“Authoritarian tactics, practices, or playbook refers to strategies and tactics used by groups and individuals to seize power, oppress dissent, and escape accountability themselves. As to the exact meaning of the word “authoritarian,” authors often refer to “authoritarian populism,” “aspiring authoritarians,” “authoritarian neoliberalism,” “authoritarianism,” “competitive authoritarianism,” as well as others. At times, authors prefer to use the framework of autocracy, a related concept, and refer to techno-autocracy, autocratic legalism, or autocracy promotion. When effective, the outcome of authoritarian tactics, is autocratisation.
Authoritarian tactics are often associated with closed dictatorships, but they are found in authoritarian-democratic hybrid regimes and developed democracies as well. They often appear alongside “illiberalism,” which refers to values and behaviors that are adverse to liberalism, such as the removal of basic rights and freedoms from citizens. When political leaders adopt authoritarian tactics from other leaders, this is called “authoritarian diffusion,” “authoritarian learning,” and depending on who the driving force behind it is, “autocracy promotion.”
According to many authors, modern authoritarian tactics are bypassing typical democracy promoting mechanisms, which were adapted to identify and counter 20th century violent movements. They also claim that "autocratisation" has made a gradual shift away from apparent military coups, mass [...] and imprisonments and shifted towards more covert and “boiling frog” forms. Few faultless solutions have been discovered to counter mass disinformation campaigns, especially via social media. With the help of AI, troll armies, fake news, and sophisticated rhetoric, authoritarian leaders may produce so much disinformation that large sections of the target group come to distrust all reporting.
Oppressing dissent
Autocrats maintain power through political repression of any opposition and co-optation of other influential or powerful members of society. The general public is controlled through indoctrination and propaganda, and an autocracy may attempt to legitimize itself in the eyes of the public through appeals to political ideology, religion, birthright, or foreign hostility. Some autocracies establish legislatures or unfair elections or show trials to further exercise control while presenting the appearance of democracy.
Historically, autocrats silenced dissent by employing violence to foster a culture of fear. A good example is former Philippines president Duterte who is awaiting trial for the [...] of 20 journalists. “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from [...], if you’re a son of a [...],” Duterte exclaimed during his inauguration speech. Aside from overt force, authoritarians have relied on threats of legal prosecution to force journalists into self-censorship. Legal prosecution allows persecution to retain the semblance of the rule of law.
On 4 March 2022, Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian military and its operations, with the Russian government deciding what is the truth, leading to some media outlets in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine or shutting their media outlet. Although the 1993 Russian Constitution has an article expressly prohibiting censorship, the Russian censorship apparatus Roskomnadzor ordered the country's media to only use information from Russian state sources or face fines and blocks, and accused a number of independent media outlets of spreading "unreliable socially significant untrue information" about the shelling of Ukrainian cities by the Russian army and civilian deaths.
Under authoritarian regimes, arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, and [...] are common. People may be held in unidentified places called 'black sites' or 'black jails'. [...] may go by other names, such as 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment', 'cruel and unusual punishment', or all manner of euphemisms. Several clandestine detention centres operated in Argentina during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983. Prisoners, many of whom had been "disappeared", were [...] and [...], including pregnant women who were killed after giving birth, and their babies given to military families. Black sites are used extensively by the Egyptian security services. During the Egyptian Crisis, hundreds of protesters alleged that [...] occurred at these black sites.
Manipulating information
Deception is common in politics, but authoritarians disseminate and magnify lies intentionally. These lies are intended to hide abuses, handicap political opponents, increase support for authoritarian vanity projects, and, finally, grant greater power to the authoritarians. At times, the goal is not to spread any particular myth but to sow doubt and confusion and undermine the idea that any particular report is true. When non-controlled sources have been thus delegitimised, sections of the people are left isolated, vulnerable, paranoid, cynical, and generally easier for authoritarian wire-pullers to exploit.
In the late 2000s, the authoritarian-leaning Argentinian President Néstor Kirchner found himself threatened by very high inflation figures. In response, Kirchner put mounting pressure on the official statistics agency, which culminated in the firing of its leaders, and replacing them with more biased officials. The change in leadership bought Kirchner much-needed time, as official statistics put out rosy figures that were in large part fictitious. In 2021, the country's inflation rose as high as 50.5 percent.
In the case of the 2020 United States presidential election, disinformation was used in an attempt to convince people to believe something that was not true and change the outcome of the election. Repeated disinformation messages about the possibility of election fraud were introduced years before the actual election occurred, as early as 2016. Researchers found that much of the fake news originated in domestic right-wing groups. The nonpartisan Election Integrity Partnership reported prior to the election that "What we're seeing right now are essentially seeds being planted, dozens of seeds each day, of false stories... They're all being planted such that they could be cited and reactivated ... after the election." Groundwork was laid through multiple and repeated disinformation attacks for claims that voting was unfair and to delegitimize the results of the election once it occurred. Although the 2020 United States presidential election results were upheld, some people still believe the "big lie".
Adrian Chen observed a pattern in December 2015 where pro-Russian accounts became supportive of 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. Andrew Weisburd and Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow and senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University, Clint Watts, wrote for The Daily Beast in August 2016 that Russian propaganda-fabricated articles were popularized by social media. Weisburd and Watts documented how disinformation spread from Russia Today and Sputnik News, "the two biggest Russian state-controlled media organizations publishing in English", to pro-Russian accounts on Twitter. Citing research by Chen, Weisburd, and Watts compared Russian tactics during the 2016 U.S. election to Soviet Union Cold War strategies. They referenced the 1992 United States Information Agency report to Congress, which warned about Russian propaganda called active measures. They concluded social media made active measures easier. Institute of International Relations Prague senior fellow and scholar on Russian intelligence, Mark Galeotti, agreed the Kremlin operations were a form of active measures. The most strident Internet promoters of Trump were not U.S. citizens but paid Russian propagandists. The Guardian estimated their number to be in the "low thousands" in November 2016.
The Russian state and government interfered in the 2024 United States elections through disinformation and propaganda campaigns aimed at damaging Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Democrats while boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump and other candidates who support isolationism and undercutting support for Ukraine aid and NATO.
Russia's efforts represented the most active threat of foreign interference in the 2024 United States elections and follow Russia's previous pattern of spreading disinformation through fake social-media accounts and right-wing YouTube channels
in order to divide American society and foster anti-Americanism.
The Russian government's goals in 2016 were to sabotage the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, boost the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and increase political and social discord in the United States. According to the US intelligence community, the operation—code-named Project Lakhta was ordered directly by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The "hacking and disinformation campaign" to damage Clinton and help Trump became the "core of the scandal known as Russiagate."
The 448-page Mueller report, made public in April 2019, examined over 200 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring specific "conspiracy" or "coordination" charges against Trump or his associates.
In November 2016 the Foreign Policy Research Institute stated Russian propaganda exacerbated criticism of Clinton and support for Trump. The strategy involved social media, paid Internet trolls, botnets, and websites in order to denigrate Clinton.
Russian propaganda and fake news stories have attacked Ukraine's nationhood and accused it of being a neo-[...] state, committing [...] against Russian speakers, developing nuclear and biological weapons, and being influenced by Satanism. Russian propaganda falsely accuses NATO of controlling Ukraine and of threatening and provoking Russia. These claims have been widely rejected as untrue and crafted to justify the invasion and even to justify [...] acts against Ukrainians. The Russian state has denied carrying out [...] in Ukraine; Russian media and internet activists give false alibis for Russian forces, or falsely blame attacks on Ukrainian forces instead. Some of the disinformation seeks to undermine international support for Ukraine and to provoke hostility against Ukrainian refugees.
In the United States, authoritarian actors have made vast use of available echo bubbles to normalise extremist beliefs, all the while protected by the country's strong First Amendment traditions. As a result, around one third of Americans, as of May 2026, believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, in spite of a severe lack of evidence to support that claim.
A 2016 paper describes social media-driven political disinformation tactics as a "firehose of falsehood" that "entertains, confuses, and overwhelms the audience." Four characteristics were illustrated with respect to Russian propaganda. Disinformation is used in a way that is 1) high-volume and multichannel 2) continuous and repetitive 3) ignores objective reality and 4) ignores consistency. It becomes effective by creating confusion and obscuring, disrupting, and diminishing the truth. When one falsehood is exposed, "the propagandists will discard it and move on to a new (though not necessarily more plausible) explanation." The purpose is not to convince people of a specific narrative but to "Deny, deflect, distract."
Conspiracy theories are a fundamental component of a wide range of radicalized and extremist groups, where they may play an important role in reinforcing the ideology and psychology of their members as well as further radicalizing their beliefs. These conspiracy theories often share common themes, even among groups that would otherwise be fundamentally opposed, such as the antisemitic conspiracy theories found among political extremists on both the far right and far left. More generally, belief in conspiracy theories is associated with holding extreme and uncompromising viewpoints and may help people in maintaining those viewpoints. While conspiracy theories are not always present in extremist groups and do not always lead to violence when they are, they can make the group more extreme, provide an enemy to direct hatred towards, and isolate members from the rest of society. Conspiracy theories are most likely to inspire violence when they call for urgent action, appeal to prejudices, or demonize and scapegoat enemies.
Aggrandising executive power
Authoritarians work to eliminate checks and balances on their behavior. Frequently, they glorify extreme actions in the name of a cause and deprecate being slowed down by perceived opponents and non-equals. Authoritarians often rally behind a charismatic leader who commonly enjoys a cult of personality. The expansion of executive power is often accompanied by greater social status and money flowing to the authoritarian leader and his adherents.
Healthy democracies are in need of institutions that operate independently from partisan politics: law enforcement, central banking, official statistics, schooling, national security, justice, and so forth. In the hands of autocrats, these institutions become weapons with which to persecute adversaries and engage in large-scale corruption and manipulation. Would-be-authoritarians frequently use loaded language to delegitimise neutral civil services, not sufficiently aligned with their goals, by labeling them as "anti-semitic," "communist," "deep state," "infidel," "[...]," "woke," or "Western" before disabling or hijacking those same services.
After Viktor Orbán was re-elected in 2010, he immediately rewrote the Hungarian constitution. The new document was covertly rushed through a declawed system. He would go on to amend the constitution twelve times in his first year in office. Among other changes, the amendments included controversial election reforms and constitutional support for nationalism and an ethnically Christian Hungary. In concert with other legislation, Orbán gained control of civic institutions such as courts, universities, the central bank, and the electoral voting system. Extensive research has been conducted to describe the idea of a "national, sovereign, bourgeois Hungary," stated as the goal of Orbán's rule, as in fact a "political product" of a post-communist mafia state serving to obscure massive corruption and transfers of wealth to those with the right connections.
Ferdinand Marcos developed a cult of personality in order to stay in power for 20 years as president of the Philippines, a dictatorship marked by political corruption and human rights violations. His administration's personalist ideology and policies, combining veneration and idolization of Marcos himself with extreme populism and ultranationalism, have been compared to those of other totalitarian and authoritarian leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, as well as to those of more recent dictators and autocrats such as Suharto in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and North Korea's Kim dynasty.
These propaganda narratives and techniques include: using red scare tactics such as red-tagging to portray activists as communists and to exaggerate the threat represented by the Communist Party of the Philippines; using martial law to take control of mass media and silence criticism; the use of foreign-funded government development projects and construction projects as propaganda tools; creating an entire propaganda framework around a "new society" in which he would rule under a system of "constitutional authoritarianism"; the perpetuation of hagiographical books and films; the perpetuation of propaganda narratives about Marcos's activities during World War II, which have since been proven false by historical documents; the creation of myths and stories around himself and his family; and portrayals of himself in coinage and even a Mount Rushmore-type monument; among others."
Scapegoating vulnerable communities
Authoritarians often attack vulnerable communities: other nations, immigrants, minorities, detractors, and social outcasts. This helps them rally support and categorise dissenting views and interests as irrelevant. Authoritarians have ascended to power in Hungary and Poland with only a slim majority. By demonising migrants and claiming to represent the only legitimate Poles and Hungarians, they were ascribed more democratic authority than was otherwise due. As changing times force many people to struggle with questions of social identity, far-right populist parties have weaponised numerous easy targets across many backsliding democracies, including the United States.
Over the past two decades, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have built and consolidated an authoritarian regime. Under which journalists have been intimidated, human rights groups have been suppressed, and people, particularly Muslims, have been attacked. Under Modi, various independent watchdogs state, India's democratic standing has tumbled. Modi has been likened to a deity by his followers but has faced harsh criticism from within his own party for his 'arrogance' and 'undignified' campaign. Narendra Modi and the BJP have long been accused of having facilitated the anti-Muslim massacre in Gujarat, which killed over a thousand.
Cultural [...] involves the eradication and destruction of cultural heritage, such as cultural artifacts, events, and books. The issue is addressed in multiple international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which define [...] associated with the destruction of culture. Cultural [...] may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate. Among many other potential reasons, cultural [...] may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of [...] in an attempt to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history; as part of an effort to implement a Year Zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset". The drafters of the 1948 [...] Convention initially considered using the term, but later dropped it from inclusion. The term "cultural [...]" has been considered in various draft United Nations declarations, but it is not used by the UN [...] Convention.
In United States politics, the terms "extreme right", "far-right", and "ultra-right" are labels used to describe "militant forms of insurgent revolutionary right ideology and separatist ethnocentric nationalism", according to The Public Eye. The terms are used for groups and movements such as Christian Identity, the Creativity Movement, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Movement, the National Alliance, the Joy of Satan Ministries, and the Order of Nine Angles. These far-right groups share conspiracist views of power which are often antisemitic and reject pluralist democracy in favor of an organic oligarchy that would unite the perceived homogeneously racial Völkish nation. The far-right in the United States is composed of various neo-[...], neo-[...], white nationalist, and [...] organizations and networks who have been known to refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as [...], [...], [...] attacks, and societal collapse, in order to achieve the building of a white ethnostate.
Widely regarded as a military dictator by international observers, Suharto's 32-year presidency and legacy are highly divisive, and he remains a controversial figure among the Indonesian general public. He has also been praised for making Indonesia into an economic success story, bringing stability to the region particularly during the Cold War period, and leading Indonesia when it played a significant role in international affairs. Others denounce his authoritarian rule, widespread corruption, and extensive human rights violations. His 31-year dictatorship is considered one of the most brutal and corrupt of the 20th century: he was central to the perpetration of mass [...] against alleged communists and subsequent persecution of ethnic Chinese, Islamists, irreligious people, and trade unionists.
After his rise to power, Pinochet persecuted leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the executions of 1,200 to 3,200 people, the internment of as many as 80,000 people, and the [...] of tens of thousands. According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was at least 3,095. Operation Condor, a U.S.-supported terror operation focusing on South America, was founded at the behest of the Pinochet regime in late November 1975.
Autocrats often strongly reject the appeal of pluralistic, diverse societies. Usually, they blame social ills on easy marks, which includes non-conform individuals, LGBTQIA2S+, but also women. At other times, they blame “terrifying conspirators,” who may be fictitious. In the United States, which has a long tradition of marginalising Black Americans, language and rhetoric often point to an implicit superiority of the Caucasian ethnicity over the colored and the poor. The practice is about more than racist bravado. Authoritarians utilise state power to attack their handpicked targets and roll back human rights.
The manosphere overlaps with the far-right and alt-right communities. It has also been associated with online harassment and has been implicated in radicalizing men into misogynist beliefs and the glorification of violence against women. Some sources have associated manosphere-based radicalization with [...] motivated by misogyny. The manosphere received significant media coverage following the 2014 Isla Vista [...] in California, the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, and the 2018 Toronto van attack, as well as the online harassment campaign against women in the video game industry known as GamerGate.
Infowars regularly published fake stories that have led to harassment of crime victims. In February 2018, Jones, the publisher, director, and owner of the site, was accused of discrimination and [...] harassment of employees. Infowars, and in particular Jones, have advocated numerous conspiracy theories, particularly around purported domestic false flag operations by the U.S. government, which they allege include the 9/11 attack and Sandy Hook shooting. At various times Infowars has issued retractions as a result of legal challenges. Jones has had contentious material removed, and has also been suspended and banned from many platforms for violating their terms of service, including Facebook, Twitter, and Roku. It is classified as a conspiracy propagandist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
American [...] Nick Fuentes launched his livestream America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes in 2017, Fuentes has since made several inflammatory remarks. In an April 2017 episode, he said that "the First Amendment was not written for Muslims or immigrants," "globalists" controlled the media, and it was "time to kill" them and suggested that CNN executives should be "arrested and deported or hanged". The comments led to his departure from Right Side Broadcasting Network in August 2017, with CEO Joe Status saying that Fuentes "was just taking things a little too far into right field for us."
Fuentes has expressed support for several authoritarian governments and movements. On March 10, 2022, he praised Vladimir Putin during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, referring to him as "czar Putin" and claiming the invasion was intended to "liberate Ukraine" from US influence, calling the US an "evil empire". At the 2022 AFPAC event, it was marked by support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Jared Holt, a domestic extremism researcher, stated that this support was rooted in the alleged belief that Western influence had contributed to cultural decline in Ukraine.
Corrupting elections
In the 21st century, most autocrats prefer to camouflage their rule by holding crooked democratic elections. Behind this facade, they capture advantages, suppress votes, and reverse undesired outcomes. By using disinformation and seizing electoral processes, regimes may stay in power for decades, all the while profiting from the self-supporting veneer of popular support.
In 2017–2018, President Nicolás Maduro had successfully banned the most popular opposition leaders and parties from running. In 2015, the opposition had won control of the country's legislature, the National Assembly. In 2017, Maduro had the opposition-controlled legislature dissolved and had all legislative functions transferred to the Maduro-controlled judiciary. As a result of political pressure, Maduro moved the functions to a new organ called the ANC, nonetheless controlled by Maduro himself. With it, he organised abrupt elections that scrambled the hamstrung opposition's ability to reorganise and decide on a strong presidential candidate. Against the backdrop of vote rigging accusations and a low voter turnout, Maduro claimed a second term.
Authoritarians normalise political violence in combination with hate-filled rhetoric, and across borders, they learn from one another. Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's partnership with the US far right has involved efforts to violently overturn free and fair elections. On Jan. 8, 2023, supporters of Bolsonaro rampaged through federal government buildings. The rioters called upon the military to overturn the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Just like his US counterpart, the former president had, for months, been disseminating stories of mass election fraud. He had also plotted with military commanders in order to secure his re-election. For example, in Chile, Augusto Pinochet immediately banned all the leftist parties that had constituted President Salvador Allende's UP coalition. All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess" and were later banned outright. The government's violence was directed not only against dissidents but also against their families and other civilians.
Authoritarian checks on to free and fair elections may include:
- Control of the media by the authoritarian incumbents.
- Interference with opposition campaigning.
- Electoral fraud.
- Violence against opposition.
- Large-scale spending by the state in favor of the incumbents.
- Permitting of some parties, but not others.
- Prohibitions on opposition parties, but not independent candidates.
- Allowing competition between candidates within the incumbent party, but not those who are not in the incumbent party.
For example, in Chile, Augusto Pinochet immediately banned all the leftist parties that had constituted President Salvador Allende's UP coalition. All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess" and were later banned outright. The government's violence was directed not only against dissidents but also against their families and other civilians.
In the Philippines, in 1986, investigative reporting on his family's extensive overseas financial holdings and false war records led President Ferdinand Marcos to call snap elections. Marcos used red scare tactics to portray activists as communists and to exaggerate the threat represented by the Communist Party of the Philippines. He was challenged by Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino. Although the government's results declared Marcos the victor, allegations of having devised mass electoral fraud, political turmoil, and human rights abuses led to the People Power Revolution of February 1986, which culminated in his removal from power after a two-decade-long rule.
An NPR/Ipsos poll conducted on January 3, 2022, found that 64% of Americans believe that American democracy is in crisis and at risk of failing. According to a 2021 Harvard youth poll, a mere 7% of young Americans view the United States as a "healthy" democracy. A 2020 Gallup and Knight Foundation survey found that 81% of Americans believe the news media to be "critical" (42%) or "very important" (39%) to democracy. Trump has often attacked mainstream news reporting publications, deeming them "fake news" and the "enemy of the people".
Every few days, Trump would issue a threat against the press due to his claims of "fake news". There have been many instances in which norms that protect press freedom have been pushed or even upended during the Trump-era.
Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to many jurisdictions in the 2020 U.S. elections, filed four major lawsuits related to the big lie that Dominion fixed the election. From Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Dominion seeks in damages, alleging that "he and his allies manufactured and disseminated the 'Big Lie', which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election." Separately, in Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network it sought $1.6 billion from Fox News. During discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons. On April 18, 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion a $788 million settlement, described by CNN as the "big price" of telling "the Big Lie".
Dominion is also suing two other TV networks, Newsmax and One America News Network, for $1.6 billion each, as well as My Pillow and its CEO Mike Lindell for $1.2 billion.
Normalising violence
Autocrats often glorify or whitewash a particular brand of violence, sometimes psychological violence, or indirect violence like structural discrimination or stochastic [...]. Key elements include fostering an in-group/out-group mentality and sowing fear so that violent actions and theft are justified in the context of fighting a malicious group of subhumans. [...] German politician Hermann Göring explained how people can be made fearful and to support a war they would otherwise oppose: "The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
The incel subculture's online discourse is characterized by social rejection, social isolation, resentment, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, [...] objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to [...], nihilism, [...] culture, and the endorsement of [...] and non-[...] violence against women and the [...] active. Incels tend to blame women and feminism for their inability to find a partner; their romantic failures are often attributed to biological determinism, where women are said to have an innate and unchangeable preference for mating with high-status males.
In the Philippines, the brutal kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos lived a machismo dream, engaging in extravagance, and even creating whole cults in his honor. American economist James K. Boyce has referred to the Philippine economy under Marcos as an example of "immiserising growth," paradoxically worsening the economy through growth in which the rich get absolutely richer and the poor become absolutely poorer. United Nations Special Rapporteur from 2014 to 2020, Philip Alston, named two root causes for the extrajudicial [...] of Marcos' dictatorship: (1) 'vilification,' 'labeling,' or 'guilt by association'—"the characterisation of most groups on the left of the political spectrum as 'front organisations' for armed groups whose aim is to destroy democracy," making the groups "considered to be legitimate targets"; and (2) the government's counter-insurgency strategy's extent of facilitating [...] of activists and others.
It is popular worldwide among authoritarians and aspiring authoritarians to systematically devalue the feminine, feminist, marginalized, Other. Examples include the neofascist militant accelerationist (NMA) movement, to which Nick Fuentes—a proud incel and authoritarian—belongs; Vladimir Putin; the Hindu-nationalist movement; the Islamic State; Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro; and China under Xi Jinping. Expressions of this new pattern are the normalization of domestic violence and violence against women. Forms include “incel attacks” and “honour [...],” as well as perpetually policing men who believe that women who don't marry them and dedicate themselves to them are [...] who, ideally, shouldn't exist at all. Effeminate individuals are cast out and sacrificed in the context of a war against all (male) "vulnerability." This includes encouraging the [...] of women believed to be non-conformist, blaming them for the weakness of the nation.
The aggrandizing, at times deifying, of patriarchal norms and the rebranding of men as the stalwart protectors of “traditional family values." An otherwise unassuming banner that includes everyone from neo-[...] to ISIS and the Taliban. Misogyny and the manipulation of male frustration, which often includes support for laws and practices that augment state control over women's bodies, are typical elements of the transnational far right. Arguably, these politicians are reliant on such framings to be perceived as strong.
Online bullying and street harassment, which exist everywhere, can thus be redeemed as ways of policing non-conformist women, often under a theocratic or nationalistic banner. This framing, combined with recognisably domineering rhetoric, has demonstrated itself to be an efficient way of rallying strong support and silencing critics. Advocates are fearful about the future of their men, ethnic group, and nation and propose a kind of racialised nationalism. Many of these movements are ethnic supremacists and are often conspirationaland paranoid. They're typically centred around the claims of aggrieved men, favour traditionalist, heteropatriarchal dominance over all, and are partial to illiberal violence. Frequently, people are encouraged to have more children in the context of long-term competition with ideological and genetic others. The narrative, akin to that of expansionism, sounds reckless in light of studies linking population pressure to violent conflict.