The history of democracy globally is strewn with examples of extremists and demagogues manipulating prejudice, insecurity, and fear in a bid for power. In this sense, Trump is nothing new. And from the Poland to the Philippines, the virus of political extremism and intolerance—of anti-pluralism—is once again spreading, placing the survival of democracy in jeopardy. Democracy has failed several times before in the Philippines, most notably in 1972, when Ferdinand Marcos, nearing the end of his second elected term as president in the midst of an armed communist insurgency, declared martial law and became a dictator. It failed once before in Poland in 1926, when Marshal Jozef Pilsudski staged a coup d’etat against a fragmented and poorly functioning party system. It was widely assumed that the rebirth of democracy after the Cold War, and its maturation in a modern and now economically successful Poland that is part of the EU, would give it immunity from reversal, but now a right-wing, anti-pluralist government is gutting constitutional constraints on its power and stifling opposition in politics as well as the media. Democratic failure could happen again in Poland—and certainly the Philippines. But could it happen here?

Among the most dangerous sins of democrats in times of trouble are arrogance and apathy. The severe polarization of American politics—to the point where Trump’s support base appears to be sticking with him despite his increasingly anti-democratic statements and the mounting allegations of his sexual abuse of women—is one sign of the trouble Americans are in. Fanaticism is another. Recall Trump’s statement in Nevada in February about the intensity of his support: “Sixty-eight percent would not leave [me] under any circumstance. I think that means murder. I think it means anything.” Perhaps most disturbing of all are the signs that several years before the rise of Trump, support for democracy had begun to decline significantly, especially among young people, and not only in the U.S. but in Europe as well.

Democracies fail when people lose faith in them and elites abandon their norms for pure political advantage. In The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz stressed two factors in the failure of democracy. One is the growth of “disloyal opposition”—politicians, parties, and movements that deny the legitimacy of the democratic system (and its outcomes), that are willing to use force and fraud to achieve their aims, and that are willing to curtail the constitutional rights of their political adversaries, often by depicting them as “instruments of outside secret and conspiratorial groups.” But at least as great a danger, Linz warned, was “semiloyal behavior” by parties and politicians willing “to encourage, tolerate, cover up, treat leniently, excuse or justify the actions of other participants that go beyond the limits of peaceful, legitimate … politics in a democracy.” It is now not only fair but necessary to ask whether those in Donald Trump’s party who fail to denounce his democratic disloyalty are not themselves doing great damage to American democracy.