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The riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is often cited as one of the lowest points for democracy in U.S. history. (Getty Images)

To the editor: Nicholas Goldberg bemoans the challenges facing democracies and cites a few examples of our nation's inability to tackle big things, including the Jan. 6 insurrection, legislative paralysis in Washington and the U.S. response to climate change.

Democracy is not to blame in any of these cases. Republicans are.

The former president, a Republican, drew throngs of followers to Washington on Jan. 6, and he whipped them into a frenzy and almost subverted the peaceful transfer of power.

Were just a dozen Senate Republicans to support climate legislation, President Biden's Build Back Better bill, which he calls "the largest effort to combat climate change in American history," would likely pass. But not one does.

As to legislative paralysis, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, famously said a year ago, "One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration."

I'm disappointed Goldberg didnt identify the threat by name, suggesting our woes are a systemic problem. Yes, two Democratic senators held up passage of voting rights legislation, but it must be noted that not a single Republican supported that bill.

The country is polarized, and money in politics is a huge problem. But if democracy is threatened in the United States, the blame must be fixed squarely on Republicans.

Mike Diehl, Glendale

..

To the editor: Goldberg's assessment is very depressing, but it's also spot on. He's so right about the fundamental flaws in our system, such as the makeup of the Senate and the electoral college.

But what can be done in the way of remedies? It's those very flaws that keep allowing the Republicans to control the rules, precluding any prospect for change.

Zena Thorpe, Chatsworth

..

To the editor: Goldberg's column is both interesting and frightening.

Countries in Northern Europe have achieved a better form of democracy, while our political system is failing. The blame falls on big business corruption, absence of term limits and a very antiquated Constitution.

Story continues

My solution would be a system of "benevolent dictatorship" benevolent in that people's needs would be provided for, freedom of expression would be allowed and there would be equality of opportunity; and a dictatorship in the sense that things would get done.

Alas, this is exceptionally rare in history. Even in some cases when a dictator starts out as benevolent, they end up corrupt. So we will keep on struggling with no imminent solution.

Aavo Koort, Santa Barbara

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Letters to the Editor: Democracy is declining only because the GOP is killing it - Yahoo News

The United States has made many contributions to the world in science, technology, medicine and the arts. Weveexported the key ideasthat serve as the framework of self-government and personal freedom around the world.

By my reckoning, however, the greatest contribution of the United States to the world is the idea oflegitimate opposition. Put simply, this idea holds that people can be loyal to their nation but opposed to the sitting government. It at once legitimizes, normalizes, and institutionalizes political opposition. In too many parts of the world, this idea has yet to take root.

All over the world, billions of people live in nations where those who organize against the government are treated like traitors. The first order of business for any authoritarian nation is to arrest or kill the political opposition.

According to a 2021 report from theInternational Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance:

Democracy is at risk. Its survival is endangered by a perfect storm of threats, both from within and from a rising tide of authoritarianism. The Global State of Democracy 2021 shows that more countries than ever are suffering from democratic erosion (decline in democratic quality), including in established democracies. The number of countries undergoing democratic backsliding (a more severe and deliberate kind of democratic erosion) has never been as high as in the last decade, and includes regional geopolitical and economic powers such as Brazil, India and the United States. More than a quarter of the worlds population now live in democratically backsliding countries. Together with those living in outright non-democratic regimes, they make up more than two-thirds of the worlds population.

In the United States, it has long been considered normal that there will be a formal, organized, regularized, and institutionally recognized attempt to unseat every elected official at every scheduled opportunity. This competitive system of party politics, however flawed, sits at the foundation of our democracy. The idea of a legitimate opposition at its core is the belief that our differences on policies no matter how profound do not make us enemies.

Until very recently, politicians and parties of every stripe understood that if they lost an election, they would accept the results, dust themselves off, and try to win the next one. Sure, there might be court challenges, but until 2020, never had a major presidential candidate refused to accept the results of an election or thrown into doubt the legitimacy of an elected president (and this includes some pretty suspicious elections, 1876, 1960, 2000). Indeed, even the white men who seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy in 1860-61, never questioned the legitimacy of Abraham Lincolns election.

Many years ago, I was made to read Richard Hofstadters, The Idea of a Party System. Hofstadter charted the painful embrace of political opposition from the long-held view of something to be avoided (faction) to an essential element of democratic politics. His focus was the election of 1800,a bitterly contested battlebetween the Federalist President John Adams and his Republican opponent Thomas Jefferson. Jeffersons victory marked the first peaceful, democratic change of government in the modern era.

In 1801, in his inaugural address, Jeffersons main theme was that the strength of our democracy was in our common allegiance to the principles of self-government. Famously,Jefferson wrote, every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.

Three score years later, in 1861,Abraham Lincoln, in his First Inaugural, tried to save the Union by appealing to that same ideal, We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

And two and a half years later, in the midst of the bloody Civil War, he concluded hisGettysburg Addressby echoing Jefferson: that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Two hundred and four years after Jeffersons First Inaugural, a young state senator from Illinois delivered the Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.Barack Obama, channeling both Jefferson and Lincoln stressed the idea of the legitimate opposition. Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes, he said. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; theres the United States of America.

And very recently, asYahoo Newsreported, former Republican presidential candidateSenator Mitt Romney saida chart in his Senate office traces the history of civilizations over the past 4,000 years. From the Mongol Empire to the Roman Empire, Romney said, autocracy is the charts default setting, with authoritarian leaders at every turn. What has kept us from falling in with the same kind of authoritarian leader as Vladimir Putin are the strengths of our institutions, the rule of law, our courts, Congress, and so forth, Romney said.

In contrast to these examples of appealing to our better angels, there are among us today ordinary citizens and high-ranking leaders who are working to discredit and forcibly overturn our democracy.

In Washington, the January 6thSelect Committee has uncoveredsubstantial evidenceof illegal activity and unethical practices designed to overturn the presidential election of 2020. Starting with a campaign of disinformation over several months about election fraud and culminating with aplanned violent actionto halt the counting of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021.A poll from February 2021found that, most Democrats say that they tend to view Republicans as political opponents. Most Republicans say that they tend to view Democrats as enemies.

A functioning democracy requires many things. It requires the tireless and hard work of the citizenry to become educated about public affairs and to hold elected and party leaders accountable. And we need to recognize that American democracy is an unfinished project. If the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, it is only because there are plenty of people pushing it in that direction.

Above all, democracy requires that citizens see one another as part of the same democratic project, and not as enemies. It demands that we value self-government more than a particular candidate or policy. That we accept the results of elections and, if we lose, we try to win the next one. And in the interim, we must believe that our political opponents are as loyal to the nation as we are. If fail to embrace the idea of the legitimate opposition, we will have lost our democracy.

Reprinted from History News Network with permission from the author. This column was originally published in the Minnesota Reformer.

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The loyal opposition is a key element of democracy, and we're losing it - Nevada Current

Large crowd of presidential candidate Eric Zemmours supporters Spech/Shutterstock

In Sundays first round presidential race, even though the ultimate result is to set up a repeat of the 2017 runoff between the incumbent Emmanuel Macron and the xenophobic candidate Marine Le Pen, there were two enormous surprises. The first was the utter humiliation of the two political groupings that traded turns at running the country for the past 70 years. Valrie Pcresse, the candidate of the Republican party (the establishment right), ended up with 4.7% of the vote. The Socialists, heirs to the Mitterrand legacy and the last of the dominant parties to hold the office, didnt even reach 2% (they got 1.75% of the vote), less than the communist candidate who got just over 2%.

The second surprise was the strong showing of Jean-Luc Mlenchon, a non-establishment leftist, who, it now transpires, would have overtaken Le Pen had any of the other candidates dropped out to line up behind him. Its a moral victory of sorts for voters on the left, who have now been excluded from the final round of the two most recent presidential elections. The compensation is that, with legislative elections looming in the immediate aftermath of the April 24th presidential face-off, it will inevitably lead to some kind of intriguing regrouping or redefinition.

In its reporting on the election, The New York Times focused on the one issue that is of most interest to its American readers: the impact on what it calls the Western unity US President Joe Biden has so solidly engineered in his response to Russias invasion of Ukraine. The Times foreign editor, Roger Cohen expresses the fear that, in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory France will become anti-NATO and more pro-Russia. He adds that this would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In other words, make no mistake about it, The New York Times is rooting for Macron.

Todays Weekly Devils Dictionary definition:

Opposed to the ideal the United States government imagines for Europe, defining it as a continent composed of free, enlightened democracies irremediably dependent both economically and militarily on the benevolent leadership of a powerful American Deep State and the sincere brotherly love offered by the American military-industrial complex.

The Times may have reason to worry. While the odds still favor Macron, Le Pen could possibly duplicate Donald Trumps incredible overcoming of the odds in 2016 when he won the US presidency, and largely for the same reasons. Macron has been a contested leader, branded by opponents on the left and right as the president of the rich. Hillary Clinton similarly suffered from her image of being a tool of her Wall Street donors. There comes a point in every nations life when the people seem ready to take a chance with what appears to reasonable people as a bad bet.

Perhaps that time has come for France. Its electors exercised what they call republican discipline against far-right politicians when Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pens father, Jean-Marie, in 2002. He harvested 82% of the vote to Le Pens 18%. In 2017, though Macron was still an unknown entity with no serious support from either of the major political groupings, the young man easily defeated the far-right candidate with 64% of the vote to Le Pens 36%.

Prognosticating statisticians might simply follow the curve and assume that the downward slope will lead this time to a 50-50 election. They may be right. But the reason lies less in an arithmetical trend than in the growth of a largely non-partisan populist revolt directed against what is perceived to be an occult power establishment comprised of powerful industrialists, bankers, unrepresentative parties, corrupt politicians and a political class marked by an attitude of subservience to the American empire. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, has himself tried to burnish his image as a neutral, pan-European visionary who seeks to break free from the chokehold held by the power brokers of Washington DC, Arlington, Virginia and Wall Street. His attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin before and after the Russian invasion were undoubtedly designed to bolster that image.

The explanation everyone likes to give for Marine Le Pens success in distancing her rivals including fellow xenophobe, Eric Zemmour is her focus on inflation. James Carville may be applauding from afar. It is, after all the economy, stupid. The issue has been there throughout Macrons term. It was the COVID lockdown and not Macrons policies that cut short the dramatic yellow vest movement that was still smoldering when the pandemic struck. The French have not forgotten their own need for economic survival while living in a society in which the rich keep getting richer. Voters remember Macrons joyous elimination of the wealth tax and the alacrity with which he announced higher gas taxes would fill the gap.

A musician I work with regularly told me recently: Im not voting in the first round, but Ill vote against Macron in the second round. In other words, of the possible rivals in the second round Le Pen (far right), Mlenchon (progressive left), some even predicted Valrie Pcresse (right) he would have voted for any one of them, just to eliminate Macron. I dont believe hes a racist, but he is now ready to be voting for a woman who has put xenophobia at the core of her political program.

If we tally up the scores of the candidates who are clearly anti-NATO without including Macron who keeps his distance but adheres to the US alliance in the current campaign against Russia the total climbs towards 60%. Historically, France is the only European country to have declared independence from NATO, when De Gaulle withdrew from NATOs military structure and banished all NATO installations from the nations territory in 1966.

Roger Cohens and The Times concern may be justified, even if Macron wins the election. Even more so if the results are close. Very few commentators, even here in France, have begun trying to tease out whats likely to emerge from Junes legislative elections. With the two traditional establishment parties on the ropes and utterly leaderless, is there any chance that a reassuringly coherent order dear to establishment politicians might reappear? Even if Macron wins, he never really managed to assemble a stable majority in his first term. The real questions now are these: among the defeated, who will talk to whom? And who will even grudgingly accept to defer to whose leadership? If Le Pen wins, it is unlikely she will be able to muster anything resembling a loyal majority. It is often said that the French voters heart is on the left, but their vote is on the right. With a president so far to the right, the voters wont deliver a presidential majority in parliament, as they have so often done in the past.

Like the US and the UK, Frances democratic institutions have become profoundly dysfunctional. In no way does the political class even attempt to implement the will of the people. The globalized economy, with its arcane networks of power, had already diminished the meaning of democracy. The US is now consciously splitting in two that same globalized economy through its campaign of sanctions against Russia, possibly as a broader strategic move designed to create a degree of chaos that will ultimately embarrass its real enemy, China.

That radical split points in one direction: militarizing even further an economy already dominated by military technology. And as we have seen, a militarized economy means an increasingly militarized society, in which surveillance, propaganda, control and enforced conformity in the name of security cancel any appeal not just to the will, but even to the needs of the people.

It is a real pity that Jean-Luc Mlenchon didnt make it to the second round, if only to enrich a largely impoverished debate. Independently of any of his political orientations concerning the economy or foreign policy, the leader of his party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), was already insisting in the previous election five years ago that the nation needed to replace with a 6th Republic an out-of-date 5th Republic created in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Mlenchons idea of a 6th Republic contained less presidential power and weaker parties, meaning better access for the people.

A lot of water has flowed under the Pont Neuf since 1958, and neither of the candidates appears interested in reducing presidential powers. But the result of this election demonstrates clearly that both presidential power and the ability of parties to give direction to the politics of the nation have become non-existent as tools of democratic government. The results show that they have reached a point of no return. No one should be surprised to see at some point in time after the legislative elections France being rocked by a constitutional crisis on the scale of the one Pakistan lived through this past week. At which point, a 6th Republic may emerge from the ashes, Phoenix-like, but with more than a few burnt feathers.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devils Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devils Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

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In the post-truth era of fake news, echo chambers and filter bubbles, we publish a plurality of perspectives from around the world. Anyone can publish with us, but everyone goes through a rigorous editorial process. So, you get fact-checked, well-reasoned content instead of noise.

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Democracy and Frances Theater of the Absurd - Fair Observer

If asked to name the greatest threat facing Europe today, the continents leaders would probably point to Russias invasion of Ukraine. The war has completely upended European politics, sending millions of Ukrainian refugees into neighboring European Union countries and putting states nearest to Russia on high alert. Disagreements over further sanctions on Moscow following the Russian militarys atrocities in Bucha have begun to expose the cracks in Europes fragile unity.

But another, more insidious, threat can be found within the EUs own borders, one that it only now truly appears to be waking up to.

Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn was reelected, securing not only four more years in power but a two-thirds supermajority, thus enabling his ruling party, Fidesz, to unilaterally amend the countrys constitution. For years, he has overseen the steady destruction of his countrys democracy, transforming Hungary into what some scholars refer to as a soft or competitive autocracy, in which elections are held but the oppositions ability to compete in them is severely undermined. Orbns influence over Hungarys institutions, coupled with his control over state coffers and the airwaves, has made elections ostensibly free but far from fair. Such was the implicit verdict of a team of election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which concluded that the Hungarian contest was marred by the absence of a level playing field. Including a lack of transparency about campaign finances and pro-Fidesz bias in the Hungarian media, all of the issues that we raised this time around were raised in previous reports as well, Jill Stirk, a former Canadian ambassador leading the OSCE mission in Hungary, told me. Perhaps the most pervasive issue was the overlap between government information and campaign messaging. Whether it was on the war in Ukraine or on economic issues, Stirk said, in some instances, it was really hard to know who exactly was speaking.

For all the attention being paid to the autocratic threat from Russia, the European Union seems belatedly to be coming to the realization that autocrats among its ranks are just as great a risk. Last week the EU announced that it would, for the first time ever, apply new powers enabling it to withhold funds from countries that fail to meet the blocs democratic standardsa move that could cost Budapest tens of billions of euros.

That this decision should come amid the war in Ukraine is an encouraging sign that perhaps Europes leaders have finally recognized the importance of tackling threats to democracy both within and beyond the bloc. But by waiting so long to act, the EU has made its task that much more difficult.

Read: The EU watches as Hungary kills democracy

The question, then, is what took so long? The bloc has ostensibly long had instruments by which to keep its member states in line with its core values, though it hasnt always had the easiest time implementing them. Perhaps the most obvious example of this was in 2018, when the EU moved to suspend Hungarys voting rights within the bloc under Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty, citing a serious breach of the EUs founding values, including freedom of expression, democracy, and the rule of law. But this process requires the unanimity of all EU member states, and Poland and Hungary, which have had Article 7 proceedings triggered against them, each acted as an assured veto for the other, rendering the process effectively redundant.

But the EU isnt without leverage. Under a new mechanism, which was introduced in 2020 and approved by the European Court of Justice this year, the bloc now has the power to withhold its funding from any member state where rule-of-law violations could affect how the money is spent. Daniel Freund, a Green Party member of the European Parliament and one of the negotiators behind the so-called conditionality mechanism, told me that though it was designed to prevent abuse of the EU budget, it can in effect be used by the EU to compel member states to enact reforms and to punish those that dont. It cannot be that we send billions of taxpayer money to a country where this money is being stolen, where its being misused, where its actually used to attack the European Union and its principles, Freund said. You cant be part of a club, not play by its rules, but keep all the money. That just doesnt work.

Such funding cuts would have a huge impact on Hungary, which is one of the largest per capita recipients of EU funding, and on Orbn. The prime minister has spent more than a decade enriching himself and his cronies with European funds. As Orbn faces a costly election tab, rising inflation, and an energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine, he cant exactly afford to lose any fiscal support right now. Its for this reason that the prime minister wrote to Brussels last month requesting the release of the blocs pandemic-recovery funds, billions of which have been withheld from Budapest over corruption concerns.

He will attempt to lobby, blackmail, by hook or by crook, to solicit this financing from Brussels, Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a research firm and consultancy, told me. Orbn is running a kleptocracy and so these funds are pretty important to him politically and pretty important for the equilibrium that hes created around him.

Even if money is a powerful form of leverage, the threat of losing it is unlikely to have a transformative effect on Orbn, at least in the short term. In response to the EUs announcement that it would begin the process of applying the conditionality mechanism, his government urged Brussels not to punish Hungarian voters for their choice and cautioned the bloc against making the same mistakes as the Hungarian left. The Hungarian prime minister has since positioned himself as the greatest obstacle to additional European sanctions on Russia over its atrocities in Ukraine, further demonstrating the cost of the EUs inactionnot just within the bloc, but beyond it. Orbn has already been vindicated by winning another term; any attempts by the EU to reverse Hungarys democratic decline is already 10-plus years too late, Rahman said.

From the May 2022 issue: There is no liberal world order

But so long as the bloc continues to overlook, much less subsidize, autocracy within it, the whole European project is at stake. Its late, but its not too late, Freund said. This is one of the core fights of the European Union right now. In a way, [its] the fight for the soul of Europe.

Read more:
The Other Threat to Democracy in Europe - The Atlantic

These safeguards were too little, too late. And they were only temporary. Just days after these measures took effect, Facebook (now Meta) shut down its civic-integrity team and its amplification engine returned to business as usual. This happened just as Trumps Big Lie about the election outcome was gaining traction online among conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists planning a violent attack on Congress.

Get Weekend Reads from IdeasA weekly newsletter from the Boston Globe Ideas section, forged at the intersection of 'what if' and 'why not.'

The online lies that helped incite the Jan. 6 insurrection share unsettling similarities with the information war now being waged over Russias unjustified invasion of Ukraine. The current situation is even more dangerous, given both the extent of Russian state-sponsored disinformation and the horrors and casualties of the war. Meta is again grappling with a disinformation deluge. And its response to Russian propaganda has been as inconsistent and patchy as ever.

Pleas from civil-, digital-, and human-rights groups to protect democratic values around the world have been met with indifference at Meta and other major online platforms. In the conflict between the public good and corporate profits, profits win each time. They do so regardless of the resulting harm. Profiting from hate and misinformation appears to be hardwired into Metas business model. This must change.

While Moscow has blocked Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram within Russia, its government accounts are still actively spreading pro-Putin, pro-war disinformation to the world. Moscow has activated its global army of bots and trolls to echo and amplify false claims across social-media networks. Former State Department official Ben Scott who is a board member of Free Press, the media and tech justice advocacy group where one of us is senior counsel reports that the use of the Z hashtag and imagery supporting Russian aggression are still proliferating across social media, despite these platforms claims that theyre taking actions to curb them. And The Guardians Kari Paul reports that on Facebook 80 percent of the false claims around the US bioweapons conspiracy theory have gone unflagged.

Organizations including Free Press and the Real Facebook Oversight Board a group of activists holding the company accountable in ways that Facebooks official oversight board does not have routinely pressured online platforms to do more to combat hate speech and disinformation.

Today, were calling on Meta to take three decisive steps to stop amplifying the worst Russian propaganda. These are measures that should also apply to other disinformation campaigns worldwide, including targeted efforts to misinform voters participating in the dozens of national elections that occur in any given year.

First, Meta needs to fix algorithms that promote the most incendiary and hateful content, including disinformation that makes a false case for going to war, covers up or distorts evidence of war crimes, and dehumanizes the innocent victims of combatants. Metas business model is built on its ability to increase users engagement with its platforms. But keeping eyeballs glued to Russian disinformation comes at a great cost to free societies. Meta needs to stop amplifying hate and lies for profit.

Second, Meta must protect its users equally. Haugens testimony made clear that the company prioritizes content moderation in English but is woefully understaffed when it comes to vetting disinformation in the worlds other languages. These include Russian and 25 other languages that are collectively spoken by more than half of the worlds population. Nobel Prize laureate (and Real Facebook Oversight Board member) Maria Ressa, who is a frequent target of Facebook attacks in the Philippines, has spoken frequently about this gaping double standard. Meta must devote more resources to content moderation outside the United States and Western Europe.

Third, Meta must be transparent about its amplification and moderation practices. That means making it possible for researchers and journalists to investigate whether the company is adhering to its stated commitments to combat misinformation, protect elections, and keep people safe. In the past, when researchers began to touch on any of these sensitive topics, Meta summarily cut off their access or attempted to bury the results of their research.

These break-glass measures should continue even after Meta decides that a crisis has passed. We are in a global disinformation crisis. With Russian aggression escalating and 36 determinative national elections taking place in 2022, the urgency to act has never been stronger. The spread of disinformation never ends. Metas efforts to safeguard its users shouldnt either.

Nora Benavidez is the senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press. Kate Coyer is a fellow with the Democracy Institutes Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University and a member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board.

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Facebook ought to be protecting democracy worldwide every day - The Boston Globe