1 week Ago
By Jim Mittelman In January, I was stunned by the rise to power of a would-be dictator as president. This coup occurred in a spiral of political violence: an insurgency, assassination attempts and belligerent rhetoric. The year was 1971.
General Idi Amin unseated Uganda’s civilian president, Milton Obote. On the night of the coup, I was awakened by a knock on my door. Looking through the peephole, I saw a government vehicle and the minister of labor, who said, “Sir, may I take refuge in your flat?” Studying and teaching then at the country’s national university, I am familiar with what led to the coup and its consequences.
If you want to understand regime change, the eerie parallels between the 1971 coup in Kampala and the 2025 coup in Washington, D.C., offer a salient lesson.
The congruence is akin to Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” a story about social injustice in Paris and London. This novel explores the implications of class disparities, inequality, unchecked power and a cycle of violence. The coups in Kampala and Washington are emblematic of these same themes.
Uganda’s strongman sought to consolidate power in a shocking pattern of behavior like what happened just over a half-century later in Washington. Reminiscent of Amin, Trump told the American people that he would become a dictator on day one of his second presidency. Both leaders’ public appearances demonstrate a poor command of English (a national language in Uganda), limited vocabulary and an apparent lack of reading.
While their style of leadership is erratic, the main efforts are to muzzle the media, attack the judiciary, rule by executive decree, slam universities and stoke fear. Amin and Trump created enemies to bind the dominant, in-group together. While Amin scapegoated and expelled both citizen and non-citizen Asians from Uganda, Trump has called for mass deportations of immigrants and banning birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents.
To shore up power, they purged the ranks of non-loyalists and installed their acolytes, rewarding Amin’s Praetorian Guard and Trump’s oligarchs. In each case, the Israeli issue loomed large. Initially, Israel supplied arms to Amin’s military.
But in 1976, Palestinian and German commandos hijacked an international civilian flight and, with Amin’s countenance, diverted it to Entebbe, Uganda. Israel subsequently intervened and rescued the hostages. So, too, Amin and Trump alike were candid about invoking extra-constitutional, anti-democratic measures.
As Trump put it: “He who saves his Country does not violate any law.” As a candidate for a second term of office, Trump aimed to restrain free expression and declared: “I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met. They’re terrible.
” Continuing, he railed: “I’m going to open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.” Of course, the two coups differ in certain respects. The one was military-led; the other, a billionaire coup.
Whereas Amin’s intervention in politics was an act of brute force, Trump’s putsch took advantage of technological advancements and funding from the richest person in the world, South African-born Elon Musk. Abetted by algorithms and artificial intelligence, Trumpists have used social media and infiltrated the inner recesses of the mind, the educational sphere and popular culture (for example, by taking charge of the Kennedy Center). Since Amin aimed to perpetuate his rule indefinitely, it was left to stark resistance from grassroots opponents, Ugandan exiles, and neighboring Tanzanian troops provoked by Amin’s attempt to seize a slice of their territory to depose his regime.
Similarly, Trump says that notwithstanding constitutional provisions, he is considering staying in office beyond two terms. This bears the markings of a self-coup in which an elected head of state becomes a king — the very tyranny that the founding fathers wanted to avoid. The uncomfortable lesson lies in the drift from democracy to semi-democracy and autocracy.
A failure to recognize this slide would be tragic. The haunting question is, will Trump’s denouement mirror the type of deadly turbulence that unseated Amin? Or before it’s too late, will Americans establish a national movement to resist rising authoritarianism, leading to a peaceful and lawful transfer of power? Jim Mittelman, a Boulder resident and Camera columnist, is an educator, activist, and author. His newest book is titled “Runaway Capitalism: The Greatest Pandemic” (due out in early 2026).
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