“No Kings”. That’s the moniker that was given to the widespread protest movement that swept across the US last weekend, as people took to the streets to demonstrate their lack of approval for the current administration, or at least their current president, Donald J Trump. Armed with poster boards and magic markers , groups gathered along streets and sidewalks in the name of democracy, many citing the belief that they are currently under “authoritarian rule”. The general tone of the protesters was one of distaste for the president, with many aiming, or wishing, to somehow remove him from office. The claim of supporting democracy in this context is paradoxical in nature. If the majority of the population voted for and support the current president, those who are opposed are not moving to change this outcome in the spirt of democracy, but in contempt of it. Distaste for the president or administration by the opposition doesn’t warrant overruling a democratic result.

The protest network itself, was highly organized; with countless social media ads, legacy media endorsements, and scheduled locations and times posted across the internet days before the event took place. We saw claims of “millions expected to attend” by the very promotors who seemed to be seeding the protests. One couldn’t help but notice: This wasn’t an organic even that transpired due to social outrage leading people to assemble, but an organized call to assembly by high-power political opportunists. The majority in attendance were older, and predominantly female; not the young, inflamed representatives of the next generation, as you might expect to see at a protest of this nature. Perhaps this is due to a higher degree of credulousness, and narrow scope of data input from this demographic (example: cable news/legacy media consumption is almost exclusive to older audiences). In light of this, I view these protesters (many of which were well-meaning) not as bastions of change, but as political pawns, most of which weren’t even aware of why they were there in the first place. I’ll explain…

Nobody protests their way out of an authoritarian government. Escape from authoritarianism requires an intervention of force, either through revolution from the citizens under rule, or outside actors infiltrating the ruling class. Protests are appeals to the governing class, to demonstrate the needs and desires of the people to the government. In a “free” society, the government can then, in good faith, choose whether and/or how to act in order to satisfy that sector of the population. Those in attendance or support of the “No Kings” protests either do not truly believe they are living in an authoritarian state, or they don’t have a strong sense of what that actually is. So, the question is: Why were they there? They were there because they were told to be. The protests were organized by outside actors as an appeal to get left-wing supporters in the public eye, creating a widespread look of discontent. “No Kings” doesn’t have to be a logical cause or even in line with a palpable reality. It just has to demonstrate a social consensus. In Nazi Germany (no, I’m not suggesting the left is synonymous with Nazis, just demonstrating how this propaganda works), it was mandatory to use the greeting “Heil Hitler” in public. While a simplistic view of this would suggest they were inflating Hitler’s ego by forcing an individual to begrudgingly endorse him, the effect on the individual was not the primary aim. Rather, the intent is known as Normalizing through social pressure or Normalizing ideological compliance, where the result (along with other forms of propaganda) was a majority acceptance of a leader who most would consider unpalatable to the masses. The strategy works, because while people like to think their world view comes from within, it often doesn’t. Societal norms and social acceptance largely drive moral outlook in large groups. For example, consider how quickly and considerably views on gay marriage have changed in the last generation. (Forget what you think the appropriate position is, and just consider how it’s changed, please). The phenomenon works in regard to both support and opposition. Abortion, slavery, incest…even things like dietary/nutritional advice all bend the knee to majority public acceptance and popularity. I could easily digress here, and I likely will at a later date, but for now, just consider the power that comes with the optic of public support or opposition. Groupthink is (sometimes unfortunately) more persuasive than critical thinking. Organizing these protests is a way to create chaos, and an optic of opposition and discontent for the ruling party. The most benign intended effect of this would be to motivate voters in upcoming elections, while more serious interests could target affecting support for some sort of coup, either through nefarious legal actions, assassination, or other uses of force. If you’re on the right and you think things like this are laughable and fruitless, think again. If you’re on the left and you think the protests were about prevention of authoritarianism, think harder.

Why is this a problem?

During these protests, we saw videos of numerous direct threats, ignorant and malicious calls to violence and chaos, and a general disregard for any sort of tolerance for opposing views. Multiple protestors had signs, made verbal statements, or even acted out their approval for the murder of people like Charlie Kirk. Use of the term “Nazi” or “Fascist” was widespread and aimed at anyone who opposed, regardless of how unreasonable the claim was. One supporter was captured on video with a sign asking others to join her in killing “Nazis”. When asked who these Nazis were, her response was “Steven Miller… Steven Miller is definitely a Nazi”. If you don’t know Steven Miller, he’s the current US Homeland Security Advisor. He is also a practicing Jew. So now we have people stating intent to kill a Jewish man under the guise of him being a Nazi. You couldn’t find a better example of stupid, misguided malice and hate.

While some may attribute these examples as “fringe”, contrived demonstrations like this serve as a tide that lifts and builds the fringe in all measures of magnitude. People feel empowered to be “fringe” when they feel there is public support for their position. Further, I don’t see this behavior as anything “fringe” at this point. We’ve seen far too much expression of support for these views and actions from the political left recently. People like Luigi Mangione (charged with killing United Healthcare worker Brian Thompson) should have experienced unanimous condemnation from both the right and left, but he didn’t. Many on the left supported , applauded, and even laughed after he ruthlessly killed a father, husband, and son in the street. When Charlie Kirk died, the left rushed to social media to spread malicious lies, out-of-context propaganda, and disingenuous accusations in an attempt to dehumanize Charlie, and diminish the wrongfulness of his murder. Whether you posted a video of yourself dancing and celebrating, stomped on memorials, or you took the more passive-aggressive route of posting how you “don’t condone assassinations, but…(followed up with some version of attempting to convince people that Charlie was a bad person)”, you participated in some form of support for a political assassination of an innocent citizen. The left seemed more worried about their distaste for people mourning Charlie Kirk than they did about the reality that a man was just murdered in front of the whole world for choosing to speak.

These could all be seen as the death rattle of a lost society, but what concerns me more than the individual transgressions themselves, are the logical undertones of it all. It’s convenient to just assume that Donald Trump is the catalyst for the outrage we see from the left. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Charlie Kirk was not only quite moderate, but perhaps the most kind and loving person I can think of on the political right. It took no time at all for people who disagreed with his political party to paint him as a racist, misogynist, hateful, Nazi, terrible person, etc. (their words). If this is the case, it is clear that there can be no leader of the republican movement who will not suffer the same slanderous fate, which means this will surely continue, well after Trump. Add to this the inevitable retribution that will come from the right as this continues (we’re already seeing criminal pursuit of the left in response to the criminal pursuit of the right during the last administration). The result could be endless scaling of bad behavior on both sides, resulting in continuous entropy of American civilization.

How does it end?

One possibility is, ironically, actual authoritarianism. People often attribute one “bad” or evil person as the cause of oppressive authoritarian societies. This is really never what happens. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong… all were products of societal corrosion that lead to adoption of radical governing and/or societal degradation and instability. After World War One, German society was in peril. Unmanageable reparations in a war-torn nation and the resulting economic collapse led to left-wing revolutions of communists, spartacists, and socialists that caused further instability, and ultimately lead to the Weimar Republic governing from 1919 to 1933. During this time, the republic experienced unimaginable hyperinflation, social degradation, crime, violence, sexual dysfunction, ethical erosion, and constant threat of political violence. It was this social dysfunction and distrust in government that lead to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and acceptance in Germany. Hitler was proposed as the answer to these issues, not the cause of them. This is not a statement in support of the Hitler regime, but an illumination of how Germany got there in the first place.

Another possibility, and one that deviates from historical precedent, is the total adoption of a government by artificial intelligence. While the idea may seem far-fetched, that’s only because it hasn’t happened yet. In a society that no longer respects the boundaries laid by our founding fathers… one that is in constant turmoil as the two parties continue to act against the interest of the people in favor of victory over the other side, is it so far-fetched to consider that input from a third and unbiased party would be off the table? When society can no longer agree on simple universal truths, or the concept that they even exist, how will we ever come to consensus on our own?

Most of us have always envisioned an AI takeover of society to look like something out of a Terminator movie. A war between humans and machines, either ending in our extinction, or in some perpetual struggle of survival. Is it possible that we install this new reality willingly?