Appendix B: Scholarly Warning Signs Frameworks
This appendix supports the main analysis: When Constitutional Guardrails Fail
1. Gregory Stanton’s Ten Stages of Genocide
1.1 Background and Credentials
Claim: Gregory Stanton developed the Ten Stages framework as a tool for genocide prevention based on study of the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, and Cambodian Genocide.
Evidence: Dr. Gregory H. Stanton is the founding president of Genocide Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to genocide prevention. He first presented the model at Warren Wilson College in 1987, then as a briefing paper “The Eight Stages of Genocide” at the U.S. State Department in 1996. He served as the drafter of UN Security Council Resolution 1366. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked him to review U.S. policy failures in Rwanda.
Source: Genocide Watch; Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, October 2023
1.2 The Ten Stages Defined
Stanton: “Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages occur simultaneously.”
Stage 1: Classification
Definition: Division of people into “us” and “them” based on ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality.
Historical Example: German vs. Jew; Hutu vs. Tutsi.
Prevention: Develop universalistic institutions that transcend divisions.
Stage 2: Symbolization
Definition: Names or symbols are assigned to classifications, identifying members of groups.
Historical Example: Yellow stars for Jews; blue scarves for Eastern Zone residents in Cambodia.
Prevention: Ban hate symbols and hate speech.
Stage 3: Discrimination
Definition: Dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny rights of other groups.
Historical Example: Nuremberg Laws denying Jews German citizenship (1935).
Stanton’s Note: “Removal or denial of a group’s citizenship is a legal way to deny the group’s civil and human rights. The first step toward the genocide of Jews and Roma in Nazi Germany were the laws to strip them of their German citizenship.”
Stage 4: Dehumanization
Definition: Target group equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases.
Historical Example: Jews called “rats”; Tutsis called “cockroaches” (inyenzi).
Stanton’s Note: “Dehumanization makes murder without guilt possible for perpetrators, because they are convinced they are purifying society.”
Stage 5: Organization
Definition: Genocide is always organized, often by the state, using militias or special army units.
Prevention: Outlaw militia membership; enforce arms embargoes.
Stage 6: Polarization
Definition: Extremists drive groups apart. Hate groups broadcast propaganda. Laws forbid intermarriage or social interaction.
Critical Indicator: “Moderates from the perpetrators’ own group are most able to stop genocide, so are the first to be arrested and killed.”
Stage 7: Preparation
Definition: National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution.” They use euphemisms like “ethnic cleansing” or “counter-terrorism.”
Stanton’s Note: “Leaders often claim that ‘if we don’t kill them, they will kill us.‘”
Stage 8: Persecution
Definition: Victims are identified, isolated, and subjected to harassment, displacement, or abuse.
Actions Include: Segregation, deportation, forced displacement, forced sterilization, torture, extrajudicial killings.
Stage 9: Extermination
Definition: Mass killing begins. Called “extermination” because perpetrators do not consider victims fully human.
Stanton’s Note: “Mass rape is used as a means to genetically alter and destroy the victim group.”
Stage 10: Denial
Definition: Perpetrators deny crimes, destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses, blame victims.
Stanton’s Note: “Denial is the tenth stage that always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres.”
“The main lesson is that preventive action must be done as soon as you know genocide is coming. Many people talk about early warning. But it has to be really early because it is too late once genocide is already underway.”
— Dr. Gregory Stanton, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, October 2023
2. Levitsky & Ziblatt’s Authoritarian Warning Signs
2.1 Background and Credentials
Claim: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are Harvard political scientists whose research focuses on democratic breakdown and authoritarianism.
Evidence: Levitsky specializes in Latin America; Ziblatt specializes in European democracy. Their 2018 book “How Democracies Die” became a New York Times bestseller and won the Goldsmith Book Prize.
Source: Harvard Department of Government; Crown Publishing
2.2 Core Thesis
“Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”
2.3 The Four Behavioral Warning Signs
Based on study of democratic breakdown globally, Levitsky and Ziblatt identify four key indicators of authoritarian behavior:
Warning Sign 1: Rejection of Democratic Rules
Definition: Rejection of (or weak commitment to) the democratic rules of the game, in words or action.
Indicators:
- Attempts to undermine electoral legitimacy
- Endorsement of extralegal means to gain power
- Willingness to undermine checks and balances
- Attempts to change constitutional rules to entrench power
Warning Sign 2: Denial of Opponent Legitimacy
Definition: Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents—treating rivals as enemies rather than legitimate competitors.
Indicators:
- Describing opponents as existential threats to national security
- Baselessly accusing opponents of treason or undermining the nation
- Treating opposition as criminals rather than political adversaries
Warning Sign 3: Toleration or Encouragement of Violence
Definition: Toleration or encouragement of violence against political opponents or marginalized groups.
Indicators:
- Ties to armed militias or paramilitary forces
- Encouraging supporters to engage in violence
- Refusal to unambiguously condemn political violence
- Praising or rehabilitating violent actors
Warning Sign 4: Readiness to Curtail Civil Liberties
Definition: Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media.
Indicators:
- Threatening to take legal action against critics
- Threatening to restrict civil liberties or protests
- Praising repressive measures in other countries
- Attacking the press as “enemies of the people”
2.4 December 2025 Update
Claim: Levitsky and Ziblatt published updated analysis in December 2025 concluding that democratic backsliding in the United States is no longer speculative but documented.
Evidence: Their Foreign Affairs article “The Price of American Authoritarianism” stated: “Reversing the United States’ slide into authoritarianism will require democracy’s defenders to recognize the twin dangers of complacency and fatalism. On the one hand, underestimating the threat… enables authoritarianism by encouraging inaction. On the other hand, overestimating the impact… discourages the citizen actions required to defeat” it.
Source: Foreign Affairs, December 2025; Harvard Department of Government announcement
3. Scholarly Guidance on Using These Frameworks
3.1 Holocaust Scholars’ Position
Claim: Over 400 Holocaust scholars signed an open letter arguing that comparisons to early-stage Nazi practices can serve educational purposes while cautioning against equation with the Holocaust’s genocidal outcomes.
Evidence: In July 2019, historians including Omer Bartov, Doris Bergen, and Timothy Snyder published an open letter in the New York Review of Books urging the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to retract its statement “unequivocally reject[ing] efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events.” The scholars argued this position was “far removed from mainstream scholarship” and would make “learning from the past almost impossible.”
Source: New York Review of Books, July 1, 2019; The Hill, July 2019
3.2 Distinction: Comparison vs. Equation
Claim: Scholars distinguish between comparison (analyzing similarities and differences) and equation (claiming events are identical).
Evidence: Holocaust historian Waitman Wade Beorn: “Genocides—and dictatorships—do not spring into existence” but begin with “authoritarianism, racism, ethnic myths and dehumanizing language. This is where Holocaust comparisons can and should be made.” Daniel H. Magilow, co-editor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, concluded: “Comparing ICE to the Gestapo is less a historical judgment than a reflection of modern anxiety… Current events do not have to mirror historical ones precisely or in severity to benefit from historical reflection.”
Source: The Conversation, January 2025; Newsweek, June 2019
3.3 Stanton’s Warning on Timing
"The main lesson is that preventive action must be done as soon as you know genocide is coming. Many people talk about early warning. But it has to be really early because it is too late once genocide is already underway. So genocide prevention must start when the processes that lead to genocide begin."
— Dr. Gregory Stanton
Note: Appendix C applies these frameworks to documented events from December 2025 through January 2026.