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	Rising Authoritarianism and Plutocracy are a dangerous mix by LSE Inequalities Institute, agencies   How inequality is trumping democracy, by Danny Sriskandarajah. (LSE Inequalities Institute)   Debates about inequality and democracy are often treated as separate issues. But the reality – increasingly apparent – is that they linked to the very core. In highly unequal societies, the poorest feel disconnected from and distrustful of the political system, while the richest try to hoard power.   Nowhere are those trends more obvious than in the US today, with Donald Trump’s re-election and prompt nomination of his billionaire buddies for political posts a vulgar manifestation of how corrosive economic inequality is to democracy.   What’s going on here? In essence, the exponential accumulation of wealth and power by the “private few” reduces the capacity of the “public many” to exercise the freedom to make the choices that shape our lives. The promise that each of us in a democracy has an equal vote and equal say in how our society functions then begins to ring hollow.   Extreme inequality corrodes trust, cohesion and engagement   If individuals believe the economic and political system is unfair, then the social glue that binds us loses its stickiness and society begins to fall apart.   For example, income inequality has been shown to have a highly detrimental effect on the development of social capital – the networks of relationships among people in a society that enable us to act together to pursue shared objectives.   This, in turn, profoundly affects civic engagement. Evidence shows that richer households are more likely to be involved in things like daily discussions about politics, attendance at political meetings and participating in civic organisations than poorer ones.   Those earning less than a minimum wage are the least likely to be civically engaged. Working long hours or doing multiple jobs just to make ends meet leaves less time to participate in civic life or engage in political activities.   Meanwhile, inequality lowers an individual’s sense of trust in others: not in family or friends but in unspecified persons. Again, this kind of generalised trust is a core component of social capital.   We tend to have less trust in people who are dissimilar to us, which might explain the striking correlation observed in countries like the US between an increase in income inequality and a sharp decline in trust.   Finally, in highly unequal societies, political participation falls as conventional political activities come to be perceived as unfair and political leaders as untrustworthy.   A society that is distrustful and divided is less able to solve pressing socioeconomic challenges, not only because the legitimacy of its government and their policies is weakened, but because it lacks the necessary social cohesion for people to mobilise around shared goals.   As Noam Chomsky has argued, decades of public policy have been aimed at stripping back public services, reducing social security and undermining workers’ collective bargaining abilities. The neoliberal era in the West is, he argues, “dedicated to making sure that society no longer exists”. It ensures that the social and economic environment is as hostile as possible to genuine democracy.   Redistribution revisited   Central to neoliberalism is the push to shrink the size of the state – to see little or no need for social security provisions or any other transfers of resources from richer to poorer groups of society. Neoliberals are steadfastly against such “redistribution”.   But a study by the non-partisan RAND Corporation found an eye-watering level of redistribution in the US in the period between 1975 and 2018 – just not in the direction that progressives were calling for. During this era in which Reagonomics and neoliberal policies were let loose, the bottom 90 per cent of America’s income earners saw a hit to their combined incomes of $2.5 trillion each year relative to the case where their incomes had grown in line with the average(per capita) income trend for the country as a whole over this period. The top 1 per cent of Americans, meanwhile, enjoyed higher incomes by the same amount each year.   The proliferation of trickle-down policies like tax cuts, wage suppression and stock-market deregulation has meant that 90 per cent of all Americans have experienced (at best) meagre improvements to their standard of living over a 45-year period, while the super-rich have won big. Taken together, this almost $50 trillion transfer has been the greatest redistribution of income ever seen in human history, perhaps the most audacious heist ever to occur in plain sight.   It marked the Great Reversal of the previous period of fairly equitable growth that occurred in post-war America until the late 1970s. Today, the American Dream looks more like a feudal nightmare.   The stark choice citizens are left with   Once you have a huge concentration of wealth, political leaders are left with few choices. They could act in the interests of the powerful, shutting down spaces for challenge, allowing the wealthy to control the media, silencing those who dare to speak out (or at least turning a blind eye when vigilantes do the job) and seeking to preserve the system from which they both benefit.   Or they could actively de-concentrate wealth by instituting new taxes and policies that look to make society more equal and fight to retain an open society in which criticism and argument can flourish.   There have been instances of the latter – the post-Second World War creation of the liberal welfare states in Western Europe being the most prominent – but history tells us that the former is more likely.   Or perhaps, more pertinently, what is actually happening around us suggests that elites are choosing to hunker down, protecting their interests and the system which they have exploited.   A century ago, at a time of soaring levels of inequality in the United States, the Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis is said to have noted that “we can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can’t have both”. Almost everywhere I look around the world, wealth is being hoarded and democratic freedoms are under attack. Unless we do something to change the course of history, the choice is being made for us.   * Danny Sriskandarajah is Chief Executive Officer of New Economics Foundation. Prior to that he spent five years as Chief Executive of Oxfam GB, he was previously Secretary General of CIVICUS.   http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/12/10/the-rest-is-not-just-politics-how-inequality-is-trumping-democracy/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/08/28/capitalisms-gaping-inequalities-are-also-its-main-weakness/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/10/08/feeding-the-machine-seven-links-between-ai-and-inequalities/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/05/01/todays-colonial-data-grab-is-deepening-global-inequalities/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/10/02/placing-gender-justice-at-the-heart-of-the-wellbeing-economy/   http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/12/11/global-water-insecurity/ http://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/water-dilemmas-the-cascading-impacts-of-water-insecurity-in-a-heating-world-621548/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/03/20/hope-in-the-shadows http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/05/08/its-not-rocket-science-the-politics-of-inequality/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/07/09/to-heal-our-fragmented-economic-system-we-must-look-to-deeper-aspects-of-our-human-nature/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/04/22/uneven-earth-policies-for-a-sustainable-world/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/04/30/new-research-on-global-poverty/ http://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/blogs/peruvian-civil-society-is-under-attack   Rising Authoritarianism and Plutocracy are a dangerous mix for Press Freedom, by Rachel Kleinfeld. (Just Security, agencies)   Press freedom in the United States showed the world its Achilles heel this week – a soft spot that reveals just where the greatest weakness lies. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times, both cancelled editorial board decisions to endorse Kamala Harris for president; in the case of the Washington Post, an editorial was already reportedly written and approved.   Soon-Shiong also blocked a series of stories about Donald Trump. A few hours after ownership canceled the Post’s editorial, executives from Bezos’ Blue Origin company met with Trump to discuss other business interests in his sprawling conglomerate, although Bezos denied any quid pro quo.   Research suggests that the electoral consequences of the endorsements were likely to be, frankly, unimportant to the election outcome. While local newspapers play a crucial role in endorsing and providing information about relatively unknown local candidates, these major media endorsements of presidential candidates are unlikely to provide new knowledge or change anyone’s mind.   In 2016, Trump received endorsements from just the Enquirer and five small newspapers – including one owned by his son-in-law Jared Kushner – and the lack of support from the Republican and mainstream intelligentsia appeared to matter not a whit to his voting base.   Standing on this argument, Bezos has argued that ending endorsements will reduce polarization and build trust in the media. And there’s something to be said for that – if it were done in coordination with the editorial team after deep reflection on a principled basis long before this point in an election season.   But back in the world of what really happened, the democratic consequences of these newspaper decisions are hard to overstate. Trump showed that he could make the owners of major media in the United States cave to his will and give up long-standing norms of independence – without even holding office.   Timothy Snyder, among the most preeminent scholars of authoritarianism, wrote a set of simple lessons for people wishing to avoid that fate for their countries. The first: “Do not obey in advance.” In the top five were: “Defend institutions” and “Remember professional ethics.”   The pre-willingness of America’s billionaire class to grovel before a strongman, even before they are forced to comply, shows just how quickly freedom of the press in America is likely to fold when confronted with any significant pressure. And it shows the point of greatest weakness: not the editors, journalists, or libel laws, which Trump has signaled he wishes to break and which Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas have shown an interest in revisiting – but the owners.   Readers may cry foul: the United States has so many press outlets; the cravenness of a few hardly destroys access to information for the many. But that is not how things have worked in other faltering democracies.   Hungary and India both once had freewheeling, raucous media traditions. But as they fell from full democracies to only “partly free” in Freedom House rankings – the media became cowed.   In declining democracies like India, the media is not completely censored as it is under totalitarian rule in places like China. Independent websites and elite publications continue to operate. There are rare moments of censorship: as when India banned a BBC documentary investigating the Prime Minister’s role in a bloody pogrom against Muslims while he was governor of Gujarat state. But on the whole, compliance is not coerced with the mass threat of arrests, but induced by making examples out of a handful of unfortunate reporters or publications. The rest get the message and curb themselves.   Hungary started the same way. But as its slide from democracy to one-party rule has continued, it has become more repressive. At first, many Hungarian media outlets were regulated out of profitability and then pressured into selling to government-friendly leaders.   Eventually, 467 media properties were given of free will to a single foundation run by a party loyalist. While 90 percent of the media landscape was controlled by the government, elites could still get their news from what was left. Hungarians who wanted to could get around blocked websites, and could continue to read real news. The main problem was that these sites had little reach.   The media that the majority of the population actually imbibes kowtows to what is known to be acceptable to the leader. But in Hungary, the vise has tightened over time – focused, as here, on owners. Those willing to hold the last few independent sites have found threats against them moving from tax investigations to fears of jail time.   In the United States, there are many editorial boards and even more journalists, and many have fierce pride for professional ethics and editorial independence. But the ownership class is small. Decades of media consolidation mean that the vast majority of television and radio media in the United States is owned by a handful of conglomerates.   Most other key media properties, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, are owned or co-owned by just over a dozen billionaires with many other business interests. In many cases, the news business actually loses them money.   In the face of a leader willing to retaliate against business, Americans are reliant on the individual strength of character of such media owners to maintain independence. But these owners are not steeped in the journalistic ethics of their editors, stand to gain little monetarily from maintaining such norms, and have much to lose in other aspects of their business.   What at first glance appears to be a robust, proud, and varied media landscape shows itself to be an industry with a very small number of wizards behind the curtain, far weaker than anyone would expect from the United States of America.   Aristotle wrote that a government by, for, and of the people could not survive great concentrations of wealth. Rule by the many required a strong middle class, he felt: a small and immensely wealthy elite would refuse to follow the rules made for others, and could not be relied on to maintain democracy. The very wealthy, he argued, create a state consisting of slaves and masters, not of free men.”   In Federalist Paper Ten, America’s founders also showed their concern for how unequal distribution of property undermines democracy. Plutocracy, in both conceptions, leads to tyranny.   In other countries whose democracies have been sacrificed to a small elite, such as Hungary and Guatemala, the business sector divides in two. A small group of oligarchs works hand-in-glove with government leaders to make their money through regulatory hijinks and government contracts.   Meanwhile, a large number of main street businesses try to function on an uneven playing field. Whenever one of the well-connected starts to play in their arena, the real businesspeople face ruin.   In Hungary, the oligarchs are known as “friends of Fidesz,” the party run by Viktor Orbán; in Guatemala, “the Pact of the Corrupt.” In the United States, they were known as the robber-barons of the Gilded Age.   In each case, the group most hurt by plutocracy is small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs, and businesses that want to focus on their business, not on gaming the government. Those mainstays of the middle class require fair rules and an even playing field. They need government to provide workable infrastructure: electricity, garbage collection, and other goods at a fair price and without reference to who someone voted for.   That’s why small and medium businesses formed the core of the movement to dismantle the last plutocratic period in America. During the Gilded Age, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and other astronomically wealthy were using their power to corrupt government and favor themselves. Members of Congress, governors, and state legislatures were in on “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” deals with the Gilded Age titans.   The result was retaliatory enforcement of laws and government-protected monopolies that squelched innovation. Meanwhile, main street businesses faced all sorts of problems that come from corrupt governments that favor friends and punish enemies: from broken infrastructure to a weak rule of law.   Small businesses and other middle class interests led good government groups and funded factions within both major parties to end the economic, as well as democratic, rot of the Gilded Age. It eventually worked. America gained a strong middle class for a century, making huge economic and democratic leaps that turned it into the 20th century beacon it became.   Now, the pendulum has swung back to the plutocrats. But this time, American business is more confused regarding its interests. A number of corporate leaders did support Trump. They understand where retaliation and government control of corporations can lead. But main street businesses have no background in considering what might hit them. Having been taught for decades to fear regulation from the left, they have no reference point for the ways populist leaders harm the economy.   Meanwhile, the small group of would-be oligarchs are willing to back the man they think could help them, or at least kiss the ring in the hopes of not getting on Trump’s wrong side. A two-level, oligarchic economy is in the making. Most businesses will find themselves on the losing end.   Like the warrior Achilles, U.S. democracy appears so strong as to be unbreakable. But the billionaire class is its weakest point: small, concentrated, and all too often uninterested in following the rules that apply to others, as Aristotle prophesied. They are the heel at which the poison arrow is pointed.   http://www.justsecurity.org/104407/authoritarianism-plutocracy-press-freedom/ http://cpj.org/thematic-reports/on-edge-what-the-us-election-could-mean-for-journalists-and-global-press-freedom/ http://rsf.org/en/usa-rsf-report-shows-press-freedom-shortcomings-key-swing-states-ahead-2024-election http://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-verbally-attacked-media-more-100-times-run-election   http://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5163293/la-times-editor-resigns-trump-msnbc-washington-post http://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5156184/elon-musk-trump-election-x-twitter http://www.npr.org/series/973275370/untangling-disinformation http://counterhate.com/research/musk-misleading-election-claims-viewed-1-2bn-times-on-x-with-no-fact-checks/ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/02/elon-musk-donald-trump-us-presidential-elections http://www.mediamatters.org/ http://library.witness.org/product/tipsheet-on-combating-misinformation-disinformation-in-elections/   http://www.americanprogress.org/series/project-2025-exposing-the-far-right-assault-on-america http://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga http://blog.ucsusa.org/chitra-kumar/project-2025s-assault-on-epa-human-health-and-the-environment-must-never-be-put-into-action   http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/11/meteorologists-death-threats-hurricane-conspiracies-misinformation http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/10/trump-hurricane-lies-conspiracy-theories http://blog.ucsusa.org/marc-alessi/hurricanes-helene-and-milton-further-proof-were-not-ready-for-fossil-fuel-caused-climate-change/ http://blog.ucsusa.org/category/science-and-democracy/   http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-musk-economy-lower-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-higher-costs-for-everyone-else-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2024-11 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-tax-plan-wealthy-corporations-oil-billionaires-musk-1235107554/ http://accountable.us/new-campaign-spotlights-the-billionaires-and-corporations-fighting-for-wealthy-tax-cuts/ http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/what-billionaires-see-in-donald-trump http://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025s-tax-plan-would-raise-taxes-on-the-middle-class-and-cut-taxes-for-the-wealthy/ http://itep.org/a-distributional-analysis-of-donald-trumps-tax-plan-2024/ http://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/house-committee-farm-bills-30-billion-snap-cut-other-harmful-proposals http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver   The New-Old Authoritarianism, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Cecilia Menjivar, Deisy Del Real. (Project Syndicate, agencies)   With US think tanks having already drawn up plans for instituting an authoritarian government under a second Donald Trump administration, the stakes in the year's presidential election are difficult to overstate. Around the world, "strongmen" are turning democratic institutions on themselves and learning from each other.   Over the past decade, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has emerged as one of the English-speaking world’s leading experts on, and chroniclers of, authoritarian leaders in the twenty-first century. A professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, she warns against complacency in the face of growing threats to democracy around the world.   Project Syndicate: What is your working definition of a twenty-first-century “strongman”? Or more specifically, which contemporary political leaders do you include in this category, and what features do they share?   Ruth Ben-Ghiat: I use the term strongman for authoritarian leaders who damage or destroy democracy using a combination of corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo (masculinity as a tool of political legitimacy). A strongman’s personality cult elevates him as both a “man of the people” and “a man above all other men.” Authoritarianism is about reorganizing government to remove constraints on the leader – which in turn allows him to commit crimes with impunity – and machismo is essential to personality cults that present the head of state as omnipotent and infallible.   Strongmen, as I define them, also exercise a form of governance known as “personalist rule.” Government institutions are organized around the self-preservation of a leader whose private interests prevail over national interests in both domestic and foreign policy; public office thus becomes a vehicle for private enrichment (of the leader and his family and cronies).   Personalist rule is associated with autocracies. A good example is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where a kleptocratic economy allows for the systematic plundering of private and public entities for the financial benefit of the leader and his circle. Yet personalist rule can also emerge in degraded democracies when a politician manages to exert total control over his party, develop a personality cult, and exert outsize influence over mass media. That happened in Italy under Silvio Berlusconi (who owned the country’s private television networks and much more) and in America during Donald Trump (through his command of Twitter and his alliance with Fox News).   Because personalist leaders are always corrupt, they and those closest to them usually will be investigated when they come to power in a democracy. In such cases, governance increasingly revolves around their defense. More party and civil-service resources will be devoted to exonerating the leader and punishing those who can harm him, such as judges, prosecutors, opposition politicians, and journalists.   In the United States, the Republican Party has lent itself fully to this personalist endeavor. The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, chaired by Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, is just one example of a government mechanism created for the sole purpose of targeting anyone who threatens the leader.   Even where investigating the leader is no longer possible, as in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, a formidable army of lawyers, trolls, bureaucrats, and others will sustain the leadership cult and watch for any cracks in the armor. Hence, the Turkish government spends considerable time and public funds pursuing tens of thousands of “insult suits” against Erdogan’s critics.   Finally, while democratic leaders can be deeply flawed as individuals, the strongman’s corruption and paranoia ineluctably leads him to develop highly dysfunctional governance structures such as “inner sanctums” composed of sycophants, family members, and advisers chosen for their loyalty rather than their expertise.   As a result, strongmen will gradually come to lack the proper objective input to make reasoned decisions. Their impulsive and mercurial personalities will make their cabinets a circus of hirings and firings, with the chaos further drowning out sound advice.   Trump, who made his daughter and son-in-law top advisers, is in this lineage. “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” he said in 2016, when asked who advises him on foreign policy. When the strongman is ripe to be overthrown, he may be the last to know.   PS: Would you also include those CEOs and business leaders who, like Elon Musk, wield absolute power within their organizations?   RBG: There are many “little tyrants” in business who create decision-making structures that are beholden to their whims, and who dwell in a semi-fantasy environment rooted in their demands for loyalty. Adam Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork, is a good example. Of course, corporate leaders generally must answer to boards of directors and other fiduciary structures that exist to preserve the integrity and profits of the business entity; that is why Neumann eventually was removed. But this does not always happen, as the case of Musk (at Tesla) shows.   Normalizing Extremism   PS: How should we understand Trump’s evolution since he first announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015? In what ways has he become more dangerous, and in what ways has he become simply a “known quantity”?   RBG: Trumpism started in 2015 as a movement fueled by conservative alarm and white rural rage at a multiracial and progressive America. It continued as an authoritarian presidency – what Trump’s advisers envisioned as a “shock to the system” – that unleashed waves of hate crimes against non-whites and non-Christians. It then reached a new stage with the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, which deployed violence not just to keep Trump in office, but also to keep Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and other representatives of social and racial progress from taking power.   Normalizing extremism has been critical to this success. Trump has worked very hard to condition Americans to accept authoritarianism as a superior form of government, and this emotional re-training has proceeded along several vectors. For example, he has sought to change perceptions of political violence, using his rallies since 2015 to market it as necessary and justified – the preferred way to deal with differences.   He has also repeatedly praised dictators around the world in an effort to change Americans’ perceptions of tyrants. And he has led a massive, concerted campaign to delegitimize democratic leaders and institutions, from elections and the courts to the free press.   All are depicted as inefficient, corrupt, and dangerous.Trump surveyed the political marketplace and made himself into an exponent of the causes and emotions that he felt American politics was neglecting.   He identified and named a new constituency: the “forgotten” – white rural and exurban working-class voters whom Democrats had ignored. He told them he loved them, proclaimed himself their savior, and made himself a victim on their behalf. None of this is new for authoritarian politics, but it was new for America, given the scale it has reached.   PS: There is a long-running debate over whether Trump is more of a symptom or a cause, with the “symptom” camp arguing that a similar politician would fill the void were Trump to exit the stage. Do you agree with that, or is there something uniquely compelling about a figure like Trump (or historical antecedents like Mussolini)?   RBG: Strongmen use their personality cults to proclaim their uniqueness. As individuals, they are indeed innovators in repression and communication, capable of presenting themselves as the symbols of all that is most wanted at the moment (safety from racial enemies, protection from leftist anarchy and globalists abroad, and so forth). They can connect on an emotional level with their followers.   Nazis felt that Hitler was speaking directly to them and expressing things they had not known how to articulate, and you can find many quotes from people at Trump rallies who feel the same way about their leader.   But the strongman also breeds imitators (in Nazi Germany they were known as “mini-Hitlers”). Though these figures are often hated by the people, even as the original remains loved, they perform an important function by institutionalizing the tyrant’s values and style.   Sometimes, however, a strongman can become too much of a liability for a country’s conservative elites, so support builds for someone who is equally extreme but appears and sounds more acceptable.   This happened in the Philippines, where former President Rodrigo Duterte’s loose-cannon pronouncements about killing people earned him an International Criminal Court investigation and bad press for the country. That created an opening for the current president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., the son of the former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. Bongbong is a known quantity to the country’s elites, and he is much more respectable on the surface.   When Duterte resigned to help his own daughter be elected as vice president, the Marcos family returned to power. That is how the legacy of dictatorship is institutionalized and normalized.   In the US, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the more polished extremist that Republicans could use to ditch Trump (along with all of his legal and other baggage). But DeSantis proved unsuitable. Although his autocratic leadership style and repressive policies were just fine for the GOP, he was too unlikeable, and his personality too wooden.   Some also hoped that Nikki Haley could assume this role (and she has continued to get votes in primaries even after dropping out of the race). The maxim once applied to Berlusconi is applied to Trump: there is no alternative.   PS: What will it mean for America if Trump wins in November? Do you agree with The Washington Post’s Robert Kagan that America would become a “dictatorship”?   RBG: To understand the stakes of this year’s election, one need only read The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a neutrally named plan for converting America into an autocracy, and listen to what Trump says he will do to America and Americans. I was one of the very first to see Trump as an authoritarian, and I have seen nothing to give me comfort since then. In a January 2017 CNN commentary, I predicted how he would behave in office.   Unfortunately, my warnings proved accurate in every detail, from his attacks on judges and the press, to his efforts to delegitimize institutions and cultivate a personality cult.   I have no doubt that Trump would try to exert dictatorial power so that he could end his legal troubles and repress his critics and investigators without consequences. He will continue to turn party structures into vehicles for personal enrichment.   The Republican National Committee had already been paying his personal legal expenses long after he left office, and now his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is its co-chair.   Meanwhile, Trump’s enablers at Project 2025 have been working for years to facilitate his destruction of democracy. It is telling that they see an “existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.”   Dictators always justify their crackdowns as necessary responses to some kind of national emergency. Now add Trump’s quest to achieve personal immunity for any crimes he will commit, his efforts to attract more unscrupulous cronies by promising pardons, and his vow to grant police officers immunity from prosecution. It becomes easy to see how the rule of law would be transformed into rule by the lawless, with Trump as chief thug.   The Illiberal International   PS: Why did the MAGA movement identify so eagerly with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, rather than with other figures like Jarosław Kaczynski in Poland (before his party’s recent ouster from power)?   RBG: Orban has an unusual history. I call him the strongman “made in America and Hungary.” Having lost re-election as prime minister in 2002 to a Socialist coalition, he embarked on a journey of reinvention as a far-right politician. In 2008, Binyamin Netanyahu, then the leader of the opposition in Israel, introduced Orban to Arthur Finkelstein, a Republican political consultant who specialized in crafting campaigns designed to spark anger and fear in voters and polarize the electorate.   It was Finkelstein, along with his protege George Birnbaum, who created the villainous “George Soros” of the right’s imagination, turning the billionaire defender of democracy into an all-powerful exploiter and predator.   Orban was back in power two years later, and “George Soros,” the anti-Semitic creation of two American Jews, has helped him to stay there ever since.   Orban has portrayed himself as a defender of white Christian civilization against “globalists,” a talking point that is now central to GOP platforms, too. The GOP is also enamored with “illiberal democracy,” Orban’s slogan for a model of governance in which elections are free but unfair, because they are weighted to produce the desired results. He and his party have done this through domination of the media, so that opposition candidates’ messages don’t really reach voters outside of big cities; and through purges of non-loyalists from the judiciary and the electoral apparatus, so that any challenges to results can be turned back swiftly.   While we hear about people falling out of windows or being poisoned in Russia, Orban relies on more surreptitious forms of threat and pressure. That makes him palatable to suit-wearing extremists such as The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, who wants autocracy without seeming to dirty his hands. Owing to Hungary’s captured press, we don’t know the full back story of how Orban persuaded owners of 500 media properties to “donate” their assets “voluntarily” to a government-allied foundation in 2018.   But it is pretty easy to see why he became the poster boy for MAGA, and for far-right elites who work behind the scenes more broadly.“It’s like we’re twins,” Trump exclaimed when he hosted Orban at the White House in 2019. After a few years of Trump, America could indeed resemble Hungary.   PS: According to many commentators, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has transformed herself into more of a moderate, mainstream politician, despite leading a party with fascist roots. What do you say to that?   RBG: I am not among those who see Meloni as a moderate. She is a far-right militant who presents herself as a conservative abroad while staying silent when Mussolini sympathizers salute Il Duce publicly in Italy. Meloni plays a double game. On foreign-policy issues, she takes pro-democratic positions (notably on helping Ukraine) that keep Italy in good standing with its funders at the European Union. That quiets the conservative elites and technocrats at home, giving her a freer hand to pursue an authoritarian agenda domestically.   That agenda includes restricting reproductive and LGBTQ rights (she is for the “natural” family of one man and one woman, and does not support same-sex marriage or adoptions by same-sex couples); revising the constitution to strengthen the executive; and using her position to attempt to shut down critics with lawsuits. For example, she is suing the eminent (81-year-old) classicist Luciano Canfora for calling her a “neo-Nazi at heart” six months before she took office, and her lawyer in this venture is the sitting minister of justice.   PS: Which is more dangerous, a deeply unpopular strongman or a popular one? On the one hand, Netanyahu is so desperate to avoid prosecution that he seems willing to do just about anything to stay in power. On the other hand, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has trampled on civil and human rights, but boasts a sky-high approval rating.   RBG: As I write in Strongmen, the most dangerous authoritarian is the one who can no longer risk removal from power. That is the factor that matters most. Since leaving office usually means meeting a bad end – in the form of prosecution, exile, jail, or worse – a leader in this desperate position will do anything to stay in power.   Netanyahu is indeed a case study. First, he allied with extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir (who was previously convicted on charges of supporting terrorism) to return to power and avoid prosecution. Then, he tried to push through a self-serving “judicial reform” that sparked mass protests in Israel. Now, he wants to expand his war with Hamas.   Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet (the internal security service), recently stated outright that Netanyahu would gladly prolong the war to avoid leaving office, since thousands of Israelis continue to protest against him and demand his resignation.The recent round of purges to the Israeli defense leadership may have been a move to clean house as punishment for intelligence failures before the October 7 attacks. But it bears mentioning that dismissing insiders is also something autocrats do when they feel their power is threatened.   http://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/how-authoritarian-leaders-dismantle-democracy-trump-orban-netanyahu-meloni-by-ruth-ben-ghiat-2024-06-1-2024-06 http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/prospect-podcast/69818/trumps-100-days-with-ruth-ben-ghiat http://lucid.substack.com/ http://ruthbenghiat.com   Meet the New Autocrats who dismantle Democracies from Within, by Cecilia Menjivar & Deisy Del Real for the Scientific American   The new interconnected breed of autocrats gains and retains power by deception, globally undermining democracies through their own institutions.   An autocratic wave has crept up on us in the U.S. and over the world in the last decade. Democracy and autocracy were once seen as two separate and distant worlds with little in common, and that the triumph of one weakened the other. Now, however, autocrats across the globe, in poor and wealthy nations, in established and nascent democracies, and from the right and left, are using the same tactics to dismantle democracies from within.   As of 2021, of the 104 countries classified as democracies worldwide, 37 had experienced moderate to severe deterioration in key elements of democracy, such as open and free elections, fundamental rights and liberties, civic engagement, the rule of law, and checks-and-balances between government branches. This democratic backsliding wave has accelerated since 2016 and infiltrated all corners of the world.   With the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November, questions about the future of American democracy take on urgency. As the American public seems increasingly receptive to autocratic tactics, these questions become even more pressing. Will the U.S. slide into autocracy, faced with a presidential candidate in Donald Trump who promises to be a dictator on his first day in office? Can lessons from autocracies elsewhere help us detect democratic backsliding in the U.S.?   To answer these questions, we first need to identify how the new breed of autocrats attains and retains power: their hallmark strategy is deception. How does a roll call of modern autocrats, and wannabe autocrats, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro implement this modus operandi for the latest model of autocracy? They twist information and create confusion within a façade of democracy as they seize power.   They do not overthrow democracy through military coups d’etat but by undoing core democratic principles, weakening the rule of law, and eliminating checks and balances between branches of government.   Rather than eradicating democratic institutions as leaders like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet or Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko did in the past, today’s established and emergent autocrats (as is the case of Maduro or Orban, for instance) corrupt the courts, sabotage elections and distort information to attain and remain in power. They are elected through ostensibly free elections and connect with a public already primed to be fearful of a fabricated enemy.   Critically, they use these democratic tools to attain power; once there, they dismantle those processes. Autocratic tactics creep into the political life of a country slowly and embed themselves deeply in the democratic apparatus they corrupt. Modern autocracy, one may say, is a tyranny of gaslighting.   We gathered a group of scholars who have looked at successful and failed autocracies worldwide in a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, to identify common denominators of autocratic rulers worldwide. This research shows that modern autocrats uniformly apply key building blocks to cement their illiberal agenda and undermine democracies before taking them over.   Those include manipulating the legal system, rewriting electoral laws and constitutions, and dividing the population into “us” versus “them” blocs. Autocrats routinely present themselves as the only presumed savior of the country while silencing, criminalizing and disparaging critics or any oppositional voice.   They distort information and fabricate “facts” through the media, claim fraud if they lose an election, persuade the population that they can “cleanse” the country of crime and, finally, empower a repressive nationalistic diaspora and fund satellite political movements and hate groups that amplify the autocrats’ illiberal agenda to distort democracy.   In February, Bukele, the popular Salvadoran autocrat and self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” spoke at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual convention for U.S. right-wing elected officials and activists. There he received a standing ovation after he flaunted his crackdown on crime in his country and suggested the U.S. should follow his tactics. His speech demonstrates how, regardless of political history and ideology, or their nation’s wealth and place on the global stage, autocrats today deploy a similar “toolbox of tricks” aimed at legalizing their rule.   That’s because they copy from one another and learn from one another’s successes and failures. Vast interconnected networks enable autocrats to cooperate, share strategies and know-how, and visit one another in public shows of friendship and solidarity to create an international united front.   Just ask Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and autocrat, who received a warm reception when he spoke at the CPAC in 2022, reminding the crowd of the reason for his visit: “I’m here to tell you that we should unite our forces.”   Global networks of autocratic regimes also provide economic resources to other autocrats and invest in their economies, share security services to squash popular dissent, and sometimes interfere in each other’s elections.   Modern autocrats do not act alone; their connections with one another are complemented and sustained by a varied cadre of legal specialists, political strategists and academics who tend to be economically secure, well-educated and cosmopolitan. These individuals, like Michael Anton and those tied to the Trump-defending Claremont Institute, the over 400 scholars and policy experts who collaborated on Project 2025— the extreme-right game plan for a Trump presidency—and Stephen K. Bannon, who called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” by filling government jobs with partisans and loyalists, move in and out of government positions and the limelight.   They are nimble and, moreover, fundamental to the autocrats’ strategies, as they create videos and podcasts and write books to fabricate good images of the autocrats, write detailed blueprints for an autocratic form of government, and consult aspiring autocrats on best practices.   Evidence indicates that we are in a critical moment in U.S. democracy. Will the U.S. inevitably descend into autocracy? No, not with an alert and well-informed electorate. Recognizing the strategies that autocrats use and share, veiled behind a façade of democratic elections and wrapped in fearmongering, equips us to understand the harmful consequences of these strategies for democracy, and perhaps to stop the wave in time.   Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a Nicaraguan opposition politician and prospective presidential candidate, was accused of treason, arrested and banished simply for running as an opposition candidate by the regime of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo (who is also first lady). In exile, Chamorro has described a danger countries face: autocrats who come to power through democratic systems are “like a silent disease—the early symptoms of this silent disease are usually dismissed, but once it begins to consume the body, it is usually too late to stop it.”   * Cecilia Menjivar is a professor of sociology and Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles. Deisy Del Real is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California.   http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-new-autocrats-who-dismantle-democracies-from-within/ http://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/analysis-viktor-orban-transatlantic-assault-democracy/ http://inthesetimes.com/article/trump-musk-bezos-authoritarian-right-strongmen http://theconversation.com/trump-is-ruling-like-a-king-following-the-putin-model-how-can-he-be-stopped-249721 http://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/19/foreign-agent-laws-authoritarian-playbook http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027642241267926 Visit the related web page
	Myanmar: UN chief urges return to civilian rule as crisis worsens by United Nations News, agencies   May 2025   Myanmar: UN report maps pathway to fulfil aspirations for peace, inclusivity and democracy. (OHCHR)   In the face of years of suffering and abuse, the vast majority of the people of Myanmar are united in their defiance of military authoritarianism and violence, a report by the UN Human Rights Office finds, calling for renewed international resolve to end the military’s stranglehold on power and to support the democratic aspirations of the Myanmar people.   “Ever since the military disrupted Myanmar’s democratic path in 2021, the country has endured an increasingly catastrophic human rights crisis marked by unabated violence and atrocities that have affected every single aspect of life,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk.   “Over the past months, my Office has consulted with Myanmar people across all ethnic communities, sectors and demographics, particularly listening to the voices of young people, on their vision for the future,” the High Commissioner said. “They have been united in one message: they don’t want to be ruled by guns, but, rather, yearn for a peaceful, inclusive and democratic society.”   Due to be presented to the Human Rights Council on 1 July 2025, the report underscores the importance of tackling the root causes of the crisis, including unchecked political and economic power concentrated in the military’s hands, generalised impunity, instrumentalization of laws and institutions to serve military interests, and an overall system of governance based on structural racial discrimination, exclusion and division.   It identifies four key areas to the path forward: accountability, good governance, sustainable development and the actions of international and regional stakeholders.   The report also identifies the “constituents for change” -- namely women, youth, civil society organisations and grassroots networks, pro-democracy actors and the media. The voices in the report call for dismantling military-controlled institutions and economic structures, pointing in particular to the military’s domination and exploitation of the economy and natural resources for their own enrichment..   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/05/myanmar-un-report-maps-pathway-fulfil-aspirations-peace-inclusivity-and   28 Feb. 2025   United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk update on the human rights situation in Myanmar / 58th session of the Human Rights Council:   "The human rights situation in Myanmar is among the worst in the world. Today, I will go through a litany of human suffering that is difficult to fathom.   Conflict, displacement and economic collapse have combined to cause pain and misery across the country. Civilians are paying a terrible price. The number killed in violence in 2024 was the highest since the military launched their coup in 2021.   Fifteen million people face hunger this year and in the latest appalling development, up to two million people are reported to be at risk of famine.   Most civilians were killed in brutal and indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery shelling by the military, as it continues to lose its grip on power. The targeting of schools, places of worship, healthcare facilities, displacement camps and public events caused mass civilian casualties and displacement.   At least 1,824 people were killed in 2024, including 531 women and 248 children, but these figures are probably a fraction of the real numbers as there is no verified information from several key areas where heavy fighting took place.   Analysis by my Office suggests the military has attacked healthcare facilities and staff more than 1,500 times since the coup, killing 131 health professionals.   Armed groups opposed to the coup also targeted administrators, local politicians and people affiliated with the military. While this violence is not comparable in scale and scope to that carried out by the military, all parties must respect human rights and humanitarian law.   The military continued its campaign of terrorizing the population through acts of extreme brutality, including beheadings, burnings, mutilations, executions, torture, and the use of human shields. Soldiers launched unprovoked attacks on villages where there was no active fighting.   For example, last October, the military conducted at least 13 airstrikes, burned up to 1,000 houses and killed at least 25 civilians across several villages in Budalin Township, Sagaing, in one day.   Nearly two thousand people have died in custody since the coup, including 410 in 2024 – more than one person per day. Analysis by my Office indicates most deaths were the result of summary executions and torture.   There are continued reports of the systematic use of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, in places of detention. Conditions were reported to be horrific, with squalid facilities, overcrowding, rotten food and contaminated water.   Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to rage. Over 3.5 million people are displaced, and 20 million are in need of humanitarian assistance.   Hunger is reaching catastrophic levels and agricultural productivity has declined by 16 per cent since 2021. Fertilizer shortages, skyrocketing fuel prices, and trade disruptions have driven the price of rice up by 47 per cent in some regions.   The State Administrative Council took further steps in 2024 towards militarizing the entire population of Myanmar.   The activation of a law on military service led to coercive conscription into the armed forces, arbitrary arrests, often at gunpoint, and the enforced disappearance of women and men at military checkpoints and in displacement camps.   Men aged between 18 and 35, and women aged between 18 and 27, face a constant risk of arrest and recruitment into the armed forces.   This has created widespread fear and further displacement. Many young people are attempting to seek safety outside the country – putting them at further risk of trafficking, extortion and exploitation, while increasing the regional impact of this crisis.   The creation of so-called ‘Security and Anti-terrorism Groups’ at the local level has also blurred the distinction between military and civilians, putting civilians at further risk.   Collectively, these policies have had a serious impact on the economy, which was already on its knees. Three-quarters of the population are at, or below, the poverty line. Less than 80 percent of Myanmar’s children are in school, and over 3.7 million young people have left to seek protection beyond the country’s borders.   Myanmar’s Gross Domestic Product has contracted by seventeen per cent since 2020 and is not projected to grow this year. The currency has plummeted, and restrictions on imports and supply chain disruptions sent prices soaring. Inflation is projected at thirty per cent this year.   As the formal economy collapsed, crime and corruption flourished. The Global Organized Crime Index reports Myanmar was the biggest nexus of organized crime in the world in 2024..   Member States, particularly those with influence, need to work together to bolster and support ASEAN members to end the violence and resolve the crisis. That will require a political path that includes not only the National Unity Government, ethnic armed groups, and the democracy movement, but also representatives from women’s groups, youth, and civil society.   I am deeply concerned by the impact funding cuts will have on Myanmar’s embattled civil society and humanitarians. Amid challenging human rights situations around the world, I appeal to the international community to prioritize Myanmar.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2025/02/high-commissioner-turk-decries-litany-human-suffering-myanmar http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/third-myanmars-population-faces-food-insecurity-un-human-rights-experts http://www.acaps.org/en/countries/archives/detail/myanmar-implications-of-the-us-funding-freeze http://reliefweb.int/country/mmr   Feb. 2025   Myanmar on the brink as conflict fuels hunger. WFP   Hunger has reached alarming levels in Myanmar with the situation set to worsen in 2025, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today. A staggering 15 million people are expected to face hunger in 2025, up from 13.3 million last year.   Those living in active conflict areas, particularly in Chin, Kachin and Rakhine states, as well as Sagaing Region, are experiencing the highest levels of food insecurity in the country. Almost 20 million people - 1 in 3 - will need humanitarian assistance this year, according to the Myanmar Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan.   “Growing conflict across the country, access restrictions, a crumbling economy and successive weather-related crises are driving record levels of hunger,” said Michael Dunford, WFP’s Representative and Country Director.   More than 3.5 million people are displaced in Myanmar due to armed conflict and violence, a number projected to increase to 4.5 million in 2025 as conflict takes root and spreads to new areas.   Food is the biggest need for displaced people but spiraling costs and rapid inflation have made it unaffordable for many. The cost of basic staples – including rice, beans, oil and salt – has increased by 30 percent in the past year.   “Food prices in Myanmar continue to rise each and every month. Even if some food is available in local markets, people simply don't have the resources to buy the basics, which means they are eating less and going hungry," said Dunford.   The rapid escalation in humanitarian and food security needs in Myanmar has been overshadowed by international political turmoil and a surge in global crises, which have drawn public attention away from Myanmar.   “The world cannot afford to overlook Myanmar’s escalating crisis. Without immediate and increased international support, hundreds of thousands more will be pushed to the brink,” said Dunford.   http://www.wfp.org/news/myanmar-brink-conflict-fuels-hunger http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159641 http://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-appeals-urgent-funding-prevent-ration-cuts-over-one-million-rohingya-refugees-bangladesh http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2025/02/27/myanmar-war-victims-rohingya-refugees-us-aid-cuts   Jan. 2025   The UN Secretary-General said this week Myanmar’s military must relinquish power to allow a return to civilian rule through an inclusive democratic transition, as the country marks four years since the junta seized power.   Following the coup, President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were detained and the country was plunged into a humanitarian and human rights crisis that has only worsened amid an intensifying civil conflict.   “Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemns all forms of violence and calls on all parties to the conflict to exercise maximum restraint, uphold human rights and international humanitarian law, and prevent further incitement of violence and intercommunal tensions,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in statement.   The situation in Myanmar is in freefall, with nearly 20 million people – a third of the population – expected to need humanitarian aid this year.   Hunger has reached alarming levels, with 15 million people projected to face acute food insecurity in 2025, up from 13.3 million last year. The cost of basic food staples has risen by 30 percent in the past year due to soaring inflation and supply chain disruptions caused by conflict.   “Even if some food is available in local markets, people simply don't have the resources to buy the basics, which means they are eating less and going hungry,” said Michael Dunford, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Representative in Myanmar.   Conflict, displacement and economic collapse   Fighting between junta forces and opposition armed groups – marked by indiscriminate aerial bombardments, village burnings, and executions – has displaced over 3.5 million people within the country. Many others have fled across borders seeking safety, particularly in Thailand and Bangladesh.   Those in conflict-affected areas, including Chin, Kachin, Rakhine and Sagaing regions, are suffering the worst levels of food insecurity. The collapse of Myanmar’s economy, combined with access restrictions and disasters, has left communities on the brink.   Secretary-General Guterres also expressed concerns over the military’s plan to hold elections, warning that intensifying conflict and widespread human rights violations do not permit free and peaceful polls.   He said more cooperation was essential on the part of political and military leaders to bring an end to hostilities and help the people of Myanmar forge a path towards an inclusive democratic transition.   “A viable future for Myanmar must ensure safety, accountability, and opportunity for all its communities, including the Rohingya, and address the root causes of conflict, discrimination and disenfranchisement in all its forms,” the statement noted.   Tom Andrews, the UN’s independent human rights expert on Myanmar, criticized the junta’s election plans as “a fraud,” stressing that it is not possible to hold a legitimate vote while arresting, detaining, and executing opposition leaders and criminalizing media freedom.   “Junta forces have killed thousands of civilians, bombed and burned villages, and displaced millions of people. More than 20,000 political prisoners remain behind bars,” he said. “The economy and public services have collapsed. Famine and starvation loom over large parts of the population”.   Calling on the international community “to help end the nightmare” in Myanmar, Mr. Andrews praised the resilience of Myanmar’s pro-democracy activists, journalists, and humanitarian workers who continue to document abuses and provide aid.   “The resilience and courage of Myanmar’s people continue to amaze and inspire others around the world… These heroic efforts are compelling indicators that Myanmar’s best days lie ahead,” he said.   The Special Rapporteur urged governments to impose stronger sanctions, restrict the junta’s access to weapons and support international justice mechanisms, including efforts to bring Myanmar’s military leaders to justice in the International Criminal Court (ICC).   “Impunity has enabled a decades-long cycle of violence and oppression in Myanmar. Ultimately, this sad chapter of Myanmar’s history must end with junta leaders being prosecuted for their crimes,” he said.   Mandated and appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, Mr. Andrews works independently of the UN Secretariat.   http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159641 http://www.wfp.org/news/myanmar-brink-conflict-fuels-hunger http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/third-myanmars-population-faces-food-insecurity-un-human-rights-experts http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/01/myanmar-four-years-coup-leaders-ramp-violations-unprecedented-levels-un Visit the related web page
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