Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested

[Oscar]

Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested

[ https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/04/05/ ... -Globally/ ]

How the well-honed playbook for whipping up authoritarian populism is being employed here and around the world.

Michael Harris - 5 Apr 2024 - The Tyee

Michael Harris, a Tyee contributor, is a highly awarded journalist and documentary maker. His investigations have sparked four commissions of inquiry.

PHOTO: Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper, whose International Democracy Union helps hard-right leaders get elected, with one of them, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who gushed: ‘International co-operation between right-wing, conservative governments is more important than ever. Chairman Harper is a great ally.’ Photo via International Democracy Union.

EXCERPT: "If the polls hold, Pierre Poilievre will be our prime minister and Donald Trump will be ruling the United States, which — according to the Orange One’s own words — will no longer be a democracy. Trump will act as a dictator on “Day 1,” he’s declared on Fox News. According to the world’s most indicted politician himself, a U.S. Trumpocracy will run along the lines of strongman Viktor Orbán’s increasingly undemocratic Hungary.

Poilievre makes no such claims of course. But if he wins along with Trump, both countries will be part of the worldwide drift towards hard-right agendas tinged with authoritarian contempt for democratic institutions including a free and fair press.

The tactics for steering ships of state sharply starboard are similar around the globe, having changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Today’s political campaigners, particularly on the populist right, rely far more on attack ads and tearing down one’s opponent rather than presenting one’s own plans for the country. Brilliant polling is done to find out what issues people react to emotionally. And the internet is played like an algorithmic Wurlitzer to convert whipped-up fears into devotion to cult-like leaders.

That’s one of the reasons that outside influence on democracies has become such a burning issue around the world these days, including here in Canada. . . . ."

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