Democracy Is No Protection from Authoritarianism
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Basharat Peer is one of India’s most renowned non-fiction writers and journalists. He talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about two democratically elected leaders — India’s Narendra Modi, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who have used populism, majoritarian politics and extreme nationalism to push their nations away from democratic traditions. The illiberal drift of the two countries is looking frighteningly familiar to many Americans.
Peer shows how these strongmen “are united in their promises to make their countries great again. They position themselves as saviors on white horses.”
The author, who grew up in India-controlled Kashmir and witnessed the persecution of many of his fellow citizens, also talks about the politicians, journalists, activists and ordinary citizens who have pushed back, some at great personal risk and sacrifice.
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Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy. I’m Jeff Schechtman.
As we are rapidly finding out here in America, having leaders who are democratically elected is not a safeguard against authoritarianism. The need for a sense of security, anger about dramatic change, waves of populism and pushback against the established order by those left behind, all contribute to an often popular desire for strong authoritarian leaders. If what we are seeing here in America isn’t example enough, all we need is to look to Turkey and to India, once considered the world’s largest democracy to see the impact of authoritarianism. The encouraging thing is that we have seen remarkable pushback by citizens, journalists and political leaders, often at great personal cost and sacrifice. We’re going to talk about this today with my guest Basharat Peer. He’s an opinion editor at the New York Times, he’s the author of Curfewed Night: A Memoir of War in Kashmir. He has worked as an editor at Foreign Affairs and written for the New Yorker, The Guardian and The New York Times. It is my pleasure to welcome Basharat Peer to the program to talk about question of order: India, Turkey and the return of strongmen. Basharat, thanks so much for joining us.
Basharat Peer: A pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Jeff Schechtman: When we look at this from a historical perspective, do we have some historical precedent for this idea of democratically elected authoritarian leaders?
Basharat Peer: In the American context, there have been controversial figures who assumed power after coming into public life through election. But in terms of the mode of politics that candidate Trump throughout his campaign that turned toward, what increasingly experts around the world have been calling populism, there were two kinds of populisms in play with Bernie Sanders going for the left-wing populism and Donald Trump going for right-wing populism; which essentially is an attack on the elites but also saying that the elites have been patronizing at the cost of the everyday working man. They have been patronizing minorities who don’t work as hard as, quote unquote, everyday working man. This has been a classic example of that kind of right-wing populism, but I think the roots of populism go much deeper in American history. You had a populist party in the 1890s, the Wallace campaign had elements of this and they were [way harder? And there were others? 02:56]. I can’t think of any other president, I mean there were things that people were already critical of in terms of President Nixon, but this is unique in the American context in the sense of a populist actually entering the White House. I think this might be the first example in the United States. Correct me if I’m wrong. American politics is not really my subject but that’s my sense. We have seen this elsewhere around the world, it’s not a new thing. In some ways, there have been populists across the world at different points in time. In India, we had the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, who was prime minister in the late sixties and seventies. She was an incredibly powerful woman, but a populist and terribly authoritarian. There have been other cases in the world, in the Arab world, in Latin America and other parts of Asia. What we do have now is some sense that America was exceptional and it was providing sense in the American world that this wonderful country is so exceptional, we have checks and balances so something like this will not happen here, but sadly it has happened.
Jeff Schechtman: When we look at the stories that you detail in Turkey and India, talk a little bit about how those particular leaders: Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India, how they came to power in the waves of populism and the nature of the populism that propelled them.
Basharat Peer: So, the ways they came into power was – Erdogan came to power first. In early 2003, he became the prime minister of Turkey. There was an element of populism. There was an element of majoritarian politics, but he was also an outsider. There was an old, elite establishment; the kind of people who would be buddies with Hillary Clinton, like the old democratic establishment, in some ways.
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