Polar Opposites
It is curious that nations with autocratic rulers are demonstrating for freedom while free nations seem to yearn for a dictator.
There is a phenomenon in the natural world called geomagnetic reversal, the switching of the magnetic North and magnetic South Poles. Swapping places by the magnetic poles is a random event, and apparently it has occurred ten times in the last 2.6 million years. Scientists think a polar exchange could happen soon (soon in geologic time could still be a long way off), but we can all breathe easy, since the effect on humans would be slight. The most significant effects are that compass needles will indicate the north is in Antarctica, animals that use the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation would be disoriented, and a car’s GPS would be confused.
An analogous phenomenon is occurring today in international politics — a swapping of political systems that could have serious repercussions for humans. Some repressive authoritarian regimes — Iran and Russia, notably — are experiencing popular uprisings that may doom their continuance, while democratic nations — Italy, Sweden, the United States, and others — are flirting with autocracy. It as if those who have lived without freedom yearn for it, while those who live in free countries fear their freedom.
The recent victory in Italy of the right-wing, ultra-nationalist Brothers of Italy party raises the prospect of a fascist resurgence. A new government has yet to be formed, but the party’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, is likely to head a coalition government comprising a number of right-wing and center-right political parties. Meloni’s party won only about a quarter of the votes cast, so immediate disruptions to Italian, European, and international politics are unlikely. Still, it is disconcerting that a century after Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome a fascist political party is going to control the Italian government.
In Sweden, right-wing political parties won a slim election victory a few weeks ago. Most worrisome, Sweden Democrats, an extremist organization, emerged as the second-most popular party in a country that is usually viewed as a bastion of social democracy and tolerance. The Sweden Democrats have Nazi origins, and some of the party’s founders served in Hitler’s notorious Waffen SS. The party is virulently anti-immigrant, and it believes that neither Jews nor the Indigenous Sami people are “real Swedes.”
The pattern has been repeated elsewhere. Right-wing governments are in control in Turkey, Brazil, Poland, Hungary, and other countries, as well. Hungary’s iron-fisted ruler, Victor Orbán, boasts of creating an “illiberal democracy” where immigrants are unwelcome, where Jews and Muslims are suspect, and where freedoms are slowly but effectively weakened until they disappear.
And, then, there is the United States. Long touted as the touchstone of democratic rule and an inspiration to freedom-seeking peoples elsewhere, the United States is flirting with authoritarianism. Donald Trump, while serving his one term as president, showed his disdain for constitutional rule and legal traditions, and in 2021 he staged a failed coup to remain in power despite his decisive rejection by the voters. Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, and he could win another term in office.
What’s going on in our topsy-turvy world? Why the apparent yearning for an autocratic strongman to rule? It is, after all, fewer than 80 years since the democracies (and the Soviet Union) defeated fascism in Europe and Asia. It is barely three decades after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Are historical memories that short?
Apparently so!
But, those who suffer under repressive regimes show signs of throwing off the yoke of totalitarian rule. In Iran, the murder of a young Kurdish woman who was detained by the religious authorities, accused of violating the dress code that calls for modesty, has touched off protests throughout the country against the regime of the ayatollahs. In Russia, discontent with the iron-handed rule of Vladimir Putin, the failures of the Russian military in Ukraine, and the regime’s decision to mobilize 300,000 more men to serve as cannon fodder for Putin’s schemes of grandiosity have fueled unrest. In both cases, the understood social compact between the rulers and the ruled — that if the rulers leave the people alone, the citizenry will acquiesce in the dictatorship — has been broken. It reminds one of Jefferson’s line in the Declaration of Independence: “[T]hat mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” The evils in Iran and Russia are no longer sufferable.
Italians should know better, having lived under Mussolini’s fascist rule for more than two decades. Hungarians should also know better. Hungary had an authoritarian ruler, Admiral Miklós Horthy (why land-locked Hungary had a navy is a mystery), between the world wars, and it suffered under communism for more than four decades after World War II.
Globalization, mass migrations, income inequality, among other things, have created a sense of unease among many, stoking a yearning for a strongman who can lead a beleaguered nation in a time of crisis. Quantifying social discontent is perilous at best, but there appears to be a direct correlation between increasing income inequality and the growing popularity of autocracy. Pluralism and diversification — whether it be an influx of people of different color, ethnicity, and/or religion or a recognition of differing sexual orientations — are disquieting to many, giving rise to a desire, as Trump puts it, to “take back our country.” World-wide manifestations of the so-called “great replacement theory” are demonstrations of discontent among many with societal change. All of this can make populations susceptible to conspiratorial thinking, such as the “big lie” of the the stolen election, which serves only to reinforce the rise of the dictatorial ruler.
So, like the geomagnetic reversal in the natural world, we seem to be witnessing a political swapping of governmental systems. And, while the natural switch does not have significant harmful effects, the political exchange likely will destabilize international relations, at a minimum. The rise of dictatorial rulers in the 1920s and 1930s led to a cataclysmic world war. We can only hope that such a catastrophe is not in our future.
Posted September 30, 2022