Democracy is under attack across the western world - from external powers like Russia, China and Iran, and from inside: the rise of populism, disinformation and organised crime.
Democracy is under attack across the western world – from external powers like Russia, China and Iran, and from inside: the rise of populism, disinformation and organised crime.
That’s the alarming warning from the Pulitzer prize winning author Anne Applebaum, whose latest book Autocracy. Inc, The Dictators who want to run the world, reveals a network of repressive regimes across the world who are working to keep one another in power. We spoke to her earlier and asked first about what she thought of the proposed ‘Project 2025’ by the Republicans if they win in November, led by Donald Trump.So nowadays, most democracies don’t fall because there’s a coup d’état, with tanks in the streets and the lieutenant colonel shooting up the presidential palace. They fall because a legitimately elected politician attacks and undermines democratic institutions. It’s what happened originally in Putin’s Russia.
And it’s what Project 2025 describes in the United States. It describes a means of replacing or changing many American institutions, many long time American civil servants, and replacing them with people who are loyal not to the political system and not necessarily even to the Constitution, but who are loyal to Trump or to the Republican Party under Trump’s guidance.And of course, this has a lot of publicity, some very negative publicity, in this election campaign.
This is something that people are really just beginning to grapple with and contemplate. And of course, all across Europe, and nobody talks about it in public, but their preparations are being made and conversations about the future of defence are being had. And yes, what can I say? People are anxious that a second Trump presidency would be markedly different and more radical than the first.
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