I don’t see support for the key claim of the article.
This post aims to show that, over the next decade, it is quite likely that most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships—this is not a tail risk, but the most likely overall outcome.
How do we get to “most democratic Western countries”? Which ones should I expect to fall? What’s a rough timeline for them falling?
Erdogan just narrowly won an election, one in which he was fully expected to step down if defeated. He has repeatedly lost important elections at the local level.
Modi is a popular leader who is widely expected to win reelection, and yet opposition parties control a great many states. Indian democracy still functions, despite the many failures of the main opposition.
Hungary also still has elections and viable political opposition.
Other examples include:
Trump, who has been president without significantly weakening American democracy and whose 3 appointed judges have proven willing to rule against him, particularly as democratic norms go (and he will get no more judges).
A variety of European countries, including Italy, France and Sweden, in which far-right origin parties have grown and even (in Italy’s case) gained power. But they gained power, to a large extent, by repudiating those parties’ past beliefs. Le Pen even has to boot her own father from the party.
Context is important. It’s not given in the article, but you could well point to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada as another far-right populist party that emerged in recent years. But so were the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties that existed 30 years earlier, which emerged in reaction to the Progressive Conservative’s move towards the center. Those parties moved towards the center, gained power, lost it, and elected even more centrist candidates. Hence, the appearance of the PPC, a far-right party that will need to capture far more disaffected conservatives if it’s ever to win seats.
Yes, Le Pen is doing well, but the Republican have been so crushed in recent election that Macron (a former Socialist) has become the de facto center-right leader. Le Pen has been working to make herself more acceptable for decades, even as France has had significant blowback against the refugee influx. There are a lot of things working in her favor, but still little evidence that France would transition to a dictatorship under her rule (say, having won 35% in a hypothetical round one and 55% in round two, and controlling very little in terms of states or parliament). What’s the process here?
I think a lot more needs to be done in order to support the article’s thesis, including:
Elucidating what counts as a fascist dictatorship, with modern examples.
Giving examples of countries that could reasonably become fascist dictatorships within the next decade, with some discussion of how. (This is a time-consuming process, but even just discussing how they could begin the transition over the next ten years would support a weaker, but more defensible, claim.)
Trump’s appointed SCOTUS judges are indeed willing to rule against him and to uphold a coherent legal theory of democracy under the rule of law, which agree or disagree is clearly not equivalent to “whatever my side wants it gets”. The same sadly cannot be said of his lower court judges, notably Aileen Cannon, whose presence on the bench in his home district drastically decreases the otherwise high likelihood of his being convicted and imprisoned for having obviously, self-confessedly committed serious crimes. Cannon is exactly the sort of lawless, toadying party hack that fascist dictators-in-making around the world love to appoint to the judiciary, and we should expect lots more of them to be appointed if Trump wins in 2024. This may prove to be the biggest single piece of damage to US democracy in the next decade.
I appreciate this because it focuses on the mechanistic process of inter-human communication that actually implements the patterns we’re discussing. I feel like if this conversation is to continue usefully it probably should move towards precise mechanistic description, I’d be interested in a v2 of a post like this that taboos most names of organizational patterns and instead uses mechanistic descriptions. examples of words that I’d rather see as an expanded definition in most of the document (mentioning the name need not be forbidden, just don’t use the name at length): fascism; authoritarianism; democracy (!); [far] right, left. also, every “will”, “typically”, “often” should ideally be cited. Without these refinements this is already a great doc, but it needs to be a high quality argument about a fraught topic. I write this already in agreement with the title thesis, but I also agree that OP isn’t sufficiently verified evidence to be convincing to someone who doesn’t already have an epistemic state that makes this a small update.
That is one example, but wouldn’t we typically assume there is some worst example of judicial malpractice at any given time, even in a healthy democracy? If we begin to see a wave of openly partisan right or left-wing judgements, that would be a cause for concern, particularly if they overwhelm the ability of the supreme court to overrule. The recent dueling rulings over mifepristone was an example of this (both the original ruling and the reactive ruling), but it is again a single example so far.
I actually think the more likely scenario then a fascistic backslide is a civil conflict or split between red & blue America, which would significantly destabilize global geopolitics by weakening American hegemony. The military leans conservative but not overwhelmingly, so if put under pressure individual battalions may pledge loyalty to either side in a conflict.
However, even this I would say is low-probability because of the partisan geography of America; red & blue areas intermingle and do not form a coherent front like the north & south did in the Civil War.
- India, Turkey, and Hungary are widely referred to as “hybrid regimes” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_regime), in which opposition still exists and there are still elections, but the state interferes with elections so as to virtually guarantee victory. In Turkey’s case, there have been many elections, but Erdogan always wins through a combination of mass arrests, media censorship, and sending his most popular opponent to prison for “insulting public officials” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63977555). In India’s case, Modi is no doubt very popular, but elections are likewise hardly fair when the main opponent is disqualified and sent to prison for “defamation” (insulting Modi). Rather than being voted out, hybrid regimes usually transition to full dictatorships, as has happened in (eg.) Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, etc.
In Turkey’s case, there have been many elections, but Erdogan always wins through a combination of mass arrests, media censorship, and sending his most popular opponent to prison for “insulting public officials”
You do know that Ekrem Imamoglu was not actually sent to jail, right? He was one of the vice-presidential candidates in the May 2023 election.
Your claims here also ignore the fact that before the May 2023 elections, betting markets expected Erdogan to lose. On Betfair, for example, Erdogan winning the presidential elections was trading at 30c to 35c. Saying that “of course Erdogan would win, he censors his critics and puts them in jail” is a good example of 20⁄20 hindsight. Can you imagine betting markets giving Putin a 30% chance to win a presidential election in Russia?
It’s also not true that Erdogan always wins elections in Turkey. Erdogan’s party used to have a majority of seats in the parliament, and over time their share of the vote diminished to the extent that now they don’t anymore. To remain in power, Erdogan was compelled to ally with a Turkish nationalist party that had previously been one of his political enemies, and it’s only this alliance that has a majority of seats in the parliament now. This also led to noticeable policy shifts in Erdogan’s government, most notably when it comes to their attitude towards the Kurds.
It seems to me that you’re getting your information from biased sources and your knowledge of the political situation in Turkey is only superficial.
I wondered if there was a selection effect in your hybrid → dictatorship statement (we don’t talk much about people who lost power). But if I look at the hybrid regimes in 2012 here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index), I do see a fair percentage that are listed as authoritarian in 2022. By contrast, only three countries (Singapore, Sri Lanka and Albania) have moved to Flawed Democracy. (2012 is, of course, a major outlier for Egypt, Libya and some other Arab Spring countries, but that doesn’t affect the general trend much.)
It’s worth looking at what happened in Ekrem İmamoğlu’s case, which you’ve linked to. As of today, Ekrem İmamoğlu is the sitting mayor of Istanbul, awaiting pending multiple courts upholding the verdict in his trial. İmamoğlu endorsed the head of his party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, as a presidential candidate, with İmamoğlu to serve as vice-president (though ultimately there were 7 (!) people set to serve as VP, so I don’t know how meaningful this is). Kılıçdaroğlu won 48% of the vote in the presidential election. I haven’t seen a detailed postmortem on how Erdoğan beat the polls, but there was no “virtually guaranteeing victory” in this election.
Also importantly: Erdoğan took power in 2003! He was 49. It took him 20 years to bring Turkey to the state it’s in, and I don’t think he has another 20 in him. If you want to turn your country into a dictatorship, you have to be young: Putin was 47, Chavez 45. This isn’t a quick process, and if your candidate for doing it is 75, they’re not likely to succeed. This is part of why I don’t see your “over the next decade” holding up.
Nitpick: Erdogan’s party won the 2002 elections, and Erdogan became Prime Minister in 2003. I’m not sure where you got the year 2004 from, but it’s not correct.
I don’t see support for the key claim of the article.
How do we get to “most democratic Western countries”? Which ones should I expect to fall? What’s a rough timeline for them falling?
I don’t even see what parties are supposed to be those fascist dictatorships. The three main examples given of fascism are “Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, and Orban in Hungary”.
But:
Erdogan just narrowly won an election, one in which he was fully expected to step down if defeated. He has repeatedly lost important elections at the local level.
Modi is a popular leader who is widely expected to win reelection, and yet opposition parties control a great many states. Indian democracy still functions, despite the many failures of the main opposition.
Hungary also still has elections and viable political opposition.
Other examples include:
Trump, who has been president without significantly weakening American democracy and whose 3 appointed judges have proven willing to rule against him, particularly as democratic norms go (and he will get no more judges).
A variety of European countries, including Italy, France and Sweden, in which far-right origin parties have grown and even (in Italy’s case) gained power. But they gained power, to a large extent, by repudiating those parties’ past beliefs. Le Pen even has to boot her own father from the party.
Context is important. It’s not given in the article, but you could well point to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada as another far-right populist party that emerged in recent years. But so were the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties that existed 30 years earlier, which emerged in reaction to the Progressive Conservative’s move towards the center. Those parties moved towards the center, gained power, lost it, and elected even more centrist candidates. Hence, the appearance of the PPC, a far-right party that will need to capture far more disaffected conservatives if it’s ever to win seats.
Yes, Le Pen is doing well, but the Republican have been so crushed in recent election that Macron (a former Socialist) has become the de facto center-right leader. Le Pen has been working to make herself more acceptable for decades, even as France has had significant blowback against the refugee influx. There are a lot of things working in her favor, but still little evidence that France would transition to a dictatorship under her rule (say, having won 35% in a hypothetical round one and 55% in round two, and controlling very little in terms of states or parliament). What’s the process here?
I think a lot more needs to be done in order to support the article’s thesis, including:
Elucidating what counts as a fascist dictatorship, with modern examples.
Giving examples of countries that could reasonably become fascist dictatorships within the next decade, with some discussion of how. (This is a time-consuming process, but even just discussing how they could begin the transition over the next ten years would support a weaker, but more defensible, claim.)
Trump’s appointed SCOTUS judges are indeed willing to rule against him and to uphold a coherent legal theory of democracy under the rule of law, which agree or disagree is clearly not equivalent to “whatever my side wants it gets”. The same sadly cannot be said of his lower court judges, notably Aileen Cannon, whose presence on the bench in his home district drastically decreases the otherwise high likelihood of his being convicted and imprisoned for having obviously, self-confessedly committed serious crimes. Cannon is exactly the sort of lawless, toadying party hack that fascist dictators-in-making around the world love to appoint to the judiciary, and we should expect lots more of them to be appointed if Trump wins in 2024. This may prove to be the biggest single piece of damage to US democracy in the next decade.
I appreciate this because it focuses on the mechanistic process of inter-human communication that actually implements the patterns we’re discussing. I feel like if this conversation is to continue usefully it probably should move towards precise mechanistic description, I’d be interested in a v2 of a post like this that taboos most names of organizational patterns and instead uses mechanistic descriptions. examples of words that I’d rather see as an expanded definition in most of the document (mentioning the name need not be forbidden, just don’t use the name at length): fascism; authoritarianism; democracy (!); [far] right, left. also, every “will”, “typically”, “often” should ideally be cited. Without these refinements this is already a great doc, but it needs to be a high quality argument about a fraught topic. I write this already in agreement with the title thesis, but I also agree that OP isn’t sufficiently verified evidence to be convincing to someone who doesn’t already have an epistemic state that makes this a small update.
That is one example, but wouldn’t we typically assume there is some worst example of judicial malpractice at any given time, even in a healthy democracy? If we begin to see a wave of openly partisan right or left-wing judgements, that would be a cause for concern, particularly if they overwhelm the ability of the supreme court to overrule. The recent dueling rulings over mifepristone was an example of this (both the original ruling and the reactive ruling), but it is again a single example so far.
I actually think the more likely scenario then a fascistic backslide is a civil conflict or split between red & blue America, which would significantly destabilize global geopolitics by weakening American hegemony. The military leans conservative but not overwhelmingly, so if put under pressure individual battalions may pledge loyalty to either side in a conflict.
However, even this I would say is low-probability because of the partisan geography of America; red & blue areas intermingle and do not form a coherent front like the north & south did in the Civil War.
Thanks for the response! Here are some comments:
- India, Turkey, and Hungary are widely referred to as “hybrid regimes” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_regime), in which opposition still exists and there are still elections, but the state interferes with elections so as to virtually guarantee victory. In Turkey’s case, there have been many elections, but Erdogan always wins through a combination of mass arrests, media censorship, and sending his most popular opponent to prison for “insulting public officials” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63977555). In India’s case, Modi is no doubt very popular, but elections are likewise hardly fair when the main opponent is disqualified and sent to prison for “defamation” (insulting Modi). Rather than being voted out, hybrid regimes usually transition to full dictatorships, as has happened in (eg.) Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, etc.
- Of course nothing is certain, but France’s president is very powerful, and this article discusses in detail how Le Pen could manipulate the system to get a legislative supermajority and virtually unlimited power if elected: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/20/france-election-le-pen-macron-constitution-separtism-law-state-of-emergency-referendum/
- I made a map here of roughly how much electoral support the far right has in each country worldwide (https://twitter.com/alyssamvance/status/1656882958903418880). However, it is tricky to forecast based on this, because far-right parties can appear from nothing and gain a wide support base very quickly (as happened with eg. Chile’s Republican Party).
You do know that Ekrem Imamoglu was not actually sent to jail, right? He was one of the vice-presidential candidates in the May 2023 election.
Your claims here also ignore the fact that before the May 2023 elections, betting markets expected Erdogan to lose. On Betfair, for example, Erdogan winning the presidential elections was trading at 30c to 35c. Saying that “of course Erdogan would win, he censors his critics and puts them in jail” is a good example of 20⁄20 hindsight. Can you imagine betting markets giving Putin a 30% chance to win a presidential election in Russia?
It’s also not true that Erdogan always wins elections in Turkey. Erdogan’s party used to have a majority of seats in the parliament, and over time their share of the vote diminished to the extent that now they don’t anymore. To remain in power, Erdogan was compelled to ally with a Turkish nationalist party that had previously been one of his political enemies, and it’s only this alliance that has a majority of seats in the parliament now. This also led to noticeable policy shifts in Erdogan’s government, most notably when it comes to their attitude towards the Kurds.
It seems to me that you’re getting your information from biased sources and your knowledge of the political situation in Turkey is only superficial.
I wondered if there was a selection effect in your hybrid → dictatorship statement (we don’t talk much about people who lost power). But if I look at the hybrid regimes in 2012 here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index), I do see a fair percentage that are listed as authoritarian in 2022. By contrast, only three countries (Singapore, Sri Lanka and Albania) have moved to Flawed Democracy. (2012 is, of course, a major outlier for Egypt, Libya and some other Arab Spring countries, but that doesn’t affect the general trend much.)
It’s worth looking at what happened in Ekrem İmamoğlu’s case, which you’ve linked to. As of today, Ekrem İmamoğlu is the sitting mayor of Istanbul, awaiting pending multiple courts upholding the verdict in his trial. İmamoğlu endorsed the head of his party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, as a presidential candidate, with İmamoğlu to serve as vice-president (though ultimately there were 7 (!) people set to serve as VP, so I don’t know how meaningful this is). Kılıçdaroğlu won 48% of the vote in the presidential election. I haven’t seen a detailed postmortem on how Erdoğan beat the polls, but there was no “virtually guaranteeing victory” in this election.
Also importantly: Erdoğan took power in 2003! He was 49. It took him 20 years to bring Turkey to the state it’s in, and I don’t think he has another 20 in him. If you want to turn your country into a dictatorship, you have to be young: Putin was 47, Chavez 45. This isn’t a quick process, and if your candidate for doing it is 75, they’re not likely to succeed. This is part of why I don’t see your “over the next decade” holding up.
Nitpick: Erdogan’s party won the 2002 elections, and Erdogan became Prime Minister in 2003. I’m not sure where you got the year 2004 from, but it’s not correct.
Typo, fixed. I believe I got his age right.
Also, the UK is heading towards a long period of centre-left government.
A period, sure, I guess my median is 8 years?
Two to three terms. Blair 2.0, IOW.