Episode 6 | The Rise of Authoritarianism

I don’t want to be an alarmist, but if we look at a playbook for “How to Become an Authoritarian Country,” we are in the opening chapters. Last week, green-card-holding Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was detained for participating in protests on campus. He has yet to be convicted of a crime and is here legally. His detainment is intended to make a point—both about the tenuousness of being an immigrant in this country and our protected right to free speech and dissent.

What does this have to do with authoritarianism? Authoritarianism is a process of centralizing power in an individual, party, or cabal that has four primary symptoms: fear, division, distortion of the truth, and suppression of dissent. All of these ingredients are currently present in our political environment. There is resistance to it, but make no mistake about the aims of this administration.

My mentor mentioned a 59-page book by Brian McLaren this week called Authoritarianism: Coming to a Country Near You. You can find it here. We need to keep finding ways to resist, and we’ve got to stay committed to integrity, freedom, and justice.

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