The Rise of the Strongman

Who does this describe?

…authoritarian leaders around the world have refined a playbook for acquiring and consolidating power. The strategy goes something like this: appeal to nationalism, stoke fear and divide people into an “us” and a “them,” use that polarization to win an election (even if it’s just an internal party vote, as in China), and systematically undermine democratic rules and other procedural safeguards.

According to Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” piece, it describes the strongman — its #1 most influential thinker.

FP lists:

Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Xi Jinping’s China, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and even Donald Trump’s America”…

And that’s fine as far as it goes.

But who is dividing America, say, into “us and them?”

Is it just Trump. Or is it a Democratic leader calling a huge chunk of the population “the deplorables?” Whether you agreed or disagreed with Clinton, is this not an internal enemy?

What about the Democratic and “Resistance” strategy of demonizing Russia and Putin? Is this different in kind from China demonizing Japan and the West? (Perhaps it is, in that those countries really did despoil China, while Russia has never despoiled America.)

Is it so different from what is happening in Britain, with Brexit, or in much of Europe, especially Eastern Europe with regard to refugees?

I think Foreign Policy magazine is correct, understand. I just think that being members of America’s elite, they have trouble seeing and naming this tendency when it is being done by leaders or movements they identify with. Trump is outside the foreign policy establishment (he actually talks about withdrawing troops from Syria and Afghanistan!) He is easy to criticize. But Trump has not been tangoing in the US alone and US politicians have a long history of using internal and external enemies, just like strongmen, to win internal elections.

Likewise, that US democratic elections have been systematically undermined (thru gerrymandering, voter suppression and vast lakes of money) is undeniable, as is the fact that the rule of law means little in the United States after Obama’s Department of Justice immunized virtually every senior financial executive in the country.

There is a general global trend to authoritarianism. In the US it did not start with Trump, and it is already in the acute stage. It entered the acute stage not in 2016, but on September 14th 2001, with the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), when the US Senate decided to give away its war-making authority to the Presidency. (And with the Patriot Act, when the US decided to formally become a soft police state.)

It is seen in austerity, where government functions have been systematically weakened so that tax cuts and privatization can be given to the rich.

It is abetted by the destruction and hobbling of the media. It is true that Turkey’s Erdogan is terrible when it comes to jailing the media; that China’s media is censored, and so on.

But the US media is being eviscerated by market forces. Journalists are laid off in waves. What oversight they offered (generally pitiful, as the run up to the Iraq war showed, with virtually all media onside and critics deliberately silenced, fired and demoted) is withering on the vine.

The trend away from meaningful democracy, whatever forms are maintained, is not limited to a few bad apples and one rogue President, Trump. It is, instead, something with deep roots in the hegemonic power of the age, America.

It will continue so long as the general population are considered sheep. As long as the needs of the many are subordinate to the needs of the few, and as long as large groups of the many are impoverished, they will remain demagogue bait and willing to support authoritarians.

Fear, as FDR understood, is at the heart of all authoritarianism.

People are scared. They have good reason to be scared, because their leaders despise them and want to hurt them. And whenever they find someone they think is strong and on their side, they will flock to that person. They will usually be wrong to do so, but abused people usually make bad decisions.

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