From Fascism onward, authoritarians have believed in violence as the way to move history forward and create new realities to “get things done” when other methods do not succeed. “Only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington D.C,” declared then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, now Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, at a campaign event for Trump in Iowa last summer, expressing this conception of violence as a lever of change.

Authoritarians hollow out institutions, voiding them of any values and professionalism beyond loyalty to the leader, but they also hollow out people. Strongmen need to bring everyone around them down to their level of corruption and depravity. To show their loyalty, elites compete to be the most sycophant and self-abasing, doing anything the leader asks, no matter how criminal, and going along with the inevitable escalations of violence and corruption.
Lucid.substack.com