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Christopher R. Browning

Thursday 16th of April 2026

Authoritarianism The fascist movements of [the 1930s] prided themselves on being overtly antidemocratic, and those that came to power in Italy and Germany boasted that their regimes were totalitarian. The most original revelation of the current wave of authoritarians is that the construction of overtly antidemocratic dictatorships aspiring to totalitarianism is unnecessary for holding power. Perhaps the most apt designation of this new authoritarianism is the insidious term “illiberal democracy.” Christopher R. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary have all discovered that opposition parties can be left in existence and elections can be held in order to provide a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy, while in reality elections pose  scant challenge to their power. Truly dangerous opposition leaders are neutralzied or eliminated one way or another. Christopher R. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Freedom of the press A free press does not have to be repressed when it can be rendered irrelevant and even exploited for political gain. Christopher R. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Political inequality By my calculation every currently serving Democratic senator represents roughly 3.65 million people; every Republican roughly 2.51 million. Put another way, the fifty senators from the twenty-five least populous states – twenty-nine of them Republicans – represent just over 16 percent of the American population, and thirty-four Republican senators – enough to block conviction  on impeachment charges – represent states with a total of 21 percent of the American population. Christopher R. Browning, “The Suffocation of Democracy” © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Snapshot If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell portrayed by Christopher Browning © 2018 Kwiple.com