Democracy in Peril

Democracy in Peril

By: Erreh Svaia

“Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike."

Plato

Perhaps is globalization, perhaps is terrorism, perhaps is precisely authoritarianism, we still don't know yet, but something is putting democracy on great danger these days all over the world, the perils of watching our more or less imperfect free systems and becoming infatuated by "great leaders" or "strongmen" taking advantage of all the turmoil.

Economic frustration, as the 2008 world economic crisis hasn't really showed signs if finally going away and the world's population increasing apprehension towards an uncertain future is starting ti drive people into taking desperate measures, and taking for granted that some messianic characters can have immediate solutions to the problems, so desperate are we, that we are willing to trade our rights and freedom for some "protection", "stability" and "security", making us easy prays of wolves in sheep disguise, times for Hitlers and Mussolinis to rise.

We have witnessed the rise of figures like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, characters who used the book of demagoguery, populism and nationalism in order to achieve power and to manipulate the masses; perhaps the world order is changing fast again, we saw the end of the Cold War, and the end of left wing version right wing, and what apparently looked like the consolidation of capitalism after the dissolution of the USSR, simply didn't materialized, and these days, the promise of a better world seems to ne putting the West at great peril, and the rest of the world in a really complex situation, with the European Union facing the possible separation of the UK, discomfort in the south of Europe, with Spain facing a political crisis Italy challenging the EU's leadership of Germany and France, Germany struggling with the migrant crisis and France scared by terrorism and the strengthening of the xenophobic far right wing of the National Front, that, and a complex situation in central Europe with countries like Poland and Hungary adopting Putin's style of illiberal policies afraid of Germany's dominance and Russia's aggressive interventionism.

China's big years of growth seem to be a thing of the past, now the Chinese president Xi Jiping is leading his country in a more authoritarian style than a couple of years ago, opening Chinese economy helped, but in Xi's mind, it also made his communist regime weak and vulnerable, so Xi is working in getting back the iron hand rule, accumulating power once again, eliminating opposition by executing functionaries accusing them of corruption, drawing back liberal policies in Hong Kong and putting in jail it's dissidents, and even censoring outside information and threatening bookstore owners who included in their stores books expressing opinions against the regime.

The Arab Spring, seen by many as society's awakening against oppression, in reality became everything it wasn't about Tunisia, the place where it started is still facing the same troubles that ended up in Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, in Egypt, society's trip from one dictatorship, into the world of the Muslim Brotherhood's brand of fundamentalism wasn't satisfying enough, prompting the Egyptian people to return to an even harsher Soviet style military dictatorship, while the fall of strongmen in Libya and Iraq simply of opened the door to Daesh, chaos and anarchy, even Turkey, Middle East's example of where the Arab world was heading to, has been turning into a dictatorship under prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan increasingly authoritarian rule, the big trouble here is that in exchange of granting asylum to the age big influx of migrants, Erdogan is negotiating Turkey's entrance into the European Union, with the Union overseeing Erdogan dictatorial nature, a seed that could turn other political leaders in the EU like Viktor Orban, Jaroslav Kacsynzki or Marine Le Pen into the authoritarian future of Europe, and the bitter end of history in a perverse turn of what Francis Fukuyama originally predicted.