The Strongman You Don't See
Because he looks too much like you
To hear many Americans talk, you would think we are on the verge of a coup. A tyrant is gathering power with the help of his loyal followers. They are plotting in silence to take control of the country from within.
The details change, but the story does not. We agree on the plot. We only disagree on one point—whether the tyrant will wear a red tie or a blue one.
These prophecies can become self-fulfilling. The fall of democracy could lead to decades of bloodshed and oppression. Can it be saved—and if so, how?
Can we trust our voters to do the right thing? Can we depend on the forces of law and order to stop people who do not honor those forces? Should we wait for our opponents to act, or should we act first to stop them?
Those questions are playing out today, in real time. More and more Americans are seeing our government as an obstacle to be overcome.
American power is divided into three branches: Executive, Legislative, Judicial. Each branch serves as a backstop against the others. That balance depends on a trust that is quickly eroding.
Judges are supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law. Today many see them as unelected obstacles to change. We are also seeing this change in other countries.
President Nayib Bukele moved quickly against El Salvador’s judiciary. Judges were removed and replaced with allies. The courts, once a constraint, became an instrument.
The results were immediate. Violence declined. Gangs that had terrorized the country were dismantled. Order was restored, and El Salvador’s historically high murder rates decreased by over 70%. Many citizens welcomed the peace. But it came at a cost.
Bukele made his country safe by jailing 1.6% of the population—over three times the rate of American incarceration. Constraints were removed not just for the moment, but for the future. Measures used against gangs today could be used against political opposition tomorrow.
This isn’t about Bukele, or about any political party. It’s about the way pressure reshapes reasoning. It’s about the conditions that make dangerous tools look necessary.
It’s about the moment Boromir decides that only the Ring can defeat Sauron.
How Every Group Recreates the Pattern
Online communities make it easier than ever to find people who think like you—and easier to avoid those who do not.
But social media has also created information silos where algorithms surround you with your favorite ideas. It’s easy to believe that your worldview is the only sensible one—and that everybody who disagrees is simply wrong.
Over time, that environment shapes perception. Agreement feels like confirmation, and repetition feels like truth. Slowly, subtly—often imperceptibly—the range of acceptable opinions narrows.
In that setting, disagreement no longer looks like a difference of opinion. It looks like error. Error, when the stakes feel high enough, begins to look like danger. And because algorithms reward outrage and anger, many people begin to experience the world as a constant threat.
Online discourse reduces complex issues to simple narratives and catchy slogans. Difficult questions get filtered through moral binaries. Messages are shaped, amplified, and repeated until they take on the appearance of consensus. And all of it is reinforced through signals of belonging—shared, reposted, and affirmed as identities.
Many determine who they are by declaring who they are not. The best way to advertise your virtue is by contrasting it to the wickedness of your opponents. Outgroups become immoral, dangerous, and beyond redemption. And this dynamic is not limited to political groups. You’ll find it in communities catering to media, to identity, even to shared fandoms.
Groups maintain cohesion by setting boundaries. Some make those boundaries explicit—“DNI (Do Not Interact)” lists of unacceptable views or people. Others enforce them informally through social pressure and reputational risk. Members learn what they must say, what they must condemn, and where the limits are.
Enforcement does not require a single leader. It emerges through the interactions of the group itself. As the community grows, so do its expectations, its taboos, and its signals of loyalty. Power may have no single face. But it can still shape behavior, restrict dissent, and enforce conformity.
The result is a system that behaves like a strongman—even when no strongman is present.
You’ll find communities dedicated to the dislike of public figures, cultural trends, and more. Not all are driven by hostility. Many begin as spaces for humor, critique, or shared frustration. A group formed around disliking a public figure or cultural trend may be, at least initially, more playful than ideological.
But the structure does not remain neutral. As the group grows, it attracts a wider range of participants—including those who take the underlying premise more seriously. What begins as irony or exaggeration can harden into conviction.
Over time, the tone shifts. The loudest voices are often the most extreme. Boundaries tighten. What was once casual becomes more rigid. And the difference between joking and belief becomes harder to distinguish.
In these situations, conflicts and accusations are amplified, exaggerated, and often weaponized. Misconduct by a community member becomes evidence against the group. Members become defensive—rejecting critics, minimizing issues, and reframing criticism as attack. Each side reads the other’s behavior as proof of their worst assumptions.
This response is not irrational. Most people within these communities are genuinely disturbed by serious wrongdoing. They have difficulty believing their friends are capable of it. And they feel an obligation to defend the people they trust against wild accusations from outsiders.
That same reflex can shield real problems from scrutiny. Loyalty outweighs truth. Criticism becomes hostility. Internal accountability gives way to collective defense, and the moral framework shifts from Good and Bad to Us and Them.
At this point, the system no longer requires a strongman to function. The logic is already in place. The boundaries are enforced. The incentives are aligned. A leader can accelerate the process, but he does not create it.
The strongman impulse is not ideological. It is structural. And once those conditions exist, it can emerge anywhere.
The Choice
Spotting the strongman isn’t about condemning a particular party, ideology, or leader. It’s about recognizing the patterns, structures, and ways of thinking that empower him—and recognizing them in yourself.
Condemning strongmen is easy. It makes you feel virtuous. It shows your friends that you’re a Good Person. It comes with a warm glow of moral certainty and, so long as the strongman is out of power, carries very little risk. You get to feel like a revolutionary without the fear of getting shot or imprisoned for your beliefs.
But strongmen don’t come to office as tyrants. They seize control in the name of fighting tyranny. They present themselves as defenders, not destroyers. They frame their actions as temporary measures, regrettable but unavoidable choices made to restore lost liberty.
They are not here to take your rights. They’re here to protect them.
The strongman appeals to urgency. He takes decisive action when your leaders are mired in doubt and gridlock. In the short term, he often produces real results. People follow strongmen because they get things done when no one else can.
A free system allows for multiple viewpoints. Not all those viewpoints are correct, and you’ll likely find some of them repugnant, even dangerous. You might cheer when the strongman finally shuts down those vile ideas. But you will soon see him censoring critical comments as well.
Even this might not bother you. Our culture tends to personalize disagreement. We assume commenters are not just misguided but actively hostile. Can you deal with a dissenting view not as an attack but as a disagreement? If not, you’re likely to find yourself cheering for someone who promises to shut those ideas down for good.
Group members internalize the rules. They don’t need to read the guidelines to know what can be said and what cannot. They learn through repetition, through feedback, through subtle signals of approval and disapproval. And once those boundaries are internalized, enforcement no longer feels external. It feels like common sense.
Learning to recognize those internal boundaries takes time, will, and self-awareness. Those who go outside those guidelines may lose social status, jobs, friends, even loved ones. You may decide that challenging these borders is not worth the cost. But you will choose to honor them, and choice is the heart of freedom.
In time, your choice may change. You may find yourself forced to hold your own group to standards while others would rather look away. This will be tense and uncomfortable. There is no guarantee you will prevail.
But if you do not speak up against injustice, you accept it. And if you do not take responsibility for the systems you participate in, those systems will shape you in return. Whether you seek your meaning or outsource it from others, you will bear its consequences.
The overwhelming reach and size of government is a fundamental issue. How can one reconcile themself to those they disagree with directing such a totalizing behemoth? It is unbearable unless everyone is tightly aligned, and any notion of that was stomped and strangled to death.