Tips to Recognize Autocratic Communication Styles
And avoid voting for them (Scroll to the end to listen)
Project 2025 is a masterclass in autocratic communication styles.
Its pages drip with the message We will tolerate nothing less than the policies outlined here. We will make them happen, and we will force every American to live with them.
Tato A. Torres Gilormini, Doctor of Clinical Psychology and Family Therapist, has built us a list of autocratic, non-compromising, non-flexible communication styles. As we evaluate political candidates at every level of government this November and beyond, we can return to this list of autocratic red flags.
I’ve included this list below, along with examples from the text of Project 2025.
Traits of autocratic, non-compromising, non-flexible communication according to Tato A. Torres Gilormini, Doctor of Clinical Psychology and Family Therapist
Directive Communication: They use a commanding tone, issuing orders rather than engaging in dialogue.
My newsletter “What Is Ordered Liberty?” covered how Christian Nationalist Republicans define this legal term.
Christian Nationalists believe the founders intended for the United States to be a Christian nation with the Bible as the foundation of law. Therefore, their definition of order will always mean this behavior offends me because the Bible says it offends God. We must honor God by limiting individual freedoms to control this behavior. (See “What Is a Family?” HERE.)
They equate ordered liberty with their definition of Christian morality.
Their reframing of ordered liberty as Christian morality is the very definition of directive communication. We will define order, and we will order you to obey.
Closed-Mindedness: They are not open to feedback or alternative viewpoints.
In “Project 2025: Attack Regulation to Promote Christo-fascist Education,” we examined how Project 2025 plans to rollback federal requirements for charter school grants enacted in 2022 by the Biden Administration.
Why do Project 2025’s framers object to these new guidelines?
The new requirements call for more rigorous peer review of applications for charter schools…It provides guidelines for more community engagement.
Christo-fascist Republicans don’t want anyone looking over their shoulders or reviewing their work. They aren’t open to feedback on how things can be done better (or in this case, review that could halt theft of federal grant monies). They aren’t interested in diverse community voices or engagement, because those alternative viewpoints don’t matter to them.
Absence of a real human dialogue: They talk at people. They don’t listen with curiosity. Their core posture and position is “I-AM-THE-ONE-WHO-KNOWS.”
In “Project 2025: Where the Only Genders Are Male and Female,” we covered one of the most inflexible, autocratic sections of P2025. Christo-fascist Republicans insist that the only genders are “male” and “female.” And they intend to force every American into one of those boxes.
The department proposes to interpret Section 1557 as if it created special privileges for new classes of people, defined in ways that are highly ideological and unscientific.
Project 2025, page 475
Nowhere does Project 2025 acknowledge the number of people worldwide who are born intersex. They don’t believe intersex people happen, because “God doesn’t make mistakes.” Nor do they bother to look up data on the subject so they can provide their own data to refute it. THEY ARE THE ONES WHO KNOW.
Incidentally, the Intersex Society of North America says this about the estimated number of intersex births worldwide per year:
Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female = one in 100 births.
Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance = one or two in 1,000 births.
Eliminate Dissent: The elimination of dissent is a “ sine qua non’ of the authoritarian cocktail.
Project 2025 outlines several policies that will eliminate dissent, from firing thousands of federal workers and replacing them with Republican loyalists to giving the President the power of a dictator. But their plans to destroy the free press are perhaps the most insidious.
In “Project 2025: The Republican Race to Empower the Next Joseph Goebbels,” we covered how P2025 plans to make the White House Communications Director the master of regime propaganda.
P2025 also calls for eliminating dissent by defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.
Assertiveness: They communicate assertively, often appearing aggressive or confrontational.
The Republican Party offers an all-you-can-watch smorgasbord of this kind of communication today. Here are several examples.
The Republican Party is stating something VERY CLEARLY: They are autocratic, non-compromising, non-flexible people.
They communicate this through Project 2025. They reveal this through red state laws modeled from Project 2025. They loudly state this with every right they want to roll back, every body they want to control, every freedom they want to eliminate or restrict.
If I could upload a video or two, I'd add a video of Sheldon Whitehouse or Jamie Raskin in action...strong opinions delivered without shouting or insulting or diminishing others. There is a better way forward.
Excellent job, Andra. So, I've been reading about the Southern Economic Development Model (SEDM). This came from the Reagan administration. Which was ran by the Heritage Foundation. Their goal is to keep Americans functionally illiterate. To keep the tax burden on the poor and middle class. To keep states Right To Work or less. No regulations at all. To incorporate slave labor. To make Churches responsible for all social programs. Segregation will be in forced. To be a communist nation. A chattel America. Project 2025 is SEDM. The 2025 version.