Earlier today, I published part 1 of a new series: The Strongman’s Playbook. It is about the techniques authoritarian leaders use to make their power permanent once they have won office.
In this video, I share a few thoughts on what stood out most. The transcript is below for those who prefer to read.
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Transcript
The Strongman’s Playbook starts today in The Planet. Ten installments. Ten techniques. We begin with the one that always comes first.
Before the press. Before the army. Before the elections. It’s the courts.
Courts are the only institution that can say no to an executive and make it stick. That is why every authoritarian leader who has lasted long enough to make his power permanent moved on the judiciary first.
Perón did it in Argentina in 1947. Peronist legislators impeached four of the five sitting justices. The Senate removed them. The charges were thin. And that was not the point. The point was to show every judge in the country who was really in charge.
Orbán did it differently. He waited for a parliamentary supermajority. Then he lowered the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 62. Hundreds of experienced judges were pushed out at once. He packed the Constitutional Court. He pushed through a parallel system of administrative courts for politically sensitive cases. By the time the EU understood what had happened, it was mostly done.
Marcos in the Philippines used martial law. He declared it in 1972. He used emergency powers and military tribunals to sideline his Supreme Court in national security cases. He then steered a constitutional convention into ratifying a new constitution that gave him sweeping powers. The courts that remained worked within the boundaries he had drawn.
Mussolini took a more patient route. He kept Italian courts nominally independent for years. But he built a parallel structure alongside them. The Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State, established in 1926, handled political crimes outside the ordinary judicial system. By the time ordinary courts might have pushed back, the Special Tribunal had already dealt with everything that mattered.
Different methods. Identical logic. The goal is never to destroy the courts. It is to make them irrelevant.
FDR tried court-packing in 1937 and failed. He wanted to expand the Supreme Court to fifteen justices after it struck down several New Deal programs. Congress rejected the plan. Even members of his own party voted against it. The courts held. And that failure matters, because it shows this is not inevitable.
What does this mean for the United States today? The American judiciary is not being dismantled. But it is being pressured and, when possible, worked around. Judges who rule against the administration face public attacks and calls for impeachment. The administration has pushed the boundaries of compliance with court orders. And judges appointed during Trump’s first term are already hearing cases that will shape what the second term can do.
This is not Perón’s purge. It is closer to Orbán’s method. Patient. Incremental. Technically legal at each step.
The historical lesson is consistent. Once courts are captured or neutralized, everything else accelerates. The press, the opposition, the elections. Every other technique in the strongman’s playbook depends on having already dealt with the courts.
Americans are living through the opening chapter of this story. Where it goes depends partly on whether the courts continue to hold.
Part 2 is next. We move on to the media.
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