It’s Time to Worry About the Survival of Democracy
My September 3, 2024 Dean's List Editorial.
Is it time to declare democracy an endangered species? Not just in America, where Trump credits the democratically elected administration of Biden and Harris with America’s decline, but in Europe. An ill wind is blowing across the continent. Earlier this summer, the right-wing National Rally party fared well in the first round of voting in France’s national election. Now the AfD, Alternative for Germany, won in Thuringia, the first state victory for a far-right party in Deutschland since World War II.
In the 1930s as Hitler rose to power in Germany and a neo-Nazi movement grew in America, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel; It Can’t Happen Here, that told the tale of a dictator coming to power in the U.S. The book warned Americans not to take democracy for granted.
In October 1948, presidential candidate Harry S. Truman told an audience at Chicago Stadium:
We must not imagine, just because we love freedom, that freedom is safe — that our freedom is safe. Eternal vigilance is still the price of liberty.
Other people have also loved freedom, but have lost their liberty with tragic suddenness.
It happened in Italy 25 years ago. It happened in Germany 15 years ago. It happened in Czechoslovakia just a few months ago. And it could happen here.
I know that it is hard for Americans to admit this danger. American democracy has very deep roots. But, if the antidemocratic forces in this country continue to work unchecked, this Nation could awaken a few years from now to find that the Bill of Rights had become a scrap of paper.
Given the similarities in the AfD and Trump populism, it is time to start giving warnings again. Democracy is an issue in the 2024 election. If Trump wins and implements some of the proposals in Project 2025, his second term will mark the beginning of the end of democracy.
John Nichols writes in The Capitol Times, a Wisconsin progressive paper:
The document [Project 2025] offers a strategy for establishing an American version of [Hungarian dictator Viktor] Orbán’s “illiberal democracy.” That strategy is woven throughout the whole of the document, with key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the section on the DHS, for instance, there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors election security to prevent the spread of disinformation about voting and vote counting.
Inspired by MAGA and Trump?
In 2024, one can argue that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are inspiring European right-wing parties rather than the other way around. That is scary. Democracy-loving Europeans should start pointing to Trump and warning it could happen here. The “it” would be the election of a right-wing, anti-democratic national government.
Most of us have never heard of the AfD; the party is relatively new. But a quick look at some of the positions of the AfD suggests it has plenty in common with MAGA. Both parties generally share positions on immigration, Islamophobia, nationalism, denial of climate change, economic protectionism, opposition to immigration, and anti-LGBQT+ policies.
Hopefully, after November 5, it will be time to assess Trump’s legacy. His role in promoting fascism and admiration for dictators like Putin, Orbán, and Kim Jong Un will be part of the legacy.
© 2024 John Dean, all rights reserved.
The far right in America got their footing in 2016, when citizens elected this fool. Congressional Republicans fell into place, drinking Donald Jone's Kool-Aid. When he lost the 2020 elections, the same Republicans swore they were done with him - until it looked like he could win again in November. Once again, these clowns followed Trump's Pied Piper antics.