'Resurgence of autocracy': Scholar debunks claim that authoritarianism started with Trump

Liberal author/journalist and Columbia University journalism scholar Jelani Cobb isn't shy about criticizing Donald Trump's presidency in his articles for The New Yorker or during his appearances on MSNBC. But in an interview with The Guardian's David Smith published on October 18, Cobb emphasized that authoritarianism in the United States didn't start with Trump and the MAGA movement.

Smith explains, "It is now fashionable on the left to bemoan the rise of U.S. authoritarianism as a novel concept, a betrayal of constitutional ideals envied by the world. Cobb has a more complex take, suggesting that the U.S.' claim to moral primacy, rooted in the idea of exceptionalism, is based on a false premise."

Authoritarianism, Cobb argued, existed in the U.S. long before Trump's 2016 presidential campaign — from voter suppression after the Civil War to Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) during the 1950s — and civil libertarians have long struggled against it.

Cobb told Smith, "America has been autocratic previously. We just don't think about it. It's never been useful.… to actually grapple with what America was, and America had no interest in grappling with these questions itself. Who has ever managed personal growth while constantly screaming to the world about how special and amazing they are?"

During the interview, Cobb noted that racism and authoritarianism have often gone hand-in-hand in U.S. history.

"America has been autocratic previously…. The Constitution gave Black people the right to vote," Cobb told Smith, "but if you voted, you'd be killed — and this was a known fact. This went on for decade after decade after decade. You can call that a lot of things. You can't call that democracy. It was a kind of racial autocracy that extended in lots of different directions…. We should have been mindful that the country could always return to form in that way, that its commitment to democracy had been tenuous. That was why race has played such a central role in the dawning of this current autocratic moment."

Cobb continued, "But it's not the only dynamic. Immigration, which is tied to race in some ways, is another dynamic. The advances that women have made, the increasing acceptance and tolerance of people in the LGBTQ communities — all those things, combined with an economic tenuousness, have made it possible to just catalyze this resurgence of autocracy in the country."

Read The Guardian's interview with Jelani Cobb at this link.