You're right that most people in this thread are likely native english speakers, but that just means that we can understand that the weird narrow read of the words "authoritarian regime" is silly and, based on other comments you've made, very likely just you being purposely obtuse for partisan reasons.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to respond to me on multiple threads. As mentioned elsewhere, I am not the source of the common meaning of the term, I do not edit the encyclopaedia, the newspapers, take the photos or anything else you will see on the front page of Google when you search for “authoritarian regime”.
You know what an authoritarian regime commonly means, and you know what you were trying to do, and you just don’t like being called on it. Someone is indeed using HN for partisan advocacy and we both know it’s you.
> I am not the source of the common meaning of the term,
The accuracy of your claim regarding common meaning is being disputed. You might notice that well over half of the quote you pasted from Britannica is referring to totalitarian, not authoritarian, regimes.
Nowhere does it say anything like "the term authoritarian regime is commonly taken to imply".
As mentioned, the most notable examples all conform to the common definition as does every other result on the front page of Google for the term. You are welcome to dispute all of them if you want to, but I’m not going to spend time on it.
You are using hyperbole at best and simply lying at worst and you know this. You can jump on any English language search engine, discover what the common meaning of the term ‘authoritarian regime’ is and reflect which behaviour you’re involved in.
Bing produces a very nice summary for the term which also doesn’t describe the US government. You can read that and argue with it if you like.
I don't think the way you're approaching this is in keeping with HN guidelines.
You seem to have jumped straight from "everyone agrees with my view" to "the people who disagree with me are acting in bad faith", skipping the much more likely "other people hold views that differ from my own".
As a native English speaker who lives in the US I don't need to check a search engine to understand the common meaning of the term. Sometimes people have different impressions of these things. About the only thing you could attempt to argue is that I'm in the extreme minority. I don't think you'd get very far with that though because it's unlikely that you have the evidence to back up such a claim.
For all your apparent outrage the Oxford example that you cited is the closest you've come to presenting valid evidence in support of your position. However if you examine the paragraph just above your quote you will see that it is rather academic in nature. Having glanced at it I can't say that the description presented matches what I encounter in common usage by laymen. (I include myself in that category. I am by no means a political scientist or remotely well studied.)
More generally, I think you've picked a fundamentally unwinnable position here. All it takes for me to be correct (and you to be demonstrably in the wrong) is for people in the area where I live to commonly use the terminology in the way I'm describing. And indeed they do, because I'm in a fairly far left part of the country.
Now you can certainly object that the population at large where I live is misusing the term. But without a central governing body for the language that's going to be extremely difficult to argue. Either way it won't change common usage here. It's simply the difference between "commonly used in that manner" versus "commonly used in that manner, incorrectly".
Because you're responding about different things in different threads, so I'm responding to those responses.
You're just wrong about the common meaning of the term, and you seem to think that just asserting the same thing over and over is somehow going to make you right about it, but it won't. And I'll keep pointing out that you're wrong about it as long as you keep repeating the same thing.
I'm not being partisan. You're not being partisan in this thread either, you're just repeating this silly assertion about what "authoritarian regime" means. So I'm continuing to rebut that.
