Democracy's about reflection. It's about seeing the world, it's about self-correction. Which means that it's not at all the default form of politics. -- Timothy Snyder, authoritarianism expert, Yale U., Your brain on authoritarianism: The inside forces that drive people to turn on democracy, WBUR interview, 2025
Democracy is fragile and abnormal: Some evidence
Dissident Politics is primarily grounded in a single core belief. The belief is that various forms of representative democracy are almost always inherently better than authoritarianism. That applies to all forms of authoritarianism, including autocracy, theocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy. The asserted superiority exists in both moral and practical terms.
This is not an assertion that democracy is perfect or incapable of making major mistakes, including mistakes that kill people. Just as nearly all authoritarian regimes, democracies can be significantly corrupt and closed. Humans are not perfect. Because of that, no form of government can be perfect, error-free, or 100% honest. But on balance, democracy is morally and practically better than the alternative.
For better or worse, democracy is fragile. There are always individuals and groups who vie for significantly unrestrained power or wealth. Inherent in the authoritarian mindset is a drive to concentrate power and usually wealth among the controlling individual or group(s) of elites. In modern times, all or nearly all major authoritarians or groups with significant power claim to be democratic. That lie is the rule, not the exception.
“Democracy is more fragile than most of us like to think. Not fragile like glass. Fragile like a bomb.” -- Ray Block, senior analyst, African American Research Collaborative, Greater Good Magazine, 2024
At present, all four forms of authoritarianism are waging a full-blown direct assault on America's representative democracy, it's rule of law, our civil liberties, and society's pro-democracy morality and mindset. The assault is disguised by demagoguery and its irrational emotional manipulation, but it is real and powerful. American democracy has been under a decades-long assault by people, groups, special interests at odds with the status quo. Powerful American authoritarianism is currently grounded in radical right politics. America's authoritarian radical left is out of power and not a current threat. One can refer to the current authoritarian wealth and power movement as MAGA.
Because the legalistic autocrats deploy the rhetoric of democracy and the methods of the law, observers find it hard to see the danger until it is too late. .... These autocrats push their illiberal measures with electoral backing and use constitutional or legal methods to accomplish their aims, they can hide their autocratic designs in the pluralism of legitimate legal forms -- Kim Lane Scheppele, legal scholar and authoritarianism expert, Princeton U., Autocratic Legalism, U. Chicago Law Review, 2025
Historians can no doubt trace authoritarian impulses back to American colonial days and even to many centuries before that. The reason is grounded in the evolution and the resulting human condition. Both authoritarian and anti-authoritarian impulses are inherent to humans. Simply put, many human minds are drawn to and desire authoritarian leadership with attendant power concentrated with a single leader or one or more small groups. Other minds are accommodating to more distributed power, pro-democracy mindsets more or less.
Research findings from Political Science and Evolutionary Psychology suggest that democracy may not be 'natural,' whereas authoritarianism might be. -- Eric Haseltine, Will Human Nature Allow Democracy to Survive?, Psychology Today, 2025
Questions for thought and discussion
Is American democracy actually under serious threat from radical right authoritarianism, or are those concerns exaggerated or outright lies? Is America's radical left the true threat as MAGA rhetoric constantly asserts? Is is credible to think that authoritarianism is more "natural" to human psychology than democracy?
No comments:
Post a Comment