- 1 day ago
The internet asks, WIRED answers. Is American democracy going to die? Professor and scholar in fascism and authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat breaks down all of the key ingredients in a recipe for a dying democracy. From electoral manipulation through to a transfer-of-power crisis, Ruth reveals the hallmarks of a constitutional government in peril.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Many people around the world are concerned about the future of democracy.
00:04They have good reason to be.
00:05Some estimates show that over 70% of the world's population now lives under some form of autocracy.
00:12I'm historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
00:14Today we're answering one of the most searched, misunderstood, and debated questions of our
00:19time.
00:19Is American democracy going to die?
00:23Most people think democracies are dying when they see things like this.
00:27Angry protests, bitter partisanship, culture wars, scandals, and contested elections.
00:35But democracies can survive all these things.
00:38Instead, experts on autocracy like myself look for patterns that appear in countries' democracies
00:44are being weakened.
00:45The first is electoral manipulation.
00:49Changing the rules of the game to benefit those in power.
00:53There's a whole bag of tricks autocrats use.
00:56First, you make it difficult or dangerous for people to vote.
00:59They can use paramilitaries or gangs as observers to make people feel watched when they're voting.
01:06In Italy, would-be autocrat Mussolini used his blackshirt fascists to harass people when
01:12they were casting their ballots.
01:13In the 21st century, they still use armed enforcers and paramilitaries, as Maduro did in Venezuela,
01:21to make voting difficult for those in the opposition.
01:24What if you're an autocrat and you fear someone from the opposition can beat you in a fair
01:29and free election?
01:30Well, if you're Erdogan in Turkey or Putin in Russia, you remove those people from the ballot.
01:36Erdogan jailed the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, so that he could not run for office.
01:41Putin made sure that Alexei Navalny was disqualified from the ballot.
01:46The United States has a long history of suppressing fair and free elections through racialized voter suppression,
01:53gerrymandering, redistricting.
01:55This was used in the Jim Crow South and after.
01:57Today, the Supreme Court attempts to take the power out of the Voting Rights Act
02:02to make it more difficult for non-whites to vote.
02:05When we think of dictators, what comes to mind is often old one-party states like fascism
02:11or Stalin's communism.
02:13So it's surprising that today, wannabe autocrats and dictators are often elected.
02:18That's been the case with Erdogan of Turkey, Putin of Russia, Orban of Hungary, Duterte and Marcos
02:25in the Philippines, and Donald Trump.
02:27The endgame of electoral manipulation is to remove confidence in the public that elections
02:33are free and fair.
02:34If you think the elections are a sham, you're much less likely to exercise your precious right
02:40to vote.
02:41In doing so, you're doing the autocrat's job for him.
02:46Another warning sign that a country is heading into autocracy is weaponized government.
02:51All government institutions and agencies have to be transformed so that impartial civil servants
02:58are out and loyalists who will do your bidding are in.
03:02That's the essence of weaponizing government.
03:04Since authoritarians are lawless people who live in fear of being held accountable, they
03:09especially go after the judiciary.
03:11In Nazi Germany, Hitler brought the German courts into alignment with Nazi policies, including
03:17using the courts to have new race-based laws and racial punishments.
03:22In Italy, Mussolini had a new penal code which brought fascist values into the legal system.
03:28In Turkey, after the 2016 coup against Erdogan, a vast purge of the judiciary was launched, even
03:34though the judiciary had nothing to do with the coup.
03:37And hundreds of lawyers and prosecutors and judges have been put behind bars.
03:41Similar things are happening in the United States today.
03:44The Supreme Court gave Trump a gift by giving the presidential office immunity for official
03:49acts.
03:50The tax system has been repurposed so that the IRS can no longer investigate the president
03:56or his family.
03:57The Department of Justice has been repurposed as the president's personal tool.
04:01For example, launching investigations into the former FBI head, James Comey.
04:07Candidates for judicial positions are asked the important question, who won the 2020 election?
04:14If you give the wrong answer, you are considered not fit for government service.
04:18Who won the 2020 election?
04:20Joe Biden was certified president.
04:24That is not what I asked you.
04:26Courts don't disappear under authoritarian rule, but they can stop acting as an independent
04:31check on power.
04:32Today in the United States, legal actions are one of the centers of resistance against encroaching
04:38authoritarianism.
04:39In hundreds of cases, judges have ruled against President Trump's policies and actions, thus
04:45acting to slow down or reverse the march to autocracy.
04:51Another hallmark of weakening democracy, press intimidation.
04:55If you want to know if a politician has authoritarian aspirations, see how they talk about the press.
05:01Do they label them as corrupt, as fake news?
05:04Do they try and discredit the free press?
05:07If so, you're in the presence of someone who has autocratic ambitions.
05:11From Mussolini beating up the opposition journalist Piero Gobetti in the early 1920s, when he was
05:17still trying to become a dictator, to Hitler outlawing criticism in art and culture and in
05:23the press in the 1930s, media capture is an integral part of the authoritarian playbook.
05:29In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi retained control of all of the private news networks and television
05:35channels while he was prime minister, and exercised pressure on the state broadcaster, the Rai,
05:41resulting in many journalists being fired or resigning.
05:45Autocrats can go after media outlets and individual journalists who reveal their corruption and their
05:51violence.
05:51This happened in the Philippines.
05:53Rodrigo Duterte sued Maria Ressa and the Rappler, her outlet, for tax evasion and ultimately libel.
06:01Being an investigative journalist is one of the most dangerous professions in an autocracy.
06:06Vladimir Putin had Anna Politovskaya killed and the Saudis had Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi
06:12journalist, chopped into pieces for investigating their crimes.
06:16In the United States, media capture has proceeded, with billionaire allies of Trump buying up historic
06:22outlets such as CBS, and criticizing the administration's policies has become more risky.
06:28Even the Washington Post, which is owned by billionaire Trump ally Jeff Bezos, had one of its journalists,
06:35Hannah Nathanson, investigated and her house was searched.
06:39The Trump administration has also sued many news outlets, including the New York Times and
06:4460 Minutes, in order to create a chilling effect.
06:47The version of reality he wants promoted must be the only reality that Americans hear.
06:52The 21st century poses challenges, however, to autocrats who want a total media capture.
06:59There's a whole world of individual creators and influencers.
07:02Think of YouTube, Substacks, TikTok.
07:05Independent journalism has also had a huge revival.
07:09Short of internet-free countries such as Eritrea or total dictatorships such as North Korea,
07:15the defenders of democracy cannot all be silenced.
07:21Another sign of a weakening democracy is the normalization of extremism.
07:26It's when ideas that used to seem outlandish or fringe, marginal or crazy, become accepted
07:33and even integrated into state policy.
07:35Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, said,
07:39We have to bring the Jewish question into the public's attention,
07:43so that Jews would be recognized as enemies of the state.
07:48Every autocracy targets certain groups who are said to be not only a threat to public safety,
07:53but to the entire country and to civilization itself.
07:57Traditionally, communists have been seen by right-wing dictators as a source of social anarchy,
08:03and thus policies have been supported by the population to detain them and kill them,
08:09and that happened in the military dictatorships of the Cold War, such as Pinochet's Chile.
08:14A through-line of autocracy is homophobia, and LGBTQ groups have been targeted by autocrats throughout history,
08:22from the Nazis who sent LGBTQ people to concentration camps, to the Hungary of Orban,
08:28the Italy of Giorgio Meloni, who say they're a danger to the, quote,
08:32natural family, which is one man, one woman, both straight.
08:37Nomadic peoples, Muslims, are targeted around the world today.
08:42Think of in India, Modi, convincing the population that these groups pose a threat to the country's national identity,
08:49which must be Hindu.
08:50In the United States and Europe, it's been non-whites and immigrants, often targeted immigrants,
08:56are said to be eating cats and dogs.
08:58They're likened to vermin.
09:00They're dehumanized.
09:01All to create an environment that will lead people to think that perhaps violence or detention or deportation is the
09:08answer.
09:09ICE agents in the United States are allowed to be lawless to put down and detain and police these groups
09:17who are seen as enemies of the state.
09:20In the United States, the long history of tolerance for militias, the fetish for guns,
09:26and race-based violence, such as lynchings,
09:29made fertile soil for someone such as Donald Trump to come along and normalize extremism.
09:34From 2016 onward, he made the MAGA movement a big tent for all kinds of extremists,
09:40neo-Nazis, homophobes, people who were apologists for the Jim Crow South,
09:45and people who believed that violence is the way you deal with difference.
09:50The normalization of extremism is why so many autocrats give pardons to violent extremists.
09:57After all, why should people with perfectly useful criminal skills be sitting in jail when they could serve your cause?
10:04Mussolini pardoned all the violent blackshirts who got him to power when he became a dictator.
10:09Augusto Pinochet in Chile pardoned all the human rights abusers,
10:14and Donald Trump pardoned the January 6 rioters who assaulted the Capitol
10:18and threatened Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers.
10:26The last sign of a declining democracy is a transfer of power crisis.
10:31Sometimes, despite trying their best to capture the country, an autocrat can lose an election,
10:37and then they have to act to stay in power at all costs.
10:40In 2022, Pedro Castillo, the president of Peru, tried a self-coup or autogolpe.
10:47An autocrat is when a president who is in office tries to stay there by illegal means.
10:53He was promptly jailed.
10:55As a journalist said, he was president at breakfast and a prisoner by dinner.
11:01In 2024, South Korean President Yoon declared martial law to avoid prosecution, possibly, of his family and to neutralize the
11:11opposition.
11:12The National Assembly promptly acted against him, and President Yoon is now sitting in jail for life.
11:18In the 20th century, one of the biggest risks to declining democracies were coups, that somebody would come from outside,
11:26often military officials, and replace the democratically elected politician.
11:31That happened in Chile in 1973, where Salvador Allende was forced out of office, and Pinochet took over for 17
11:39years.
11:40That's a transfer of power crisis for sure.
11:42In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election, and then plotted a coup to stay in power illegally.
11:50First, he claimed electoral fraud, and then he planned, as we now know from his trial, to assassinate Lula da
11:58Silva, who was the incoming head of state, and other officials.
12:02This backfired in Brazil, because in 1964, Brazil had a military coup, and the dictatorship that followed lasted until 1985.
12:11So the people prosecuting Bolsonaro had lived through the dictatorship.
12:17They knew the stakes.
12:18Bolsonaro was convicted, and is now serving a 27-year prison sentence.
12:24The United States has had a quite different outcome for a self-coup.
12:28Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and did not want to leave office.
12:32He claimed the election was rigged.
12:34He tried to overturn the results.
12:36When all else failed, he incited a violent mob to assault the Capitol, and force Mike Pence, the Vice President,
12:43not to certify the results.
12:45This failed, and Trump had to leave office.
12:48But he has turned January 6th into an element of patriotism today.
12:54And it is very rare that someone who tried a self-coup was not held accountable and allowed to run
13:00for office again.
13:02The authoritarian we now have at the White House is a direct result of not holding him accountable.
13:11As we've seen, the United States has many signs of being a democracy in decline.
13:15The institutions have been severely damaged.
13:18We have a head of state who has been given immunity for official acts.
13:22However, we are not a full autocracy.
13:24There are many counters for each category, from judicial resistance, to civil society action, to independent media being stronger than
13:32ever.
13:33Trump's policies have created disaffection, which happens with many autocrats.
13:37The institution of militarized occupation in places like Minneapolis has also been a training ground for civil resistance and community
13:47activism.
13:48More people are more conscious of the stakes of autocracy than ever before.
13:54That is why I believe the U.S. will come back from this experience of brush with autocracy,
13:59come back a stronger democracy with reforms of our institutions,
14:03and resume our path toward being the world's preeminent example of a multiracial and multi-faith democracy.
14:11Democracy is not going to die in the United States.
14:15I'm Ruth Benghia. Thank you for watching.
Comments