Recession of democracy
On the day I began writing this (December 18), the depressing spectacle of the House of Representatives impeachment vote on Donald Trump occurred, and I happened to come across an even more depressing op-ed by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post. Zakaria described a trend toward repression of minorities, tribalism, and incipient totalitarianism.
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- The widening schism between Hindus and Muslims in India, now being codified into laws that repress the latter. For a look at the rising persecution of Muslims in India, check out this in The New Yorker.
- Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Trumplike attack on the Israeli justice system, together with an accusation that the police and prosecutors are attempting a coup.
- Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s moves to silence opposition voices, curtail the power of local governments, and throttle immigration with fences and razor wire and a limit of 10 asylum applications per day.
- The massive government persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
- White-hot partisanship in the U.S. political system (compounded by the resurgence of White Nationalism), whipped up by a demagogue whose bent is toward autocracy.
Zakaria refers to the human rights watchdog group Freedom House finding a worldwide decline in global freedom over the past 13 years. He quotes Stanford’s Larry Diamond, coeditor of The Journal of Democracy, saying that we are seeing a worldwide “Democratic Recession.” Zakaria puts it more strongly: it may be a “Democratic Depression.”
Totalitarianism in the Information Age: the China model
To Zakaria’s list, we can add human-rights abuses in China, on the cusp of becoming a totalitarian surveillance state (more on that in later parts of Treading into Darkness). The Chinese leadership’s actions to control its population is pulling it so far away from democracy that democratic aspirations are destined to become an illusion for the people of China (no matter what the outcome in Hong Kong). The Artificial Intelligence-assisted mass surveillance system they have developed in the Xinjiang region to control, police, detain, sometimes torture, and imprison minorities (such as the Uighur Muslims) serves as a model to extend throughout China going forward.