Umair Haque, originally from Pakistan, warns us about just how precious our democracy is and how a second term for Trump will lead us further down the path of authoritarianism—as many have, of course, warned. His first-person account describes in chilling detail what life under authoritarian rule means.
Forewarned is forearmed. Let's all vote in November.
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-Angela Valenzuela
What’s Life Like Under Authoritarianism? Worse Than You Imagine, and Closer Than You Think.
By now, it should be plain to see that America’s at a moment of extreme peril. It is one small step — a stolen election, a thwarted one, shock troops in the streets, militiamen executing people for political reasons in the streets — from full-blown authoritarian collapse that lasts a generation or more.
So what is life like in an authoritarian state like? We survivors keep warning you “real” Americans, who have been lucky enough to have never experienced such a thing. But because “real” Americans have never experienced life under authoritarianism, under fascism, those very warnings seem hard to grasp, difficult to process, strange and alien. I feel we survivors haven’t made our warnings concrete enough. So here is what life is like in an authoritarian-fascist state.
(When I say “real” Americans, by the way, I mean something like the white Americans, who, because their grandparents immigrated a few decades before ours, feel the need to ask, “but where are you really from?” I put it in quotes because, of course, we are all real Americans. Or are we?)
I received my first death threat when I was at the ripe old age of 14 years. It wasn’t like you think — some chubby basement-dwelling dork with fists about as dangerous as pillows says he’ll kill you on Twitter. This one came from seriously violent men in organised groups, wings calling themselves militias, carrying machine`guns, whose only real job it was to kill people who had crossed the line. I was still just a kid — but I’d crossed a line, and now the fascists wanted me dead. I was on their list of people to murder now — and people on that list tended to die gruesome deaths. Yes, really.
It happened like this. There isn’t much to do in authoritarian states — I’ll come back to that — so I became the science writer of a noted paper. Yes, that’s a little strange for a kid, but in authoritarian states, education isn’t valued, and neither is science, much less writing about either. So there I was. My job basically consisted of taking articles from functioning societies, which had a thing called science — we weren’t allowed to, because the fanatics would kill you over it — and publishing them, for what audience we had.
I tried to make it fun — I was a kid, after all. So I came up with weekly science quizzes. I wasn’t totally insufferable — mostly, I was a teenage punk, but we’ll come back to that, too. My science quizzes were a big hit. Because they poked fun at the authoritarians. Who believes dinosaurs never existed? A) the fanatics B) Charles Darwin C) Albert Einstein D) Meteors. Who believes science is more dangerous than an AK-47? Lol. You can see why the fanatics were getting a little hot under the Nazi collar, and sent the Nazis after me.
Now, I took great pride in my little quizzes. I’d go to parties, and all the grown-ups would laugh uproariously, deliriously, at them. I was too young to get: mostly because I was saying what they were afraid to say out loud. But there was a good reason they were afraid, and I was about to learn it.
One day, the office received a hand-written letter addressed to me. Umair, we’re going to kill you, you bastard heathen. And so on. Signed, the Army of the Pure. I laughed. The Army of the Pure? LOL. But nobody was laughing. There was pin drop silence in the office. And so even fourteen year old me knew this was somehow very bad news. They were, I understood, the guys who rode around on motorbikes executing people in broad daylight with machine guns. People like me. People who believed in science and democracy and truth, but not in heaven or hell or brutality or hate — and were foolish enough to say it out loud.
So I got assigned a bodyguard. There I am, a fourteen year old punk with green hair…and a bodyguard. I didn’t even take all that seriously. Until one day, we were driving home, and we came to a roaring surging, shouting crowd on a street. Another thing par for the course in authoritarian societies. Not of peace-makers — of raging fanatics, of fascists. Look at these fools, I said, rolling my eyes. Shush, said my bodyguard. This was serious. Because they were about to notice me. At that instant, they did.
And then all hell broke loose.
They started pelting the car with rocks, with bottles, with bricks. My bodyguard turned into Vin Diesel from the Fast and the Furious. But we couldn’t escape. I heard the whine of motors. In the rearview mirror, motorbikes approached. Uh oh. Men carrying machine guns rode them, pointing and shouting. Someone in the crowd had called them. One of their hated targets was here, trapped. The death squad. Shit.
I went numb. My bodyguard slowly forced the car’s way through the crowd, and we made a narrow escape. Too narrow. My heart was pounding. It had been a joke, and now it was lethally real. I’d almost been killed as a fourteen year old kid for writing about science, by armed fascists.
Maybe that sounds exciting to you. It was, to fourteen year old me. All those grown ups at the parties? With that, I earned their respect and even more laughter. “Umair escaped from the gunmen!! Right under their nose! Ha-ha!! What a kid!!” I wondered what they would’ve said if I hadn’t. I’d been one bullet away. Ten feet away. Five seconds away. From being shot to death by fascists and fanatics.
That’s life in an authoritarian society. Sure, it sounds like a scene from a movie. It was like one. Is that what you want for your kids, though? To be hunted in the streets for doing things that are considered normal — even accomplishments — in free societies, like, say writing for a newspaper?
That’s where America’s heading. I know you doubt me. So let me put in perspective for you. Consider for a moment that armed militias are already executing protesters in the streets. And the President has given his soft license and approval. That is an exact analog of what I went through. Being hunted and attacked by a militia, who wanted to kill me, because I challenged the sanctity and purity of their fascist beliefs. What’s the difference? Almost nothing.
Or just go ahead and remember Heather Heyer, who was killed by a fanatic, too.
So, like I said. Is that the kind of life you want for your kids? Being hunted in the streets by fanatics? It’s on its way, and every single one of us survivors knows that. It’s “real” Americans who are not quite yet getting the full gravity of the threat.
After I was nearly killed by fanatics for writing a science column, the editor of my paper wrote a piece challenging the government. Only a little too strongly. He’d always edged the line — that fuzzy boundary which exists in authoritarian states, of what you can get away with, how much criticism is allowed, how much reality you can really talk about. And now he’d crossed it.
And so one day, armed men without any badges showed up to his home, early in the morning. Now, his home was, like in most authoritarian states, a fortified compound. So when I say “armed men,” I mean “men with even bigger guns than his guards.” They knocked his guards to the ground, burst into his home, beat his family, and abducted him.
Then they took him to a secret jail, where he was tortured. I can’t quite remember for how long. Six months? Two years? That’s another thing that happens in authoritarian states. Forgetting. You don’t remember. You don’t want to. You know you should, but the mind is traumatized. Better to forget. The fascists count on that, too. Everyone is always busy forgetting something in an authoritarian society. It becomes hard work. You party to forget, drink to forget, do anything, just not to remember last week’s, last month’s, last year’s horrific abuse.
My editor had been disappeared. He was not a nobody in this society. In fact, he was quite well-known. So another thing that happened in authoritarian societies took place. “Hey, did you hear that Kumar got disappeared? Ha! I hope that poor bastard makes it!” That’s not his real name, obviously. There’s no real word for this emotion in free societies. It’s an expression of despair, crossed with humour, to cope with it all, crossed with a kind of bond of solidarity. You shudder as you laugh. You go numb as you try to smile.
The message has been sent. If they can make one of the most famous people in this society disappear…they can do it to anyone.
My editor was a tough man. In fact, it had happened to him before. He was that combination of things that Americans don’t quite know. Gentle but strong, wise but funny, warm but ice-cold. I thought to myself, he’ll probably make it. And he did. One day — for no reason, it appeared — they let him out, finally. And nobody talked about why.
That’s yet another facet of authoritarian life. Had his family paid off the bad guys? Had he signed some kind of confession, agreement? Had they just Clockwork-Oranged him until he’d broken? These are impolite questions. They are the same as saying: “Was he strong, or weak?” And that is insulting, to a person who has just been disappeared by fascists. So in authoritarian states, such questions aren’t asked. And yet that creates a weakness. How are you to challenge the fascists if nobody ever talks about what they do when they disappear you? So they get away with it, over and over again.
My editor emerged unbroken. Fazed, a little, maybe, as Americans say, bent, but not broken. And we all thanked our lucky stars. Because the truth was that they could have done anything they wanted. That they didn’t kill him, maim him, was a calculation, too. Only a calculation — not some kind of constitutionally binding rule of law. There was no rule of law.
Now, if you are a “real” American, you might say, “Umair, why are you telling me this?” It should be clear already. Armed men from the (at the time) head of state’s private paramilitary, carrying heavy weaponry, without badges, answerable to no one, operating above and beyond the rule of law, abducting people, whisking them off to nobody really knows where?
That’s exactly what’s happening in America now, too. And I mean exactly.
Trump now has the powers of a nascent Gaddafi or Saddam. Just like my editor got disappeared, by armed men without badges, without regard for any rule of law, so too Trump’s storm troopers — his paramilitaries wing of “Homeland Security” — can now abduct literally anyone they want. Moms in Portland. Protesters in Kenosha. People walking down the street. Do you see the link? How terrible and portentous it is? My editor got disappeared. And in Trump’s America, it can happen to you, too.
That’s a sign of things to come. When authoritarians are given the power to disappear people, they don’t use it gently. Lol. They abuse it, because authoritarians are of course abusers. They start with disappearing the powerless — hated minorities, minor-league protesters, veritable nobodies. And then they escalate to their real enemies: the heads of the opposition, key intellectuals, critics, dissidents, heads of noted newspapers.
As all this occurred, there was a friend of a friend of mine, to whom something even more terrifying happening. He was the son of a rich man. But not just any rich man. A rich man who was a reformer. Who spoke out against fascism. Against extremism, fanaticism, hate. Who spoke in favour of democracy and freedom and peace and justice. Of living in harmony with hated minorities, of treating all people as equals, as human rights for everyone. It was said that he was planning to run for office.
Imagine that if fourteen year old me received death threats for writing a column, what kind of threats this man, rich, a reformer, famed, about to run for office was receiving. Every day. Every second of every day. He was receiving threats against not just his own life, but his family’s lives, his kid’s lives, everyone he’d ever loved’s lives. He was brave enough, though, to persevere. His family was, too. They understood that the weak and cowardly can never throw off the yoke of the violent and stupid.
Can you guess what happened next? They gunned him down in the streets. Just like that. Who did? One of those militias did. The Army of the Pure. Or maybe it was the Defenders of the Homeland. Or maybe it was the League of Faith. I can’t remember. What I do remember is that they gunned him down with extreme violence. 14 year old me travelled with a bodyguard — this man travelled with a veritable army. An SUV in front, an SUV behind, packed with men carrying weaponry, armored. A convoy.
And they gunned him down anyways. Even that wasn’t enough to stop his murder.
He had to be removed, you see. He was becoming too great a threat. To the authoritarians who led the country. To the fanatics who did their dirty work. To the extremists who were their gunmen. To the whole unholy alliance of fascism that had reduced this country — once a proud, liberal democracy, to dust, to ashes, to murder and blood and smoke.
He was mourned. Not in the way the extremists mourned their dead — as martyrs. Just as a good and noble and beautiful man. The city turned out at his funeral. And the authoritarians let that happen, too. As a lesson. This is what can happen to you.
What do you think happened next? They caught the gunmen. The gunmen were tried. And they were found innocent. They walked free, smug smiles on their faces. The message had been sent. There is no rule of law here. Don’t imagine that something called a constitution or a court will protect you. This society is ruled by the most violent and fanatical. Cross us, and you will lose everything you cherish, right down to your life.
That, too, is on the way in America. Did you see how the President defended the young man who assassinated people for political reasons in Kenosha? How the President is bellowing about “law and order,” painting everyday protesters as “radicals” and “anarchists” and “agitators”?
Authoritarians do that for three reasons. One, to provoke the fanatics who do their dirty work to kill them. Two, to set up a pre-existing defence for that act of violence: if the people you killed were traitors, then you did a good thing, not a bad one. Murderer? You’re a hero. And three, to send the message. This is what we are now. Violence is the force that controls everything, and I control all the violence. Fear me.
I’ve told you three tales of life in an authoritarian state. What I haven’t told you is this. I was one of the lucky ones. I came from the stratum of society where though my life may certainly have been in danger, I was still protected. I was lucky enough to have a bodyguard, to work at a newspaper while I went to school no less, to mingle and commingle with those who’d lived abroad, experienced democracy, even to have done so myself. I was one of the privileged ones.
That is why I could mount my little revolt. Only because of my privilege. Everyone else, those who weren’t as lucky as me? Most kids would never have the chances I did. And so what fight could they win against the authoritarians? They were too busy hoping to not be noticed, to fly under the radar, and maybe live whatever semblance of a normal life they could. They were too busy doing things I didn’t have to worry about: eking out a living, trying to get into a school. And nobody would protect them if they spoke up. Nobody was going to give them a bodyguard.
So what battles were they going to fight? They didn’t. And so the authoritarians maintained an iron grip over society that way — only the privileged had the luxury of fighting them. But the privileged were a tiny, tiny few. The silent majority? It may have stood against them. In fact, it did. But it had no time. No resources. Nothing to fight back with.
That is the place America’s heading now. The average person is already broke, indebted, weary, anxious. Imagining that during a second Trump term they are going to somehow mount a noble battle against authoritarianism is a fantasy.
The battle is now. In these next sixty days. They are America’s last chance to keep a democracy. Every single one of us survivors feels that deep in our bones, because we have lived all this before, in chilling, eerie detail.
I’ve spoken to you of three things in my three stories. Abductions, disappearances, assassinations. Those three things are already happening in America. I’ve also spoken to you of the way we cope in authoritarian states. With fatalism, with deadly silence, with deliberate forgetting. And how all those are tools the fascists use, too. All those are happening in America, too.`
Don’t minimize the threat. America is far further down the road of authoritarian collapse than “real” Americans yet understand. That is what we survivors know, and why we are trying to warn you.
My three stories. Me, a fourteen year old, being hunted by fanatics. A man widely respected and admired, disappeared and tortured, just like — snap!! — that. The reformer who was gunned down for becoming too much of a threat, to send the public message that violence is what really controls society now.
That is what Trump wants for America. Violence, brutality, shock. Abductions, disappearances, assassinations. Silence, forgetting, fear, the numb feeling of terror sweeping a country. And, in the end, exhaustion and weariness with it all.
You can expect all those things to become normal, everyday parts of life in a second Trump term — just as they are right now. And you can expect democracy to die for good, too. Because that is what all the stories I have told you really are: what happens when a democracy dies, what that phrase, which “real” Americans use, but don’t fully grasp, really means, because they have never lived it. So take from me, from the story of my life. Abductions, disappearances, assassinations — surviving them. Living to tell the tale, having fought back, even in some tiny way. That is what life in a fascist-authoritarian state is like — for the lucky ones. For the unlucky ones? It’s silence and terror and despair. It’s torture and jail and fear. Never knowing if they’ll come for you today. Life as endless violence and constant, omnipresent brutality.
Only one thing — one small thing — now stands in the way of all that now. You.
If you give up your voice now, I and every other survivor of authoritarianism are likely to agree: you will live in the kind of society we grew up in. Where nobody is really free. Where death is something that stalks little children. Where people disappear, and their friends try to desperately forget, so it doesn’t happen to them, too. Is that what you want? Because that is what you are about to get.
This is not a joke. This is not a drill.
We survivors can’t warn you any harder.
It’s happening in America, the very self-same horrors of our childhoods, the terrible and unspeakable things our parents fled from.
Do not let it happen here, my friend.
Remember the vow every survivor of authoritarian-fascism makes. I made it that day when I was an inch away from being gunned down as a boy, not even a man, hunted by fanatics who wanted to kill me, for nothing more than a word, a belief, a phrase.
You must make that vow, now too. It is your time to fight the good and beautiful and noble fight, against all the ugliness and stupidity and violence in the human heart. How many have fought it before you? Courage, my friend. courage. Say it with me.
Never again.
Umair
August 2020
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