Excerpt from “The Authoritarian Handbook,” by Lewis Galleani and Irwin Kern (1922). 

            What are some hallmarks of an Authoritarian regime? 

First, a “President for Life.”

Second, a cowed judiciary.

Third, a legislature with a pro-government majority engineered by a combination of the disfranchisement of a part of the population and urban political “machines” based on government patronage.

Fourth, a government bureaucracy eating away at the prerogatives of the legislature and the courts.

Fifth, an idealization of the simple and honest life found in rural populations, in contrast to the depravity of the big cities.

Sixth, the justification of radical departures from traditional policies by the invocation of “crisis” and “necessity knows no law.”

Seventh, in a severe crisis, the imprisonment without trial of alleged “enemies of the nation.”