Looking back on Corona, which officially arrived in the Netherlands at the end of February 2020, started here and there. I notice a certain disbelief in people when they recall the lockdowns: all that radical forbidden, was that necessary? Wasn’t that virus not that deadly?
It is a typical case of the prevention paradox: a disaster is averted, which is the danger overestimated. I get the same feeling from the people who say two during Trump that it will not go so fast with the breakdown of liberal democracy. The first time it was also called that he was a fascist, and Democracy died then?
That laconic attitude is a mistake, says Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way this week Foreign Affairs. Both are known for their books about the erosion of liberal democracies. Trump did indeed have radical intentions in 2016, they write, but they have been stopped by Republicans who at that time still attached to the ‘democratic rules’. This time the situation is different. Trump has populated his cabinet with loyalists, and the opposition seems demoralized.
America does not move towards a fascist dictatorship, write Levitsky and Way, but to a ‘competitive autocracy’, as it also exists in countries such as Turkey and Hungary. More or less honest elections are held in a competitive autocracy, but there is none Level Playing Field For all parties. The prevailing party manages to put the democratic institutions (media, justice, civil service) so in hand that the opponent does not get a fair chance. “If governments use their power to systematically disadvantage and weaken the opposition, they undermine liberal democracy. Politics becomes a football match in which the referee, the linesman and the fourth official work for one team to sabotage the opponent. “
This is now going on in the US. While Trump undermines the rule of law by releasing Capitol stormers, the unelected Musk is busy firing thousands of officials. Without providing evidence, he claims to have discovered large -scale corruption. He even called the closed USAID “a criminal organization.” It encounters surprisingly little opposition from the Republican establishment.
“It is not true that we do not learn from history. We do learn from it. And then we forget it again, “said Financial Times-Columnist Martin Wolf in Wednesday Room for discussionan interview program from UVA students. It was a quote from a Czech friend who grew up under communism. Wolf argued two years ago The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism That the combination of capitalism and democracy is still the best system, and cannot exist without limit by the rule of law. He wrote it, he said on Wednesday, among other things for younger generations: studies show that they are more often longing for a strong leader. Wolf understands that desire. Anyone who has no experience with authoritarian administration, he said, takes our democracy more easily for granted.
The prevention paradox also applies here: because the democratic institutions do their work so far, they are found exaggerated. That also happens in the Netherlands. Young people call legal values less often as important for democracy, wrote the SCP last year. And here too, democratic institutions are increasingly being discredited. Think of Wilders, who has been raging against journalists and judges for years, and who this week about the Council of State advice on Fabers tweeted new asylum laws: “Don’t put on anything about those unkind bureaucrats of the stainless steel!” FvD, always just a little more radical, even called for the “dismantling” of the Council of State.
People like Trump, Musk, Wilders and Baudet outline the democratic institutions as enemies of the people. The opposite is true: they protect the people against arbitrariness and corruption. That lesson seems to have fallen away from many, while it is now coming: democracy does not survive without the support of loyal democrats. But they can now conclude that the battle is too heavy and risky, Levitsky and Way say. They call that “self-subsidiary”: to get rid of potential social opposition against an authoritarian regime. “The young lawyers who do not go into politics; The young writers who don’t become a journalist; the potential whistleblowers who choose to keep their mouths shut; The countless citizens who decide not to demonstrate or become a volunteer in an election campaign. ”
Self-subsidy is done out of fear, say Levitsky and Way. Fear of falling into disgrace with the new regime and to be fired or prosecuted. But it is even more serious, I think: it also happens from disinterest. Because people do not recognize what it means when a politician attacks judges, journalists and officials. They find the fuss hysterical. And hysterical, who wants to be that? No, rather stay sober. There is nothing wrong, people. Didn’t it work out the last time?
Floor Rusman ([email protected]) is editor of NRC