The Staircase of Oppression
Watch the boot ascend.
The path to authoritarianism is a staircase. Each step is spring loaded, made to propel you naturally to the next. By accepting the simple premises of the first step, you set yourself up for the entire progression. The incentive to halt this progression is likewise built in. If you see the jackboot climbing the staircase below you, it is not hard to figure out that its next step will be onto your neck.
The first step is the scapegoating and persecution of the most vulnerable. We are already there. Secret police are prowling America’s cities and snatching minorities off the street. Families are hiding at home. Businesses are closing in fear. The experience of immigrants in America—and, by extension, anyone who could be mistaken for an immigrant by someone who thinks that all brown people look alike—has crept into the realm of terror.
People who have spent years building homes and families here are snatched by armed men, shipped to jails, and find themselves cast off in foreign countries soon after, blinking in disbelief, their entire lives destroyed. There are stories of this every single day. Today? Maria Bolvito, an 18-year-old Louisiana high school student, accompanied her father to a routine immigration appointment last week. She was arrested and sent to Guatemala. She has been here since she was in fifth grade. “My heart just sank and the tears started flowing,” her friend told a reporter. “One day I was with her, and then the next day she’s not here any more.”
This happens every day. For those who are members of the persecuted group, the boot is firmly on the neck already.
This grotesque oppression causes outrage. And it produces resistance. Thus we have enormous protests in cities targeted by ICE, and thousands of ICE watching activists tailing agents as they work, and lawsuits, and all forms of organized activism to try to stop or mitigate the oppression.
The determination to crush this resistance fuels the next step up the staircase. In America, the government has not fully taken this next step, but it is clear that many in the administration would like to. Opposition has been formally classified as domestic terrorism. Government databases of protesters are being built. The FBI has opened an investigation into the Signal chats that activists use to follow ICE agents. All of these things are flirtations with criminalizing activism.
If this step is taken in earnest, you can expect to see arrests and prosecutions of protest organizers and activist leaders; aggressive mass arrests of street protesters; and even more outright violence used by police to crush protest actions. Activists will be treated as criminals and targeted and sent to jail. The circle of government oppression, which started out by including immigrants and minorities, will be expanded to include regular people who take action to stop that oppression. The criminalization of protest—justified by the argument that impeding law enforcement is itself a serious crime—gets us much closer to real authoritarianism.
Clearly, Trump and many of his advisers would be pleased to do this. It is only the creaky and uncertain combination of the courts, sinking polling, and the power of protest itself that account for the fact that this step has not been fully carried out here. Whether it will be remains an open question.
Now, imagine peeking down at all of this chaos from the next step up the staircase. That is the step where the powerful people and institutions reside: Elected officials, businesses, very wealthy people, established legal and cultural organizations, and so on. This is the group that collectively held much of the political, economic, and social power before Trump’s race to authoritarianism began. As they watch the brutal oppression of immigrants and minorities play out, and they watch the subsequent protests play out, and they watch the government deciding if it can disregard the Constitution in order to crush that dissent, this already-powerful group must make a choice. Their choice is to either use their power to stop what the government is doing, or try to keep their heads down and protect their own little kingdoms and hope that all of this madness won’t affect them too much.
I expect little courage from the already-powerful, and, in aggregate, they have so far justified this expectation. Trump’s immediate assault on civil society upon taking office—the defunding of universities and threats to law firms and lawsuits against media companies and so on—was, for the most part, a success. The instinct of these institutions was, for the most part, to fold, to compromise, to strike deals, to retreat in order to protect their own bank accounts, to throw a few vulnerable groups overboard as sacrifices in the name of protecting the rest of the kingdom. All of that was a preemptive effort by the administration to prevent any resistance to their larger agenda down the road from this, the most powerful class.
That said, we should not just wave our hands and stipulate that these powerful institutions will fold and grovel to authoritarianism. Not because we believe in their moral fiber, but because they hold power, and pushing them to use their power in the right way is just another organizing task for everyone trying to fight authoritarianism. Regular Americans, all of us who are protesting and marching and decrying government oppression, need to make it part of our task to convince those on the higher tier of power that their own interests are better served by fighting than by folding.
The pressure being applied to tepid Democratic politicians to step up and oppose the administration more forcefully is part of this project. The tech workers urging their own companies not to participate in the oppression are part of this project. Boycotts of businesses on the wrong side and support of businesses on the right side are part of this project. Pressure on investment firms to divest from, say, Palantir and private prison companies is part of this project. Social pressure on athletes and celebrities to speak out is part of this project. Those with the most power are always the most insulated from the direct effects of the government’s oppression. In order to use their power for good we must get them to overcome their natural cowardice and sense of self-preservation.
What the powerful may not realize until it is too late is that fighting along with the protesters in the streets is actually in their own self-interest as well. They try to sit out the fight because they believe that the boot will not come for them. But it will. They are only one step up the staircase from us. If the opposition in the streets is criminalized, and the activist groups and protesters are treated as domestic terrorists and subject to the full force of the state, the only source of opposition left is the powerful. The final step up the staircase is almost trivial. The government need only say: Have you funded the opposition? Then you too are a criminal. Have you used your media outlet to support the opposition? Then you too are a criminal. Has your business made statements in support of the opposition? Then you too are a criminal. Have you made a movie sympathetic to the opposition, or spoken out in an interview? Then you too are a criminal.
Have you, a politician of the opposing party, taken actions that can be interpreted by us as impeding the ability of the government to carry out its vital law enforcement actions? Then you too are a criminal.
Rich people do not actually want to live in an authoritarian state. Such a state does not grant them freedom, and having unfettered freedom is the entire reason to be rich. Businesses and law firms do not actually want to be based in an authoritarian state. There is no rule of law, and that is bad for business. Media companies and universities and artists and musicians and actors do not actually want to live in an authoritarian state. There is no freedom of speech, and that makes it impossible to do the things that they exist to do.
What I am saying is that the collective instinct of the powerful to protect themselves ends up having the opposite effect. They refuse to throw their own power behind the opposition to government oppression, and thereby prevent the opposition from being as powerful as it could be, and thereby allow the boot of authoritarianism to step smoothly up the staircase, right to where they are. It would have been wiser for them to do everything in their considerable power to hold the line, to fight back, to fund the activists on the front line, to speak out firmly, to take strong legal and political action against the oppression, to refuse to do anything at all to help the government do its work. That path would be better not just for the immigrants being snatched by the secret police, but, ultimately, for themselves. All of us have to think creatively about how to make them realize that before it is too late.
We’re halfway up the staircase already. Whether we go the rest of the way is up to us. One thing I know for sure is that the boot will not stop climbing voluntarily.
More
Related reading: The Business Community is Extraordinarily Stupid; How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself; Prisoners of Fortune.
Yesterday, I spoke to Detroit’s public radio station about the incredible resistance that I saw in the streets of Minneapolis. You can listen to that interview here. You can find out how to support the actions in Minneapolis here.
The publication you are reading is called How Things Work. We are independent media. We have no paywall, and no corporate donors. This place runs solely due to the support of readers just like you. Paid subscriptions keep us going. If you like the work we do, and want to help us survive and thrive in 2026, take a quick second to become a paid subscriber today. Together we will make it my friends. Thanks for reading.
A chilling reminder that throwing Kristi Noem etal under the bus is another devious way to make us think the movement towards authoritarianism has been disrupted. I recently read a post about how Hitler used the Brown Shirts to terrorize people on the streets, but got rid of them when he needed the army to establish his power. As I understand it, ICE=Brown Shirts.
Your Stacks are essential reading - especially now. Thank you.