At the Guardian, Jason Wilson has a grim warning for Americans, if not the entire world about what the nefarious Right Wing in U.S. politics is plotting these days. We’ve grown used to those on the left talking about how the Far Right (or the “antidemocratic right” as Wilson also identifies us) are plotting to cheat in elections, suppress voters, hand out handguns to toddlers, or just undermine democracy in general. But Wilson summons up a new bogeyman, quoting the work of Kevin Slack, who in June warned of an American system that is in severe decline, if not already in the midst of collapse. (Hard to argue with that some days.) But rather than winning elections and changing the system, we are warned of right-wingers who want to overthrow it entirely. They are waiting for a “Red Caesar” who will rise to power, break the chains of his followers, and “restore the strength of his people” in his “post-Constitutional rule.” So let’s see a show of hands. How many of you who are sick of the current flavor of tyranny in Washington would like to replace it with an entirely different brand of tyranny?

In a discussion of possible responses to this conspiracy theory, he wrote that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people”.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

So this supposed Red Caesar autocracy would be a “form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”. Apparently, we wouldn’t have to worry about election rigging anymore because there would be no further need for elections.  And Wilson makes no bones over who the coming Caesar would be. I won’t spoil the entire article for you, but he probably would have been clearer if he’d simply said “Orange Caesar” instead.

Wilson goes on to quote Damon Linker, who is apparently an expert on the American Right. He warns of the consequences of Donald Trump winning in 2024. If people protest, he will send in the military to stomp them down. And if things get too out of hand, he’ll simply “cancel the next election.”

Sadly, that’s as close as this lengthy diatribe comes to explaining how such a takeover of the United States might be accomplished. Never mind the fact that there is nobody in the country, be it the President or the Postmaster General who has the authority to “cancel” elections. In rare cases, elections can be locally extended in the event of a natural disaster, but there is no mechanism by which they can simply be done away with, leaving one person to remain in power for as long as they wish.

This was written by someone who obviously doesn’t spend much time talking to actual conservatives. Is there a single one of you reading this who wants to live under a permanent autocracy, even if was (at least at first) fashioned in principles and beliefs similar to your own? One of the biggest complaints among conservatives today is that the government at multiple levels is already being run far too much like a tyrannical autocracy. It kicked into high gear during the pandemic and hasn’t slowed down noticeably. What virtually every conservative I follow is looking for is precisely the opposite.

There is more than a little irony in the implied accusations being leveled here. Virtually every one of the one-man authoritarian dictatorships seen in modern history did not rise from the right. They rose from the left and communist/socialist ideologies. Promises were made about throwing down the powerful oppressors and spreading the wealth to the people. Think of the French Revolution, Pol Pot, and most recently, Kim Jong-un’s family’s dynasty. They all begin the same way and they inevitably end the same way.

The path to ending the current reign of abuse and lawlessness is not by force and the cancellation of elections. It’s by winning elections after offering alternatives and better ideas that address some of the very real problems plaguing us today. Sadly, it appears that the left is running out of bogeymen to dress up for the unwashed masses and is resorting to creating new monsters out of whole cloth. So keep your eye out for the Red Caesar. I’m sure he’ll be coming along any day now. I just hope he brings cake.