Author: Phil Anderson
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The Myth of the Lone Strongman
Tyranny rarely announces itself. It emerges when institutions defer and constraints quietly dissolve. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes in Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, autocrats like Mussolini and Orbán didn’t act alone. They relied on courts, legislatures, and bureaucracies repurposed by enablers of authoritarianism. Modern strongmen gut democracy from within. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way call…
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The House Next Door — Echoes Across America
Part 6: The Kids Who Stayed Behind After the knock, after the silence – what happens to the children still expected to pledge allegiance, solve for x and turn in their homework? Stillness After the Storm The shoes are still there. Mine and hers.One is leaning against the wall, its heel flattened from mornings in…
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The House Next Door — Echoes Across America
Part 5 – When Neighbors Become Organizers It didn’t start with petitions. It started with casseroles. With porch lights left on. With neighbors who couldn’t sleep after the black SUVs came. They weren’t elected. They weren’t activists. They were neighbors. Grandparents. Librarians. Teachers. Clerks. Truck drivers. People whose only qualification was proximity and whose only…
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The House Next Door — Echoes Across America
Part 4 – The Lawful, the Vulnerable and the Vanished They followed every instruction. Showed up for check-ins. Paid taxes. Kept their appointments. Taught Sunday school. Filled out the forms. They were told to wait. And they did. For years. Then one morning, or afternoon, or evening, they were gone. Take Maria and José in…
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The House Next Door — Echoes Across America
Part 3 — They Were at My Graduation Last Year It started with one name not called at roll. Then another. And another. In a middle school in Arkansas, two desks remained empty after spring break. Their lockers stayed full. Binders, shoes, a hoodie still on the hook. The silence grew so loud that classmates…
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The House Next Door — Echoes Across America
Part 2 – When They Were Taken The shriek of tires. The clash of doors. The sound of lives shattering. It doesn’t always happen in the shadows. Sometimes it happens at school pickup. On the way home from work. While children draw sidewalk chalk hearts in the driveway. That’s how it happened in Postville, Iowa.…
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The House Next Door — Echoes Across America
Part 1 — When the Lights Go Out Next Door It began with shrieking. Not laughter or squeals from tag in the yard, but high, piercing screams from children, echoing off vinyl siding and white fences. Neighbors stepped out onto porches. Some dropped garden tools. Others froze. Moments before, the street had been filled with…
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With Power Comes Responsibility
With Power Comes Responsibility
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Intimidation as a Political Weapon
Throughout history, autocrats have wielded political intimidation as a weapon to silence opposition, control narratives, and consolidate power. Whether through threats, legal pressure, or outright violence, intimidation has served as a critical tool for authoritarian figures seeking dominance. From Stalin’s purges to Mussolini’s blackshirts, rulers have repeatedly used fear to bend individuals and institutions to…
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The Campus Crackdown: Trump’s War on Academic Freedom
Donald Trump’s war on academic freedom is a tactic autocrats have historically used to suppress dissent and enforce ideological conformity.