Viktor Orbán

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      Conservatives want to make the US more like Hungary. A terrifying thought | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Conservatives want to make the US more like Hungary. A terrifying thoughtAndrew GawthorpeFor the US right, Orbán’s Hungary – unconstrained by an independent media, democratic institutions or racial diversity – isn’t a cautionary tale, but an aspiration Long a safe space where conservatives could say what they really thought, this year the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) is hosting an event in Budapest, its first ever on the European continent. Attendees will be treated to panels about “western civilization under attack” and be addressed by American conservative luminaries including the former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and media figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. That Hungary has become an authoritarian state whose leader, Viktor Orbán, has deconstructed Hungarian democracy and become a close ally of Vladimir Putin doesn’t seem to faze anyone involved. In fact, it’s the whole point.Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginning | Thomas ZimmerRead moreThe embrace of Orbán as a role model by many on the right seems at first glance puzzling. After all, conservatives are not known for welcoming lessons from Europeans on how America ought to be run. But it becomes more explicable when you realize that for years, Orbán has been playing out the fantasies of Cpac’s attendees, unconstrained by the independent institutions, impartial media and racial diversity which American conservatives see as their foils at home. Where Orbán has gone, American conservatives want to follow. And increasingly, they are doing so.Central to Orbán’s appeal is that he is a fighter who has turned his country into, according to the organizers of Cpac, “one of the engines of Conservative resistance to the woke revolution”. In some ways Orbán resembles Trump, but in the eyes of many conservatives he’s better understood as the man they wished Trump would be. Where Trump was a thrice-married playboy who boasted of sleeping with porn stars and managed to lose the 2020 election, Orbán seems both genuinely committed to upholding conservative cultural values and has grimly consolidated control over his country, excluding the left from power indefinitely.Among the terrifying implications of the American right’s embrace of Orbán is that it shows that the right would be willing to dismantle American democracy in exchange for cultural and racial hegemony. Many of Orbán’s admirers come from the “post-liberal right”, a group of intellectuals and politicians who see “traditional American culture” as so far degenerated that it may be necessary to wrest power away from a corrupted people in order to make America great again. They count among Orbán’s victories his clampdown on gay and transgender rights and his refusal to allow Muslim refugees to enter Hungary. Upholding a particular set of “Christian” (actually nationalistic and bigoted) values is seen as worth the damage to democracy – the latter might even be necessary for the former.Things get even more sinister when we consider that America is a vast continent-sized country of enormous cultural and racial diversity. Imposing a conservative monoculture on such a country could only be achieved through one means – governmental coercion. The desirability of doing just that is now openly discussed on the right. Over the past several years, many have been advocating “common-good constitutionalism” – an idea put forward by the conservative legal thinker Adrian Vermeule which holds that America should embrace a new interpretation of the constitution focused on, among other things, a “respect for hierarchy” and a willingness to “legislate morality”. As surely as such ideas underpinned the Jim Crow south, such ideas mesh easily with, indeed are required by, any attempt to bring Orbánism to the United States as a whole.Far from being limited to the trolls at Cpac or obscure writers, such an approach to governing is already being implemented by conservatives up and down the country. State laws which ban teaching about race or gender issues in schools have passed in many states, and Republicans have continued their assault on businesses which speak out on these issues. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has moved to use the power of the state to punish Disney for its stance on gay rights. In the face of cultural change which conservatives dislike, the principle of free speech has gone out of the window, and the heavy hand of the state is knocking at the door.The recently leaked US supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade is perhaps the clearest indication of the danger that this trend poses. By removing a fundamental individual right and once again enabling conservatives to impose their own moral views on women’s bodies, the decision – if passed as written – will be seen on the right as a landmark in how the power of the state can be used to discipline a degenerated culture and regulate morality. Further crackdowns are sure to follow. Locked out of power on the supreme court and facing steep challenges to winning power in America’s unbalanced electoral system, defenders of liberalism will struggle to fight back.It’s no exaggeration to say that Orbánism, with its rejection of democracy and its willingness to use coercion to enforce a narrow cultural and religious agenda, defines the danger posed by modern American conservatism. The danger is greatest when the two elements come together. Unable to win the approval of the people on whom they wish to force their values, conservatives will be tempted to proceed further and further down an undemocratic path. That path has already taken them all the way to Budapest. The fear now is that they will ultimately bring Budapest back to America.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the host of the podcast America Explained
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      Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’

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      Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’Hungarian leader also tells Republicans at Budapest conference that shows like Tucker Carlson’s should be broadcast ‘24/7’ The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has told a conference of US conservatives that the path to power required having their own media outlets, calling for shows like Tucker Carlson’s to be broadcast “24/7”.Orbán, recently elected to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blueprint to achieving and consolidating power to a special meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), under the slogan of “God, Homeland, Family”, held in Budapest.Orbán and US right to bond at Cpac in Hungary over ‘great replacement’ ideologyRead moreThe Hungarian prime minister said that with his fourth electoral victory on 3 April, Hungary had been “completely healed” of “progressive dominance”. He suggested it was time for the right to join forces.“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops,” Orbán said.He told Republicans in the Balnaconference centre on the banks of the Danube that media influence was one of the keys to success. In Hungary, the prime minister and his allies have effective control of most media outlets in Hungary, including state TV.“Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left,” he said. “The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”He portrayed the US media as being dominated by Democrats, who he claimed were being “served” by CNN, the New York Times and others.“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”Carlson had been billed as a key speaker at the CPAC conference, but the Fox News talk show host sent only a 38 second video message, in which he extolled Hungary under the Orbán government as a model for the US.“I can’t believe that you’re in Budapest and I am not,” he said. “What a wonderful country. And you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out.”“The last thing they want is any kind of signpost to a better way, and Hungary certainly provides that,” Carlson added. “A free and decent and beautiful country that cares about its people, their families, and the physical landscape.”Journalists from international media outlets were denied access to the event, including the New Yorker, Vox Media, Vice News, Rolling Stone, and the Associated Press, despite months of requests. The organizers either ignored their requests for accreditation or told them to “watch the event online”.Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union that runs CPAC, said the Central-European country is the right place to start a conversation about Europe.Hungary: where editors tell reporters to disregard facts before their eyesRead moreOrbán’s 12-point action plan also included points on faith, “because the absence of faith is dangerous” and the importance in countering “LGBT-propaganda” which was “still new in our country but we have already destroyed it”.The second day of the CPAC conference on Friday is billed to start with a “surprise video message” that some speculate will be from Donald Trump, who was also invited to the event. The schedule also features Candace Owens, described as “Trump’s favorite influencer’, video messages from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Santiago Abascal, president of Spain’s Vox party, and Zsolt Bayer, a pro-Orbán pundit who formerly called Roma people “animals”, referred to Jewish people as “stinking excrement” and used racist slurs for Black people during the BLM protests.Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate from the French far right National Rally, was announced as a speaker on Monday, but the post disappeared from the organizers’ Facebook after a couple of hours, and her name was deleted from CPAC Hungary’s website.TopicsCPACViktor OrbánHungaryUS politicsEuropeRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism

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      Politics booksTrump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism It is liberal fantasy to imagine that poor handing of the pandemic has lessened the allure of Modi and Bolsonaro. They are learning fast how to subvert votingJan-Werner MüllerMon 20 Sep 2021 05.00 EDTWhen the pandemic struck, newspaper opinion pages were full of pieces predicting the end of authoritarian populism. Surely Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro couldn’t survive their mishandling of Covid-19? Finally, people were waking up to the reality of what these leaders represented.Trump may not have lasted, but the expectation that the pandemic might see off populism is mistaken. Liberal observers have long assumed that populists are by definition incompetent demagogues. But populism is not all about promising simplistic solutions in a complex world and, contrary to a complacent liberal narrative, populist leaders are not incapable of correcting failed policies. The threat of authoritarian populism is compounded by the fact that these leaders are learning from each other – though what they are copying are not more effective strategies to combat the pandemic, but techniques for disabling democracy.When despairing about the rise of populism, liberals have been eager to identify underlying causes. And indeed, there are striking similarities in the way far-right populist leaders govern in different parts of the globe: Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Jarosław Kaczyński, Viktor Orbán, Modi, and, as a hopefully historical example, Trump. But similar outcomes do not prove similar causes. Rather, the reason for the emergence of what we might as well call a far-right populist art of governance is that leaders can copy each other’s best (or worst) practices. They are busy perfecting the art of faking democracy: ballot boxes are not stuffed on election day, but between them we see voting rules manipulated, media outlets taken over by business leaders friendly to the government, and civil society systematically intimidated and therefore election outcomes are rarely in doubt. Liberals, meanwhile, are drastically underestimating their adversaries.Populist leaders are not all nearly as incompetent and irresponsible as Trump and Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid would suggest. Their core characteristic is not that they criticise elites or are angry with the establishment. Rather, what distinguishes them is the claim that they, and only they, represent what they often refer to as the “real people” or also the “silent majority”.At first sight, this might not sound particularly nefarious. And yet this claim has two consequences deeply damaging for democracy: rather obviously, populists assert that all other contenders for office are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a matter of disputes about policy, or even about values. Rather, populists allege that their rivals are simply corrupt, or “crooked” characters. More insidiously, the suggestion that there exists a “real people” implies that there are some who are not quite real – figures who just pretend to belong, who might undermine the polity in some form, or who are at best second-rate citizens.Obvious examples are minorities and, in particular, recent immigrants, who are suspected of not being truly loyal to the polity. Think of Modi’s policy of creating a register of genuine citizens. Ostensibly, this is about identifying illegal immigrants; but especially in combination with new refugee policies that effectively discriminate against Muslims, its actual message is all too clear to Hindu nationalists. Or think of Trumpists who would never really engage in argument with critics, but simply denounce the latter as “un-American”.Populists reduce political issues to questions of belonging, and then attack those who are said not to belong. That is not a matter of mere rhetoric. Sooner or later, the appeal to the real people – and the exclusion of supposedly fake people – will have effects on streets and squares: Trump rallies have been associated with a local increase in assaults. The concept of “trickle-down aggression” – coined by the feminist philosopher Kate Manne – captures this dynamic.Populist leaders present themselves as the great champions of empowering the people, and yet always exclude particular people. The shameless attempts by US Republicans to suppress the vote (and subvert election outcomes) are playing on the sense that the “real America” is white and Christian – and that black and brown people should not really be participating in politics in the first place. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is gearing up to repeat Trump-style claims about a stolen election, should he lose the vote next year; he will have learned that, beyond casting doubt on the legitimacy of those not casting a ballot for you, bringing at least parts of the military to your side might be decisive.In Hungary, Orbán has long provided a model from which others can learn how to stretch laws to the limit in order to create pliable courts and media organisations. They can also study subtle tactics of how to mislead the EU and the Council of Europe long enough to entrench partisan advantages.When Poland’s Law and Justice Party returned to power in 2015, it could reach for Orbán’s manual of how to build an autocracy under the eyes of the EU. Like the Hungarian leader, it learned the lesson that, during its first time in office, it had wasted political capital on culture wars, instead of capturing independent institutions. To keep oneself in power, one must control the judiciary, the election system and TV in particular – once that has happened, one can wage culture wars and incite hatred against minorities to one’s heart’s content.None of this is to say that the new authoritarian systems are invincible, but we need to better understand their innovative techniques. Some are so dangerous because they are getting technologically more sophisticated: Pegasus spyware, the use of private companies to spread misinformation, or the extensive use of social media by leaders such as Modi (the world’s most tech-savvy populist) are only the most obvious instances. Still more dangerous than digital autocracy, though, is the ability of authoritarians to disable democracy, while at the same time advancing democratic-sounding justifications for their actions.What is happening in the US and the UK is a prime example. The push by the Johnson government to make the presentation of voter ID mandatory can look reasonable on paper: nobody is against the prevention of voter fraud. Northern Ireland already has such measures in place, as do countries on the continent. But, as we should have appreciated by now, legal measures can be deployed to, in effect, shrink the demos, the political body, for partisan purposes: minorities, the unemployed and especially the poor – lacking drivers’ licences and passports for travel abroad – are most likely not to have the time and resources to secure the required forms of ID. We have also learned the hard way that the staffing of election commissions is not some bureaucratic trifle (as Tom Stoppard observed long ago, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting”), but can make the difference between keeping and losing democracy.‘We the people’: the battle to define populismRead moreWhy do populists so often get away with these kinds of measures? We have not grasped the extent to which they have succeeded in imposing their distorted understanding of basic democratic practices. The vast majority of those identifying as Republicans regard voting as a “privilege” tied to responsibilities, while Democrats respect it as an unconditional right.It is not true that masses of people are longing for strongmen and are turning away from democracy. But it has become easier to fake democracy. That is partly because defenders of democracy have not argued for its basic principles well, and partly because they keep underestimating their adversaries.TopicsPolitics booksUS politicsViktor OrbánCoronavirusPolandHungaryBrazilfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on liberal Christians: is this their moment? | Editorial

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      “No one is saved alone,” writes Pope Francis in Let Us Dream, a short book of Covid-related reflections published last month. Those words carry an obvious Christian resonance. But the meaning that the pope intends to convey is primarily secular. The pandemic, he believes, has underlined our shared vulnerability and mutual dependency. By shocking us out of everyday indifference and egotism, our present troubles can open up the space for a new spirit of fraternity. A fresh emphasis on looking out for each other, claims the pope, can become the theme of a more generous and caring post-pandemic politics.Let Us Dream is a pastoral, spiritual book that aspires to address a lay audience as well as a religious one. In its emphasis on civic solidarity, tolerance, concern for the poor and the environment, it is also the latest attempt by Pope Francis to shift the dial of 21st-century Christianity away from the culture wars that have consumed it.There is an obvious temptation to respond wryly: “Good luck with that.” In a number of high-profile ways, 2020 was another depressing year for liberal-minded Christians. The Polish Catholic church worked hand in glove with the state in an attempt to effectively ban abortion and trample over LGBTQ+ rights. The strong disapproval of a majority of Poles, who have no wish to live in a theocracy, cut no ice. In neighbouring Hungary, the Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic churches kept stumm as Viktor Orbán’s government continued to bully minorities in the name of “illiberal Christianity”. During the lead-up to November’s US presidential election, Donald Trump’s cynical weaponisation of the abortion debate helped ensure strong Christian backing for the most profane, religiously illiterate president in the country’s history. And this week, Pope Francis himself indicated his disapproval of the legalisation of abortion in his native Argentina.But this stark summary of the church at odds with the liberal world does not tell the whole story. In Britain, as elsewhere, Christian churches, alongside mosques and synagogues, played a frontline role in the community activism that kept people and families afloat during months of acute uncertainty and hardship. It is from that wellspring of fellow feeling and altruism, the importance of which is suddenly front and centre in our lives, that Let Us Dream believes a “new humanism” can emerge. For those who share that aspiration, whether secular or religious, there are genuine grounds for hope in 2021.A liberal CatholicThe election to the White House of Joe Biden, a Democrat who is also a practising Catholic, is the best news liberal Christians have had for a long time. In a book published last month, the conservative Australian cardinal George Pell said Mr Trump was “a bit of a barbarian, but in some important ways he’s ‘our’ (Christian) barbarian”. The end of that cynically transactional relationship between Mr Trump’s White House and the religious right signals new possibilities. In his victory speech, Mr Biden quoted from Ecclesiastes, saying that for a divided America, “it was a time to heal”. When he has discussed his faith, the president-elect has tended to talk about altruism, decency and personal integrity, steering clear of provocative dividing lines.Mr Biden has backed access to abortion and same-sex marriage. He will, as a result, be relentlessly targeted by conservative Catholic critics and evangelicals. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, José Gomez, has convened a working group to address the “difficult and complex” situation of dealing with a liberal Catholic in the White House. But the Catholic vote was split evenly between Mr Biden and Mr Trump. And, crucially, Pope Francis is likely to have the new president’s back.This relationship could constitute an important new axis of liberal influence in the west. After a recent phone call between the two, a statement from Mr Biden’s transition team said the president-elect “expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind, on issues such as caring for the marginalised and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities”. This was to more or less tick off the list of priorities the pope has attempted to set, while under constant assault from religious conservatives. The disruption of the recent alliance between Christianity and rightwing populism carries significant implications not only for America, but for the battle against global poverty, the climate emergency and the migration crisis.Fraternity as the new frontierMr Biden’s election is not the only hopeful sign for Christians who long for their leaders to look beyond the narrow preoccupation with reproductive rights and sexuality. Last year was marked by two significant theological documents, one from the eastern church and one from the west. Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, published during Lent, is a radical clarion call for Orthodox Christians to engage with deepening inequalities in developed societies, and to confront wealthy nations with their moral obligations to refugees. The tone is set by the opening words of the text: “Our spiritual lives … cannot fail to be social lives.” Endorsed by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox church, the document recalls that “[the] early and Byzantine church had a bold voice on social justice”. This, it states, must be revived and renewed. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), was written in the same spirit. Ideas of fraternity and friendship are developed as a necessary complement to the familiar political categories of liberty and equality. The argument is summed up in Let Us Dream, where the pope writes: “Without the ‘we’ of a people, of a family, of institutions, of a society that transcends the ‘I’ of individual interests, life … becomes a battle for supremacy between factions and interests.”Intriguingly, variations on this theme have been explored in a string of recent publications, both secular and religious. In his valedictory work Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, the late chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, criticises the modern priority of “I” over “we”. Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit both attempt to map out a civic territory that avoids the twin dangers of selfish individualism and illiberal populism.In recent years, Christian leaders have too often been silent, complicit or cravenly proactive, as the Bible has been deployed as a weapon in conservative culture wars. The image of Trump marching through teargassed streets to brandish a bible outside a Washington church encapsulated a kind of capitulation. But in the new year, liberal Christians have grounds for cautious optimism. In the necessary project of carving out a new space for a less polarised, more fraternal public square, they have a vital role to play. More

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      End of Trump era deals heavy blow to rightwing populist leaders worldwide

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      As the Donald Trump era draws to a close, many world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. But Trump’s ideological kindred spirits – rightwing populists in office in Brazil, Hungary, Slovenia and elsewhere – are instead taking a sharp breath.The end of the Trump presidency may not mean the beginning of their demise, but it certainly strips them of a powerful motivational factor, and also alters the global political atmosphere, which in recent years had seemed to be slowly tilting in their favour, at least until the onset of coronavirus. The momentous US election result is further evidence that the much-talked-about “populist wave” of recent years may be subsiding.For Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has yet to recognise Joe Biden’s victory, Trump’s dismissal struck close to home. “He was really banking on a Trump victory … Bolsonaro knows that part of his project depends on Trump,” said Guilherme Casarões, a political scientist from Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil.As the reality of a Trump-free future sunk in last Thursday, Bolsonaro reportedly sought to lighten the mood in the presidential palace, telling ministers he now had little choice but to hurl his pro-Trump foreign policy guru, Filipe Martins, from the building’s third-floor window.The election result represented a blow to Bolsonarismo, a far-right political project modelled closely on Trumpism that may now lose some of its shine. And on the world stage the result means Brazil has lost a key ally, even if critics say the relationship brought few tangible benefits. It brings an end to what Eliane Cantanhêde, a prominent political commentator, called Bolsonaro’s “megalomaniacal pipedream” of spearheading an international rightwing crusade. More

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      Could COVID-19 Bring Down Autocrats?

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      The outbreak of COVID-19 initially looked like a gift to autocrats around the world. What better pretext for a state of emergency than a pandemic?

      It was a golden opportunity to close borders, suppress civil society and issue decrees left and right (mostly right). Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and others took advantage of the crisis to advance their me-first agendas and consolidate power. Best of all, they could count on the fear of infection to keep protestors off the streets.

      However, as the global death toll approaches a million and autocrats face heightened criticism of their COVID responses, the pandemic is looking less and less like a gift.

      Russia’s Denials of Navalny’s Poisoning Fall on Deaf Ears

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      The news from Mali, Belarus and the Philippines should put the fear of regime change in the hearts of autocrats from Washington to Moscow. Despite all the recent signs that democracy is on the wane, people are voting with their feet by massing on the streets to make their voices heard, particularly in places where voting with their hands has not been honored.

      The pandemic is not the only factor behind growing public disaffection for these strongmen. But for men whose chief selling point is strong leadership, the failure to contain a microscopic virus is pretty damning.

      Yet, as the case of Belarus demonstrates, dictators do not give up power easily. And even when they do, as in Mali, it’s often military power, not people power, that fills the vacuum. Meanwhile, all eyes are fixed on what will happen in the US. Will American citizens take inspiration from the people of Belarus and Mali to remove their own elected autocrat?

      People Power in Mali

      Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won the presidential election in Mali in 2013 in a landslide with 78% of the vote. One of his chief selling points was a promise of  “zero tolerance” for corruption. Easier said than done. The country was notoriously corrupt, and Keita had been in the thick of it during his tenure as prime minister in the 1990s. His return to power was also marked by corruption — a $40-million presidential jet, overpriced military imports, a son with expensive tastes — none of which goes over well in one of the poorest countries in the world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Mali is not only poor, it’s conflict-prone. It has been subject to military coups at roughly 20-year intervals (1968, 1991, 2012). Several Islamist groups and a group of Tuareg separatists have battled the central government — and occasionally each other — over control of the country. French forces intervened at one point to suppress the Islamists, and France has been one of the strongest backers of Keita.

      Mali held parliamentary elections in the spring, the first since 2013 after numerous delays. The turnout was low, due to coronavirus fears and sporadic violence as well as the sheer number of people displaced by conflict. Radical Islamists kidnapped the main opposition leader, Soumaila Cisse, three days before the first round. After the second round, Keita’s party, Rally for Mali, claimed a parliamentary majority, but only thanks to the constitutional court, which overturned the results for 31 seats and shifted the advantage to the ruling party.

      This court decision sparked the initial protests. The main protest group, Movement of June 5 — Rally of Patriotic Force, eventually called for Keita’s resignation, the dissolution of parliament and new elections. In July, government security forces tried to suppress the growing protests, killing more than a dozen people. International mediators were unable to resolve the stand-off. When Keita tried to pack the constitutional court with a new set of friends, protesters returned to the street.

      On August 18, the military detained Keita and that night he stepped down. The coup was led by Assimi Goita, who’d worked closely with the US military on counterinsurgency campaigns. Instead of acceding to demands for early elections, however, the new ruling junta says that Malians won’t go to the polls before 2023.

      The people of Mali showed tremendous courage to stand up to their autocrat. Unfortunately, given the history of coups and various insurgencies, the military has gotten used to playing a dominant role in the country. The US and France are also partly to blame for lavishing money, arms and training on the army on behalf of their “war on terrorism” rather than rebuilding Mali’s economy and strengthening its political infrastructure.

      Mali is a potent reminder that one alternative to autocrats is a military junta with little interest in democracy.

      Democracy in Action in Belarus

      Alexander Lukashenko is the longest-serving leader in Europe. He’s been the president of Belarus since 1994, having risen to power like Keita on an anti-corruption platform. He’s never before faced much of a political challenge in the country’s tightly-controlled elections.

      Until these last elections. In the August 9 elections, Lukashenko was seeking his sixth term in office. He expected smooth sailing since, after all, he’d jailed the country’s most prominent dissidents, he presided over loyal security forces, and he controlled the media.

      But he didn’t control Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The wife of jailed oppositionist Sergei Tikhanovsky managed to unite the opposition prior to the election and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets for campaign rallies.

      Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in the election with 80% of the vote (even though he enjoyed, depending on which poll you consult, either a 33% or a 3% approval rating). Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania. And that seemed to be that.

      Except that the citizens of Belarus are not accepting the results of the election. As many as 200,000 people rallied in Minsk on August 23 to demand that Lukashenko step down. In US terms, that would be as if 6 million Americans gathered in Washington to demand Trump’s resignation. So far, Lukashenko is ignoring the crowd’s demand. He has tried to send a signal of defiance by arriving at the presidential palace in a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon. More recently, he has resorted to quiet detentions and vague promises of reform.

      Just like the Republicans in the US who appeared as speakers at the Democratic National Convention, key people are abandoning Lukashenko’s side. The workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory are on an anti-Lukashenko strike, and many other workers at state-controlled enterprises have walked off the job. Police are quitting. The ambassador to Slovakia resigned. The state theaters have turned against the autocrat for the first time in 26 years.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Despite COVID-19, Belarus doesn’t have any prohibitions against mass gatherings. That’s because Lukashenko has been a prominent COVID-19 denialist, refusing to shut down the country or adopt any significant medical precautions. His recommendations: take a sauna and drink vodka. Like Boris Johnson in the UK and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Lukashenko subsequently contracted the disease, though he claims that he was asymptomatic. The country has around 70,000 infections and about 650 deaths, but the numbers have started to rise again in recent days.

      There are plenty of oppositionists ready to usher in democratic elections once Lukashenko is out of the way. A new coordinating council launched this month includes former Culture Minister Pavel Latushko as well as prominent dissidents like Olga Kovalkova and Maria Kolesnikova.

      Even strong backing from Russia won’t help Lukashenko if the whole country turns against him. But beware the autocrat who can still count on support from a state apparatus and a militant minority.

      The End of Duterte? 

      Nothing Rodrigo Duterte could do seemed to diminish his popularity in the Philippines. He insulted people left and right. He launched a war on drugs that left 27,000 alleged drug dealers dead from extrajudicial murders. Another 250 human rights defenders have also been killed.

      Still, his approval ratings remained high, near 70% as recently as May. But Duterte’s failure to deal with the coronavirus and the resulting economic dislocation may finally unseat him, if not from office then at least from the political imagination of Filipinos.

      The Philippines now has around 210,000 infections and 3,300 deaths. Compared to the US or Brazil, that might not sound like much. But surrounding the Philippines are countries that have dealt much more successfully with the pandemic: Thailand (58 deaths), Vietnam (30 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths). Meanwhile, because of a strict lockdown that didn’t effectively contain the virus, the economy has crashed, and the country has entered its first recession in 29 years.

      Like Trump, Duterte has blamed everyone but himself for the country’s failings, even unleashing a recent tirade against medical professionals. But Duterte’s insult politics is no longer working. As Walden Bello, a sociologist and a former member of the Philippines parliament, observes at Foreign Policy In Focus, “The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last 4 years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder.”

      In the Philippines, presidents serve one six-year term, and Duterte is four years into his. He may well attempt to hold on for two more years. He might even pull a Vladimir Putin and change the constitution so that he can run again. A group of Duterte supporters recently held a press conference to call for a “revolutionary government” and a new constitution. Another possibility, in the wake of recent bombings in southern Philippines, might be a declaration of martial law to fight Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to the Islamic State group.

      But the combination of the pandemic, the economic crash and a pro-China foreign policy may turn the population against Duterte so dramatically that he might view resignation as the only way out.

      Democracy in the Balance

      Plenty of autocrats still look pretty comfortable in their positions. Putin — or forces loyal to him — just engineered the poisoning of one of his chief rivals, Alexei Navalny. Xi Jinping has just about turned Chinese politics into a one-man show. Viktor Orban has consolidated his grip on power in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suppressed or co-opted the opposition parties in Turkey, and Bashar al-Assad has seemingly weathered the civil war in Syria.

      Even Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, despite an atrocious record on both the pandemic and the economy, has somehow managed to regain some popularity, with his approval rating nudging above his disapproval rating recently for the first time since April.

      The US presidential elections might tip the balance one way or the other. Although America still represents a democratic ideal for some around the world, that’s not the reason why the November elections matter. Donald Trump has so undermined democratic norms and institutions that democrats around the world are aghast that he hasn’t had to pay a political price. He escaped impeachment. His party still stands behind him. Plenty of his associates have gone to jail, but he has not (yet) been taken down by the courts.

      That leaves the court of public opinion. If voters return President Trump to office for a second term, it sends a strong signal that there are no penalties for ruining a democracy. Trump operates according to his own Pottery Barn rule: He broke a democracy and he believes that he now owns it. If voters agree, it will gladden the hearts of ruling autocrats and authoritarians-to-be all over the world.

      Voting out Trump may not simply resuscitate American democracy. It may send a hopeful message to all those who oppose the Trump-like leaders in their lands. Those leaders may have broken democracy, but we the people still own it.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More