The slow drift towards authoritarianism !

 I will start this post with a Disclaimer:

This text is not intended to describe any single country or government. It reflects patterns that have appeared in many societies at different times, including established and emerging democracies such as the United States and others . Readers are encouraged to consider whether, and to what extent, these dynamics may or may not apply to their own country.

There is an old idea that power likes costumes. The more authoritarian it becomes, the more carefully it dresses itself. In countries showing authoritarian tendencies, people increasingly wonder whether they are witnessing ordinary governance or the quiet staging of a regime. When “masked” security forces operate with violence, intimidation, and raw displays of power that seem more focused on fear than on law, it is hardly surprising that citizens turn to history books in search of parallels they wish they did not recognize.

This has led to comparisons with secret police forces of darker eras. Such words are not used lightly. Yet they tend to surface when power is exercised aggressively and systematically, when people are treated as threats rather than participants in civic life, and when legal safeguards are experienced as obstacles instead of foundations. These comparisons arise not from hysteria alone, but from a sense of recognition.

Then there are some of the leaders themselves. The preference for military-style attire, heavy coats, or carefully curated symbols of authority often echoes aesthetics the world was meant to have outgrown. One might dismiss this as coincidence. History is less forgiving. The same restraint of language appears in public communication: brief, declarative statements, sometimes delivered through modern platforms ( tweets, truth social ), that leave little room for explanation or debate and quietly recall older traditions of rule by announcement rather than persuasion. In such climates, symbolism is rarely innocent. It is selected with care, refined over time, and intended to communicate power without words.

Most revealing, however, is the underlying dynamic. Power presses society toward its limits, sometimes appearing to welcome resistance, since resistance can serve as justification. When unrest finally erupts, authorities are able to point to it as evidence that stronger measures were unavoidable. In this way, increasingly severe tactics are framed as necessary in the name of order or security. ( caution: So please whatever emotions you may have don’t give the state in such a state reasons to justify violence on you)

These countries have not fallen through sudden coups. They drift through gradual transformations in which fear is marketed as safety and compliance as stability. When societies become accustomed to power that intimidates more than it protects, the crisis extends beyond politics and into the foundations of democratic life itself.

Hope lies in the possibility that people will recognize the pattern in time—that they will remember history not as an accusation, but as a warning, and understand that repetition is not inevitable if awareness comes early enough.

Whether this description resonates or not is left to the reader. The measure is not the name of a country, but the presence—or absence—of these patterns in one’s own society.

E JJUNJU