Tyranny doesn’t happen by accident. What is the method—tested, shared, copied, and repeated? Netflix’s series How to Become a Tyrant makes a bold and terrifying claim: authoritarians don’t just rise, they study. They follow a formula. And whether it’s Hitler in Germany, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or Kim Il Sung in North Korea, the steps are strikingly similar.

The series outlines the tyrant’s playbook—a chilling guide to gaining and maintaining unchecked power. But here’s the catch: you don’t have to be halfway across the globe to see the steps unfolding. You can see them right here, in today’s United States. And once you recognize the playbook, inaction is no longer an option. Because the moment patriots stop talking about the government is the moment the government stops working for the people—and starts working against them.

History teaches us that tyranny is never accidental—it follows a deliberate script. These are the steps to becoming a tyrant:

Step One: Seize Power

Tyrants often come to power in democratic clothing. They promise to fix a broken system, to restore greatness, to clean up corruption. But once elected, they immediately begin rewriting the rules to make power permanent. Think emergency powers, manipulated elections, and legal backflips to neutralize rivals. Sound familiar?

Donald Trump’s terms are marked by relentless efforts to consolidate power, erode norms, and delegitimize oversight—from ignoring congressional subpoenas to attempting to discredit and overturn election results. His second term agenda, outlined by allies in Project 2025, is even more aggressive: dismantling federal agencies, gutting civil service protections, and turning the machinery of government into a partisan weapon.

And now, the Supreme Court has enabled this further by allowing him to shut down the U.S. Department of Education—while the decision is still being litigated in federal court. That’s not democracy. That’s decree.

Step Two: Crush Rivals

Once power is seized, the next step is removing obstacles: critics, journalists, judges, labor unions, intellectuals, and other dissenters. In How to Become a Tyrant, we see tyrants jailing political opponents, banning media, and eliminating rivals through both legal and illegal means.

Trump’s playbook has already flirted with this. He is using the Department of Justice to investigate political opponents, threatened and banned journalists, while openly fantasized in public about jailing his adversaries. His loyalists in statehouses and school boards have banned books, censored curriculum, and targeted educators who dare speak the truth about race, gender, or American history.

And as the courts buckle to political pressure, there are fewer and fewer guardrails left. When Trump loyalists talk about “cleaning house” or using “military tribunals” for perceived enemies, they aren’t joking. They’re reading directly from the tyrant’s guide. Believe people when they tell you things.

Step Three: Reign Through Terror

Tyrants don’t rely on consensus. Throughout history relied on fear and scapegoating. Fear and scapegoating of immigrants, protestors, crime, fear of “the other.” They use fear to justify sweeping crackdowns, emergency powers, surveillance, and the silencing of dissent. It’s the historical playbook.

Consider ICE. Trump is expanding the force by 10,000 additional agents—an unmistakable move from the tyrant’s playbook. ICE agents now wear military-style uniforms (carrying assault rifles and wearing night vision) echoing a classic tactic used by authoritarian regimes to blur the line between civilian law enforcement and military power. It’s increasingly clear that this expansion isn’t about immigration enforcement—it’s about building a domestic army. One that answers to him, not to the people.

If you are paying attention, ICE is already operating in the shadows and publicly disappearing and arresting citizens and non-citizens. Under Trump’s first term, families were separated, children were caged, raids took place at schools and hospitals, and undocumented immigrants were treated as enemy combatants. Now imagine what a 10,000-strong enforcement wing, emboldened and politicized, could do when turned against opponents in “collaboration” with the national guard (e.g. political protestors or racial justice activists).

In every episode of How to Become a Tyrant, the leader builds their own force—a parallel military or secret police that doesn’t answer to the people. Hitler had the SS. Saddam had the Republican Guard. Trump now will have a 10,000 member ICE force.

Step Four: Control Truth

In How to Become a Tyrant, truth is the first casualty. Tyrants manipulate the media, rewrite history, and turn facts into opinions. Education becomes a weapon of indoctrination. Dissent becomes punishable or unpatriotic or illegal or treason. Sound familiar again?

In recent years, we’ve seen coordinated campaigns to ban books about racism, censor school curricula, eliminate DEI programs, and fire professors who speak out. The College Board was forced to water down its AP African American Studies course. State legislators have criminalized discussions of systemic racism and gender identity threatened education funding. Meanwhile, right-wing influencers label student protestors “terrorists,” and right-wing media spreads disinformation at industrial scale.

Even the idea of “truth” is being eroded—replaced by what tyrants call “alternative facts.” It’s no accident that educational institutions and public intellectuals are now in the crosshairs and their federal funding being threatened (e.g. Harvard). As How to Become a Tyrant reminds us, whoever controls the narrative controls the future. And if you destroy the Department of Education—while slashing university budgets and gagging teachers—you don’t just control the narrative. You write it.

Step Five: Create a New Society

Tyrants don’t just rule. They remake society in their image. They change the laws, politicize the courts, purge institutions, and eliminate protections for the vulnerable. They redraw the social contract—and remove anyone who doesn’t fit. We are watching this unfold in real time. The plan to eliminate the Department of Education is not a policy proposal. It’s a fundamental reshaping of public life.

What comes after? An explosion of unregulated charter schools. A flood of taxpayer-funded vouchers to religious academies (e.g.the Chilean dictator Pinochet executed this education playbook and his opponents simultaneously). State-sanctioned textbooks that erase slavery and civil rights. Public universities gutted. Faculty speech criminalized. Public service loan forgiveness repealed. This isn’t hypothetical. It’s the precise agenda laid out in Trump-aligned playbooks like Project 2025 and Heritage Foundation strategy documents.

This is the authoritarian version of “education reform.” Not to make things better, but to consolidate control, power, and resources. To eliminate federal protections. To punish those who speak out. To replace education with indoctrination while decrying indoctrination.

Step Six: Rule Forever

Once the system has been reshaped, the final step is to ensure permanence. In How to Become a Tyrant, rulers either hand off power to their children or design legal systems so tightly wound around themselves that no rival can rise. Trump has already floated this idea—joking (not joking) about serving a third term, invoking “president for life” models, and building a loyalist bench from local school boards to the U.S. Senate. His Supreme Court appointments alone have already reshaped generations of jurisprudence. Now, with the Court allowing him to dismantle federal agencies without full legal review, that permanence looks dangerously plausible. We’re not just facing another election cycle. We’re facing an attempt to institutionalize authoritarianism. And as the series reminds us: by the time the tyrant starts joking about never leaving office, it may be too late to laugh.

The Cost of Silence

So why does talking about the step to tyranny matter? Because the playbook doesn’t begin with jackboots in the streets. It begins with complacency. With normalized lawlessness. With institutions that look the other way. With citizens who shrug and say, “That could never happen here.” Tyranny doesn’t arrive with fireworks. It arrives with silence. When educators are fired and no one protests. When ICE raids schools and no one reports on it anymore. When the Supreme Court undermines its own authority and no one notices. How to Become a Tyrant isn’t just a documentary series. It’s a warning. The steps are known. The pattern is clear. And the question is simple: Are we paying attention? Because if we’re not, the next chapter might already be writing itself.