Stacey Abrams warns people of the ‘autocracy happening right now’

Georgia’s former House Minority Leader and candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams, is warning Americans of the threats to democracy. During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Weekend Primetime,” Abrams warned viewers of the ongoing shift towards autocracy. 

“I want people to understand [the 10 steps to autocracy] at a visceral level. We think of autocracy as something that happens to other people. It happens in other countries, but it’s happening here, right now, under our noses,” Abrams explained, reflecting on her work with Professor Kim Scheppele from Princeton University, who created the 10 steps. 

She continued: “It’s when Congress votes for a bill that it knows will hurt the people they’re supposed to serve, but they say they’re doing it because they don’t want to lose an election. It’s when the judiciary says, ‘Well, we’re going to let the President do whatever he wants because we don’t have the power to stop him,’ instead of using the power that’s embedded in the Constitution.”

She also noted how autocracy reveals itself through military forces being used against civilians in violation of the “Posse Comitatus Act,”  a federal law that restricts the use of the US military for domestic law enforcement purposes. Similarly, Abrams explains how the Trump administration’s rollback on diversity, equity and inclusion policies also plays a part in this shift. 

“We see people being attacked. And for me, that’s why DEI was such a huge target of this President, because you have to blame someone. And if you don’t blame yourself, you make the vulnerable and the dispossessed, the people that you turn on,” she added. “Most of all, what we have to understand is that this is intentional, and it works. It has worked in every nation, whether we’re looking at Turkey and Erdogan Putin and Russia, where, no matter where we’re looking, these are the steps.”

In an interview with “Jimmy Kimmel Live” guest hosted by Anthony Anderson, Abrams outlined each step: 

1. Winning an election 
2. Expansion of executive power where she says “the president decides he wants more than he’s supposed to have.” 
3. Making Congress complicit, “you weakened them, and you neutralize or neuter the judiciary,” she explained. 
4. Firing all the people who know how to make government work like civil service in efort to break democracy. 
5. Putting loyalists in places like the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense
6. Breaking communication
7. Blaming someone for the broken government, for the broken promises, which Abrams says presents itself through the attack on DEI. 
8. Eliminate anyone who can help these communities by suing law firms that do pro bono cases, going after philanthropies, accusing them of giving money, and going after colleges and universities that teach people what they should know. 
9. Encourage and incentivize private violence by sending Marines, the National Guard, and ICE into the streets
10. Deciding there is no new election, which Abrams explains is not hard because by that time, “everyone is either afraid, poor, broken, or complicit.” 

However, she did offer that people do have the power to push back through knowledge. 

“Part of knowledge is once you know what to push back on when you see these things happening, when you see the head of Health and Human Services increasing the danger to our communities,” she concluded in her conversation with MSNBC. “Let’s tell each other the truth about vaccines. Let’s talk about why people got fired from their jobs. It’s not because of fraud, waste and abuse. It’s because of a president and a party that want to break democracy so we stop remembering what it worked looked like to live in a country that worked.”