Why We Don’t Say “Authoritarian” Anymore

By Prince Kapone | Weaponized Information | April 25, 2025

Let me just get to it ya’ll:
At Weaponized Information, we don’t use the word “authoritarian.” Not anymore.

Yeah, we’ve slipped up in the past. We’ve used it here and there the way the imperialists trained us to—like it just means dictatorship, repression, some cold boot on the neck of the people. But we’ve sat with it, studied its roots, traced its usage, and dug into its function. And now we see it for what it really is:

• A colonial insult.
• An ideological trap.
• A word that doesn’t explain power—it disguises it.

See, authoritarian comes from the word author. The author writes the story. Controls the plot. Names the hero. Buries the villain. That’s what all this is really about.
So when the West calls someone “authoritarian,” what they really mean is:
“How dare you try to write your own story?”
“How dare you take the pen out of our hands?”

They’ve spent five hundred years scripting the world. Europe as the protagonist. America as the redeemer. Capitalism as salvation. And everyone else? Just background characters or barbarians.
But the moment a people rise up and start to author their own history—like Cuba did, like Burkina Faso did under Sankara, like Venezuela did under Chávez—they get branded “authoritarian.” It doesn’t matter if they feed their people, end illiteracy, build free clinics, or nationalize resources for the common good. It doesn’t matter if they hold elections or write constitutions. If they write the story without Washington’s approval, the word comes down like a gavel.

Authoritarian.

Case closed. Sanction them. Bomb them. Overthrow them.
Bring in the “freedom” contractors and the IMF.

Let’s keep it 100:
This has never been about freedom.
If freedom were the measure, the U.S. itself would’ve been declared a rogue regime a long time ago.
This is the country that funds genocide, locks up millions, assassinates presidents, spies on the planet, and sells democracy like it’s a goddam Big Mac.
But you’ll never hear them called authoritarian. Why?
Because they write the dictionary. They define the terms.
They get to be the authors.

And let’s be honest with ourselves—we’ve used their words before.
We fell for the trick. We slipped the word “authoritarian” into our own writing, thinking we were being clear, or critical, or precise. But we weren’t. We were repeating the enemy’s lines.
That’s on us.
This is our self-criticism.
And this is our break from that language.

From now on, we speak plainly:
Every state is a dictatorship of a class.
The U.S. is a dictatorship of billionaires.
Israel is a dictatorship of settler colonialism.
China is a dictatorship of the Party—but one that built public housing, lifted 800 million out of poverty, and defied imperialist domination.
Cuba is a dictatorship of the people, where doctors are exported and Wall Street is kept the hell out.
So what do we look like, comparing those contradictions with the same damn brush?

We don’t care if the West calls it “authoritarian.”
We ask:

• Whose side is it on?
• Who eats? Who learns? Who owns? Who decides?

That’s the only measure that matters.

Let the NGOs cry. Let the think tanks write reports. Let the white liberals panic over “democracy in decline.”
We’re not buying it.

Because the only real democracy is one where the people author their own future.
Call it what you want.
We call it liberation.