Authoritarianism in the Language of Liberty
Trump’s double standard in justice isn’t hypocrisy—it’s strategy, drawn from America’s authoritarian past.
While the Trump Administration loudly condemns antisemitism on an Ivy League campus, even threatening to pull federal funds in the name of protecting Jewish students, it is simultaneously importing antisemitic Afrikaners as refugees and staffing up its administration with antisemitic extremists. The hypocrisy is not an anomaly; it is the point. Selective outrage and selective enforcement of principles are key tools in the authoritarian playbook. They allow those in power to avoid accountability for their own transgressions while intensifying policing against political opponents and marginalized groups. Worse, when called out on it, they use selective outrage over neutral principles of liberal democracy to bludgeon their critics. Such tactics all serve one end: to reify patriarchal and white supremacist power structures. In these systems, power rewrites the social contract so that laws and norms constrain only the enemy, never the tyrant at the top.
A favorite tool of modern authoritarians is precisely this double standard: the selective enforcement of even “good” laws for illegitimate ends. They weaponize the language of democracy, justice, security, law and order as a cudgel against enemies, all while exempting themselves and their allies. The result is a grotesque inversion of democratic ideals. Historical precedent for this strategy abounds in the United States. As I constantly remind folks, none of this is new, especially in the US. To understand how an ostensibly democratic system can be contorted to shield a powerful few and oppress disfavored groups, one need only look to the deep south under Jim Crow. The tactics deployed then, double standards in policing, legal pretexts for persecution, and cynical invocations of “order” laid the groundwork for today’s authoritarian turn.
Historical Roots: Jim Crow’s Selective Justice
In the post-Civil War South, white supremacist elites perfected the art of using law as a weapon rather than an equalizer. After emancipation, Southern legislatures reacted to the 13th Amendment by passing Black Codes, laws explicitly written to criminalize everyday behavior for Black Americans while leaving whites unscathed. These statutes “applied only to Black people”, making it a crime for freedmen to do things like loiter, break curfew, or lack proof of employment. The goal was clear: create offenses that would ensnare Black citizens and funnel them into forced labor for the benefit of the white ruling class. This convict leasing system was, as historians have termed it, “slavery by another name”. The law-and-order rhetoric of the day cloaked what was in fact a blatant selective enforcement regime: one set of laws for Black people that were harsh, expansive, and discriminatorily applied while there was near-impunity for whites. In many states during this period, incarcerated Black folks suddenly outnumbered incarcerated whites for the first time, a direct result of these selectively enforced Black Codes.
Beyond the letter of the law, the enforcement of Jim Crow justice was staggeringly double-standard. Black Americans faced draconian punishment or mob violence for the slightest perceived infractions, whereas white perpetrators of even heinous crimes against Black victims often walked free. The entire apparatus of policing and “justice” in the Jim Crow South sent a clear message: white men were effectively above the law, while Black people were forever under its iron heel. As legal scholar Margaret Burnham notes, Jim Crow was upheld not only by police but by ordinary white citizens emboldened to act as extra-legal enforcers of racial subjugation. A Black person who violated the racial norms, by even being in the wrong town after dark risked violence, even death. Meanwhile, “any white person could commit racially motivated violence with impunity,” as authorities either turned a blind eye or actively colluded. In effect, certain crimes simply did not exist when committed by whites against Blacks.
This racially stratified justice was often justified through perverse invocations of noble principles. White mobs lynched Black men under the pretext of defending white womanhood and “public safety,” even as white men’s own sexual violence against Black women went unpunished. Lynching, an extreme form of extrajudicial “policing,” was excused as necessary to protect the community’s morals. In short, Jim Crow’s legal system weaponized the idea of law and order to uphold a patriarchal, white supremacist social order. The law was not a neutral set of rules, but a one-way contract: the powerful wrote the rules, but never truly had to obey them. This bleak legacy is an important backdrop for the present, because it shows how democratic principles can be twisted into tools of oppression. The double standards established under Jim Crow, harsh constraint for marginalized people, freedom for those atop the hierarchy, have never fully vanished; they have merely evolved.
The Authoritarian Playbook Comes Full Circle
Fast forward to today, and the playbook of selective enforcement is being deployed in new guises. The Trump administration invokes the language of rights, safety, and even anti-discrimination not to uphold those values universally, but to wield them against its chosen targets. The recent crusade against supposed “campus antisemitism” by Trump administration officials is a telling example. In early 2025, President Trump announced a sweeping investigation into elite universities for alleged antisemitic climates, singling out institutions like Harvard. Superficially, it appeared a righteous effort to combat hate. Yet it quickly became apparent how this effort was highly selective and politically convenient. Trump’s threats against the nation's top schools were not truly about protecting Jewish students at all, they were an excuse to gut funding for academia and eliminate an independent source of authority in civil society that challenges Trump's authoritarianism. The pattern is clear and familiar: a democratic principle, such as combating bigotry, is weaponized to attack institutions deemed politically unfavorable. Meanwhile, the principle itself is ignored whenever it constrains the regime’s friends.
Nothing illustrates this hypocrisy better than the company Trump and his inner circle keep. Even as they rail against purported antisemitism on liberal campuses, they pal around openly with antisemites and extremists on the far right. Trump’s own administration has been “lousy with antisemitism, starting at the top." Most glaringly, Trump hosted self-declared Hitler admirers Nick Fuentes and Kanye (who's recent song was titled "Heil Hitler") at a 2022 dinner, effectively legitimizing a Holocaust denier at his table. He even cleared the way for Andrew Tate, an alleged sex trafficker who is virulently antisemitic, to enter the United States despite serious criminal charges abroad. Tate has praised Hamas in the past and was supportive of the October 7th attacks in Israel. Over the years, Trump himself has trafficked in antisemitic tropes, accusing Jews of “dual loyalty,” demonizing Jewish philanthropist George Soros as a sinister force, and even saying that if he lost re-election “Jews would be to blame.”
This same double standard is visible in the way the administration has been attacking DEI and supports for marginalized groups in academia and in the workplace. The administration dismantled the DoJ's civil rights division, ended the use of disparate impact legal analysis in discrimination investigations, and summarily dismissed all employment discrimination claims by trans employees. Meanwhile, the administration has been on a tear attacking universities, law firms, and employers as supposedly engaging in rampant systemic discrimination against white men. The Trump administration in it's first 100 days effectively dismantled federal civil rights protections for nearly everyone while weaponizing the federal government to privilege white men by selectively enforcing spurious claims of discrimination against them. The ultimate goal is to roll back decades of civil rights progress and reinstitute a society that serves patriarchal, white-centric narratives. Those who call out such blatantly biased enforcement are painted as supportive of racial and sexual discrimination, completing the perversion of civil rights law into a pillar of white supremacy.
This is authoritarianism 101: harsh punishment for “them,” indulgence for “us.” The weaponization of “law and order” rhetoric against marginalized groups goes hand in hand with an almost laissez-faire attitude toward violence emanating from the dominant in-group, the predominantly white, right-wing supporters of the regime. It’s the modern echo of Jim Crow’s two-faced law, one face for the favored caste, another for the rest. Under Trump, federal agencies have prioritized crackdowns on anti-racist and leftist movements while downplaying the threat of white supremacist violence. Once again, the principle of equal justice is subverted: violent racism is tacitly excused or even enabled, while those who protest for equality are cast as dangerous subversives to be zealously policed. The through-line from the Deep South sheriffs who ignored Klan lynchings while jailing Black men for vagrancy, to a MAGA attorney general who might ignore neo-Nazi militias while prosecuting anti-fascists, is disturbingly straight.
Rewriting the Social Contract to Preserve Power
Ultimately, all of these tactics serve to entrench a hierarchical power structure, one that is white supremacist and patriarchal at its core. The pattern of selective enforcement is not merely a series of hypocritical incidents; it is a governing philosophy. Its thesis is simple: In a society run by strongmen, laws and norms exist to control the populace, not the powerful. This turns the very idea of a social contract on its head. In a healthy democracy, the social contract means that all members of society, including leaders, agree to be bound by the law and to respect equal rights. In the authoritarian vision, however, the contract is unilaterally rewritten: those at the top grant themselves immunity from the rules, while demanding total obedience from everyone else.
We see this in Trump’s own attitude toward the law. He has famously argued that presidents have “absolute” powers, effectively saying that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” Worse, the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed this notion of presidential power and granted sweeping immunity to official acts by the president. Trump has openly promised retribution against his political rivals. vowing to “lock up” opponents despite any genuine legal basis, even as he insists that any prosecution or judgment against himself is a “witch hunt” or illegitimate. This is selective accountability in extreme: the law is something that happens to other people. It is no coincidence that such a mindset correlates with both white supremacist and patriarchal worldviews. In a white supremacist patriarchy, certain people, wealthy white men in particular, are envisioned as natural rulers who must be unbound by the constraints of laws meant for lesser folks. Historically, this was exemplified by the way Southern white men could commit violence or sexual exploitation without consequence. Today’s aspiring autocrats carry the same entitlement, whether it’s shielding themselves and their cronies from corruption charges, or exempting their favored social groups from the moral standards they impose on scapegoated groups.
The through-line from Jim Crow to MAGA is a belief that power justifies itself. Armed with that belief, authoritarians feel free to invoke democratic ideals while betraying them. They will shout about “free speech” even as they criminalize dissent, tout “family values” while separating migrant children from their parents, or claim to champion “the Constitution” while attempting to overturn elections and subvert due process. These contradictions are resolved by one simple principle: In their view, the rights and protections of society belong only to the “right” people. Those outside the charmed circle can be surveilled, silenced, jailed, deported, or otherwise kept in their place.
What is at stake in recognizing this pattern? Quite literally, the survival of the rule of law and equality before the law. When a government operates on selective enforcement and double standards, it corrodes the public’s belief that laws have moral weight. Laws become seen as cynical tools of power, which, under an authoritarian, they truly are. This breeds cynicism, fear, and division. It reifies the worst kind of social hierarchy, in which justice is not blind but openly peeks to see one’s race, religion, or loyalty to the leader. We are left with tyranny where the authoritarian leader and his followers face no constraints, and everyone else lives under a growing burden of rules, scrutiny, and punishment.
Closing Thoughts
The selective enforcement of laws and principles, these double standards backed by state power, has a long pedigree in America’s darkest chapters. Today, as authoritarian politics surge, we are watching the revival of those tactics. From the Jim Crow South’s racist legal system to the Trump movement’s selective crusades against universities, protesters, voters of color, etc., the pattern is the same. Democratic principles are invoked but not applied. Accountability is for enemies only. “Law and order” is code for suppressing the marginalized, while the powerful enjoy near-total impunity.
It is no exaggeration to say that under such a model, democracy itself becomes a charade. Elections, rights, and laws may remain on paper, but in practice the ruling faction can do as it pleases. In the second Trump administration, we should expect this authoritarian approach to intensify: more politicized prosecutions of critics, more policing of already over-policed communities, and ever-greater immunity for acts of violence or corruption committed in the name of the ruling ideology. The endgame of these tactics is the preservation of power in the hands of a few, at the expense of the many. It serves to restore and cement a social order where wealthy white men, the traditional patriarchs, sit unchallenged at the top, as laws and norms bend to their will.
History shows us the cost of allowing such perversions of justice to go unchecked. It is a cost born by millions needlessly suffering in poverty, incarceration, depressed living standards, and systemic oppression. We must call out the pretexts and the double standards for what they are, a direct attack on the idea that all are equal before the law. If we fail to do so, we risk returning to a world where laws exist only to chain the powerless, never to constrain the powerful.
