A Dangerous Road?

By Prof. Alan Whitehorn, Kingston ON, 22 March 2025

The problematic theme of increasingly malevolent choices made on the dangerous steps from authoritarianism to dictatorship and then towards genocide is profoundly troubling. It is certainly not a stairway to Heaven, but rather a horrific and terrifying staircase descending to Hell. In the cautionary words of legal scholar-activist Raphael Lemkin, who in the 1930s explored the precursor concepts to genocide, it is descending into the twin evils of ‘barbarism’ and ‘vandalism’. His pre-World War II warning was to little avail.

In increasingly toxic circumstances, where frustration, anger, and hate continue to grow more and more unrestrained, the authoritarian leader is surrounded by a growing number of fanatical followers and enablers. He becomes more likely to go down the steep staircase of a polarizing and violent perpetrator. The dictator, who seemingly achieved initial success, is often emboldened to become more belligerent, aggressive and ruthlessly ambitious. His chosen modus operandi is to target less powerful victims, either inside the country or nearby. The victims are portrayed as the denigrated ‘other’, who should be eliminated by one violent method or another.

Is Donald Trump an authoritarian personality who, given dramatically unfolding events, is moving rapidly along the perpetrator staircase to becoming a despot? Or worse are his increasingly ruthless decrees and deeds leading towards too many helpless victims and perhaps genocide?

It is often said that for evil to succeed, it only requires good people to be inattentive and unengaged to the desperate plight of others. It is the ‘sin of indifference’ and we shall all eventually pay a price. Some sadly sooner than others.

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Alan Whitehorn is an emeritus professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. He received his BA, MA and PhD in political science. In the mid-1990s, he was the first holder of the JS Woodsworth Chair in Humanities at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. As an academic, he writes on the topics of genocide, human rights, political parties and elections. As an award-winning poet, he explores the issue of genocide and its impact on Armenian-Canadian identity.

Illustration: Envato/ContrabandCamp