Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Authoritarianism

  • What Conservative Spain Has in Common with Putin

    Barcelona Spain
    View of the Palau Nacional from downtown Barcelona, Spain, December 29, 2013 (CucombreLibre)

    There are parallels between Vladimir Putin’s need to dominate Ukraine and right-wing Spain’s intolerance of Catalan nationalism.

    Modern Spain wouldn’t bomb Barcelona. Putin’s aggression is in a league of its own. But the last conservative government of Spain did send riot police into Catalonia when it organized an independence referendum in defiance of Spanish courts. It did depose the regional government, arrest its leaders and sentence them to between nine and thirteen years in prison for inciting “sedition” and participating in a “rebellion”. It did hack the phones of dozens of Catalan separatists, including non-politicians, to read their messages and listen to their conversations.

    Putin uses tanks, conservative Spain the law, but their motivation is the same: neither can accept the independent aspirations of a people they refuse to recognize as separate from themselves. (more…)

  • The Dictator of France

    Emmanuel Macron
    French president Emmanuel Macron reviews a Bastille Day parade in Paris, July 14, 2020 (Elysée/Philippe Servent)

    What has gotten into Persuasion?

    First they published a ridiculous hit piece arguing Spain’s center-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is the greatest threat to democracy since Francisco Franco. Now it’s Emmanuel Macron’s turn.

    Robert Zaretsky, a history professor at the University of Houston, writes the French president has become “authoritarian”.

    To be fair, Zaretsky recognizes that a measure of autocracy is built into France’s presidential-centric Fifth Republic. On paper, the French president is the most powerful leader in democratic Europe; both ceremonial head of state and chief executive. Every president, from Charles de Gaulle to François Mitterrand, has been accused of dominating French politics in their time.

    Macron is no different. Zaretsky marshals little evidence to prove this president (ab)uses the powers of his office more than his predecessors. (more…)

  • Cabinet Coup Would Give Trump His Own Dolchstoßlegende

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump attends a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018 (Office of the President of the Republic of Finland/Juhani Kandell)

    Democrats in the United States are urging Vice President Mike Pence and members of the cabinet to remove Donald Trump from power under the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

    That could be a mistake.

    It would be constitutionally dubious. The Twenty-fifth Amendment allows a majority of the cabinet to replace a president who has become incapacitated. It wasn’t designed to topple a president who is still technically able to carry out his duties.

    It can be argued Trump has proved himself “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” by inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol on Wednesday in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election. But I can think of a dozen more examples of Trump’s behavior from the last year alone that proved his unfitness for office.

    More worrisome than potentially setting a bad precedent is that a cabinet coup would add fuel to the fire of the stab-in-the-back myth Trump and his supporters are already writing. It could give the outgoing president just the pretext he needs to lead an insurgency against the next government of the United States. (more…)

  • This Is a Putsch

    I’m not sure how to describe what’s happening in Washington DC today as anything other than an attempted coup.

    It’s like Berlin 1920 or Paris 1934. Right-wing militias, egged on by conservative politicians, storm parliament in an attempt to topple a democratically elected government. In this case, a president-elect: Joe Biden.

    Republicans, including the outgoing president, have for weeks alleged that the November election was stolen. Conservative media have uncritically amplified those lies.

    Before his supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump gave a speech outside the White House in which he said:

    Our country has had enough and we will not take it any more. … We will never give up. We will never concede.

    Short of marching up to Capitol Hill himself, Trump could scarcely have done more to encourage the putsch, which succeeded in delaying the certification of Biden’s election victory. (more…)

  • Trump’s Desperation and Republicans’ Shame

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump answers questions from reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, July 18, 2019 (White House/Shealah Craighead)

    Donald Trump’s attempt to cling to power has been going no better since we last checked in. He is trying to steal the election, as I expected he would, but there are still officials, including Republicans, who care more about doing the right thing than humoring the president.

    • Election officials in all states counted all the votes, despite cries from Trump and his supporters to stop the count in states where he was ahead before mailed-in ballots could be counted.
    • Secretaries of state and governors, regardless of party, certified the results in all states, despite appeals from Trump and his supporters to overturn the popular will where the outcome was close and appoint electors for the president, rather than Joe Biden.
    • 86 judges of both parties threw out lawsuits brought by Trump and Republicans to discard postal ballots or otherwise invalidate the election results.
    • All nine justices of the Supreme Court, including the three appointed by Trump, refused to even hear a lawsuit brought by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton to overturn the election in four other states.
    • The Electoral College met in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. There were no faithless electors. Republican activists claiming to be electors in Michigan were barred from the state capitol, where the actual electors cast their votes for Biden.

    Trump’s last (legal) opportunity to remain in power will be on January 6, when Vice President Mike Pence reads out the Electoral College votes in Congress. But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has already called on his members not to raise objections on that day. (more…)

  • Viktor Orbán’s Authoritarian Playbook

    Viktor Orbán
    Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán arrives to a European Council meeting in Brussels, October 16 (European Council)

    For too long has the European Union tolerated the formation of a self-proclaimed “illiberal democracy” in its midst. A recent European Court of Justice ruling underscores that Hungary is not only in beach of the rule of law, but violates the very rights and values on which the EU is founded.

    The court ruled earlier this month that restrictions imposed on foreign universities — which forced the George Soros-funded Central European University to relocate from Budapest to Vienna — were “incompatible” with the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

    Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, a French member of the European Parliament and its rapporteur on the situation in Hungary, commented that the ruling “should send a warning to Viktor Orbán: that it’s time to step back from the brink of autocracy and reverse the Hungarian government’s undemocratic path.”

    Orbán, prime minister since 2010, has come a long way. He started his political career as a liberal anticommunist and ended up the most right-wing, authoritarian government leader in the EU.

    If the rest of the bloc is to rein him in, it must first understand how he has been able to gain, and keep, his power.

    This is Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian playbook. (more…)

  • Orbán Abolishes Democracy in Hungary

    Viktor Orbán Benjamin Netanyahu
    Prime Ministers Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speak in Brasília, Brazil, January 2, 2019 (Facebook/Viktor Orbán)

    I try to avoid Nazi-era comparisons, since they’re seldom appropriate, but Viktor Orbán isn’t making it easy. The only thing that could make his power grab in Hungary more like the Enabling Act of 1933 is if, like the Reichstag fire, COVID-19 really had been manufactured (in a Chinese lab funded by George Soros, if we are to believe Russia’s disinformation).

    Using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, Orbán has dissolved parliament and postponed all elections — indefinitely.

    The Constitutional Court technically still functions, but it is packed with Orbán loyalists and provides no real oversight. For all intents and purposes, Orbán now rules alone. (more…)

  • Trump Attacks the Rule of Law

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, February 27, 2015 (Gage Skidmore)

    When Donald Trump pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2017 — before the court even had a chance to sentence him for contempt — it reminded me of that adage of South American dictators: “For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.”

    Now we know just how far Trump is willing to take America down the path of a banana republic. (more…)

  • Leftists Denounce “Coup” Against Vote-Rigging Autocrat in Bolivia

    Let’s take a break from the right-wing apologists of a would-be autocrat in the United States to check in with the left-wing apologists of an actual autocrat in Bolivia.

    In the face of mass protests, the Bolivarian military has forced the left-wing populist Evo Morales to step down.

    Morales served an unconstitutional third term as president from 2014 to 2019. He called and lost a referendum in 2016 on whether he should stand for a fourth term, but the Supreme Court canceled that result, arguing that “American imperialism” had influenced the outcome.

    In his latest bid for reelection, observers from the Organization of American States found clear manipulations, including a 24-hour freeze in the vote count, before which Morales was losing and after which he suddenly won.

    You wouldn’t know it from reading British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders or New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading light of the American new left, who have all denounced Morales’ removal as a “coup” and are calling for “free and fair elections” — no matter that’s the very thing Morales wouldn’t allow. (more…)

  • Is Brazil’s Bolsonaro the Trump of the Tropics?

    Jair Bolsonaro
    Jair Bolsonaro makes a speech in the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil, September 14, 2016 (Agência Brasil/Marcelo Camargo)

    Brazil is the latest country to lurch toward right-wing nationalism. When Jair Bolsonaro resoundingly defeated his left-wing opponent, Fernando Haddad, in the country’s presidential election last month, news whirled around the world reporting this was Brazil’s Donald Trump.

    Bolsonaro is certainly keen to be Trump’s partner in Latin America. But is the comparison apt? And is it helpful to view each new iteration of right-wing nationalism through the Trump prism? (more…)

  • Donald Trump’s Strategy of Tension

    Donald Trump
    Voters wait outside a convention center in Rochester, Minnesota, where American president Donald Trump is giving a speech, October 5 (Lorie Shaul)

    Matthew Yglesias argues in Vox that there is method to the right-wing madness in the United States.

    The violence, and threats of violence, are the result of a Republican strategy, he argues, to foster a political debate that is centered on divisive questions of personal identity rather than on potentially unifying themes of material advancement.

    The downside of this strategy is that it pushes American society to the breaking point. The upside for Republicans is that it facilitates policies that serve the interests of their wealthiest supporters. (more…)

  • Leaders Are Not Their Countries

    It’s a tried-and-tested strongman tactic: conflate yourself with the nation to silence your critics.

    Viktor Orbán used it this week, when he told critical members of the European parliament they were condemning not only him and his government but the entire nation of Hungary.

    Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice president, had the right response when he called this the “coward’s way out” of a debate. (more…)

  • Don’t Call Them Illiberal Democrats

    Viktor Orbán Vladimir Putin
    Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Russian president Vladimir Putin answer questions from reporters in Moscow, February 17, 2016 (Facebook/Viktor Orbán)

    Michael Meyer-Resende of Democracy Reporting International argues for Carnegie Europe that applying the term “illiberal democracy” or “majoritarianism” to the politics of Hungary and Poland is a misnomer. The ruling parties there are not undermining democracy — by taking control of the (state) media, stacking the courts and rewriting election laws — for the sake of the majority, but rather to maintain their own power.

    Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party pretend to apply a majoritarian logic while colonizing the institutions of checks and balances:

    For now, it means the majority can rule without constraints. Tomorrow, it means they can thwart another majority by using their control of the judiciary and state media. (more…)

  • Trump’s Praise for Dictators Is Rooted in His Own Insecurity

    Michel Temer Donald Trump
    Presidents Michel Temer of Brazil and Donald Trump of the United States meet at the G20 in Hamburg, Germany, July 8, 2017 (Bundesregierung)

    Donald Trump’s flattering comments about Kim Jong-un are shocking but not surprising. They are wholly in line with the American’s authoritarian personality.

    In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, who reminded Trump of the appalling human-rights abuses in North Korea, the president praised the young tyrant as a “tough guy”.

    When you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have — if you can do that at 27 years old… I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. So he is a very smart guy. He is a great negotiator.

    (more…)

  • Trump Uses Pardon Power to Keep Friends Out of Jail

    When Donald Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio last year before the former Arizona sheriff could even be sentenced for criminal contempt of court, I wrote it reminded me of that adage of South American dictators: “For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.”

    It has only become worse since then. (more…)