US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for strong authoritarian leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary or Najib Bukele in El Salvador. Last month, he praised Orban’s tough stance on immigration and urged European leaders to show more “respect” for the Hungarian prime minister; earlier this year, his administration reached an agreement with Bukele to send more than 200 detained migrants to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Numerous international organizations, experts, and historians warn that the US is heading in a similar direction to these authoritarian regimes.
Nearly a year into Trump's second term, The Guardian asked activists and opposition leaders from Hungary, El Salvador and Turkey what their experiences have taught them about authoritarianism, and what they wish they had understood earlier.
Americans should “look to other countries, especially the global south, to see both solutions and what not to do,” said Ece Temelkuram, a Turkish writer and author of How to Lose a Country. “Reject arrogance, reject the myth that you are exceptional and that it can’t happen to you.”
Stefania Kaproncaj, former director of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
Trump's consolidation of power in the US is reminiscent of Viktor Orbán's authoritarian moves, says Kaproncaj. But with one important difference.
“It’s happening much faster, and it surprises me that so many private companies and institutions have simply complied with the implied or explicit will of President Trump,” she said. “I didn’t expect so many people to be so risk-averse.”
Orban first came to power in 1998, amid widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s political establishment during the post-Cold War era. “Democracy promised economic prosperity and greater equality, and it simply didn’t deliver,” says Kaproncaj, now a senior fellow at Columbia University Law School’s Institute for Human Rights.
Reject arrogance, reject the myth that you are exceptional, that this cannot happen to you, says Turkish writer Ece Temelkuram
Although his party lost its parliamentary majority in 2002, Orban returned to the prime ministership in 2010 and has since tightened his grip on power, changing electoral rules in his party’s favor, filling the judiciary with loyalists, and cracking down on universities, NGOs, and the media. In 2022, the European Parliament declared Hungary a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.”
In the period following his re-election in 2010, Orban’s government pushed through reforms that brought some stability to the poorest sections of society, says Kaproncaj. “Authoritarian leaders respond to clear needs, frustrations and anger in society.”
Kaproncaj says she has learned how important it is for opposition leaders to pay much closer attention to economic, everyday issues. “Advocating for democracy, resistance and all that very abstract language is not going to reach the majority of society,” she said. “Only a very small progressive circle resonates with that kind of message.”
But the authoritarian turn also “presents an opportunity for re-examination,” she added. “If our current tools no longer work, how can we serve our mission more effectively?”
For example, between 2010 and 2012, Orbán’s party restructured Hungary’s constitutional court, filling it with political henchmen and limiting its jurisdiction. “We in the civil sector were very concerned, and I think rightly so, but for many people the court was something far away,” says Kaproncaj. Many civil society organizations did not address everyday issues such as household income, schools and healthcare, “even though these are precisely the issues that determine whether people feel that the political system is working for them and whether their voices are heard,” she said.
Kaproncaj says protests are important, especially when the political opposition knows how to use and build on them, but that small, local gatherings that bring together people of different backgrounds and beliefs to solve common problems are just as important. “Autocrats really want to polarize society, so any initiative that goes against that is of enormous importance,” she said.
The Hungarian opposition has shown renewed energy in recent months. In June, tens of thousands of people, including the mayor of Budapest, took part in an LGBTQ+ pride parade that Orban banned. And polls show the opposition Tisza party, led by Peter Magyar, leading Orban’s Fidesz party in elections next year.
“Many people believe they can actually win next year’s elections,” says Kaproncaj. “Finally, there is real competition, and that has allowed many to break free from self-censorship. My journalist friends tell me that they have more and more sources coming forward. People are no longer afraid to speak out. Civil society and public life are much more vibrant than they were in previous years.”
Ece Temelkuram (Turkey), author of the book “How to Lose Land”
Temelkuram says that Recep Tayyip Erdogan began consolidating power during his first term as prime minister, but that his re-election victory in 2007 marked a “real turning point” in Turkish politics.
“When they come to power the second time, they feel much more ruthless and act as if there are no boundaries anymore,” Temelkuram said. “I think the idea of ‘me and the state’ also becomes very strongly entrenched in the minds of leaders the second time they take power.”
Temelkuram reported across Turkey as a columnist for the newspaper “Milliyet” during Erdogan’s rise to power in 2002. She noticed his authoritarian tendencies very early on: he regularly attacked journalists and seemed to have no interest in mainstream politics.
“Autocrats think they are above politics,” says Temelkuram. “(They say:) 'Politics is corrupt. Parties are corrupt. We are clean.' They are creating a movement, not a party.
“When you despise politics, it means you are likely to do something against democracy itself,” she added.
In the years since he became president in 2014, Erdogan has imprisoned political opponents and critics, suppressed protests, and concentrated power in the executive branch.
After writing about Erdogan and other autocrats for more than two decades, Temelkuram says Americans need to prepare for the “long game” of fighting to restore democracy. “It took Erdogan 15 years to do what Trump did in 100 days,” she said. “If Americans don’t accept the fact that this is a long game, and that it will be brutal, I don’t think they will have the patience and endurance to see it through.”
But Temelkuram says he sees a glimmer of hope in the recent protests in Turkey. The protests erupted after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on corruption charges. The charges are widely seen as an attempt to eliminate Erdogan's key rival ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
“This is the first time that a conventional political party has embraced or taken the lead in street protests,” she said. “It’s always been either street protests or elections and party politics.”
The combination of these two elements, something she says should have happened years ago, is breathing new life into Turkey's main opposition party. "These political parties are like shipwrecks: metal structures, dead. Protests in the streets, youth politics, are entering them like schools of fish and turning them into living reefs."
She also said that a successful opposition movement in the US would have to bring a similar level of energy to its struggle. “A lot of people, especially in America and Europe, organize these prestigious panels that ordinary people never come to. Real NGOs that people are not interested in at all,” she said. “The only option is to offer real change … and to be absolutely bold about it.”
Claudia Ortiz (El Salvador), MP for the opposition party Vamos
Ortiz says one of the most important lessons she learned from Najib Bukele's election in 2019 is that she and her party, formed two years earlier, must do much more than simply oppose him.
“You can’t make authoritarian leaders the center of your story,” Ortiz said. “People have to be the center of your story, and you have to be passionate about it.”
That, she says, means much more engagement with citizens, and a willingness to be surprised by what they say sometimes. “Part of the cure for this is to listen to people,” she said. “Don’t be so confident that you know what they want, what they need. You have to ask.”
The election of Bukele and his New Ideas party reversed decades of two-party dominance between leftist and conservative parties.
“The parties that have ruled the country for decades have failed to build a stable democracy that delivers results in people’s daily lives,” she said. “But we believe that this is not overcome by destroying institutions, but by making them functional.”
Over the past six years, Bukele, who jokingly calls himself “the coolest dictator in the world,” has imposed emergency powers, suspended the right to due process, and appointed loyalists to the judiciary, allowing him to circumvent a constitutional ban on a second term.
His approach to fighting crime has led to widespread human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances and torture; today, according to human rights organizations, the country has the highest prison population in the world.
Many journalists, opposition leaders, and human rights organizations fled the country.
Despite this, Bukele enjoys consistently high approval ratings, which Ortiz and other analysts attribute to both a real drop in crime and propaganda. But Ortiz says he believes cracks are starting to appear.
Under Bukele, she says, basic services like health and education have worsened and the cost of living has risen.
“When reality knocks on your door and you don’t have enough food, or you have a relative who has been a victim of arbitrary detention… that’s when you say, ‘Okay, this is reality, and it’s quite different from propaganda,’” she said. “I think the honeymoon is over.”
“Authoritarian systems give the appearance of efficiency, but their solutions are not thorough, they are not sustainable, and they are not just,” she continued. “They will collapse because their way of functioning involves exclusion, abuse, and the enabling of massive corruption.”
But she also says she has learned to never underestimate an autocrat.
Whether it's undermining the judiciary or intimidating local authorities, "in many cases you think, 'No, they're not going to do that,'" she says. "But we've seen how quickly [centralization of power] can progress. That's why it's important to defend democracy at every turn," she said.
Prepared by: NB
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