Rob's Notes 39 - Regime
It’s a new year.
I grew up in South Africa in the 1980s, which is when I first heard the term “regime” used to refer to the then-Apartheid government. The term has a long history.
The word regime ultimately comes from the Latin regimen (“rule, guidance, government”), from regere (“to direct, rule”). English gets it through French régime. For a long time English writers didn’t cleanly distinguish regime (government/system) from regimen (rules for living/health), and you can still feel that older, general sense in phrases like exercise regime or workplace regime.
The French Revolution era was when régime became used for “a system of government” in English, initially via English use of “ancien régime” starting in 1794, defined as the political and social system of France before the Revolution. “Ancien régime” is already a label used from the perspective of overthrow and replacement. That association (“a system that deserved to be swept away”) is one early seed of why regime can sound morally loaded in English.
The term “regime” evolved from a neutral administrative descriptor into a word used to challenge a government’s legitimacy.
Starting in the 1920s, Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascist intellectuals themselves frequently used the term Il Regime Fascista. They did not want to be seen as just another “government” (which implies a temporary cabinet managing the state). They wanted to be seen as a “Regime”: a total, all-encompassing system that reorganized the economy, society, and private life. (1)
While Benito Mussolini originally embraced the word to boast about the “total” control of Italian Fascism, Western democracies later adopted it as a pejorative label to frame fascist and communist states as criminal or transient entities rather than lawful governments. This created a linguistic divide where allies were referred to as “administrations” or “governments,” while enemies were labeled “regimes” to imply they were temporary systems that needed to be changed.
South Africa’s Regime
In South Africa, this rhetoric became a central tactic for the ANC (African National Congress) and the United Nations, who refused to call the apartheid leadership a “government” because it did not represent the majority of the population. By the 1960s, the liberation movement made a conscious decision to stop referring to the state as the “South African Government.”
“Government” implies representation: In diplomatic terms, a “government” implies a body that represents its citizens. Since Black South Africans (the vast majority of the populace) were excluded from the vote, the ANC argued the state could not technically be a “government” of the people.
“Regime” implies occupation: By using “regime,” they framed the National Party not as legitimate leaders, but as a hostile, occupying force holding the country hostage.
Oliver Tambo, the ANC President in exile, was a master of this rhetoric. In his 1985 “Make South Africa Ungovernable” radio address, he deliberately alternated between calling them “the Pretoria regime” and “the enemy”. By branding it the “Pretoria regime,” the resistance emphasized that the state was an illegitimate, occupying force rather than a representative body. This distinction allowed the liberation movement to isolate the state apparatus as a criminal enterprise while preserving the dignity and identity of the South African country and its people.
Major reference sources routinely use regime for fascist system, which are archetypal cases of authoritarian/totalitarian rule, which is exactly where modern English regime has tended to land. But even when you try to use the term neutrally, regime can be useful because it often means something slightly different from “government”. Because a regime highlights not just “who is in office,” but the system: party control, suppression of opposition, coercive institutions, ideology, propaganda structures, etc.
When I heard the term “regime” growing up, I was hearing a refusal to obey; a linguistic tool that said: You may have the power, the army, and the police, but you do not have the right to rule.
“Regime” is now aptly being used in a number of places to refer to the Trump administration and a system that increasingly suppresses opposition and coerces corporations and institutions.(2)
In the last 12 months, corporate America has engaged in what the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and other critics describe as “anticipatory obedience,” rapidly realigning business practices to align with the new administration’s ideological demands. This corporate compliance extends beyond policy shifts to direct public signaling of loyalty by industry titans. Tech leaders who were previously adversarial to the “MAGA” movement have sought to reset relations, with executives from Amazon, Google, and Apple attending White House “innovation summits” and praising the administration’s deregulation of artificial intelligence and crypto markets. Media conglomerates too have faced accusations of “sanitizing” the regime.(3)
“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.” - V for Vendetta, Alan Moore
‘Rage bait’ was the 2025 Oxford word of the year. (4)
Perhaps ‘regime’ will be the word of 2026.
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Notes:
Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism - Teach Democracy
The Trump Regime Is Making Disasters Worse - The American Prospect
Trump Is Revealing Our Higher Ed Crisis - Academe Magazine