Will US Democracy Fall?

This is extremely serious—there's a huge struggle ahead.

“Will US democracy fall? The trajectory isn’t good. But we should—as always—have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”

“It’s bad enough when Hungary drifts towards Christian nationalist proto-fascism. When that happens in the most powerful state in world history, the implications are ominous.”

“It’s scary to think that the world’s fate depends on which way things go regarding America’s ‘serious internal crisis’.”

“But that’s the truth—the outcome of America’s ‘serious internal crisis’ will determine whether we create a livable world or whether we all burn.”

Make sure to read my below pieces:

• “Quick Thoughts on Rationality” (6 January 2022)

• “Can We Heal America?” (14 January 2022)

• “Is There HOPE for TRUTH?” (24 January 2022)

• “How Do Republicans Think?” (16 May 2022)

Everyone should also read these fascinating pieces—I’ll provide some notes and excerpts from these pieces:

• “Why the Hell Is CPAC in Hungary This Year?” (18 May 2022)

• “The Attack on Big Mouse Is Also an Assault on Democracy” (25 April 2022)

• “Laws restricting lessons on racism are making it hard for teachers to discuss the massacre in Buffalo” (18 May 2022)

• “Book bans move to center stage in the red-state education wars” (5 April 2022)

• “The European country where ‘replacement theory’ reigns supreme” (19 May 2022)

• “Noam Chomsky: Russia’s War Against Ukraine Has Accelerated the Doomsday Clock” (30 March 2022)

And everyone should watch this excellent video—which appeared on YouTube in 2018—about Hungary’s “illiberal democracy”:

It’s weird to think that the GOP has an unconcealed and clear and explicit vision that’s so diametrically opposed to what Republican politicians used to claim to value—the GOP is now transparent about what the game plan is.

And it’s disturbing to think that the GOP can unmask illiberal ambitions and face zero political penalties—the GOP’s base is on board with the vision.

Will US democracy fall? The trajectory isn’t good. But we should—as always—have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.

Regarding the 18 May 2022 piece about CPAC, here are my notes:

• “the star attraction is Orbán”

• “Orbán is the type of leader Trump aspires to be. Trump even told him so, repeatedly praising the strongman leader during a White House visit in 2019.”

• “Within months of becoming prime minister, Orbán had taken control of the judiciary, attacked the few financial institutions not under the control of his far-right Fidesz Party, and clamped down on negative press coverage.”

• “He also rewrote election laws to allow him to stay in power for as long as he wants.”

• “In the years since, he has continued to erode democratic values within the country, including a recent attack on LGBTQ and gender rights—with some measures related to the teaching of gender and sexuality in schools that closely echo the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill recently passed in Florida.”

• “Central to everything Orbán does is the promotion of traditional family and Christian values.”

• “Orbán’s promotion of family values goes hand-in-hand with his attacks on migrants, and unlike some European leaders, he has not attempted to couch his racist views.”

• “‘We do not want our own color, traditions, and national culture to be mixed with those of others,’ he said in 2018.” 

• “There is also an antisemitic streak to his immigration policy that is symbolized by Orbán’s demonization of Hungarian philanthropist billionaire George Soros.”

• “Back in 2015, Orbán made Soros the face of the immigration crisis in the country, a campaign that mirrors the antisemitic white nationalist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory that Jewish people are working to replace white people through migration.”

• “The decision by Schlapp and the ACU to sponsor an event in the home of one of the most draconian regimes in the Western world may seem shocking, but for anyone paying any attention to how the Republican Party has lurched to the right in recent years, it almost seems logical at this point.”

• “Schlapp says U.S. conservatives want to replicate what Orbán is doing in Hungary, but there are signs the Hungarian leader is already influencing U.S. politics in general—and Trump in particular.”

• “During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump ran on anti-immigrant platform promising to ban Muslims from the country and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump also demonized Soros during his campaign, going so far as releasing an anti-Soros campaign ad that was criticized as antisemitic.”

• “More recently, the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy Orbán espoused in 2019 has taken hold among U.S. conservatives, and this week the gunman who allegedly killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket claims the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy was one of his inspirations for conducting the attack.”

• “CPAC’s decision to bring its conference to Hungary is seen as an ordination of sorts for Orbán within the conservative community, but the path to this moment has been paved by a laundry list of American right-wing figures”

• “it has been Carlson, the host of Fox News’ highest-rated show, who has done more than anyone to lionize Orban’s leadership style and raise Hungary’s profile among his 3.2 million viewers”

• “Orbán’s ‘current narratives and messages practically coincide with those of the European new right movement and the American alt-right,’ Bulcsú Hunyadi, head of the Radicalization and Extremism Program at Hungarian think tank Political Capital, recently told Hatewatch.”

• “The ACU’s decision to hold CPAC in Budapest will allow that alignment to continue, and allow American conservatives to learn from Orbán, who has created an anti-woke paradise that they see as a model for the American right.”

• “Conservative commentator Rod Dreher, who admired Orbán so much he moved to Budapest last year, wrote last month about the idea that GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis was creating a sort of conservative utopia along the lines of Orbán’s Hungary in the Sunshine State.”

• “‘Maybe Florida is becoming our American Hungary,’ Dreher said.”

Here are my notes on the 25 April 2022 piece:

• “what Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are up to has nothing to do with policy or even politics in the conventional sense”

• “What we’re seeing instead are symptoms of the transformation of the G.O.P. from a normal political party into a radical movement built around conspiracy theories and intimidation.”

• “Not long ago, using state power to impose financial penalties on corporations for expressing political views you dislike would have been considered beyond the pale.”

• “Indeed, it may well be unconstitutional.”

• “the attack on Disney has gone far beyond financial reprisal”

• “Suddenly, Mickey Mouse is part of a vast conspiracy”

• “If this seems crazy—which it is—it’s also increasingly the Republican norm.”

• “I don’t think political reporting has caught up with how thoroughly QAnonized the G.O.P. has become.”

• “As I mentioned the other day, roughly half of Republicans believe that ‘top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings.’”

• “Here’s an even more impressive number: 66 percent of Republicans buy into ‘white replacement theory,’ agreeing wholly or partly with the claim that ‘the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate with voters from poorer countries around the world.’”

• “the bizarre nature of the attacks on Disney doesn’t just pander to the craziness of the G.O.P. base”

• “the attacks’ very absurdity is also a message of intimidation aimed at the business world”

• “The obvious role model here is Viktor Orban’s Hungary, where the Conservative Political Action Conference will be held next month.”

• “As a recent Freedom House report put it, in Hungary ‘businesspeople whose activities are not in line with the financial or political interest of the government are likely to face harassment and intimidation, and subject to increasing administrative pressure for a possible takeover.’”

• “the fight over Disney is actually a symptom of a much broader and more troubling development: the QAnonization and Orbanization of one of America’s major political parties”

Regarding the 18 May 2022 piece about education, here’s an excerpt:

This week, educators are once again grappling with how to discuss a mass shooting that appears to have been motivated by bigotry, just as they did in 2019 after a shooting rampage targeting Mexicans at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; in 2018 after a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; and in 2015 after a white gunman killed Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

This time, however, teachers and education experts say these already difficult classroom conversations are being complicated or suppressed under a wave of state laws and school board policies that restrict the ways educators discuss racism. Fearing for their jobs, teachers in some communities are avoiding the conversation altogether, said Anton Schulzki, a high school social studies teacher in Colorado Springs and president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

“If a student brings up Buffalo, the teacher will simply say, ‘Sorry, I can’t talk about that,’ or ‘We’re not allowed to talk about that,’” said Schulzki, noting that educators have been disciplined or fired after discussing racism, sexuality and politics with students. “And ultimately what that does, unfortunately, is we’re actually depriving our students of an important discussion.”

Educators took to social media and wrote essays debating how to talk about the Buffalo shooting. A math teacher in Atlanta wrote of being afraid to answer when his students brought it up. Responding to a tweet about how teachers should discuss the shooting, an educator in east Texas wrote, “Legally, I can’t touch it.”

And here are my notes on the 5 April 2022 piece:

• “The escalating red-state efforts to ban more books mark a new stage in the struggle to control the educational experience of America’s kaleidoscopically diverse younger generations.”

• regarding this “new wave of red-state measures”, critics “see an especially powerful through line” that connects (1) “laws that make it more difficult to vote” and (2) laws that “increase the legal penalties for disruptive public protest” and (3) “bills that censor classroom instruction or empower critics to ban books in school libraries”

• regarding (1) and (2) and (3), all “three thrusts make it more difficult for opponents to mobilize opposition to the agenda the red-state Republicans are advancing”

• these “classroom and library restrictions” effectively give “one set of parents a veto over educational content not only for their own kids, but others’ as well”

• “even with occasional setbacks, the drive to control the flow of information to young people is demonstrating enormous energy in red states”

• “What is clear is that more of the red states appear intent on testing the boundaries of what the Supreme Court will allow through new laws facilitating the banning of books from school, or potentially even public, libraries.”

Here’s an excerpt from the 19 May 2022 piece:

In January, Donald Trump endorsed Orbán in the latter’s reelection bid, calling him a “strong leader” who “truly loves his country and wants safety for his people.” Later that month, the party’s leading media ally Tucker Carlson released a special titled Hungary vs. Soros that attempted to disseminate Orbán’s “Great Replacement” mythology to an American audience.

In the episode, Carlson argues that migration to Hungary is akin to an actual military invasion—one in which migrants are effectively trying to colonize Hungary and replace its population with their babies.

“Unlike the threats from the Soviets and the Ottoman Empire, the threat posed by George Soros and his nonprofit organizations is much more subtle and hard to detect,” Carlson says. Not coincidentally, Carlson is the leading mainstream exponent of the idea that a similar process is underway in America: arguing that Democrats are using immigration policy to conduct “the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.”

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis—a leading figure in the GOP and potential 2024 candidate—is pioneering a kind of American Orbánism. While DeSantis has not openly endorsed Orbán’s replacement rhetoric in the way Carlson does, he has picked up on the style of using social conservative ideas as a justification for policies that attack one’s political enemies. There’s some evidence that his infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill was directly influenced by Hungary’s recently passed restrictions on LGBTQ speech.

Which brings us back to CPAC in Budapest. The group has held international events before in attempts to build cross-national conservative linkages, but this is its first conference in Europe. Even though few prominent Republican politicians are attending in person, the significance for the direction of the conservative movement is lost on no one.

The trans-Atlantic mainstreaming of “Great Replacement” rhetoric is especially troubling, given that it has inspired white supremacist attacks on mosques in New Zealand, Latinos in El Paso, and, most recently, Black shoppers at a Buffalo supermarket. It is a style of thinking that is not only conspiratorial, but inherently prone to justifying violence and repression. It posits that the very existence of nonwhite people in a country is a threat to the body politic.

We have seen how this has facilitated the development of an illiberal authoritarian state in Hungary; it seems the Republican Party has no qualms about traveling down a similar path. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the No. 3 ranking Republican in the House, has shown no contrition for her past comments endorsing replacement theory. And there are no signs she will face any consequences.

During Orbán’s address at CPAC Budapest, he outlined a 12-point “recipe” for political success that the American right could borrow. The very first point, he said, “is that we must play by our own rules”—that conservatives “must not be discouraged by being shouted at, by being labeled unfit, or by being treated as troublemakers.”

In context of recent developments, this advice sounds less like friendly pointers and more like the words of an enabler. And it’s clear the Republican Party is taking the idea to heart.

And—lastly—here are my notes on the 30 March 2022 piece:

• “Europe has condemned Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ‘illiberal democracy’ in Hungary”

• Hungary “has become the darling of much of the American right”

• “Fox News and its prime broadcaster Tucker Carlson are in the lead, but other prominent ‘conservatives’ are joining in with odes to the proto-fascist Christian nationalist regime that Orbán has imposed while shredding Hungarian freedom and democracy.”

• the GOP “is now ranked alongside of European parties with neo-fascist origins”

• “Trump accelerated tendencies that trace back to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of the party 30 years ago.”

• “Trump is now being outflanked from the right, difficult as that was to imagine not long ago”

• “Much of the leadership is drifting towards the Orbán model or beyond, bringing a worshipful mass base with them.”

• book-banning is “nothing new in the U.S.”

• “suppressing votes of the ‘wrong’ people is as American as apple pie”

• book-banning and voter suppression are “now returning with force as the Republican organization, soon to retake power it seems, moves towards a kind of proto-fascism”

• “Some careful analysts predict civil war.”

• “At the very least, a serious internal crisis is taking shape.”

• “There has long been much talk about American decline. To the extent that it is real, the major factor is internal.”

• “much of the internal social decay results from the brutal impact of the neoliberal programs of the past 40 years”

• “It’s bad enough when Hungary drifts towards Christian nationalist proto-fascism. When that happens in the most powerful state in world history, the implications are ominous.”

It’s scary to think that the world’s fate depends on which way things go regarding America’s “serious internal crisis”.

But that’s the truth—the outcome of America’s “serious internal crisis” will determine whether we create a livable world or whether we all burn.