Why should we care who gets elected?

            My opinion–that of many who are not committed by party affiliation to one candidate or the other in this 2024 election—is that I will choose against the specter of having the United States of America become a dictatorship, or a republican democracy with a dictator president. The ancient example is Pericles in Greece; the modern—and current example—is Hungary under Viktor Orbán. More accurately, Hungary can “no longer be considered a full democracy,” according to the European Parliament.” The Parliament said the situation has “deteriorated such that Hungary has become an ‘electoral autocracy,’” and later, labelled Orbán’s government a “systemic threat to the rule of law.” Another descriptor is that Hungary has become an “illiberal democracy”— Orbán’s own words. That is exactly the expressed intent of Donald John Trump.

It is worth understanding how Hungary’s solid democracy changed so radically and in such a short period of time—since 2010.

• Early on,  Orbán seized total control of the party’s internal decision-making and shifted its ideology to the right.
• In 1998, Fidesz party won the election and Orbán became prime minister. During that period, he and his parliament governed in regular democratic fashion.
• When Fidesz lost the 2002 elections, a new prime minister from the rival Socialist party took over.
• But although Orbán stepped aside, he and his followers never really accepted the 2002 defeat as legitimate. Immediately after the results were announced, Fidesz spokespeople accused their opponents of election fraud.
• Orbán launched a nationalist movement to support Fidesz called “Forward, Hungary.” A second electoral loss for the party in 2006 accelerated the shift. In 2009, Orbán gave a speech, delivered at a closed-door party meeting. Orbán touted the need for political stability in Hungary, calling for the creation of a “central political forcefield” that would govern the country for up to 20 years.
• In 2010, Fidesz won a “constitutional majority”. Fidesz’s victory was widely seen as a product of general anti-establishment sentiment which gave Orbán his chance.
• The Fidesz constitutional majority swiftly went to work, rewriting parts of the constitution within months of taking power. Parliamentary districts were redrawn and gerrymandered to give Fidesz a leg up. Liberal bastions, principally large cities like Budapest and Szeged in the south, were divided so that large numbers of people were packed into a handful of parliamentary districts, while each district in Hungary’s conservative countryside had fewer people in it.
• The new constitution also expanded the size of the country’s constitutional court, which decides whether laws passed by parliament are constitutional. Orbán filled the new seats with Fidesz loyalists. All judges over the age of 62 were also forced to retire; so, their seats could be filled with even more Fidesz-friendly jurists.
• Civil servants were fired en masse, and Fidesz allies were installed in vital roles—such as election supervision.
• Hungary’s state broadcaster was brought under the control of a new media board, and its editorial slant quickly began to mirror Fidesz’s positions.
• Private media was a principal target in the drive for more Fidesz power. After the 2010 victory, the Fidesz government used the power of the state to pressure private media corporations to sell to the state or to oligarchs aligned with Fidesz. The new media included every single regional newspaper in the country by 2017.
• Fidesz also worked to reshape the electorate itself. A 2010 law granted citizenship rights to ethnic Hungarians in nearby countries like Romania, including the ability to vote and to access Hungarian social benefit payments. Though many of these ethnic Hungarians have never set foot in Hungary, more than a million non-domestic Hungarians have signed up for the citizenship program. They currently make up about 10 percent of the electorate and are largely on board with Orbán’s right-nationalist agenda, voting for Fidesz at an astonishing 95 percent rate.
• In the past two elections, for example, Fidesz helped create several fake parties–including one party that was being run by someone who turned out to be homeless–that got on the ballot using signatures of Fidesz supporters and dead people.These parties split the anti-Fidesz vote in competitive districts, making it much easier for the Fidesz candidate to win a plurality.
• Successful Hungarian corporations endure shake them downs, using mafia-like tactics to seize control of the corporation. The CEOs could either sell their companies or watch helplessly as the government choked them to death with taxes and regulations. That kind of corruption is a defining feature of Hungary’s soft fascism. Corruption is so commonplace and systematic now in Hungary that Europeans have labeled it a “kleptocracy”.
• More than 126,000 government contracts were issued by the Orbán government from 2010 to 2016. Contracts awarded to four oligarch friends of Orbán’s were disproportionately likely to be awarded without a bidding process; and the companies were particularly likely to receive EU funds, over which the government exercises tight control.
• Few wealthy Hungarians are willing to risk their fortunes by challenging Orbán. Without access to an independent source of funding, it is difficult for anyone to create a political force strong enough to challenge Fidesz’s hegemony.
• By 2012—a year and half after Orbán took office–the opposing Green Party chained themselves to the parliament building in a demonstration against the hollowing of parliamentary work and democratic backsliding under Orbán’s rule–Orbán’s party, Fidesz. The leader of the Green Party is quoted as saying, “If the parliament is the political home of democracy, Hungary’s was vacant by 2012.” Authoritarianism in modern Hungary is a less obvious variation than the old Soviet bloc–one that came on subtly, quietly, and relatively recently.
• Then, the parliament became a mere decoration for a one-party state. International monitors concluded that the opposition never really had a fair chance. Orbán and his party in power hijacked democratic institutions. The nationwide right-wing media network is a crucial component of this authoritarian power. As the Voice of America reported in 2022, Orbán’s allies “have created a pervasive conservative media ecosystem that dominates the airwaves and generally echoes the positions of the Orbán government.”
• His government gerrymandered local districts and allowed voters to register outside their home districts, both aimed at favoring Orbán and his party. The government staffed the public prosecutor’s office with loyalists, ensuring that any misconduct by those in power stays hidden.
• An unending drumbeat of propaganda–from both official state outlets and the private media empires of Orbán allies–demonizes refugees and Muslims, warning of an existential threat to Hungarian society and culture and touts the Orbán regime as the only thing protecting the country from an Islamic takeover. It is “soft fascism”: a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state yet.
• By 2017, Orbán was the eighth-richest manin Hungary, with a fortune of roughly $392 million.

Not one to accept eighth place, it is likely that his wealth will be a better contender by 2024, when Mr. Trump aspires to join him as a successful dictator.

That’s how it was done. Candidate Donald Trump wined, dined, and entertained his admired friend, Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago , heaping laud and praise by the bucketful. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of schooling the would-be next US president received to aid his planning for the second term.

It is fair to ask if America is really in danger of having at least an illiberal dictator?

There is an interesting and provocative question posed by Edward Lempinen: It was a time of historic change, and society was buckling under the stress. There had been a war, then a deadly pandemic. Economic crisis was constant: Racing inflation, unemployment, and changes in technology provoked extreme economic insecurity.

But a leader emerged who understood the fear and humiliation felt by his public. He validated their rage and focused blame on a scapegoat. He pledged to make the nation whole again, to return it to its rightful glory. Much of the population, suffering so profoundly from the shock of loss and change and insecurity, embraced the leader as a sort of messiah. They accepted political violence, even welcomed it; and they turned away from democracy.

What year is this about? what leader? what country?

Lempinen’ scenario is historically accurate, but to which country does it apply? Russia in 1919? Italy in 1923? Germany in 1933? Or the United States today, a few weeks before the presidential election of 2024?

None of the scholars of the developing anti-democratic process being seen in Europe forecast an imminent or complete turn to autocracy in the US, and all were careful to say the US experience today is in important ways different from devastating conditions that preceded the rise of European fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s. But in a series of interviews–experts who have studied the political and economic history of Europe–traced dramatic and deeply troubling parallels between that era a century ago and this fraught American moment. The cautious consensus that emerged from the interviews is that US democracy is more vulnerable today than it has been since the Civil War more than 160 years ago.

Several scholars involved believe the public’s frustration and polarization, incidents and threats of right-wing violence, and a radical new Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity from the law, smack of nascent anti-democracy and could precipitate a break with democracy. Perhaps unlikely, but certainly not out of the question.

Consider the US experience since the start of the 21st century: The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 were followed quickly by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that lasted for years and ended in stalemate. The Great Recession in 2008 and 2009 wiped out savings and drove a spike in unemployment. The nation’s demographics were changing. While many celebrated the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president in 2008, and the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the first woman to win a major-party presidential nomination in 2016, many others were deeply resentful and even feared for the superior status previously enjoyed by the White community and its traditions and values. Resentment increased with the legalization of same-sex marriage and the expansion of rights for transgender and nonbinary people. There were outright and flagrant inequalities in the minds of many Whites and Republicans when the government imposed desegregation, forced busing, minority integration in schools, and affirmative action created preferences in university admissions for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

There have been measurable declines in democratically guaranteed freedoms and equality in several countries previously unequivocally rated as “free”. America is one of them.

The era has featured frequent and almost unchecked random mass shootings, bombings,  declining affiliation with traditional religion, increase in cohabitation without marriage, even disinterest in marriage itself. Technological change has been rapid and disruptive; the internet, smartphones, and social media have overwhelmed us with disinformation—all quite confusing, even frightening to older people and among the less well educated. In the aftermath, political and social polarization has steadily deepened. Evangelicals and the Republican party saw the changes as inimitable to the America they had known and believed in, and they reacted. Donald Trump, and far right extremism resulted and worked severe divisions in the body politic of the United States.

Throughout history, chronic insecurity has been a powerful driver of anti-democratic movements. One need only envision the decay and fall of Athenian democracy, imperial Russia, the Chinese civil war, and the Weimer Republic.

“Social change in gender, art, politics, and class leads to insecurity. People get used to certain norms, a certain place in the world. Then their world is turned upside down. In Europe in the ‘20s, it happened quickly. In this country, it’s been more gradual.”

Arch Puddington, Distinguished Fellow for Democracy Studies, Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global Democracy

Democratic foundations have eroded, showcasing electoral process flaws, legislative checks weakening against executive overreach, and unequal access to justice institutions. Core democratic rights, like expression, association, assembly, and press freedom, continue to decline, exacerbating institutional fragility. This decline spans regions and nations with diverse democratic standings.

For the conservatives and far right, there has become a feeling of having lost something important which must be retrieved. The sense of loss has created a mythologized and romanticized past. In those peoples’ minds, a champion is needed; a political revolution is a crucial requirement for a return to the treasured past; and Donald Trump is the visionary populist anointed to serve as savior. MAGA and the hard right Republican Way is the solution demanded.

For them, small things like giving up some of the liberals’ democratic rights, is of negligible importance beside the need to accomplish a patriotic reformation of the beloved country. The MAGA people see the high likelihood that yet another traumatic event is on the horizon, that America is sinking into a left wing, fake news, quagmire of socialism and on to Communism. Freedom for the Whites is being lost and transferred to Blacks and illegal aliens flooding over the southern border. 2024 is the time to act. In such conditions, people can turn away from democracy and toward an authoritarian leader.

Trump must be elected. This inclination was on display at CPAC in February, where the far-right activist Jack Posobiec praised the insurrection and called for overthrowing democracy, although he later attempted to walk back the comments as partly satirical. “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”

If Democrats or democrats succeed this time around, it will only convince the right that another election was stolen. There are armed rightwing militias standing by waiting for the orders of their commander-in-chief, Mr. Trump, to give the orders.

Authoritarians believe they can do certain things better than their counterparts who have to deal with checks, balances, and public opinion. Music to the ears of Donald Trump. Roughly one in four Americans agrees with the statement that a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections” is desirable.

In 2020, top Georgia Republicans such as Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger managed to block Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results illegally. Kemp earned Trump’s fury by refusing to use what the then-president called “emergency powers” to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. In an infamous January, 2021 phone call that helped lead to Trump’s indictment in Fulton County, Raffensperger rebuffed the president’s demands to “find” him votes. Kemp and Raffensperger both won handily in their 2022 reelection runs.

But ever since President Biden’s inauguration, conservative activists and policymakers in Georgia have tried to bypass Raffensperger and worked diligently to turn Trump’s heads-I-win-tails-you-lose philosophy of elections into public policy.

As Trump has continued to lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” and “rigged”, the former president and his supporters have been making concrete, step-by-step progress in shaping electoral processes to his benefit. Across the state, MAGA die-hards are devoting considerable resources to purging voter rolls, intimidating election officials, employing legal dirty tricks, and ousting Republican officials and election appointees who have not been initiated into the cult of Trump.

During a second term, not only would Trump seek to intimidate and disenfranchise marginalized voters, he would lay the groundwork to question election outcomes further that are adverse to him and his allies. Trump is likely to deploy the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal agencies to launch bad-faith investigations into voters and election officials, including against those he believes “rigged” the 2020 election. A second Trump administration is also likely to make good on earlier promises to send federal law enforcement to voting locations—a move that would serve just one purpose: to suppress voter turnout by intimidating voters.

Importantly, a second Trump administration would likely attempt to manipulate the 2030 census by adding a citizenship question. Census population counts impact apportionment of representatives, funding, and other resource allocation. Additionally, the Trump administration would also seek to reverse nonpartisan federal efforts to promote and expand access to voting, particularly for marginalized communities. That includes rescinding Executive Order 14019, which focuses on increasing language access, mitigating barriers for individuals with disabilities, and increasing voter education and registration opportunities under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

In 2024, Mr. Trump has for his use several conditions necessary for him as a “strongman” to rely on to become the “illiberal” president: A strongman leader appeals to the fear and rage of his public [more about populism in the next article]; a permeating sense of Nationalism with the strongman campaigning on a platform to return to the mythological past—the former greatness of the United States; a widespread sense of loss, humiliation, grievance, and resentment; a sense that modern ways are not serving the needs of the masses, and the masses need to seize power and restore order and justice; the leader identifies scapegoats and attacks them relentlessly; right-wing populism directed against others. What unites all these forces is a hostility to foreigners, to people who are different, to the other, that other countries will be making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength, a conviction that slides smoothly to have democratic institutions remove limits on the leader’s authority. That is the  final parallel–one of jarring importance.

“I alone can fix it…  “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

-Donald Trump, rally speech during his first campaign for president.