Left's 'No Kings' Slogan Masks New Tyrants, Esolen Asserts
Eight million marched under 'No Kings' banners — but Anthony Esolen argues the left hasn't abolished sovereignty. It has merely redistributed it across millions of petty tyrants.
Eight million Americans filled city squares and state capitol steps on March 28, 2026, waving "No Kings" banners in what some sources called the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Anthony Esolen has a pointed question for every one of them: who is actually ruling you right now?
The protests, headlined by Bruce Springsteen and Bernie Sanders at Minnesota's State Capitol, marked the crescendo of a movement that began last June with 4 to 6 million attendees. Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg framed it as "a massive cross-movement push against authoritarianism." Esolen's new essay, published in American Greatness, frames it as something else entirely.
Esolen declares the progressive left that chants "no kings" has produced millions of petty tyrants embedded across America's institutions. The left opposes kings only when the king is not them — that, he argues, is the central contradiction tearing through the movement's anti-authoritarian branding.
The essay catalogs the machinery of that contradiction: HR departments policing speech, NGO activists directing taxpayer funds, algorithmic censors enforcing ideological conformity, gender ideologues operating inside public schools, and administrators hiding curricula from parents. Esolen asserts these interlocking institutions compose a "sprawling managerial state that polices speech, compels participation in ideological rituals, and subordinates the family to the collective." It is monarchy without a throne.
Congressional testimony backs his case. Scott Walter of the Capital Research Center told the House Oversight Committee in June 2025 that more than 35,000 NGOs receive the majority of their funding from government, not citizens. "Many NGOs serve the Big Government political agenda that fights to centralize power in Washington for the benefit of the Left's preferred political party," Walter stated. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) went further, calling these organizations "the fifth branch of government" alongside what she termed the permanent bureaucracy.
Esolen reaches for the starkest evidence of where this ideological climate leads. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, during an outdoor campus debate. Tyler James Robinson, 22, faces aggravated murder charges, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox described Robinson as "a very normal young man" who later developed a "leftist ideology" after becoming increasingly radicalized online. The cartridge casings recovered at the scene bore inscriptions drawn from internet culture — what Cox called "the memeification that is happening in our society today." City Journal logged more than 63,000 posts celebrating Kirk's death. Democratic strategist Julian Epstein told Fox News, "The celebration of Kirk's death on the far left, both on and offline, is far too common, and not sufficiently denounced."
No confirmed organizational ties link Robinson to left-wing groups. But Cox's assessment places the killing within a broader pattern of left-wing radicalization that Esolen's essay documents at length. The case, in Esolen's telling, is what happens when a political movement trains its adherents to treat opponents as enemies.
From there, Esolen moves to policy. The estate tax — what he calls the death tax — forces family businesses to liquidate assets or take on debt simply to satisfy the government's claim on inherited wealth, severing the intergenerational ties that have built American prosperity for generations. Transgender ideology in schools draws equally sharp criticism: in California, districts have refused to provide syllabi to parents, blocking families from grasping what their children face in the classroom each day.
Green energy spending illustrates the same unaccountable power. Daniel Turner of Power the Future testified to Congress that $27 billion in green energy grants were steered by a single unelected EPA staffer — with $5 billion directed to that staffer's former employer. No king signed the order. No one voted on the outcome.
Esolen invokes Moloch, Marx, Baal, Mao, and what he calls "Jabba the State" as the actual sovereigns the left has installed in place of the monarchs it claims to oppose. Power dispersed across institutions, he argues, is still power — just harder to see and harder to hold accountable. HR departments exemplify this distributed tyranny. Companies have fired workers for off-duty social media posts contradicting progressive orthodoxy, while diversity officers conduct mandatory training sessions that compel ideological conformity. Google terminated employees who questioned company diversity policies; Microsoft removed workers for private emails expressing conservative views on gender.
The Trump administration has moved against several of the specific mechanisms Esolen criticizes. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission revoked workplace guidance on gender identity in January 2026. The Office of Personnel Management ordered a government-wide purge of "gender ideology" from contracts and emails in January 2025. These actions directly challenge the infrastructure Esolen's essay maps — and lend his argument a present-tense urgency the "No Kings" marchers may not welcome.
Hunter Dunn of the 50501 Movement, which helped organize the March 28 protests, told The Guardian the slogan represents "a direct repudiation of this administration, of this regime, of its unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and frankly profane actions." The movement's conviction is genuine. Its self-awareness is another matter.
When progressives chant "no kings" while building institutions that police speech and compel ideological participation, their rhetoric contradicts their actual governance. The ideological battle continues as Esolen's essay arms critics with a philosophical framework for what they see as the movement's deep authoritarian structure.
Esolen's most damning charge lands in his conclusion: the progressive left has not rejected sovereignty — it has redistributed it across millions of petty tyrants. This distributed monarchy operates invisibly, through HR departments, school administrators, NGO activists, and algorithmic censors. The "No Kings" slogan does not oppose authority. It masks a new authoritarian project that enforces ideological conformity while denying it holds any power at all. The king is dead. Meet the new kings.