In a flurry of elections, some of the world’s leading democracies have been bow or directly embrace the extreme right authoritarian leaders, who have echoed each other by promising to clamp down on loose morals, open borders and power-hungry elites.
The voters in Italy last month elected a nationalist leader whose party proposes a reversal of the effects of globalization. In Brazil, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro cast doubt on the results of his re-election bid by speculating that the vote would be being manipulated against him in a conspiracy driven by the country’s elites. In the Philippines this year, voters elected the son of their former dictator Ferdinand Marcos as president, choosing to stick with strongman politics.
Although he is hardly a defender of democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin late last month delivered an address that would sound familiar—and, to many people, appealing—to the democracies of the United States and much of Europe. Putin criticized the expansive definitions of gender, calling the idea a “perversion”, part of a “complete denial of man”. [and an] overthrow of faith and traditional values” by the “Western elites”.
“The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations” that Russia aims to resist, Putin said in a speech that echoed the rhetoric of pro-Russian right-wing politicians in many democracies.
In the United States, former President Donald Trump has allegedly rejected it future election results, and most Republican candidates on the ballot this fall for top state and federal election offices have joined him in repudiating the result of the 2020 presidential election: an epidemic of electoral denial in the United States which historians and political scientists define as a central element in the drift of any country towards authoritarian rule.
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism heralded a new era of democratic governance and a vast expansion of world trade, this democratic wave has been replaced in many countries. by a tide of authoritarianism
The street demonstrations and passion for freedom of travel, trade, and speech that brought down the Soviet empire seemed to promise a great expansion of people’s power, and for a time, democracy broke out in most of the former satellite nations. · bed of the East block. . Similarly, the Arab Spring revolutions that began in 2010 raised the promise, but not a lasting reality, of democratization everywhere. the Middle East.
Recent years have caused a strong backlash in many parts of the world, as globalization, political polarization, the rise of social media and the collapse of trust in mainstream institutions have left many people feeling betrayed. by their governments, torn from their careers and alone. in their communities, according to historians, political scientists and sociologists who have studied these changes in the world’s economies and governments.
The result has been a similar search for nationalist solutions in country after country and a growing bond between far-right autocrats in those places. For example, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban and Italy’s likely new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, have spoken to acclaim at meetings of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, a group that has helped push Trump’s move in the United States.
“The trend we’re seeing reflects a disillusionment around the world that the democratic process fails to produce effective and charismatic leaders,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College. “In country after country, the idea is spreading that we need strong leaders who get things done. And it’s not just in politics: we see the valorization of tech CEOs like Elon Musk as problem solvers who get the job done.”
In the United States, if there’s one thing President Biden and Trump agree on, it’s the existence of what Biden calls “a battle for the soul of this nation.” The two men frame the nature of this fight very differently. For Biden, the threat is authoritarianism; for Trump, it’s socialism and the country’s internal ills as “a failed nation.” But the polarization represented by the two politicians is a corrosive fact, reflecting the divisions that are leading other major democracies around the world to embrace populist and right-wing leaders who promise a return to order, traditional values and a focus on the frustrations of working people.
Trump’s definition of American greatness has long included open admiration for strongmen around the world. After China’s communist regime cracked down on pro-democracy student protests in 1989, Trump praised the Beijing government, saying, “This shows you the power of force.” During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said he admired how Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein killed terrorists. “They weren’t read their rights,” he said. “They were a terrorist – it was over.”
At a rally in Georgia this year, Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s control of his people: “He runs 1.5 billion people with an iron fist. Yeah, I think he’s smart.” Also this year, Trump called Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine “genius” and said the Russian autocrat is “a tough cookie, he’s got a lot of charm and a lot of pride, and he loves his country.” .
More Republicans are embracing the kind of strongman rhetoric that worked so well for Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), for example, has changed the “authoritarian” label to evil countries that have long been well regarded as good governments. He has declared that Canada and Australia are under the thumb of “authoritarian government” because of their efforts to limit the spread of covid-19, and proposed to create a state military force “unencumbered by the federal government” to manage local. emergencies, as well as a state law enforcement agency tasked with protecting “election integrity.”
It is no coincidence that populist leaders, many from business or non-political backgrounds, are on the rise in many countries at the same time. “In each of these countries, far-right movements have tapped into resentments that globalization made much more intense,” said Kathleen Frydl, a historian at Johns Hopkins University who studies conservative institutions. “Each country has its own reasons why authoritarianism becomes attractive, its own inequalities or racial tensions. But there is validation in all these countries, where far-right leaders can point to Putin as a model of authority and control.”
What authoritarian regimes have in common is their roots in what Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan minister who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, calls the three Ps: populism, polarization and post-truth.
Populist leaders “use ‘divide and conquer’ to explain everything,” Naím said. “Through identity politics, parties become like sports clubs, polarizing people into hard and fixed camps. And with the rise of social media, anything goes and people don’t know who to believe, which brings us into the post-truth era.”
At a time when governments around the world are finding it “devilishly difficult to deliver what citizens think they deserve,” the three Ps translate into a longing for the order promised by strongmen, Naím said, the author of “The Revenge of Power”.
In the United States, trust in government, business, the media, and other important institutions has been declining for decades. A widespread sense of insecurity spread among many Americans after the 9/11 attacks, the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic upheaval and collapse of local communities as the Internet nationalized culture. All of this led the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance to conclude that the United States has fallen into “democratic regression.”
Putin has been more than happy to encourage the insecurities that support these shows of force. The Russian president ordered his government to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election to undermine faith in the democratic process and help Trump win, according to US intelligence agencies. It also stuck on controversies such as gender politics, as he did in his speech last week, “as part of a deliberate effort to destabilize the politics of Western countries,” Gvosdev said.
But the polarization and spread of misinformation on social media that has disrupted American politics stemmed primarily from internal changes and dislocations, not Russian interference, Gvosdev said.
And for many Americans, the idea that the country’s democracy is under threat doesn’t weigh as much as the impact of inflation and the altered nature of work in the age of a pandemic and massive technological change. A new Monmouth University poll asked people what issues were most important when considering their votes this fall, and 54 percent cited concerns about the economy and the cost of living, while 38 percent he said he was more concerned about fundamental rights and democratic processes. Republicans overwhelmingly put the economy first, 71 percent of them, and Democrats overwhelmingly put rights first, at 67 percent. But while there is widespread agreement that authoritarian parties and movements have been gaining ground in many countries, the ultimate success and lasting impact of this wave of far-right populism remains the subject of much debate.
Some political leaders and academics fear a lasting era of authoritarian rule, driven by the promise of returning to workers some of the stability and security that has been swept away by globalization and the consequent transfer of many jobs to regions with lower wages in the world or automation. The trend has been exacerbated by…