By Michael Kelman Portney

Authoritarianism is like a disease—it doesn’t care about political affiliation, ideology, or the labels we slap on ourselves to feel righteous. It creeps in wherever power is unchecked, wherever fear trumps freedom, and wherever people believe their version of the world is so correct that they’re willing to crush dissent to preserve it.

For years, the narrative has been simple: the authoritarian threat is on the right. And don’t get me wrong, it is. From book bans to voter suppression, from the cult of personality around strongman leaders to open assaults on institutions, the right’s descent into authoritarianism is a clear and present danger.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth that a lot of progressives don’t want to hear: the left is not immune to authoritarianism either. And if we’re serious about progress, about freedom, and about building a better world, then we need to confront the authoritarian tendencies in our own ranks just as fiercely as we fight them on the right.

The Right’s Authoritarian Playbook

Let’s start with the obvious. The authoritarian threat on the right is loud, proud, and dangerous. They’re banning books that make people uncomfortable, restricting reproductive rights, gerrymandering democracy into oblivion, and turning "freedom" into a buzzword while dismantling the very institutions that protect it. They’ve embraced a politics of fear—fear of change, fear of diversity, fear of losing control.

And it works. Fear is a powerful motivator. The right knows how to weaponize it, to rally people around a shared enemy, and to justify crushing freedoms in the name of “saving” them.

If you’re a progressive, fighting this kind of authoritarianism is a no-brainer. It’s antithetical to everything we stand for.

The Left’s Authoritarian Blind Spot

But here’s where it gets tricky: the left has its own authoritarian impulses, and pretending otherwise only makes them harder to fight.

On the left, authoritarianism often takes a more insidious form. It’s not book bans or blatant power grabs—it’s the silencing of dissent within our own movements. It’s the purity tests, the gatekeeping, and the cancel culture that turn progressivism into a zero-sum game where one misstep means exile.

It’s the belief that some ideas are so dangerous that they shouldn’t even be discussed, that some people are so irredeemable that they should be erased, and that anyone who disagrees is an enemy of progress.

The right’s authoritarianism is about controlling everyone. The left’s authoritarianism is about controlling our own. But the result is the same: a narrowing of the conversation, a hardening of the lines, and a stifling of the very freedoms we claim to fight for.

What It Means to Be a Progressive Fighting Both

Being a progressive means believing in progress—not just for the world, but for ourselves. It means holding ourselves to the same standards we hold everyone else to. It means rejecting authoritarianism in all its forms, no matter where it comes from or how well-intentioned it might seem.

Fighting authoritarianism on the right is easy. It’s the enemy in plain sight, the threat we’ve been warned about for generations. But fighting it on the left? That’s harder. It means calling out our friends, our allies, and ourselves. It means admitting that progressivism can go wrong, that good intentions aren’t always enough, and that freedom means letting people say things we don’t want to hear.

To be a progressive fighting authoritarianism means embracing complexity. It means recognizing that the world isn’t black and white, that no one has a monopoly on truth, and that progress requires a willingness to listen, to compromise, and to let people make mistakes.

It means rejecting fear as a political tool—on both sides. It means refusing to play the game of us versus them, even when it’s tempting, even when it feels like the easier path.

And above all, it means believing in the power of people. Not just the people who agree with us, not just the people who look like us, but all people. Because progress isn’t about winning—it’s about creating a world where everyone can thrive.

Authoritarianism, whether it comes from the right or the left, is the antithesis of that vision. And if we’re serious about being progressives, then fighting it has to start with us.