Alternate title: And the battle is never completely won.
Tim asked:
I explained that regime change they are tipping us toward is what Hungarian scholar Balint Magyar calls a “mafia state,” and linked to Monday’s post on mafia states .
Born in Brooklyn then said:
which is exactly right.
The question is how much pain must be suffered along the way—until people come together to do what needs to be done.
What needs to be done, you ask?
The answer comes from looking at how countries fought off authoritarian leaders.
Ziblatt and Levitsky point out that Trump could have (and should have) been stopped in 2016 if key GOP leaders had refused to endorse him and instead backed Clinton. “There is a precedent for such behavior,” they wrote. See:
Now we know: GOP leadership has no spine and no principles, so we can’t count on them doing the right thing unless they risk losing their power.
Although not currently in Congress, don’t underestimate the value of Joe Walsh saying he’d endorse the democratic nominee—whoever that is—and Bill Kristol saying this:
If enough GOP elected leaders had the integrity to do the same, we’d be out of this mess now. (While I welcome Never Trumpers, I say “no” when former GOP operators tell Democrats to fight like Republicans. Fighting fire with fire burns the place down. Prof. Levitsky explains, here.)
The only thing that will change Republican members of Congress is if they see a blue wave coming and want to save their own hides. One way they can see that is through massive voter registration drives. Those stats are available. Elected officials know how to read those numbers. (See my list for ways to get started registering voters).
It took the Chileans too long to learn that defeating a dictator requires putting aside partisan differences. Pinochet came to power the 20th century way, through a military coup. Info from:
My husband experienced the Pinochet dictatorship, so I have firsthand accounts as well.
Pinochet’s coup was made possible partly because of a complete breakdown in trust between Chile’s major political parties. (Yeah, I know about the US involvement) Chile was bitterly divided and the parties hated each other. Even after Pinochet installed himself as a dictator, the “distrust persisted, eclipsing their shared revulsion toward Pinochet’s dictatorship.” Political leaders from opposing parties couldn’t even bear to speak to each others.
After five years of an oppressive dictator, the opposing parties started talking. Eventually they rebuilt trust.
By 1985, the anti-Pinochet forces came together and signed a National Accord for a Transition to a Full Democracy. These talks staved off “potentially destabilizing conflicts.” Staring into the abyss of a brutal dictatorship taught the Chileans a lesson.
Fearful that another Pinochet would arise, the elected leaders developed a practice of informal cooperation that they called, “democracy of agreements.”
We need to learn from their experiences.
Thus, when enough of Pinochet’s critics figured out how to negotiate with each other, Chileans were able to oust Pinochet.
Remember: Pinochet never lost all of his support, but a large enough majority came together against him. Extremists will always be with us. A long term problem is figuring out better ways of dealing with those who are inclined toward authoritarianism.
If this sounds hard, Profs. Ziblatt and Levitsky remind us that democracy is difficult, grinding work requiring compromise. It also means everyone has to get involved.
Which brings me to another opportunity to tweet this song by YelloPain.
I’m not sure what to do with comments like this:
If anyone here thinks that we we’ll turn a corner, reach a Rose Garden of Perfect Democracy and never have any more problems, well, wake up to reality. After ousting Pinochet, Chile had a long period of model democracy.
Each generation has to fight the same battles against the same enemies. It’s never over. Unless enough people say, “Democracy is too much work. Autocracy is easier.” Then it’s over.
This is right:
Twenty-first century fascism differs in marked ways from the twentieth century form (even though there is a lot of overlap.) Timothy Snyder explains that Hitler and Mussolini were interested in power. They were not also looking for personal wealth. Hitler actually made life better for ordinary (ethnic) Germans by (for example) letting them have the spoils from the victims. Mussolini wore plain workman’s clothing.
Twenty-first century fascists, on the other hand, want both wealth and power. This makes “governing” trickier because they actually hurt their own supporters. See Trump’s health plan, and this post on sadopopulism.
Once we defeat this wave of fascism (and we will) democracy still won’t be safe because the next generation will bring its own form of evil. This is our second wave of fascism. Hopefully we learn better next time how to anticipate it rising again.
Paxton makes an interesting observation:
He says fascism is a popular uprising and thus can only arise in a democracy with widespread voting—which is why it didn’t appear until the twentieth century. That means it’s new. We’re on a steep learning curve.
It also means democracy is in continual danger of a fascist uprising. In “Authoritarianism Is Not a Momentary Madness, But an Eternal Dynamic Within Liberal Democracies,” an essay in this book:
Haidt and Stenner argue that some people will never live comfortably in a liberal democracy.
As liberal democracy expands and grows more inclusive, those inclined to authoritarianism (political psychologists say that’s about a third of the population, across cultures) will have a tendency to push back.
Notice I said “tendency.” There are steps we can take.
But before we get to that and start figuring out a better way to deal with the authoritarians in our midsts, we have to get past this crisis, which means turning out to vote in large numbers in November.
