Spin-Diktatoren in unserer Zeit: Was steckt hinter der Trump-Smith-Freundschaft?

Spin dictatorship is no longer a distant academic concept; it is the political operating system of our moment. In Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century, Daniel Treisman and Sergei Guriev describe how modern authoritarian leaders have shifted from ruling by fear and overt violence to ruling by narrative control; monopolizing power while preserving the appearance of democracy. As Treisman explains in a recent podcast, “It’s all part of an act. They monopolize power like the old dictators, eliminating any effective checks and balances, but they do so with much less violence.” Instead of mass executions or gulags, these regimes rely on media capture, economic performance, and the careful spinning of facts to keep populations compliant and distracted.

Grzegorz Ekiert and Noah Dasanaike, in their essay The Return of Dictatorship, add a crucial layer: this is not just about individual leaders, but about dictatorial drift; a gradual, often stealthy slide from soft authoritarianism into full‑blown dictatorship, driven by executive overreach, the erosion of independent institutions, and the systematic weakening of civil society. This drift is engineered from above, not simply demanded from below, and it thrives in environments where citizens grow cynical about politics, elections, and truth itself.​

With that framework in mind, it is impossible to ignore the resonance between this model and two figures who matter deeply to us: one with global reach, and one whose decisions reverberate across Canada and, in particular, Alberta. I’m speaking of Donald Trump and Danielle Smith.