How to Steal a Country in Six Easy Steps

And why Americans should stop pretending it can’t happen here

If you follow us on Instagram (and you really should!), then you know we’ve been exploring a little concept called state capture.

Here’s the deal: you don’t need tanks in the streets to lose a democracy. No crowns, no coups, no Bond villain lairs required. All it takes is someone who knows how to break the system from the inside—and reshape it to serve themselves.

State capture happens when political elites, often backed by corporate or military allies, take over the levers of government — from the judiciary to the media — to serve their own interests. Once the checks and balances are gone, it’s just a matter of time before the descent into authoritarianism begins.

So let’s break it down: how it works, what it looks like, and why we need to stand up to authoritarianism today — before it’s too late.

Step 1: Discredit the Truth

The first step is simple: make people stop believing in facts, institutions, or each other. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories, attack journalists, call investigations “witch hunts,” and cast every criticism as a political hit job.

• Hungary: Viktor Orbán spent years telling Hungarians that liberals, immigrants, and “foreign globalists” were conspiring to ruin their country. Once trust collapsed, he could rewrite the rules without much resistance.

• Russia: Vladimir Putin slowly took over independent media outlets, jailing journalists and replacing news with state-run propaganda.

• United States (2025): Donald Trump has returned to his old tricks—blaming the “deep state,” creating his own set of alternative facts, and blaming immigrants for everything from hospital wait times to housing prices.

Step 2: Capture the Courts

If you control the courts, you don’t need to follow the law — the law follows you. Fill the bench with loyalists who’ll rubber-stamp your agenda, block accountability, and bless your power grabs with legalese.

• Turkey: After a failed coup in 2016, President Erdoğan purged tens of thousands of civil servants, including judges and prosecutors, claiming they were disloyal.

• South Sudan: President Salva Kiir fired senior officials and judges and weakened the judiciary, consolidating power while violence and corruption surged.

• United States (2025): Trump has called for the DOJ to “investigate the investigators” and purged inspectors general who oversee federal accountability. And don’t forget how he threatened legal firms whose cases go against him, as well as judges who rule against him. He also pardoned the January 6 rioters, showing that the rules don’t apply to his side.

Step 3: Control the Narrative

You can’t jail everyone—but you can scare them into silence. Whether through surveillance, defamation laws, or targeted prosecutions, authoritarians make the cost of resistance too high to risk.

• Russia: Opposition leaders like Alexei Navalny have been poisoned, imprisoned, and harassed. Protesters are routinely arrested and tortured.

• Uganda: President Museveni’s regime routinely detains journalists and political opponents without trial, especially around elections.

• United States (2025): Trump officials have arrested protesters and introduced dozens of bills to ban protests. Trump said the press is “truly the enemy of the people” and pulled press access from “unfriendly” networks, including the AP, after they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” He fired watchdogs who spoke out against him (including USAID’s Paul Martin) and illegally detained individuals with opposing views, like Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil.

Step 4: Rewrite the Rules

Why play fair when you can tilt the field? Authoritarians rewrite constitutions, change voting laws, and redraw districts to make it nearly impossible to lose—and easier to punish enemies.

• Hungary: Orbán’s government rewrote Hungary’s constitution in 2011 and passed election laws that helped his party stay in power.

• South Korea: In the 1970s, Park Chung-hee pushed through a new constitution that gave him near-absolute power under the Yushin system. And just last year, President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to declare martial law (luckily, the South Korean public, legislature, and courts shut down this attempted power grab).

• United States (2025): Trump has spent the last four years spreading baseless claims about the 2020 election. More recently, he’s floated changing the Constitution to “restore law and order” and praised red states for passing new voting laws that make it harder to vote. He also continually talks about staying in power for a third term — a move that is clearly illegal according to the 22nd Amendment. He’s also floated invoking the Insurrection Act to bypass Congress entirely.

Step 5: Take Over the Institutions

Here’s the secret sauce of state capture: you don’t need to dismantle the government if you can staff it with people who worship you. Once the heads of key institutions — from the DOJ to the Fed to your local election board — report to you instead of the public, the system becomes a stage play.

• Nicaragua: President Daniel Ortega replaced judges, legislators, and even school officials with loyalists. His wife is now his “co-president.” They run the government like a family business — because it is one.

• Venezuela: Chávez and later Maduro filled government offices with cronies, collapsing basic services and turning once-functional agencies into tools of control. That made it easy for the Venezuelan Supreme Court to declare Maduro the winner of the 2024 election (without any evidence).

• United States (2025): Trump’s second-term planning has focused explicitly on loyalty. He’s purged career officials, replaced dozens of senior roles with cronies, and made clear that disloyalty = unemployment. Trump has placed close allies in top roles at the DOJ, State Department, and Pentagon. Trump’s team has released plans to invoke “Schedule F,” which would let him fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists. He’s even demanded personal loyalty oaths from high-level appointees — not to the Constitution, but to him.

Step 6: Claim It’s Not Tyranny If It’s for the State

Once all the pieces are in place, the final step is simple: claim that none of it is authoritarianism—because it's all being done for the good of the nation. Stability. Security. Sovereignty. Whatever sells.

• China: The CCP frames its total surveillance and censorship as necessary to maintain “social harmony.” Critics call it techno-authoritarianism; the state calls it patriotism.

• Hungary: Orbán frequently insists he’s just protecting Hungary’s Christian values and sovereignty. He even coined the term “illiberal democracy”—a spin on authoritarian rule with a nationalist gloss.

• United States (2025): On February 15, Trump tweeted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” He insists his government overhauls are “saving America”—even as democratic norms and institutions crumble around him.

  

This Isn’t a Drill

Russia. Hungary. Turkey. South Sudan. Venezuela. Nicaragua. China. Different continents, same script.

State capture doesn’t always show up in a military uniform or a crown. Sometimes, it wears a flag pin, gives a thumbs up, and promises to make everything great again.

America’s institutions are strong — but they are only as strong as the people inside them. And if we let those institutions be filled, hollowed out, or rewritten by people loyal only to one man, we’re not protecting democracy. We’re playing house with fascism.

The Bottom Line

If it walks like a tyrant and tweets like a tyrant… it’s probably a tyrant.

Don’t get distracted by the drama. Pay attention to the playbook. Every time someone tells you it’s “just politics” — ask yourself:

Who’s gaining power? And who’s losing it?