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I disagree, I think there is a difference in kind between authoritarian and totalitarian governments, because they have different strategies of repression.
The ideal authoritarian regime has an ideal authoritarian citizen. One who is disinterested in politics, disinterested in ideology, disinterested in who rules them, and simply lives a normal, private life as a disengaged citizen. While those close to the regime, such as the military and bureaucracy, need to be kept specifically loyal, the wider public only needs to be kept not actively disloyal. They can even hate the regime if they want, as long as they don't actively threaten it.
The ideal totalitarian regime, however, has a different ideal totalitarian citizen. One who is actively interested in politics, ideology, and who rules them, all aligning with the current regime. It is not enough for you to be disinterested. You need to support the party. You need to actively promote it's beliefs. You need to hang the propaganda posters inside your home. And, eventually, you need to rearrange your entire private life in service to the regime and whatever ideals it believes in.
Republican Rome had very weak democratic institutions because the narrow franchise of the Centuriate had more power than the broader franchises of the Tribune of the Plebs. There is no equivalent to this stratification in the US. It's never going to be a good analogue for the US backsliding because the starting points are so dramatically different.
As for the other examples.
Tsarist Russia was heavily authoritarian, and the Bolsheviks made it totalitarian. It was no longer enough to be a disinterested peasant doing your own thing.
The German Empire was a hybrid regime, authoritarian compared to France or the UK but not as authoritarian as Russia. The Nazis also went totalitarian. So there was democratic backsliding here (or really, more of a yoyo, as it went down during WWI as the country became a de facto military dictatorship, up during the "Golden Twenties", then down again before diving off a cliff).
Japan is also an example worth listing, with the Taisho Democracy being undone mostly by the May 15 incident.
I agree this is important. For example, german and italian (and as far as I can tell, british) fascism were totalitarian, the hispanic and the austrian intermediary fascism were authoritarian. I disagree with your assesment of Soviet Russia as totalitarian, they never had the state capacity to do that. Unless youre counting land collectivisation per se, most peasants didnt have to actively participate. As far as I know, only the east german communism really was totalitarian.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident
Crazy.
Man, I kinda want an alt-historical fiction movie made out of this, where Charlie Chaplin has to outrun a bunch of assassins.
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Nitpick, this can be translated as 'if we talk (for a while), you'll understand'. It's not necessarily super-profound. It's basically just "listen to me, idiots!" to which the reply is "too late". This is why translating is hard.
(The absolutely literal meaning is "if speak, understand". Everything else is context.)
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...That will stick with me for a while.
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