It’s been a couple months since the October No Kings protests, but I haven’t forgotten my promise to write a critique of them. This post is a broad commentary on the left’s resistance as a whole—and it relates to a still-broader critique of American partisans in general, on both the left and the right.
Let me return to the Axis of Democracy, my term for the “up-down” spectrum running from democracy to authoritarianism. In my earlier post on this concept, I emphasized President Trump’s authoritarianism, which is easy for most people to grasp. But right-wingers like Trump are not the only authoritarians in existence. Along with right-wing dictatorships, like Hitler’s and Mussolini’s, history also chronicles left-wing ones, like Stalin’s USSR and Maduro’s present-day Venezuela. Maria Machado, recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democracy in Venezuela, hails from the political right.
So it’s important to realize that both sides of the left-right spectrum are capable of descending into tyranny. On a global scale, the Axis of Democracy is truly not a left-right axis.
In our country at this moment, Trump’s endless barrage of despicable actions and the GOP leadership’s enabling of them are a world apart from anything happening on the left. But just over a decade ago, MAGA was a fledgling movement that most people didn’t take seriously. We cannot predict what momentum a movement or sentiment may gain in the future, so we should be concerned about threats to democracy wherever they appear. That includes, for example, the folk-hero status of Luigi Mangione and the failure by a swath of the left to condemn Charlie Kirk’s murder, as well as equivalent sentiments that are mirrored on the right.
The contrast between authoritarian and democratic/republican thinking—lower-case d, lower-case r—is the foundation for my critique of No Kings. Authoritarians on both the left and the right see the world in black and white, good and evil, and they tolerate no disagreement. Defenders of democracy on both the left and the right (and in between) understand that although they may vehemently disagree about left-right policy, that disagreement is essential to a free society. They thus do not view most left-right disagreement as an existential threat, and they see their political opponents not as enemies but as fellow human beings.
What I see, in No Kings and in the left’s resistance, is a moral and inspiring movement that is nevertheless confused in the same way so many Americans are confused. The movement has been rightly calling out Trump’s tyrannical moves—but it has muddied its message by equating his conservatism with his tyranny, conflating the two axes on my chart.
To illustrate what I mean, below is a paragraph from the No Kings website. In describing Trump’s malign actions, it toggles back and forth between truly tyrannical acts and mere left-wing grievances:
His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities. They are targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting, and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education when families need them most. Rigging maps to silence voters. Ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle.
Terrorizing communities, threatening elections, and rigging maps are the actions of tyrants, and all Americans should be protesting against them. There ought to be a bipartisan No Kings movement, and I’m disappointed in the lack of an outcry from conservative leadership, a silence I see as cowardly.
But meanwhile, gutting public programs, opposing gun control, and cutting taxes for the wealthy are not tyrannical, as much as we may disagree with them. These are solidly Republican policies rooted in conservative beliefs about limited government and individual liberty. And Trump was elected to enact them.
This is No Kings’ biggest weakness, its potentially fatal error. Trump was democratically elected, having won not only the election but the popular vote, and although he has done so in shocking ways, he has been carrying out many campaign promises on which he was elected. Is this really a movement against kings, or against Republicans? It seems to be both—which undermines its claim of being against kings.
It’s fine for the left to stage protests against Trump’s conservative policies alongside his tyranny. I attended the October No Kings protest because I am against pretty much everything in the paragraph above. The problem, though, is labeling all of it tyranny. It’s not. Some of it is the will of the voters, and in that context, calling Trump a “king” appears deeply hypocritical. If you’re against kings, then you have to be for honoring the results of a free and fair election, even if you dislike those results.
This is important because, although Trump’s approval rating is underwater, the Dems are still not doing much better. They have gained some momentum since October, which is encouraging. But I worry that they still lack the vision and leadership to present voters with a clear alternative to Trump’s movement.
Harris’s 2024 loss was not only, or even mainly, about authoritarianism. I hope to write more on this soon: voters saw Trump as the stronger, more proactive candidate on immigration, foreign policy, and the economy, and they were not entirely wrong in that assessment. As long as the Dems fail to see their own policy weaknesses, and instead fixate on Trump’s authoritarianism, they abdicate their need to listen to a broader swath of voters about policy.
I think parsing out the two axes would help. Just as the right fails to recognize that democratic socialism is not tyranny (see: Finland), the left needs to understand that conservatism is not tyranny. Concepts like small government, low taxes, and strong borders (or territorial sovereignty) have existed in our country for hundreds of years and have been touted by some of democracy’s greatest champions. What distinguishes Trump is not his right-wing stances but the anti-democratic way he is enacting policy: seizing control of Congressional appropriations, ordering extrajudicial killings and deportations, attacking the press and the courts, etc. The main threat is his violations of democratic norms and laws, not his conservatism. The how much more than the what.
Again, I disagree passionately with Trump and his associates about a great deal of the what as well. As I’ve written repeatedly, this year has been incredibly distressing, and it isn’t all because of the how. Trump’s assaults on decency and humanity have come from all directions, and they have continued right up through this week, as I finish and publish this post. But I still want us to extract ourselves from the trauma and noise and attempt to think more clearly.
We need stop bundling all of it together. Americans must once again recognize that most left-right disagreements are legitimate debates within the realm of a functioning democracy. As long as we treat everything the other side believes as a threat, there will be little room for negotiation and compromise, and extremism will fluorish—as it is fluorishing now under Trump.
So: Kudos to No Kings for its peace, energy, humor, truth-telling, and morality. But adjustments should still be made to the left’s thinking, and Americans of all political stripes need a clearer understanding of what actually constitutes an existential threat. We must relearn how to coexist with our political opponents. On many issues, left-right disagreement is desirable, healthy, and essential to democracy.
