How democracies die

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

I was inspired to write this essay while reading an excellent book of the same title, written by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in 2018, which I have adapted for my purposes.

When we look at history of the 20th century and examine the reasons behind the death of democracies, we see two major strategies.

During the cold war, democracies died by military coups d’etats, achieved by men with guns. Democracies in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey and Uganda all died this way.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by political leaders elected by the people. Like Chavez in Venezuela, elected leaders with authoritarian ambitions, have used, often subverted, democratic institutions, to gain power. These countries include Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.

“Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box”.

Political scientist Juan Linz, born in Weimar Germany and raised during Spain’s civil war, was well aware of the dangers of losing a democracy. In his book, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, published in 1978, Linz summarizes a set of four warnings we should look for in the recognition of authoritarianism.

First, the aspiring authoritarian rejects, in word or action, the democratic rules of the game (flaunting rejection of, or violating, the constitution; undermining elections and refusing to accept credible election results); second, denies the legitimacy of opponents (baselessly accusing opponents of criminal acts and working with an adversarial foreign government to foster these charges); third, tolerates or incites violence (with access to armed gangs and paramilitary forces, tacitly endorsing acts of violence); finally, attempts to curtail the civil rights of opponents (threatening to take punitive action against dissidents, critics and the media).

In his satire, The Plot Against America, novelist Philip Roth describes an alternative history of America turned upside down in the 1930s. After his solo flight across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh had become a national hero. He presented the human face of a new frontier, the beginnings of air travel, which has become the standard means of international movement of people and freight today. Just as, centuries ago, man conquered the oceans, and was able to transport men and cargo across countries, changing our lives. Just as the movement towards space travel, inspired by Kennedy when he encouraged man, paraphrasing Star Trek, “to go where no man has gone before”, is fast becoming a reality. And of course, the Internet, which is continuing to progress at warp speeds, opening up means of communications beyond the ken of my generation, but as easy to operate and taken for granted by the new, who use it with the facility of the slate once used as a learning tool.

Lindbergh was, however, a known Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite, who was awarded the German Medal of Honour by Hitler’s close associate, Hermann Goering, in 1938. He was also an isolationist, who protested American involvement in World War II.

Roth describes an imaginary America where Lindbergh wins the presidency in 1936, beating the incumbent President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Just as Juan Linz’s warnings described above have all the hallmarks of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Roth’s fictional account has compelling similarities with Trump’s electoral win of 2016.

Trump also is a known sympathizer of America’s premier adversary, Putin of Russia. In a land of immigrants, he identifies his enemies as the new immigrants, legal and illegal, from Mexico and Central America. He showed his anti-Semitic tendencies by condoning the behaviour of White Supremacists who marched the streets of Charlottesville in 2017, shouting, “The Jews will not replace us”. Very fine people, according to Trump. And his racism against African Americans is as legendary as it is genetic. His father was arrested in Queens, New York, as a Ku Klux Klan activist in 1926, and he himself was indicted in 1972 for flouting the Fair Housing Act by refusing to rent to African Americans.

It would be interesting to second-guess what would have happened if, as Roth muses satirically, Hitler and the Nazis won World War II, which would have been a given with America’s non-participation, considering Lindbergh’s continuing dalliance with Hitler. A wave of anti-Semitism and violence would have been unleashed in America.

The world would have been ruled by the Master Race as dreamed by Hitler (and, later, Trump) – Aryan, white, blonde and blue eyed. The dissidents of those countries with people of impure blood, Trump’s shithole countries, would have been marginalized with an extensive use of ovens and gas chambers; others reduced to slavery whose only duty would be to serve the white Masters.

This is not some preposterous, paranoid nightmare. It is a part of history which we have already endured, more or less, with centuries of colonialism and slavery in many parts of the world.

So why has this seemingly inexorable process towards authoritarianism not continued in America? In 2016, Trump, a known sexual predator and crook with no experience of public service, defeated for the presidency the most qualified person with a decades-long, successful experience of public service. Why didn’t this happen again in 2020?

The answer is criminal incompetence. He ushered in an era of corruption, nepotism, racism, anti-Semitism and a complete indifference to the millions of impoverished, often homeless, millions in the richest country in the world. The “shining city on the Hill” was accessible only to the wealthy and the corporations. His criminal incompetence in mishandling the pandemic, which was responsible for hundreds of thousands preventable deaths, was hopefully the final nail in the coffin of his dictatorial dream.

But Trump’s dream may not be quite dead as yet, perhaps only delayed for a few years, thanks to the enablers of the Republican Party, whose sycophantic loyalty remains unshaken. Even with dozens of court cases hanging over him, for fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, sexual abuse and treason, Trump is still the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. Seventy percent of all Republicans believe the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump. Republican members of Congress, bar a couple, also pretend to believe in the Big Lie, against all evidence to the contrary. They are making utterly sycophantic idiots of themselves, because they feel they cannot win re-election in 2022 and 2024 without the support of the Trump cult. Self and Party before Country, that’s the current Republican slogan.

With 30% of the country behind him, with Republican governors of Red States already enacting Draconian laws of voter suppression, with the violent help of his armed white supremacist thugs, Trump’s dreams of autocracy may still come true, in 2024. Of course, he will be 78 years of age, with advancing dementia combined with ignorance and narcissism. These same defects did not stop him in 2016.

None of these matter, as long as the vital credential, the one dream that he shares with his cult, the dream of the perpetuation of White Supremacy and privilege, lives. The dream of a Trump Dynasty, with members of his family at the head of important governmental organizations, with the rich and wealthy becoming richer and wealthier. And most important, the shredding of the 22nd Amendment, even dispensing with or rigging elections, which will keep him in power for life, to be succeeded by the issue of his choice. The current favourite being Ivanka.

“The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy – gradually, subtly, even legally – to kill it”.

Trump’s favourite (and only) book is Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which he occasionally gets Melania to read to him. Those tactics succeeded for a time in the 1930s. More sophisticated strategies have evolved in the quest for authoritarian power.

Trump would have been well-advised to take a page from the playbook of Sri Lankan leaders, who have already achieved all the dreams that authoritarians, including Trump, hold dear, legally and painlessly.

Since we received independence in 1948, Sri Lanka was a vibrant democracy, perhaps till 1977. Elections were held on schedule (except for one two-year extention of parliament in 1975), and the electoral process was never questioned. Successive governments were overturned by landslides, and the transfer of power was usually peaceful, though sometimes disturbed by random pockets of post-election violence.

The seeds of authoritarianism in Sri Lanka, the removal of the guardrails protecting democracy, were planted by the UNP constitution of 1977. The President of Sri Lanka, hitherto a ceremonial figurehead, became the elected Head of State with full executive powers, far in excess of those enjoyed by Heads of State since independence. President Jayewardene availed himself of these dictatorial powers by immediately stripping Mrs. Bandaranaike, the previous Prime Minister, of her civic rights and expelling her from parliament from October 1980.

This dictatorial action was taken to prevent Mrs. Bandaranaike from holding public office again, voting and campaigning in elections, although she remained the leader of the SLFP and one of the most visible and popular politicians in Sri Lanka.

Page 1, section 1 of the Dictator’ Handbook – eliminate, preferably permanently, political rivals, a lesson well learned and implemented by subsequent leaders with authoritarian ambitions, irrespective of party affiliation.

Apart from ruling his party and the country with an iron fist, Jayewardene’s economic policies introduced an unprecedented level of public and private corruption, facilitated by the increase of the money supply because of huge infrastructure projects and the liberalization of imports. Corruption has only increased exponentially with each successive government.

President Premadasa continued with these policies in the backdrop of a fierce civil war and a southern insurrection. The ruling government also spawned extra-judicial, party sponsored militia (a polite term for armed goons) who “discouraged” or assassinated dissidents and muzzled the media, both print and TV.

The ending of the 30-year civil war in 2009, and the return to peace and even illusory racial harmony, has given the Rajapaksa family an almost divine image, especially in the rural areas. A country, hitherto polarized by extremists, corrupt politicians and gunrunners, for whom the ethnic war was a source of profit, was at last freed from fear, hatred and constant violence.

General Sarath Fonseka attempted to ride on his popularity as the head of the Sinhala forces who ushered in peace, success claimed by the then President and Minister of Defence MR along with Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Fonseka also had the temerity of run against Mahinda Rajapaksa for the presidency in 2010.

Fonseka’s subsequent incarceration after his defeat, with a sentence of three years in prison on charges of “corruption” was straight out of the authoritarian playbook. He was released after serving two years of his sentence through international pressure.

The Rajapaksa administration’s popularity was waning in 2014, amid widespread rumours of massive corruption, when one of the members of his cabinet, Maithripala Sirisena, defected to the impotent, rudderless UNP-backed coalition of other parties. Sirisena won the presidency and led an uneasy administration for three years. Amidst constant in-fighting, the shaky Yahapalana coalition came to its inevitable end, when Gotabaya Rajapaksa defeated UNP candidate, Sajith Premadasa handily in the 2019 presidential election.

The Rajapaksas have now resumed their accustomed position as the Ruling Family of Sri Lanka from 2019. The president retained the Defence ministry, elder brother and past president, Mahinda, Prime Minister and Finance, eldest brother Chamal at Irrigation, and Mahinda’s son, Namal, 35 years old, as Sports Minister. Most recently Basil Rajapaksa took over Finance.

The drift towards authoritarianism now seems to be a fait accompli in Sri Lanka, achieved entirely through the electoral process. Complete power resides in the hands of one family. The next generation is already being groomed for leadership. And the Commander-in-Chief is in total command of the military, as he should be.

Trump, are you listening? All it took for you to achieve your dream of claiming a dictatorial dynasty was to have shown a semblance of competence in maintaining the booming economy you inherited, and heeding scientific advice in handling the pandemic. White Supremacy alone could not save you from your own criminal incompetence.

Ironically and most tragically, it took a pandemic which has already taken over 700,000 American lives to save the oldest democracy in the world. For the moment.