The Autocrat’s Rulebook

Divide. Distract. Destroy.

President Trump signs Executive Orders, including ones targeting former White House official Miles Taylor and on April 9, 2025 | Official White House photo

By Trygve Olson

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This is the fifth in an eight-part series on the lessons I’ve learned confronting autocrats over the past twenty-five years. From post-Soviet capitals to American battlegrounds, I’ve seen how authoritarianism grows — and how democracy survives.

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There is a playbook.

Autocrats don’t improvise. They divide, they distract, and when needed — they destroy. They fracture societies to build personal power. They distract from failures by manufacturing enemies. And they destroy norms, institutions, and truth itself to keep control.

The objective is always the same: to maintain power. Every decision — no matter how irrational it may seem — is driven by the regime’s need for political survival.

The strategy: reshape the political culture to center the regime in every aspect of daily life, while instilling fear to create the perception of invincibility and inevitability. The goal is to convince people that resistance is futile.

To implement this strategy, autocrats employ six core tactics:

1. State Dependency. They make people rely on them — for food, for jobs, for safety. This isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking.

2. Marginalization. Opponents aren’t just disagreed with — they’re discredited and dehumanized. They’re painted as threats, outsiders, traitors.

3. Information Control. Autocrats flood the zone with narratives that elevate the regime and delegitimize critics. They use state media or surrogate echo chambers to enforce loyalty.

4. Disinformation. Lies aren’t a bug — they’re the feature. The goal isn’t persuasion — it’s exhaustion. Truth becomes optional, and confusion becomes power.

5. Divide and Conquer. Every fault line is a weapon — race, class, geography, religion. Unity is dangerous. Division is armor.

6. Repression. Violence or legal threat. From jailings and threats to weaponized investigations, the goal is to punish and silence.

I’ve watched these tactics play out in Venezuela, Uganda, Belarus, Georgia, and more. And we’re watching them now in real time — not theory, but application.

The only antidote is clarity. We have to name the tactics. We have to recognize the game. Because if we don’t — if we keep pretending this is just “politics as usual” — we’re not just losing arguments. We’re losing the rules that allow us to argue at all.

So what can you do today?

1. Learn the Seven Rules for Fighting Autocrats. Understanding the tactics is only half the battle. Knowing how to respond — and when — is how we win. I’ve written out seven field-tested rules based on decades of experience. Seven Rules for Dealing with Autocrats

2. Choose unity over purity. You don’t need to agree with someone on everything to stand beside them on democracy. The most successful movements I’ve seen didn’t wait for perfect allies. They built coalitions with people they respected enough to trust when it counted.

3. Tell someone else what you now understand. Maybe it’s a neighbor. A co-worker. A friend who’s checked out. Start the conversation. Share the rulebook. Remind them that power unchecked doesn’t go away — it grows.

Divide, distract, destroy. That’s the rulebook. Our job now is to tear it up — together.

Trygve Olson is a strategist, pro-democracy fighter and a founding Lincoln Project advisor. He writes the Searching for Hope Substack. Read the original column here.

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