How to build a police state

One afternoon last year, Donald Trump welcomed “a friend” to the White House – El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, the world’s most popular authoritarian. “I knew him as a very young man,” the US president said before the cameras. “He’s done a fantastic job. Mr President, it’s an honor to have you.” Since March 2022, when gangs in El Salvador murdered 87 people over a weekend, Bukele has maintained a state of emergency in which key civil liberties are suspended and 2% of the adult population has been jailed – about 100,000 people, at least half of whom are probably not…