The Authoritarian Moment

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent is a 2021 political book by American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. It was published by Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, on July 27, 2021.^[1] The publisher described the book as asking how far Americans would go to make others "fall in line" and marketed it as a critique of institutional pressure against dissent.^[2]

In the book, Shapiro argues that authoritarian habits in the United States are expressed less through formal dictatorship than through cultural and institutional pressure, including deplatforming, professional punishment, compelled speech, school and workplace disputes, and the use of social or institutional power to enforce contested political claims.

The book appeared on Publishers Weekly hardcover nonfiction bestseller tracking in August and September 2021; the listing recorded Broadside Books as publisher, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-300182-4, and an initial rank of number 2 on August 9, 2021.^[3] The Authoritarian Moment was also promoted by HarperCollins as a New York Times bestseller.^[4]

In the Claremont Review of Books, Noah M. Peterson wrote that the book gave an "insightful account" of the cultural side of left institutional dominance but argued that Shapiro underplayed the legal and governmental conditions behind it.^[5] In New York magazine, Jonathan Chait criticized the book as narrowly focused on the left and insufficiently attentive to authoritarian tendencies on the right after Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.^[6]