This story of dystopian hell makes for grim reading — but it's not fiction

Not that many years ago, the new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on the rise of authoritarian governments around the world and the United States’ role would have read like dystopian fiction. Today, however, the report merely confirms the reality that Americans live in.

HRW is an independent, international non-governmental organization that investigates and reports on human rights around the world. Its 2026 report finds that a troubling 72 percent of countries are under authoritarian governments, the largest number since 1984. It also found a realignment of powerful nations advancing the authoritarian cause that now includes the U.S. alongside Russia and China.

HRW reports that in just 12 months, the Trump administration has carried out “a broad assault on key pillars of U.S. democracy and the global rules-based order, which the U.S., despite inconsistencies, was, with other states, instrumental in helping to establish.”

Evidence abounds that the HRW report’s assessment is accurate. In the old global order, the U.S. was the leading promoter of democracy and an example to follow. It united with other democratic countries in defending and spreading democracy, constraining authoritarian advancement, and exposing human rights violations in authoritarian countries.

In the new world order, the U.S. has shockingly switched sides. It now promotes authoritarianism rather than democracy both by example and its relationships with other countries.

At home, Trump has assaulted democracy by undermining Americans’ trust in the election system, violating the rule of law and the Constitution, emasculating the Republican-controlled legislative branch, attacking judicial independence, defying court orders, using government power to punish and intimidate political opponents, the media, and universities, and deploying the U.S. military to cities to impose “law and order” against the will of states.

Abroad, Trump has sharply criticized leaders of America’s traditional allies, slapped onerous tariffs on their countries, supported right-wing leaders and organizations that threaten their democracies, and made America an unreliable NATO member.

Trump saves his admiration for authoritarian leaders who have decimated their countries’ democracies including Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Ferdinand Marcos. In particular, Trump’s assault on America’s democracy parallels that of his close friend Orban in Hungary, the anti-democratic leader most greatly admired by the Republican Party.

Trump has also sided with Putin in Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine and limited U.S. military support for Kyiv. Trump draws no moral distinction between the invading totalitarian Russia and democratic Ukraine because in his mind, there isn’t any.

In Trump’s reprehensible world view, might makes right. Trump is not going to support a democracy under attack if the aggressor is more powerful, which would have been music to Hitler’s ears. A totalitarian country can invade a democracy with no moral indignation from Trump for a simple reason: Trump sides with the authoritarians.

How can a new world order with Trump’s America undermining democracy along with Russia and China be countered by freedom-loving nations? HRW recommends that a new global alliance be formed “to support international human rights within a rules-based order.” The obvious participants would be established democracies with significant economic and geopolitical clout along with smaller countries across the globe that have advanced human rights.

According to HRW, this global coalition of democracies could offer attractive trade deals to counteract Trump’s punitive trade policies. It could include rights' protections for workers and security agreements, all contingent on nations adhering to democratic governance and human rights' norms. That the U.K., E.U., Canada, and Australia are already forming closer economic ties to end reliance on the US could be a first step in creating a broader, more powerful worldwide coalition.

The very notion of the United States under Trump going to the dark side in the battle for universal dominance between democratic, freedom-loving countries and autocratic, freedom-repressing countries once seemed an unimaginable absurdity. It is terrifyingly real today, however, something that Americans ignore at our own peril.

Sinclar Lewis prophesized the future in his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, where “Buzz” Windrip, a populist who wins the presidency by promising prosperity, systematically dismantles democratic institutions and becomes America’s dictator. Trump will be our “Buzz” Windrip if we allow it to happen.

While stopping the massive worldwide erosion of democracy may require an international coalition, Americans can do our share by limiting Trump’s ability to dismantle America’s democracy and support authoritarianism abroad. If we passively ignore Trump’s treasonous assault on democracy, he will succeed alongside Russia and China in helping authoritarianism continue to grow and choke out democracy in more countries, including the United States.

By electing Democratic majorities to the House and Senate in the November midterm elections and ending Congress’s subjugation to Trump, we can mitigate the damage he is doing to the country and the world in concert with Russia and China and ultimately return America to its historical place as the leader of the free world.

If we don’t act now, we may never have another chance, a nightmarish Orwellian future looming on the horizon.

• Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor.