On a number of occasions over the past few years, I’ve argued that the U.S. is in danger of slipping from a democracy into an autocracy, but now somebody else has done a much better job at documenting that than I ever have.
Check out this week’s article in Scientific American, entitled “Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within.”
Citing case after case all over the world, authors Cecilia Menjívar & Deisy Del Real show how modern day would-be dictators seize power. These men — Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — all use the same tactics.
“Those include manipulating the legal system, rewriting electoral laws and constitutions, and dividing the population into “us” versus “them” blocs. Autocrats routinely present themselves as the only presumed savior of the country while silencing, criminalizing and disparaging critics or any oppositional voice. They distort information and fabricate “facts”through the media, claim fraud if they lose an election, persuade the population that they can “cleanse” the country of crime and, finally, empower a repressive nationalistic diaspora and fund satellite political movements and hate groups that amplify the autocrats’ illiberal agenda to distort democracy.”
Sound familiar?
Here in the U.S., we have an autocrat who seeks to regain power. He tried to dismantle our democracy the first time around but our established system of checks and balances plus a few brave people in his own party, including Vice-President Mike Pence, held him off — barely.
He’s back and this time he’s much better prepared. Read Project 2025. It’s a blueprint for dismantling the federal government and centralizing autocratic power. And yes it can happen here. But there’s still one way to stop him and that’s at the ballot box.
(Thanks to John Jameson for alerting me to this article.)
HEADLINES:
Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within. The new interconnected breed of autocrats gains and retains power by deception, globally undermining democracies through their own institutions (Scientific American)
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