{"id":33786,"date":"2022-01-21T14:28:18","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T10:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=33786"},"modified":"2022-01-21T14:28:18","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T10:28:18","slug":"how-democracy-gets-eroded-lessons-from-a-nixon-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/how-democracy-gets-eroded-lessons-from-a-nixon-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"How democracy gets eroded \u2013 lessons from a Nixon expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Ken Hughes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Security fences stand near the U.S. Capitol on January 5, 2022.\u00a0Drew Angerer\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now that a full year has passed since the\u00a0Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, the 2020 election and the republic, it\u2019s evident that the attack never really ended. Instead, it spread out to other, less visible, more vulnerable targets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump had hoped to reverse his election loss in a single, decisive, dramatic confrontation between his supporters and the republic\u2019s, broadcast live around the world. His plan backfired, filling our screens with vivid illustrations of authoritarianism\u2019s most repugnant ills: chaos, lawlessness, violence,\u00a0racism,\u00a0fascism\u00a0and all manner of hatred run amok. The blatancy of the subversion provoked an immediate backlash, even among\u00a0some Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Had he studied democratic erosion before becoming a practitioner, Trump would know that\u00a0effective authoritarians tighten their grips on government gradually, stealthily\u00a0undermining courts, legislatures, election officials, news organizations, political opposition and other institutions strong enough to check them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The coup by a thousand cuts is the stuff of nightmares for democracy\u2019s defenders and the dream of authoritarian politicians.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe story of democratic erosion in other countries is that it happens invisibly, you don\u2019t have this\u00a0tanks-in-the-streets\u00a0moment,\u201d\u00a0Brendan Nyhan\u00a0told The New Yorker. Nyhan is a Dartmouth political scientist and co-director of\u00a0Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who \u201cmonitor democratic practices, their resilience, and potential threats.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Destructive conspiracy theories<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Democratic erosion in America depends on the conspiracy theory, destructive and demonstrably false, that the 2020 election was stolen. As the author of a\u00a0couple of\u00a0books\u00a0on Richard Nixon \u2013 who, before Trump, was the biggest conspiracy theorist to inhabit the White House that we know of \u2013 I see conspiracy theories less as failures of rationality and more as\u00a0triumphs of rationalization.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Nixon muttered to White House aides that he was the victim of a conspiracy of\u00a0Jews, intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers, \u201carrogant\u201d people he said placed themselves above the law, he did so to justify arrogantly placing himself above the law. Nixon launched a real conspiracy against an imaginary one, plotting real crimes \u2013\u00a0breaking into the Brookings Institution,\u00a0leaking grand jury information\u00a0damaging to Democrats \u2013 against those he deemed real criminals, despite a chronic lack of evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, when conspiracy theorists\u00a0falsely claim the last election was stolen, they\u2019re putting the pieces in place for themselves to steal the next one. Not by anything as blatant as\u00a0pressuring a vice president to publicly shirk his duty to certify the vote, but by subtler means, such as\u00a0taking over the offices that handle vote certification at the state level.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rep.\u00a0Jody Hice, a Republican who voted against certifying President Joe Biden\u2019s victory, is running to unseat Georgia Secretary of State\u00a0Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who would not bow to pressure from Trump to \u201cfind\u201d enough votes to reverse the election result.\u00a0Fifteen election-denying Republicans\u00a0are running for secretary of state, according to NPR, raising the risk that people who refuse to accept the results of the last presidential election will decide whether to certify the results of the next one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgia\u2019s Republican-controlled legislature revealed who controls the party by stripping Raffensperger of his vote on the\u00a0state election board, which sets election rules and investigates allegations of fraud. They have also passed new election laws targeting local boards. \u201cThe laws allow Republicans to remove local officials they don\u2019t like,\u201d the New York Times reported.\u00a0Most\u00a0of those removed initially were Democrats, at least half of them people of color.<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgia\u2019s not alone. In at least eight other states, Republican-controlled legislatures took power from those who kept the last election honest, such as secretaries of state and local election officials, and handed it to\u00a0partisan entities, ABC News reported. Many, if not all, of those\u00a0secretaries of state were partisan officials, though they largely behaved in nonpartisan ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much reporting has focused rightly on the most prominent result of lies about voter fraud, \u201cvoting integrity\u201d legislation. Those stories have focused on how little such legislation does to solve the already-minuscule problem of\u00a0voter fraud\u00a0in America, and on how much the legislation does to\u00a0create problems\u00a0for people who want to vote, especially if those people tend to vote Democratic.<\/span><\/p>\n

False claims, real threats<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Less attention has focused on the influx of\u00a0conspiracy\u00a0theorists\u00a0at the local level of election administration, where they could warp elections in several ways. They could discriminate in enforcing voter-ID laws, make people cast provisional ballots that are subject to challenge, set up polling places in ways that create long lines, and\u00a0more, said\u00a0Scott Seeborg, Pennsylvania state director of\u00a0All Voting Is Local, a nonpartisan group fighting to \u201cremove discriminatory barriers to the ballot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If election workers reject false accusations of election fraud, they may face\u00a0death threats. The news service Reuters documented over 800\u00a0hostile, threatening messages\u00a0to election workers related to the conspiracy theories, including, \u201cWe\u2019re coming after you and every other mother\u2014-r that stole this election;\u201d \u201cEveryone with a gun is going to be at your house;\u201d and \u201cWe are now watching your children and loved ones.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These threats aren\u2019t being screamed on television before the eyes of the outraged majority; they appear without warning, Reuters reports, often anonymously, in individual voicemail and email boxes, inspiring fear without provoking backlash.<\/span><\/p>\n

By these means and more, authoritarians are seizing the power to win elections without winning a majority of the vote. This is something Nixon never dared try.<\/span><\/p>\n

In every race he ran \u2013 for\u00a0House,\u00a0Senate,\u00a0vice president and president\u00a0\u2013 Nixon faced an electorate where Democrats held a numerical advantage. This forced him to moderate his politics and policies, to broaden their appeals to the majority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, Republicans can win not only the White House, but the Congress and\u00a0gerrymandered state legislatures, without winning a majority. \u201cWe are witnessing\u00a0a minority takeover of our democracy,\u201d constitutional law scholar Kermit Roosevelt wrote in TIME. It\u2019s taking place not just nationally, but at the state and local level.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why democracy\u2019s defenders \u2013 Republicans, Democrats, and all people of good will \u2013 must not make Trump\u2019s mistake, thinking that the nation\u2019s future will be decided in a single, public, climactic showdown. It depends on a thousand little struggles with enormous stakes, on unsung efforts of unknown heroes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ken Hughes<\/strong><\/span>
\nResearch Specialist, the Miller Center, <\/span>
\nUniversity of Virginia<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 21 January 2022<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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