I'd suggest you fixate just a bit less on just the media frenzy around the American example of Trump and his grab bag of incompetent nodding clowns in congress and cabinet for examples of authoritarianism in action. My comment was intended more broadly, because the problem is indeed broader.
There's no shortage of authoritarian governments all over the world, many of which use exactly the guise of collective purpose or some other similar nonsense to justify their destructive, repressive activities..
Well, of course they have to, it's kind of hard to run a regime that murders and tortures and robs people without, you know, at least pretending that you're doing it for their own good.
They also use 'upholding the law' as a common excuse, but that hardly results in "the guise of having laws or some other similar nonsense is an entry point to authoritarianism' becoming a reasonable thing to say.
There's no shortage of authoritarian governments all over the world, many of which use exactly the guise of collective purpose or some other similar nonsense to justify their destructive, repressive activities..