America’s mainstream media was never ready for democratic backsliding. It has proven itself to be woefully inept at this moment.
Historians and political scientists will write - with ease - about the failure of the fourth estate to act as a watchdog, educator, and scrutineer for what has occurred.
I don’t get why people simply accept his professed Catholicism? Surely we can be more cynical in the age of Trump?
Maybe, just maybe, his varying faith - look it up! - is a means to a political end…
www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...
Ruh fucking roh
Reposting my own thread in the hope it makes a difference to all those in Hungary who believe in democratic ideas, values, norms, and institutions. Best wishes to them.
With Hungary’s crucial election a few days away, its National Election Office has published a list of accredited international observers (n. 859). Having spent nearly a decade researching the behavior of international observers, I decided to take a closer look 😊
www.valasztas.hu/en/internati...
So what happens next? Assuming Orbán’s Fidesz is declared the winner, look for the 153 fake observers to be paraded before the media so that their positive endorsement of the flawed poll can be quickly and loudly disseminated.
Ignore them, wait for the preliminary statement of the OSCE/ODIHR.
The second takeaway is the 91 individuals from a group called the Liberty Coalition for a Free and Fair Election. It came into existence two weeks ago and has no website, contact information, methodology, or member list. I like the level of detail on the screen being studied by its “core team.”
The first takeaway is the 43 individuals from mostly far right parties in Europe, including ANO, Danish People’s Party, Dawn of Nemunas, Freedom Party of Austria, Georgian Dream etc. Also, there are EMPs from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group as well as the Patriots for Europe Group.
In Hungary, there are a range of different fake observers on the ground. There are lone individuals from foreign government’s supportive of Orbán’s regime and wonderfully named groups like World Peace Volunteers from Ghana. Overall, though, there are two key takeaways …
Here is a table on the differences between genuine and fake observers. The latter only care about the grey shaded boxes, i.e., the bright lights of the final days of a campaign and the day immediately after voting.
If genuine observers seek to foster clean elections and advance democracy, fake observers support dirty elections and defend authoritarianism. Today, there are 1000s of fake observers in operation, covering many of the most flawed polls taking place in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America.
This leaves 153 individuals – or what I call fake observers.
This is “an individual, group, or organization that superficially mimics the behavior of genuine observers for the purpose of endorsing an election held by an authoritarian regime.”
Next, there are 132 individuals from 31 foreign embassies or central election commissions. I would not trust those coming from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan etc., but this type of exchange is very common in international election observation today. Protocol makes them mostly benign.
Next, we can identify what scholars call medium quality observers – i.e., those that agree with the intent of Declaration of Principles but lack the capacity to fully implement it. In Hungary, there are 156 individuals spread across six groups –
A starting point is identifying the genuine observers present. We can do so by looking at who has endorsed the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation … (2005). In Hungary, there are 418 individuals representing OSCE/ODIHR, OSCE-PA & PACE 👍
dop-elections.org/endorsers/
With Hungary’s crucial election a few days away, its National Election Office has published a list of accredited international observers (n. 859). Having spent nearly a decade researching the behavior of international observers, I decided to take a closer look 😊
www.valasztas.hu/en/internati...
Every time I go to type something snarky about the dumb shit Trump just said, he says something even dumber. So I delete the post and start again. It is a vicious cycle.
I asked Copilot to give me a list of closed autocracies and electoral autocracies from V-Dem's latest report. It promptly listed 92 countries, but I noticed a few glaring omissions 😶
Jiang Zemin cover?
My book - “Purges” - has a release date (August 15) and a front cover. I started work on this as my PhD dissertation at the end of 2017 - excited for it to finally be coming out!
www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...
The Trump-Orban comparison has always suffered from a bunch of different cognitive biases.
Trump is both a “playbook autocrat” (like Orban) and a “mad king” (not like Orban)
I wrote this duality here. In my view, the mad king persona will always prevail.
www.thebulwark.com/p/crazy-or-c...
Trump saying the war is finished and yet Australia is sending military support.
One of those things doesn’t make sense…
Updated it 2 hours ago ahead of my 10am lecture 😀
You just know he looks in the mirror every day and tells himself he is a big boy
And so it begins! Watch now as Western media proclaim Khamenei's son to be more moderate/progressive/Western-influenced etc etc than his father.
They said the same about Kim Jong Un, Baby Doc Duvalier, Ilham Aliyev, Bashar al-Assad, Hun Manet, and just about every other next dictator ffs.
Last week I tasked Copilot with extracting the text of assassination events from scanned pages. It simply made up a good 75% of the victims names and I quickly abandoned it.
Has it occurred to anyone that competitive authoritarianism has achieved ascendancy as the operative term for the United States, even though a national election has not occurred? Given there are 100s of diminished subtypes capturing authoritarianism outside of elections, should we excercise caution?
"Two prison terms, a collapsed marriage, and permanent exile" is not enough.
Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ...
Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression — or participate in illegal coups?
Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers — it just got published by @academic.oup.com:
tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf
