Mr Trump has given cover and ballast to anti-democratic tools, Rashmee Roshan Lall writes.
First published in October 2019.
Israel, India, Britain… The grim rollcall of countries where long-standing norms of political behaviour are increasingly disregarded, and where elected leaders attack the tools that keep democracy vibrant and true. Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond has described some of these tools as follows: judicial independence, a free media, a deeply engaged civil society, universities, the civil service, intelligence agencies and the police.
Quite so. These are the very tools that have been used to devastating effect in Turkey, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere. And the results are obvious.
So, what role has Donald Trump played in all of this, one might well ask. Wasn’t this doleful progression already underway, long before he won the 2016 election?
Yes and no.
“The truth is Mr Trump has normalised behaviour that thus far was considered the preserve of authoritarian regimes.”
Timothy Naftali, a historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, recently noted that it’s unusual in a republic for all government activity to be the product of the id of the leader.
It’s also unusual in a country of laws that an embattled leader can call into question the very legitimacy of those opponents challenging his conduct.
Mr Trump’s brazenness on this front has emboldened leaders elsewhere.
Equally troubling is the way conspiracy theories about the “deep state” are being floated on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has suggested Jewish financier George Soros is somehow responsible for the current impeachment inquiry. And on Oct. 3, Jacob Rees-Mogg, currently Leader of Britain’s House of Commons, named Mr Soros as a supposed enemy of Brexit.
Mr Trump has given cover and ballast to anti-democratic tools.🔷
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[This piece was originally published on Medium and re-published in PMP Magazine on 4 October 2019, with the author’s consent. | The author writes in a personal capacity.]
