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With the end of the Cold War, the authors focused on what they saw as an interesting phenomenon, namely that most democracies were not overthrown from without by violent military coups, but internally through the ballot box and subsequent seizure of political institutions by autocrats. Although history does not repeat itself, it does “harmonize,” and this harmony is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump in 2016.The authors wish to discover similar patterns, or “rhymes,” as they say, of institutional erosion within democracies both in the distant past and in the recent.
The authors also identified the four main indicators, or behavioral warning signs, of an authoritarian: verbal or de facto rejection of the democratic rules of the game. Second, denying the legitimacy of political opponents. Third, tolerance or encouragement to violence. Finally, the willingness to restrict the civil liberties of the opposition, including the media and social networks. Indeed, what the two offer against Trump and the death of American democracy dooms the political system as a whole, as the democratic media obscures the voice of the opposition. The media is waging a war against the Trump campaign, and there is a permanent denial of the existence of a nationalist movement in support of the Trump administration, and finally the Democratic call by Hillary Clinton that Joe Biden not admit defeat according to the rules of the democratic game.
What the authors try to confirm condemns them the most. Historically, 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War, saw the Democratic nomination of Hubert Humphrey, a less popular candidate. This choice was made without what are now known as primaries (a means of probing people). After the announcement at the Chicago Democratic Convention, violent protests broke out and spread to the convention hall. After Humphrey was defeated by Richard Nixon in the election, the Democrats formed the “McGovern-Fraser Commission”, which led to the primaries becoming mandatory. Since then, delegates will be chosen by party members, and these delegates are now responsible for selecting the official presidential candidates.
Changing the rules of the democratic game for the Democratic Party is nothing new. Before Humphrey, 1867 was the year of the Reconstruction Act, after the end of the American Civil War. At the time, newly freed black citizens were voting for the Republicans (Abraham Lincoln’s party). Democrats feared that these new voters would oust them from power in the south, so they changed the voting rules by imposing a tax on the ballot box and introducing the “Dorch Act” which complicated voting and required that only educated citizens could vote. The new rules were designed to keep black voters out of the polls, confirming that the Democrats would have remained the party of the South for the next century. But they also undermined the essence of the democracy they now claim, even more racially than they accuse their opponent Trump today. When you look at the activities of Democrats over the past 100 years, it is clear that they have been hardliners in the cause of freedom in theory, but opportunistic in practice.
In the early 1990s, the people of Eastern Europe, and especially the politicians among them, discovered something that was not difficult to discover at the time, is that the fledgling liberal democracy greatly reduced the scope of what was allowed, incredibly. The last year of the decline of communism had more freedom than the period after the establishment of the new regime. Liberal democracy created the feeling of opening many doors and many possibilities to pursue. Soon this feeling evaporated and freedom diminished through the new discourse of “necessity” that the liberal-democratic system brought with it. It did not take long to discover another, more frustrating, that this unifying trend was not limited to the post-communist world, nor was it a product of its peculiarities, but that its negative effects could be seen throughout the history of liberal democracy within the western civilization.
Authors Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s argument seems flimsy, but rather personal, against Donald Trump’s victory in particular, and their proposal for what they called the rules of the political game and protecting the gates of democracy seems ridiculous. . Going back to history, we find that such democratic rules made America’s staunch enemies, the communists, more easily and successfully adapt than the former dissidents and anti-communists who advocated the new liberal democratic regimes that were established in central and eastern Europe. after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Former communists have more administrative experience, state institutions have privatized themselves, liberal democracy has made it easier for them to contribute more resources to control the political game through the media and the formation of governments.
Liberal democracy belittles our minds. Those whom he described as dictators, enemies of freedom and violators of human rights, were transformed overnight due to the rules of liberal democracy into social democrats or liberals, and dominated the debate and formed governments. This model was not limited to Eastern Europe, but also to Western Europe. It seems that public and private institutions, including European Union bodies, have come to view former communists as more appropriate than former dissidents as partners in politics and business. It almost seemed as if the anti-communist democrats were seen as a greater threat to the neoliberal democratic order than those who had been its enemies the day before. In addition to its practical advantages, the ex-communists had an ambiguous ideological advantage: they recognized that liberal democracy is nothing more than rules and a game of globalized interests.
As you read “How Democracies Die …” you will find that the authors of the book have a dogmatic belief in a one-way story that revolves only around humans. There is a remarkable relationship between the political system and that imagined person, a relationship that has not been seen before in history, and the communists tried to form a communist man who conformed to the institution and logic of the communist system, but they swallowed the cup of defeat. But from where they failed, the Liberal Democrats succeeded. And if there is any system that is perfectly designed for the aspirations of the people in its orbit, you will find that it is liberal democracy. And if there was any human role model ideally designed for the opportunities the political system provides and the aspirations it promotes, it was a liberal democrat.
The assassins of democracy are using the very institutions of democracy
The Liberal Democrats sincerely embraced the belief in the inevitability of history. No alternative political paradigms have been developed or even seriously considered, as the effectiveness of the democratic system remains impressively high. Thus, it is likely that liberal democracy will continue to expand and the system will continue to assert a set of beliefs / rules, as the authors of the book call them, that believers in the liberal democratic order claim not only to live, but also to be the only one. set of beliefs worth living for. The liberal democrat feels privileged and fortunate because he is not like those unfortunate “idiots” or “scoundrels” of the communists and the national right who have not accepted the obvious. All of these factors combined reinforce the Democrats’ belief that for the world to live and develop, it must move in only one direction … the special direction of the Liberal Democrats.
So the Liberal Democrats are absolutely right when they continue to suggest that history is over and that for the world to continue to exist satisfactorily, it must develop along the same lines. Of course, it is quite possible that some new rights will be invented to make everything more convenient.
Yet the liberal democratic ideology and its revivals will prove more absurd than before … that people who proudly adore their intellectual independence and revolutionary struggle will once again surprise everyone by humbly embracing it. We can imagine a literature that speaks more and more of nothingness, the most vociferous discourse of diversity and more concealment of a homology to the American one. But all of this will be another scene in the same final chapter of the long history that historically began: The Long Night of Liberal Democracy!
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