules to target the president’s enemies and shield his friends. It’s the very scenario the framers of our Constitution feared and it’s unfolding at top speed.
Migrant Scapegoating: Echoes of 1930s Germany
One of the clearest and most alarming parallels between America’s current trajectory and the rise of past authoritarian regimes (notably Nazi Germany) lies in the treatment of “outsider” groups, especially immigrants. From the start, Trump has wielded nativist, xenophobic rhetoric as a political weapon, and it has only intensified in his renewed grip on power. He speaks about immigrants in dehumanizing terms that chillingly echo Nazi propaganda. For example, Trump has claimed over and over that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation: a phrase that invokes pseudo-scientific racism and is strikingly similar to language used by Nazi officials who warned of “blood poisoning” of the Aryan race by Jews. He has called political opponents “vermin” and referred to migrants as “animals” and “rapists,” painting them as sub-human threats. This rhetoric is not only shockingly offensive; it’s straight out of the fascist playbook. Historians and genocide scholars will tell you that dehumanizing language. Comparing groups to pests, diseases, or criminals, is a classic precursor to state-sponsored persecution. In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels and other propagandists routinely described Jews as Ungeziefer (vermin) and as a disease infecting Germany. Hearing similar slurs from an American president in 2025 is beyond disturbing, it’s a flashing red warning light.
And it’s not just words. Policy is following rhetoric, in ways that make the historical parallels impossible to ignore. At the 2024 Republican National Convention, delegates waved signs demanding “Mass Deportation Now,” and Trump has promised, if given the opportunity, to deport as many as 20 million people from the United States. That staggering number (essentially every undocumented person in the country) exceeds even the wildest mass deportation undertakings in modern history. Experts point out that you cannot round up and expel that many people without creating a system of camps and checkpoints that would amount to a 21st-century incarnation of concentration camps. Remember, “concentration camp” doesn’t necessarily mean a death camp like Auschwitz; it refers to the mass detention of civilians without trial based on group identity. We are talking about detaining millions of men, women, and children on U.S. soil, under military or paramilitary guard, for forced removal. It’s no wonder historians are openly making the comparison. This is precisely how some of the worst chapters in history began. In fact, before resorting to genocide, Nazi policy in the 1930s initially aimed to strip German Jews of citizenship and expel them from the country. The Nazis labeled Jews as “aliens” in their own homeland and tried to force them into emigration. In a grim parallel, Trump has floated the idea of ending birthright citizenship in America, which would mean many children born in the U.S. (largely to immigrant families) could be retroactively declared “aliens” in the only country they’ve ever known. This is exactly the kind of legal maneuver that would pave the way for mass expulsions.
It cannot be overstated how extreme and dangerous this direction is. Rounding up people en masse based on their identity or origin is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes on the path toward ethnic cleansing or genocide. We have seen it in history time and again and now those dynamics are emerging here. Analysts warn that if such a mass deportation project were launched, it would “unleash deliberate and collateral mayhem” and likely spiral out of control. Even many who are not targeted initially could get caught up in the chaos. As one observer starkly put it, a system of camps built to punish millions is a threat to every American. Once a government claims the power to disappear and incarcerate huge numbers of people without due process, no one’s rights are truly safe. Today it might be immigrants and asylum-seekers; tomorrow it could be dissidents, journalists, or any group deemed “undesirable.” The parallels to early Nazi Germany, the dehumanizing propaganda, the stripping of citizenship, the talk of camps and mass roundups, are flashing like neon signs. History is screaming at us with a question: will we heed its warnings in time?
Fatigue and Misinformation: Tactics to Numb the Public
Amid this march toward authoritarianism, there is another tactic at play that is more psychological: exhausting and confusing the public into submission. Modern strongmen know that outright repression is only one tool; another is to wear people down with an overwhelming flood of information, controversy, and fear, until many just give up on trying to follow what’s true or hold leaders accountable. Trump and his strategists have explicitly embraced this approach. (Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon put it in crudest terms: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”) What Bannon meant was that if you overwhelm the media and public discourse with constant scandal, outrage, contradictory narratives, lies, and chaos, people will eventually become numb and disoriented. Unfortunately, it works. As a New York Times piece noted during Trump’s first impeachment saga, “people are numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact.” This “outrage fatigue” is something many Americans can relate to after years of daily political firestorms, from wild conspiracy theories to never-ending legal dramas, a lot of folks understandably tune out.
That fatigue is not just a side effect; it’s an intentional feature of authoritarian strategy. By creating an environment where the truth feels unknowable and everything seems like partisan noise, would-be authoritarians make it harder for the public to unite against any particular abuse or even to agree on basic facts. Political analysts have called this the “firehose of falsehood” propaganda model. Rather than trying to convince everyone of a single big lie, the goal is to confuse people with a blizzard of half-truths and outright lies such that they throw up their hands and say “you know what, nothing is credible anymore.” In that kind of cynical atmosphere, power grabs go unanswered because the public either doesn’t know what to believe or has checked out in exhaustion. As one scholar observed, the objective is to convince people that “the truth is unknowable” and therefore “the only sensible choice is to follow a strong leader”. It’s a tactic pioneered in modern times by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia, and perfected by social media algorithms that amplify confusion. In the U.S. context, we see it in the constant swirl of disinformation, from election lies to extremist propaganda, and the sheer pace of crises that leave us perpetually off-balance. The end result of this “manufactured nihilism” is a citizenry too fatigued to resist and institutions too overwhelmed to check abuse. This is exactly the environment an authoritarian leader wants: one where the public is either too divided or too drained to fight back, and truth can no longer serve as a rallying point for opposition.
Performative Opposition: How the Establishment Paved the Way
It’s important to acknowledge that the blame for America’s authoritarian slide doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of the right-wing actors pushing it. There is a critique to be made of the institutional opposition, chiefly the Democratic Party leadership, for failing to robustly defend democracy when it had the chance. For years, many Democratic politicians have responded to growing extremist threats with strong words and symbolism, but far less concrete action than the moment required. This kind of performative politics (fiery speeches on the floor, gestures of solidarity like wearing kente cloth or kneeling, “resistance” social media posts) can garner applause on Twitter or cable news. But when it came time to actually reinforce democratic guardrails, the follow-through was lacking. Consider that in 2021, after Trump’s departure, Democrats briefly controlled both Congress and the presidency. This was a golden opportunity to pass meaningful reforms: protecting voting rights, reducing the influence of dark money, even perhaps tackling the Electoral College or Supreme Court imbalance. None of that happened. “No major prodemocracy reforms have passed Congress” in recent memory, as one analysis noted, even after all the norm-breaking we witnessed. The Democratic-led Congress held hearings and wrote scathing reports, sure, but they ultimately left in place the same brittle system that had just barely survived a coup attempt. They did not eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights protections; they did not expand the Supreme Court or put serious checks on presidential powers. And crucially, there was “no real accountability” for the high-level plotters of the January 6th insurrection. The message (unintentionally) was: try to overthrow an election, and you might face a congressional committee and some bad press, but you’ll still be viable to run for office again. It’s hard to imagine a more demoralizing signal to send in the face of an existential threat to democracy.
Why have mainstream leaders been so timid? Part of it is that many are entrenched in the very system that’s failing; they often prioritize stability and bipartisan civility over the hard, messy work of structural change. For decades, politicians of both parties embraced a neoliberal economic order that left working class communities struggling and inequality soaring, while both parties’ donor classes thrived. This created fertile ground for a faux-populist authoritarian to exploit people’s anger. In truth, beneath the partisan theater, power in America has often been a battle of classes more than a battle of ideas. A famous Princeton University study in 2014 found that affluent individuals and business interest groups have vastly more influence on U.S. government policy than average citizens do. In fact, the preferences of ordinary Americans had “no discernible, independent effect” on policy outcomes in that 30-year analysis. Think about that; regardless of which party was in power, if you weren’t wealthy or part of an organized interest group, your voice barely registered. This economic elite dominance has continued through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. So when we talk about a “partisan façade,” it’s because on some fundamental issues, like who really controls policy, the two parties have often been aligned with the interests of the powerful.
This isn’t to create a false equivalence: there are absolutely major differences between the parties on many policies and certainly in their rhetoric about democracy. But the Democratic establishment’s caution and incrementalism in the face of an extremist threat has arguably been a form of complicity. By not decisively correcting course when they had the chance, they left the door open for the authoritarian movement to regroup and charge back in. Performative opposition (tweets, virtue signals, symbolic votes destined to fail) may win news cycles, but it doesn’t stop an opponent that plays by no rules. In some ways, it only fuels cynicism among the public, who see the lack of real change and conclude that the system is irredeemably rigged. That cynicism can depress democratic participation and drive some people into the arms of demagogues promising to “burn it all down.” In short, America’s democratic immune system was weakened not just by direct attacks from the right, but also by years of neglect and fecklessness by key players on the center-left. Both factors allowed authoritarianism to take root.
Conclusion: Democracy at the Precipice and What Comes Next
As we survey the landscape in 2025, it’s clear that the United States is perilously close to a point of no return. The trends we’ve discussed, the implementation of the Project 2025 blueprint, the brazen authoritarian actions of the administration, the chilling parallels to fascist regimes, the deliberate exhaustion of the public, and the failure of opposition leaders to effectively counter any of it, all converge toward one stark conclusion. American democracy is hanging by a thread. The facade of normal partisan politics conceals what is essentially a struggle between the many and the few, between democratic governance and oligarchy, between rule of law and authoritarian rule. And right now, the authoritarian oligarchic forces are ascendant.
If this trajectory continues unchecked, we could witness outcomes that once seemed unimaginable in the United States. Already, vulnerable communities (immigrants, religious and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people, political dissidents) are being demonized and targeted in ways that raise the specter of past atrocities. History teaches that when a government openly talks about purging millions of “undesirables” and uses language of infestation and disease, violence on a mass scale is alarmingly possible. The ground is being prepared for state-sanctioned cruelty at a level that could even meet the definition of crimes against humanity. In the worst-case scenario, the “othered” groups in America could face a campaign of persecution that, while it might not mirror the exact industrial genocide of Nazi Germany, would rhyme with the early stages of that horror in deeply unsettling ways.
And yet, it’s not too late, not yet. The very fact that we can still write and speak about these issues means some freedom remains to be defended. The United States has faced profound challenges before and has the capacity for renewal. But that requires a clear-eyed recognition of reality: the house is on fire. Business-as-usual politics, denial, or hoping someone else will fix it simply won’t suffice. It will take an engaged public, willing to cut through the fog of misinformation and overcome fatigue, to demand change. It will take leaders with courage to enact reforms and hold wrongdoers accountable, even if it’s politically hard. Most of all, it will take a recommitment to the fundamental values of human dignity, equality, and justice that are the antidote to authoritarianism.
The stakes could not be higher. Americans, regardless of party or background, now face a choice that people in failing democracies have faced before: Will we resist the slide into darkness together, or succumb to it through our division and weariness? The lessons of history are in front of us, the warning signs flashing. The promise of an inclusive, democratic America is still within reach, but only if enough of us step up to reclaim it. If we don’t, the “land of the free” may tragically earn a new and far bleaker distinction: as yet another cautionary tale of how a democracy can die in the daylight.
Sources:
Cherfilus-McCormick, House.gov – Project 2025 overview and pillars
Center for American Progress – Project 2025 authoritarian blueprint ; Trump administration authoritarian features (2025)
The Guardian – “Trump propels US into authoritarianism” ( June 2025)
Scientific American – “Trump’s Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History”
Vox – Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” strategy, public numbness to misinformation
The Atlantic – “American democracy is dying” analysis
Princeton University study – Influence of affluent vs. average citizens on policy
Project 2025 | Representative Cherfilus-McCormick http://cherfilus-mccormick.house.gov/issues/project-2025
America’s Self-Obsession Is Killing Its Democracy - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/american-democracy-breakdown-authoritarianism-rise/670580/
How Democracies Defend Themselves Against Authoritarianism - Center for American Progress https://www.americanprogress.org/article/how-democracies-defend-themselves-against-authoritarianism/
‘He’s moving at a truly alarming speed’: Trump propels US into authoritarianism | Donald Trump | The Guardian-https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/trump-us-autocracy-authoritarianism
The Dangers of Project 2025: Global Lessons in Authoritarianism - Center for American Progress-https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-dangers-of-project-2025-global-lessons-in-authoritarianism/
Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History | Scientific American-https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-massive-deportation-plan-echoes-concentration-camp-history/
The impeachment trial didn’t change any minds. Here’s why. | Vox https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/impeachment-trial-trump-bannon-misinformation
Study casts doubt on fairness of U.S. democracy – Discovery: Research at Princeton https://discovery.princeton.edu/2014/11/14/study-casts-doubt-on-fairness-of-u-s-democracy/