I Watched Orbán Destroy Hungary’s Democracy. Here’s My Advice for the Trump Era.
I Watched Orbán Destroy Hungary’s Democracy. Here’s My Advice for the Trump Era.
To dismantle the machinery of autocracy, you first need to understand how it works.
-
Spoken like the DNC cares about preserving democracy, but otherwise good read.
-
It's much like Hungary in that respect as well. Hungary's socialists have been running trying to be the "strongest opposition party" for nearly 15 years as well.
And the antidote to that seems to be, at least currently (we'll see if it holds up to the election) economically left wing populism with a strict centrist noncommittal take on social issues.
So for example if you get asked about LGBTQ rights, instead of getting bogged down in the made up social issues of the right, say "this is not our current biggest problem, look at our terrible infrastructure/healthcare/wages, that's what we want to address first, we'll just put social issues to referendum".
-
we have elections where rich people spend money to influence the population and we do have lots of local democracy. The problem is the feds are like a pseudo democracy and the courts are explicitly anti democratic. Reforming the courts here would fix a lot of things. fixing voting methods (RCV, eliminate the electoral college) would go a long way towards the rest.
-
-
One thing not mentioned is the economic status of Hungary. If focusing on "dinner table issues" is the key then people need to be hurting. If they're hurting then why would they triple or quadruple down on the status quo? If they're not hurting then we're back to ideology and convincing people there's more to life than the necessities or that an even better future awaits. For the US I think the next 2 to 4 years are likely to dictate the next 2 to 4 decades.