![]() Without the Depression and the sense of societal unraveling during the Weimar Republic, it is unlikely Hitler would have gained power. In the 1930s, radical cultural changes and depressed economic conditions fostered nationalist extremism in some places, while others rejected constitutional democracy for the siren song of Stalinism. In his 1995 work, Nazi Germany: A New History, the historian Klaus Fischer argues that the 20th century’s dictatorial regimes thrived by offering “a version of traditional religiosity with its own dogmas, priesthood and inquisitions.” Their preferred terroirs are societies experiencing economic decline and the loss of traditional social, spiritual, and political moorings. Historical precedence and critical pre-conditionsĪutocracy’s appeal lies partly in the sense of certainty and enthusiastic commitment it provides. ![]() “Democracies,” Xi is said to have told Biden, “can’t be sustained in the 21st century.” Most critically, China’s rise offers an alluring-at least to some-model of a new corporate state that, perhaps more than anything, recalls the European fascist regimes in the 1920s and ’30s. But authoritarianism has been on the rise for almost two decades. At the end of the Cold War, the world seemed to be traveling on a natural “arc” to a more democratic future. Perhaps most ominous of all, expanded state power and intolerance are also now being embraced by some of the world’s most powerful corporations, which have benefited greatly from liberalism, the rule of law, and open inquiry.īeyond the West, full-bore authoritarians are already in power-Xi Jinping in China, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. The Western Left, once advocates of free speech and tolerant of markets, now embrace a massive expansion of state power, complete with expansive curbs on expression and speech. Biden has already called much of his own domestic opposition “ semi-fascist,” and fears of anti-democratic violence remain following the storming of the US Capitol on January 6th, 2020, by rioters attempting to overturn his own election.īut these worrying developments on the political Right reflect only one expression of the new authoritarianism. “We can't be sanguine about what's happening here either,” he added. His warning about the global spread of illiberalism followed the stunning gains made by populist parties in Sweden and Italy, the latter of which he mentioned directly. “Democracy is at stake,” US President Biden told a gathering of Democratic Party governors on September 28th.
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