This blog post started out as a video, which you can see here.
Today, I am going to address this comment, made in response to another Trump lie about elections being rigged:
I’ll give you the spoiler up front. Then I’ll explain. As long as you have a democracy, you will have people trying to undermine the democracy. People ask “What can we do?” Actually, there are things we need to do.
I’ll start with the latest attack on democracy, which is coming in California’s recall election.
Polling is showing that California voters are rejecting the Republican-led effort to recall Gov. Newsom. This is really no surprise, given that deep blue California went for Biden 63.5 to 34.3 for Trump. So basically, if Democrats show up to vote, the recall loses.
So of course, Republicans have begun laying the groundwork for claiming that the recall election will be riddled with fraud and if Newsom wins, it will because the election was stolen.
Republican candidate Larry Elder said last week that he believes “there might very well be shenanigans” in the election.
Fox News pundit Tomi Lahren assured Fox viewers that “the only thing that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud.” The Los Angles Times reported that these lies are finding a receptive audience in the Republican parts of California. No surprise, conspiracy theories about the election are being circulated on right-wing social media.
Trump got into the act on right-wing cable channel Newsmax when he said, without evidence, that “It’s probably rigged. They’re sending out all ballots ― the ballots are mail-out, mail-in ballots. I guess you even have a case where you can make your own ballot. When that happens nobody’s going to win except these Democrats.”
We’ve seen this routine before. Polls throughout the 2020 election season indicated that Trump would lose the election. He responded by claiming that if he lost, it would be because the election was rigged. He made his first false claim about the security of mail-in ballots on April 7, 2020, and during the months following, he unleashed a steady stream of lies about the election. On election night, he declared himself the winner before all the ballots were counted. At 2:30 a.m, he said, “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” He continued to repeat—with disastrous consequences—the lie that the election was stolen from him.
Now, look what’s happening in Brazil with right-wing leader Bolsonaro, who has been called the Brazilian Trump.
Bolsonaro’s popularity is plunging over his handling of the COVID outbreak that has killed nearly 560,000 Brazilians. How did he react? By attacking the voting system and claiming that the upcoming election will be rigged.
To answer the question, when will this end, I need to get wonky and dive into some scholarship. I do that because I like scholars and because I don’t want people to think I’m just making things up.
German sociologist Max Weber, in his classic essay, Politics as a Vocation, written in 1919, outlined three sources of authority for government.
The first is traditional. This is the authority underlying monarchies. This has problems: What happens if the king is a blundering fool? But it has an advantage, which is stability. You always know who the ruler is and you know (or you generally know) who the next ruler will be.
The second form of government is legal-rational or rule of law. This is the kind of government that strives for fairness and it’s the form of authority we have in democracies. This one too has problems. For example, it strives for fairness but can never be completely fair. Why? Because there is always pushback and because the institutions of democracy consist of mere mortals.
Another problem: when you create checks and balances and spread all the power around, it gets harder to get anything done. It also makes it harder for a dictator to take over, because it’s harder to seize control of all parts of a complicated government—but a complicated government moves slowly. When you bring together diverse groups, you have to compromise. That’s why democracy is slow grinding work.
Some people don’t like to compromise and some people are threatened by diversity. That brings me to the third form of government, what Weber calls personal charisma, which the source of authority underlying dictatorships and fascist regimes. Today we might say demagogue, or cult leader, or strongman.
People who don’t like democracy—and there are a lot of them—are drawn to a strongman who promises to cast aside the rules and get things done. Fascists are also anti-diversity. That’s why you always see them falling in line. People who dislike diversity don’t like democracy because democracy strives for fairness and inclusion. These people are attracted to a demagogue or authoritarian figure.
The first fascist governments appeared in the 20th century, after the old empires and monarchies broke down, which makes sense.
In a traditional government when you always know who the ruler is and who comes next, there’s almost no way for a demagogue to give himself the mantle of kingship. In a democracy, though, a demagogue can run for office, win, and under the rule of law as laid out in the constitution, take power with full authority.
Political psychologists talk about the authoritarian personality — a personality type that will never feel comfortable in a liberal democracy. See my video on the authoritarian personality for more.
One way to see all of this is that democracy creates and unleashes anti-democratic forces. That’s because if you have a democracy, there is nothing to stop people with authoritarian leanings from trying to get elected—and they’ll always be able to muster up at least some support.
When liberals ask, “when will this end,” they are not seeing this as an ongoing struggle. They think one day the anti-democratic forces will be beaten back and liberal democracy will prevail, and we will all live happily ever after. They also tend to think there is a magic bullet, something that someone can do to end fascism once and for all, if only they would just do it.
People thought fascism was beaten after World War II. It wasn’t. It just went underground and regrouped.
As long as we have a democracy, there will be forces trying to undermine the democracy.
Once you accept this painful truth, you stop feeling shocked and exhausted each time the right-wing (or anyone under the spell of a demagogue) begins attacking democratic processes.
So back to the question, “Is this crap never going to end???” The answer is it won’t end.
Okay, so what happens if they “win”?
First, I’ll give a 20th-century example of what can happen if they win, and then I’ll talk about what’s more likely to happen in 21st century America.
The 20th-century example I’ll use is Chile. (Source: Ziblatt and Levitsky’s book, How Democracies Die, starting on page 112. )
In 1970, left-wing leader Salvador Allende was elected president.
In 1973, Pinochet, with a little help from Kissinger and Nixon, ousted Allende in a coup and made himself dictator.
Five years later, in 1978, the opposing parties started talking.
By 1985 the people opposed to Pinochet were able to come together and sign a National Accord for a Transition to a Full Democracy. (Not everyone joined. You’ll never get the hard-core extremists)
As a result, the transition back to democracy happened peacefully. One reason Chile was able to pull this off is that, before Pinochet’s coup, they had functioning democratic institutions. They had a tradition to go back to.
According to Harvard professors Ziblatt and Levitsky, these kinds of sudden coups where you go to sleep in a democracy and wake up in a dictatorship isn’t the way things happen anymore. In the 21st century, the move is gradual as democratic institutions break down.
There’s a thing called ‘competitive authoritarianism’.
This is from a study by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Rise of Competetive Authoritarianism.”
Now, here’s the important part:
So the answer to “what happens if they win” is “we work on getting out again.”
OK, so what do we do now? A few things
First, learn to love democracy with all its frustration and imperfection. It is imperfect, and it is often frustrating. But the more people who actually like democracy, the better. Obviously.
Second, accept that there will always be people who don’t like democracy and are going to fight back against it.
This doesn’t mean we accept them and say “hey, it’s cool.” They are dangerous. But if we know they’re going to keep attacking, we pace ourselves for the long haul and we don’t wear ourselves out with each destructive lie.
Some of what they do is designed to wear us out so that we give up, lose confidence in our democratic institutions, and tune out.
Third—work on strengthening our democratic institutions. Find a way to contribute. If you need ideas, I have a tab on my website called “Things to do.” `
So yes, they will keep trying.
Whether they succeed depends on the strength of our democratic institutions—and each of us can contribute to strengthening them.
