“Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be,” political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt tell the New York Times, primarily because “most 21st-century autocrats are elected.”
Unlike the regimes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and U.S.-backed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, authoritarianism comes in a new flavor called competitive authoritarianism — “a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against” the ruler’s opposition. This is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia, Turkey and now Venezuela.
The disguise is that modern authoritarians attack their rivals through a nominally legal system originally created by a democratically-elected government. This includes defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations that make citizens slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule.
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“More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy,” they write. “Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.
But if citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.
The signs are obvious in the administration of President Donald Trump. Just look to the Department of Justice opening investigations into former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency operator Christopher Krebs who called out Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020. You can also see it in the administration targeting major law firms like Perkins Coie by prohibiting them federal contracts for being perceived as friendly to Democrats.
Look also for Democratic Party donors and other progressive causes facing political retribution, such as Trump directing the attorney general to investigate the fund-raising practices of progressive fundraising platform ActBlue.
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“Like many autocratic governments, the Trump administration has targeted the media,” they say, referring to Trump suing ABC News, CBS News, Meta, Simon & Schuster and TheDes Moines Register. He’s also “deployed” the Federal Communications Commission to open an investigation of fund-raising practices by PBS and NPR, and reinstating complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC for anti-Trump bias while ignoring complaints against Fox News for promoting lies about the 2020 election.
The writers say “there are signs of an awakening” to the threat in the U.S., particularly with Harvard refusing to install Trump’s commissar to direct school business. It’s also visible in Microsoft recent move to dump the services of a law firm that agreed to do pro bono work for Trump in favor of one that defied the White House.
America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible, they say, “but no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.”
Read the full New York Times article here.