authoritarian

“Using the military for domestic law enforcement is something that’s characteristic of authoritarian regimes.”

In that context, Sharp’s pragmatic strategies for noncompliance can be considered an active, peaceful response to the sense of powerlessness that authoritarians like “our” president aim to foster.

Since he returned to office in January, his attempts to pull the U.S. away from its democratic allies and into the orbit of authoritarian countries has accelerated.

In his view, the defining fight of the era was not between Western civilisation and forces that would destroy it, but between democratic and authoritarian nations.

For some people they can conjure up images of authoritarian states like Germany in the 1930s, and men in jackboots barking "May we see your papers please?"