Autocrats have long lists of political enemies. This is how Donald Trump has tried to silence his

Written by: Justin Bergman, International Affairs Editor, The Conversation

The list of people Donald Trump has punished or threatened ^[1] to punish since returning to office is long. It includes the likes of James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, as well as members of the opposition, such as Adam Schiff, Mark Kelly and Kamala Harris.

In fact, he has gone so far as to call Democrats “the enemy from within ^[2]”, saying they are more dangerous than US adversaries like Russia and China.

According to Lucan Way, a professor of democracy at the University of Toronto, when a leader attacks the opposition like this, it’s a clear sign a country is slipping into authoritarianism.

As Way says in episode 5 of The Making of an Autocrat:

In other kind of countries with weaker justice systems, you can literally jail members of opposition or bankrupt them. In a country like the United States, where the rule of law is quite robust, this is not possible, you can’t just jail rivals at will.

But Trump has other ways of making the cost of opposing him too high for his critics to bear. This includes investigations, lawsuits, audits, personal attacks – anything to distract and silence them.

The effect is his opponents become much more reluctant to engage in behaviour they know that Trump won’t like, Way says.

So it really has this kind of broader silencing effect that I think is quite pernicious.

Listen to the interview with Lucan Way at The Making of an Autocrat podcast.

This episode was written by Justin Bergman and produced and edited by Isabella Podwinski and Ashlynne McGhee. Sound design by Michelle Macklem.

Newsclips in this episode WCNC ^[3], MS NOW ^[4], WHAS11 ^[5], and Radio Free Europe ^[6].

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed ^[7] or find out how else to listen here ^[8]. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.