A Coup or Authoritarian State Capture? On Conceptualizing Trump's Project 2025 Program​

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion as to what a Trump victory in the November election portends. There has been talk of a Trump coup since the 2020 election, with January 6th serving as one of the main events in that narrative. In their efforts to understand and explain, observers have called that event an attempted coup. Recently, Donald Trump referred to the effort to get Biden to step aside as a coup. Such confusion.

In a recent Portside article, Jonathan Winer, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, details three phases of mischief-making on the part of Trump and his minions. Winer characterizes the MAGA effort to implement Project 2025, should Trump win, as a "coup." However, most activities that Winer discusses in his article take place before the winner is certified. All that pre-certification activity involves legislative, electoral, and judicial maneuvering and mischief—but precedes actual office holding. It seeks to influence who wins electorally and that is not the process that one follows in a coup.

A coup is a militarized assault on the institutions of power. It seeks to overthrow through violent means what is recognized as a legitimate government. It involves organized force, capture of key institutions, including the military, security establishment, Information institutions, media outlets, executive); and removing incumbent officials (legislators, judges, administrative personnel, military, and security leaders). These are summary dismissals; they do not come about through an orderly process. Some come with additional burdens that might include imprisonment, exile, or execution. It also involves suspension and/or rejection of the existing constitution and governing structure. It usually results in a military-led administration and governance by decree. That is not what we are considering here.

The mob on January 6th did not seem to have meaningful plans to take over the government, or much of an idea of what they would do on day two. Nothing they did extended beyond Congress. What little coordination there was did not include mobilizing an armed force to overthrow the government, nor did they have any plan for governing. They clearly did not have the support of the military leadership and, bluster and bravado aside, they did not have the wherewithal to withstand a frontal military assault. Their main goal seems to have been to disrupt the legislative process which was to confirm the winner of the election. It was disruptive of congressional business. It was, no doubt, an insurrection, which is a violent uprising against the government. That concept suffices to characterize the January 6th events.

Once the authoritarians have taken power, they use their democratic legitimacy to justify a series of restrictions on democratic forms of governance, such as voter and polling restrictions.

With the coming election we are hearing commentators refer to the Project 2025 document as a prescription for a coup. I find this conceptualization to be problematic. We are witnessing political developments that may have never occurred before in this country. We have no ready ways of conceptualizing those events, so, like Procrustes, we fit them into preexisting conceptual categories. This is what I see happening with the effort to understand what a second Trump administration might portend.

If Trump wins the election and proceeds to implement Project 2025 it will be via the existing political process, even if they massage, manipulate, misinterpret, and cajole to get the results they seek. And they will. Observers cannot accept that the political system can produce outcomes such as those that Project 2025 promises because that would require condemning a flawed process—one that is open to manipulation. This would be a process that can produce an elected administration, however controversial, with a different (and dangerous) policy agenda. Understanding this process requires seeing that such a power grab can happen in the system through its normal workings.

So long as they stay within the operational framework that requires Congress to codify and fund their initiatives, and a Supreme Court to sanction what they do, they will be a legitimate, if not popular, government. We might not like what they do but it will fall within the framework of the American constitutional order.

It is important to be clear about what we are confronting—which is an attempt to consolidate Authoritarianism through the mechanism of State Capture.

We are witnessing an attempt to capture the instruments of the government to institute policy and personnel changes that will resonate for decades.

Contemporary Authoritarian regimes concentrate power in a leader or an elite to undermine democratic institutions to the extent that those institutions become more performative than substantive. Once the authoritarians have taken power, they use their democratic legitimacy to justify a series of restrictions on democratic forms of governance, such as voter and polling restrictions. They neuter the political order while allowing a level of social and economic freedom. These regimes will tolerate social and economic institutions not directly under governmental control so long as they stay in line. The practice of authoritarian regimes is to rely on resignation in the face of lawful, though repulsive measures, and passive mass acceptance rather than active popular support. So long as Trump is in play, authoritarianism will have a populist cast. Thereafter, right-wing Authoritarian forces expect to have their dominance institutionalized through State Capture.

A simple definition of State Capture assumes that elections occur, and officials hold office. It is a matter of how and who. State Capture is a systematic process to advance narrow group interests by taking control of the institutions and processes that produce and implement public policy. Once in control they proceed to direct policy away from the public interest and instead begin to shape policy to serve their own interests more effectively.

We are dealing with a process that has antecedents in Hungary, Türkiye, India, and elsewhere where an authoritarian regime captures the government through formal channels and then begins to populate the administrative structure with partisans, preferably in secure civil service positions. They then implement policies that further consolidate their power. We are witnessing an attempt to capture the instruments of the government to institute policy and personnel changes that will resonate for decades.

The make-up and character of these “narrow interest groups” can differ from case to case. So, in India it can be Hindu nationalists, capitalists, and the landed gentry. In Türkiye, Islamists, and capitalists. In South Africa party cadre, domestic and international capitalists and landed interests. The one thing they all have in common is that capitalists always factor. The narrow interests served by a Trump presidency includes the monopoly sector, neoconservatives, white nationalists, Christian evangelicals, and isolationists. Regimes on the right exist, as in this case, to advance the interests of Capital.

The make-up and character of these “narrow interest groups” can differ from case to case... The one thing they all have in common is that capitalists always factor.

We see the phenomenon of winning elections to legitimize authoritarian regimes on both the right and the left. The difference being that the regimes on the left are doing so under extreme duress from covert destabilizing forces, in the face of punishing international sanctions, and as acts of survival. It does not excuse them, but it does place them in a different context. Among them are regimes that came to power through other means such as coups and revolutions. In those cases, they already have control of the state. The goal is to continue in power.

The main similarity is that State Capture regimes deploy the electoral process to maintain their positions and power. The process of gaining and staying in power involves winning elections. Much can be said about the veracity of those elections. No matter how flawed they may be, though, the regime still gets to check the Democracy box. That is what will happen with Trump if he wins- they will modify the instruments of the state to remain in power and serve capital...forever, if possible. That plan can be delayed but not derailed by the outcome of the November election.