This looks absolutely fantastic! The history of the Voting Rights Act - and all the many ways in which the Roberts Court has been assaulting it.
@kevintmorris.bsky.social is doing brilliant, essential work - and this book will be mandatory reading the minute it is out.
Pre-order this now.
Uhm, I actually write extensively about Dreher *in* my piece - and he is definitely bad bad bad. Try to find yourself someone in your life who loves you half as much as Rod Dreher loves Orbán. He’s enthusiastically anti-liberal - a proper reactionary who’s radicalized quite a bit in recent years.
It is a difficult challenge to strike the right balance between articulating clearly that liberal democracy is under acute threat – and needlessly perpetuating the Far Right’s assertions of strength and dominance.
As Orbán found out on Sunday: Nothing about these people is inevitable.
More here:
It is a difficult challenge to strike the right balance between articulating clearly that liberal democracy is under acute threat – and needlessly perpetuating the Far Right’s assertions of strength and dominance.
As Orbán found out on Sunday: Nothing about these people is inevitable.
More here:
There is indeed a transnational rightwing assault on democratic pluralism, and we must be alert to the far-right networks and channels of influence that are being created.
But let’s not help them perpetuate the idea that democracy is destined to surrender to the Far Right.
There is a risk that these ubiquitous crisis discourses might turn into self-fulfilling prophecies that only help the extremists. Because those on the Far Right want us to believe that their triumph is inevitable, that resistance is ultimately futile.
6
“Rightwing populism on the rise.” “Liberal democracy in crisis.”
These narratives have dominated the political discussion – and the subjective perception! – on either side of the Atlantic for well over a decade now. The threat is real. But we must not give in to defeatism.
Rightwingers understand the transnational dimension as well as the world-historic significance of the struggle perhaps more clearly than many people on the Left: Is it possible to establish a stable democracy under conditions of multiracial, multi-religious gender-egalitarian pluralism?
5
The transnational right-wing admiration for autocrats like Orbán is a crucial reminder that the struggle over democracy and multiracial pluralism is indeed playing out not just in the United States, and that the reactionary counter-mobilization is an international phenomenon.
None of the American Orbán fans know much about Hungary. What matters to them is an imaginary place called “Hungary” – which they imagine as a stronghold of white patriarchal Christianity, where men still get to be real men and punish the “wokes” and the “globalists.”
4
It is hard to overstate how much the American Right has been obsessed with Viktor Orbán – who they believed had figured out how to “stem the tide of global wokeness” by mobilizing the coercive powers of the state against the “globalist” enemy.
And because they all depend on that method of creating – or at least faking – legitimacy, there is a built-in weakness, an opening that opposing forces can exploit. Losing support – and elections! – is a big problem even for proper authoritarians like Orbán.
3
This is also a reminder that basically all present-day authoritarian regimes, all the different variants of authoritarianism that are out there today, find it necessary to make some gesture towards democratic legitimacy to support their claims.
That’s the thing about competitive authoritarianism: The “authoritarianism” is serious – but so is the “competitive” part. Politics hasn’t ended in such regimes. The rules have been changed significantly, giving a massive advantage to the ruling regime; but the political conflict is not over.
2
Viktor Orbán is absolutely a proper authoritarian. But Hungary under his rule is not adequately characterized as a dictatorship. It has existed in that wide range somewhere between a functioning liberal democracy and a full-scale autocracy.
1
Unequivocally a good day for democracy. But not some definite “turning point” in the transnational struggle against authoritarianism, as the Far Right remains stronger today, on either side of the Atlantic, than at any previous point since the end of the Second World War.
Six big-picture conclusions from Orbán’s smashing defeat – and what it all means for the transnational struggle against rightwing authoritarianism.
I wrote about why Hungary matters – and why nothing about rightwing authoritarianism is inevitable.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
🧵
People are insisting that Cowen and Ross Douthat, who's peddling the same nonsense, are not stupid.
Well, the only other option is that they're deliberately pushing this mendacious, ignorant nonsense. Either way, this "Orbán is no authoritarian / democracy was never in danger" shit is disqualifying
Wrote about this today: Statements like this, from Cowen, betray a child’s understanding of politics (and/or a high level of disingenuousness).
Don’t waste time listening to people who can’t conceive of the political conflict beyond a simplistic binary of perfect democracy vs full-on dictatorship.
Friends, if you have space in your budget to support a(nother) independent writer fighting for democracy, please consider a paid subscription to Democracy Americana. This is a weekly must-read for me.
Anyway: People flirting with “Orbán is not an authoritarian” / “Democracy was never in peril” takes are either incredibly ignorant or pursuing an ideological agenda that makes them propagate mendacious nonsense. Either way, it's disqualifying. Just like all the stupid "democratic minimalism" stuff.
And because they all depend on that method of creating – or at least faking – legitimacy, there is a built-in weakness, an opening that opposing forces can exploit. Losing support – and elections! – is a big problem even for proper authoritarians like Orbán.
Beyond the practical limits of retaining power: This is also a reminder that basically all present-day authoritarian regimes, all the different variants of authoritarianism that are out there today, find it necessary to make some gesture towards democratic legitimacy to support their claims.
To hold on to power would have meant unleashing a self-coup. But after such a lopsided result, this would have necessitated a drastic level of country-wide repression. Orbán simply does not have the apparatus to implement something like that.
Why did Orbán concede? The answer is not that he had some epiphany that made him rediscover his love for liberal democracy. The simplest explanation is that he did not possess the means to stay in power and needed to preserve a path to return to power at a later point.
Elections are no longer free and fair – but they are still competitive enough, meaning the regime still has to take them seriously and can, under certain circumstances, still lose. That is what happened in Hungary.
That's the thing about competitive authoritarianism: The “authoritarianism” is serious – and so is the “competitive” part. Politics hasn’t ended in such regimes. The rules have been changed significantly, giving a massive advantage to the ruling regime; but the political conflict isn't over.
Viktor Orbán is absolutely a proper authoritarian. But Hungary under his rule is not adequately characterized as a dictatorship. It has existed in that wide range somewhere between a functioning liberal democracy and a full-scale autocracy.
Wrote about this today: Statements like this, from Cowen, betray a child’s understanding of politics (and/or a high level of disingenuousness).
Don’t waste time listening to people who can’t conceive of the political conflict beyond a simplistic binary of perfect democracy vs full-on dictatorship.