After being carried into power on a wave of nativist populism in 1922, Benito Mussolini set about dismantling Italy's unpopular government bureaucracy, leaving himself and his loyalists unhindered in their pursuit of complete dictatorial control. In explaining the gradual erosion of the country's democratic institutions to one of his closest advisors, Mussolini bragged that "If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices." Such a manoeuvre- exploiting widespread public grievance or fear of some unseen enemy as a pretext to disguise anti-democratic governance- became commonplace amongst authoritarian figures throughout the 20th century. Now, almost 100 years on from the onset of European fascism, it appears that their playbook has been revised and updated. At a moment when the international community grapples with a global public health crisis and looming recession, democratic freedoms and civil liberties become more open to attack. There has rarely been such an opportunity for those who deem democratic values an inconvenience to pluck away at them, one feather at a time.
Mass popular protest defined 2019's international political landscape, forcing five leaders to step down and giving many cause to hope for a pushback against antidemocratic leaderships worldwide. Dave Lawler, writing for Axios, even goes so far as to label 2019 as "the year of the protest". Already in 2020, however, that progress has come screeching to a halt with the outbreak of COVID-19. Now, according to Lawler, the year of the protest has met "the year of the lockdown". As governments enact social distancing laws, mass demonstrations of the type seen previously in Hong Kong and Moscow become impossible. Whilst the citizens of Hong Kong have added the Chinese government's initial cover-up of the COVID-19 outbreak to their list of grievances, a ban on gatherings of more than four people plays into the hands of the Chinese government's efforts to disperse the protests until elections for Hong Kong's Legislative Council are held in September, in which pro-Beijing parties are heavily expected to maintain a majority of seats through gerrymandering, according to The I's Anthony Dapiran. Meanwhile in Russia, opponents of President Vladimir Putin's plans to amend the constitution to allow him to run for office yet again in 2024 were forced to scale back protests planned in Moscow and St Petersburg. Putin's proposals have already been ratified by both chambers of parliament, and a nationwide vote is slated for 22nd April. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny told Reuters that the Coronavirus has hampered his movement's plans to mount a campaign of protests against the amendments. As such, Navalny argues that "The only tactic can be not recognising the vote and its outcome" if results are falsified, as many opposition figures accept as inevitable.
Another institution of democracy to come under threat as a result of the Coronavirus is freedom of the press. Attempts by the likes of Russia, China and Iran to cover up the extent of the outbreaks in their countries should surprise nobody. However, according to The Washington Post's Jason Rezaian, it would be remiss of us all to focus solely on the restrictive measures that geopolitical adversaries are placing on their citizens, whilst ignoring similar alarming manoeuvres by democratic allies. Take India, the world's most populous democratic state, whose Prime Minister Narendra Modi requested a directive from the country's Supreme Court that would force news outlets to acquire state permission before publishing any reporting on the Coronavirus, essentially allowing the government to censor politically or otherwise damaging information. Take Brazil, whose President Jair Bolsonaro has made no secret of his contempt for the free press, having already targeted The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald with charges of "cybercrimes" that have subsequently been proven false. More recently, Bolsonaro has repeatedly sought to discredit press coverage of the pandemic, stating that "People will know soon that a large part of the media have deceived them on this issue of coronavirus." Take Hungary, whose President Viktor Orban, now endowed with the emergency power to rule by decree with no term limit, is set to implement laws that threaten journalists with prison sentences for their coverage of COVID-19. These developments in the former Soviet state have prompted many, including former Obama-administration foreign policy officials Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes, to call for Hungary's expulsion from both the European Union and NATO, whilst the Vice-President of the European Commission, Vera Jorouva, told POLITICO that "Corona must be killed, but democracy must survive."
It is the most fundamental pillar of that democracy, the right to vote, which is most directly threatened by this outbreak. And where better to look at this ominous trend than the global democratic leader, the United States? As American citizens prepare to choose between Joe Biden or a second term for Donald Trump in November, many Democratic politicians, activists and voters have voiced their concerns over perceived Republican efforts to use the virus to stifle electoral turnout. Tuesday's Wisconsin primary and supreme court elections went ahead despite a state-wide stay-at-home-order and calls for voting to be postponed by the state's governor Tony Evers. In the week preceding the elections, Bernie Sanders, who has since suspended his presidential campaign, said in a statement that "People should not be forced to put their lives on the line to vote." With the Democratic primary all-but over, the nation's attention was thus focused on the battle for the available seat on Wisconsin's Republican-majority supreme court, responsible for the overturning of Governor Evers' emergency measures, and currently held by conservative justice Dan Kelly. According to Democrats, that decision by the state's high court, along with well-documented attempts by Republicans to restrict absentee ballots and voting-by-mail, offer a glimpse of the Trump administration's re-election strategy, should America still be the epicentre of the Corona crisis come November: force Democrat voters to choose between protecting their health or exercising their right to vote. Stacey Abrahams, former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and now director of Fair Fight, an organisation that aims to protect and extend voting rights, said in an interview with Pod Save America's Dan Pfeiffer that the actions taken by Republicans amount to "a naked power grab...and absolutely a preview of the fall." After voters were forced to queue for up to six hours outside polling stations, Wisconsin's Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler tweeted that, whilst results were still to be announced, "The most important results are already clear: many thousands of people were potentially exposed to COVID-19 due to decisions made by WI's Republican state legislators."
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is all too familiar with the threats posed by opponents of democracy. Having fled to London following the invasion of their native Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, her family were driven from their home a second time following the Soviet occupation. In her 2018 book Facism: A Warning, Albright reminds the reader that threats to democracy "rarely make a dramatic entrance." Rather, democratic decay is bought about "when small aggressions, if unopposed, grow into larger ones, when what was objectionable is accepted, and when contrarian voices are drowned out." The American democratic model is rife with points of conflict at the best of times. The voting rights of racial and socioeconomic minority groups are disproportionately subjected to restrictive measures. Democrats and Republicans are locked in a hyper-partisan battle for control over state and federal supreme courts, and the power to subsequently influence the local and national legislative processes. In times of crisis, these tensions are exacerbated. Following 9/11 the passage of the PATRIOT Act granted the federal government sweeping authority to preserve national security at the cost of civil liberties and democratic accountability. On this evidence, one can broke no argument with the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2018 classification of the United States as a "flawed democracy", brought about by "a sharp fall in popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions." If the United States is to reclaim its position as the world's leading democracy, it must first safeguard its own institutions and restore the confidence of its citizens. Fail to do so, and the anti-democratic trends we see around the world will only be further emboldened, regardless of the threat of COVID-19.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is all too familiar with the threats posed by opponents of democracy. Having fled to London following the invasion of their native Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, her family were driven from their home a second time following the Soviet occupation. In her 2018 book Facism: A Warning, Albright reminds the reader that threats to democracy "rarely make a dramatic entrance." Rather, democratic decay is bought about "when small aggressions, if unopposed, grow into larger ones, when what was objectionable is accepted, and when contrarian voices are drowned out." The American democratic model is rife with points of conflict at the best of times. The voting rights of racial and socioeconomic minority groups are disproportionately subjected to restrictive measures. Democrats and Republicans are locked in a hyper-partisan battle for control over state and federal supreme courts, and the power to subsequently influence the local and national legislative processes. In times of crisis, these tensions are exacerbated. Following 9/11 the passage of the PATRIOT Act granted the federal government sweeping authority to preserve national security at the cost of civil liberties and democratic accountability. On this evidence, one can broke no argument with the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2018 classification of the United States as a "flawed democracy", brought about by "a sharp fall in popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions." If the United States is to reclaim its position as the world's leading democracy, it must first safeguard its own institutions and restore the confidence of its citizens. Fail to do so, and the anti-democratic trends we see around the world will only be further emboldened, regardless of the threat of COVID-19.
Written by Ben Seymour
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