In response to the apparent danger FDR and his New Deal posed for their financial interests, a circle of businessmen and financiers devised a plan to forcefully overthrow the president of the United States with the help of the military.
Fortunately for American democracy, the Marine general refused to participate in the plot and informed Congress about the conspiracy, halting the coup before it could ever begin. Democracies can also fall into dictatorships when voters become politically apathetic, thereby withdrawing themselves from participation in the political process.
This is a growing problem in many democracies, as indicated by falling voter turnouts across much of the democratic world. Voters may feel apathetic when they come to believe that they will no longer make a difference in average politics. Voters may experience alienation when their political choices fail to reflect their democratic interests. This is particularly dangerous, as this presents an opportunity for authoritarian-minded political leaders to start curtailing political rights for minority groups, if not the entire national population.
This can then start a backslide into dictatorship when the democratic voice becomes permanently suppressed, eliminating any kind of recourse against undemocratic policies such as voter suppression or encroachments onto free speech. Hungary, as many political observers have noted over the past decade, is a profound case of democratic decline towards illiberalism, if not an outright march towards authoritarianism.
Since , Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his political party, Fidesz, have dominated Hungarian politics through a combination of populist demagoguery and pernicious political engineering which have ensured repeated electoral success over the past three election cycles. These upheavals caused mass unemployment, creating a sense of resentment to the social-democratic and liberal parties whose policies led to the situation. Orban has also repeatedly attacked international and European institutions in Hungary while expressing a vitriolic attitude towards economic and political globalism.
Fidesz has maintained a tight grip on Hungarian politics over the past decade, despite spirited attempts by the opposition to eject the right-wing party from power. Orban and his party have successfully established a stranglehold on the institutions of government, having taken control of the courts , revised the Hungarian constitution , and gerrymandered the electoral districts to favor their party.
Perhaps now more than ever, citizens in democratic countries must work to prevent the encroachment of dictatorial politics into democracies. We must do more than just simply understand past historical examples of democratic decline; we must go further and make sure these historical examples do not happen again. The first step is to recommit to democratic principles and embrace them wholeheartedly.
Strongmen often turn their ireful gaze onto many different groups, including minorities, immigrants, the political opposition, and established national leaders; strongmen tend to view these groups as both personal and national enemies. Strongmen need to be stopped at the polls. Elections tend to affirm strongmen by giving them a popular mandate for their regime, but their respect for democracy ends the day after the election.
Beating strongmen means not giving them a position of power to abuse in the first place, or by denying them a mandate and voting them out of power.
Ultimately, the best way to protect democracies against becoming a dictatorship is to continue embracing democratic practices. Voters need to make conscientious electoral choices that reject candidates or political groups that threaten to undermine the democratic process. Maintaining democracy requires voters to become yet more steadfast in their empathy towards others and participating in national politics with a frame of mind towards cooperation and understanding.
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Ways Dictators Come to Power in a Democracy Dictators may rise to power in a democracy through several ways. Political Radicalization and Social Desperation Democracies are characterized by lively but peaceful debate between a variety of political parties and interest groups.
Representatives of the Nazi Party first two left , German Centrist Party middle , the Social Democratic Party middle-right , and the Communist Party far right canvassing before the Elections, the last free elections before the rise of Nazi Germany.
Credit: HistoryToday After six years of recovery and even some economic prosperity for Germany, the Great Depression of once again threw Weimar Germany in a desperate economic state, prompting many German voters to seek radical political options, including National Socialism.
Apathetic and Alienated Voters Democracies can also fall into dictatorships when voters become politically apathetic, thereby withdrawing themselves from participation in the political process. Hungary Hungary, as many political observers have noted over the past decade, is a profound case of democratic decline towards illiberalism, if not an outright march towards authoritarianism. Credit: BBC. List of Dictatorships Which Arose from Democracies Poland: Germany: Austria: France: Spain: Brazil: Chile: Nicaragua: , Present Venezuela: Present How to Stop Dictatorships From Coming to Power in a Democracy Perhaps now more than ever, citizens in democratic countries must work to prevent the encroachment of dictatorial politics into democracies.
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First Name. Last Name. How does a totalitarian government harness this attitude of the masses? This feeling is what totalitarianism figured out how to manipulate by random terror that severed any form of connection with other human beings. Totalitarianism does not have an end goal in the usual political sense. Its only real goal is to perpetuate its own existence.
There is no one party line that, if you stick to it, will save you from persecution. Remember the random mass murders. Stalin repeatedly purged whole sections of his government — just because. The fear is a requirement. The fear is what keeps the movement going. This battle with truth is something we see today. Opinions are being given the same weight as facts, leading to endless debates and the assumption that nothing can be known anyway.
It is this turning away from knowledge that opens the doors to totalitarianism. These fabrications form the basis of the propaganda, with different messages crafted for different audiences. What does totalitarian rule look like? These states are not run by cliques or gangs. There is no protected group getting rich from this control of the masses.
And no one is outside the message. Why no clique? One reason is that the goal of totalitarianism is not the welfare of the state. It is not economic prosperity or social advancement. The reason why the ingenious devices of totalitarian rule, with their absolute and unsurpassed concentration of power in the hands of a single man, were never tried before is that no ordinary tyrant was ever mad enough to discard all limited and local interests — economic, national, human, military — in favor of a purely fictitious reality in some indefinite distant future.
Since independent thinkers are a threat, they are among the first to be purged. Bureaucratic functions are duplicated and layered, with people being shifted all the time. This regular violent turnover of the whole gigantic administrative machine, while it prevents the development of competence, has many advantages: it assures the relative youth of officials and prevents a stabilization of conditions which, at least in time of peace, are fraught with danger for totalitarian rule….
Any chances of discontent and questioning of the status quo are eliminated by this perpetual rising of the newly indoctrinated. Totalitarianism in power is about keeping itself in power.
By preemptively removing large groups of people, the system neutralizes all those who might question it. Possibly the one ray of hope in these systems is that because they pay no attention to actually governing, they are not likely to be sustainable in the long run.
The incredibility of the horrors is closely bound up with their economic uselessness. The Nazis carried this uselessness to the point of open anti-utility when in the midst of the war, despite the shortage of building material and rolling stock, they set up enormous, costly extermination factories and transported millions of people back and forth.
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