Anti-democracy wave opening old wounds that may not heal

One of the horrors of history is that it often repeats itself. After World War I – in which Germany was a major protagonist – Adolf Hitler and the drums of Armageddon overtook the Weimar Republic and gave us World War II.

In the US, the abolition of slavery in 1865 brought the Era of Reconstruction in which African-Americans were for the first time accorded rights as citizens. Reconstruction ended in 1877. The Jim Crow Era, which followed, enacted official racial segregation or Apartheid in America until 1965. Blacks were once again subjugated as sub-human. History often repeats itself – with viciousness and devastation. A look at the globe today – and especially the ascension of Donald Trump – underscores the point.

In his book – The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century – political scientist Samuel P Huntington of Harvard captured the return of democracy across the globe. To him, the First Wave of democracy started in the 19th century – with the grant of suffrage to white males in America – and ended in the throes of WWII.

The Second Wave lasted from 1945 to the late 1960s. The collapse of the Portuguese Empire ignited the Third Wave in 1974 and spread like bushfire in Eastern Europe and Africa after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. In 2010, the Arab Spring lit a match to the Fourth Wave that quickly petered out in the Arab Winter. Lesson – history repeats itself.

The elections in the Philippines of Rodrigo Duterte, Viktor Orban in Hungary, the rise of Theresa May in the UK, the defeat of Italy’s Matteo Renzi, and the rise of far right fascist parties in France and The Netherlands may portend a dark future for democracy. Germany’s Angela Merkel is an endangered species.

However, it is the election – whether with Russian help or not – of Donald Trump to the White House that is a serious warning that the end of the Fourth Wave of Democracy is nigh. The Age of Democracy – as we have come know it – may be ending. Mr Trump’s entry into Washington starts the Age of De-Democratisation. The racist demons of the West have come back to haunt it. Illiberalism and authoritarianism are sweeping the globe.

Let’s look ahead. The text of Nineteen Eight-Four, the dystopian 1949 novella by writer George Orwell, may be enacted live. The super-state, under the mysterious Big Brother – who may not exist, although he could be Mr Trump’s Steven Bannon, may erase the democratic protections we take for granted.

Mr Bannon, the guru of the Alternative Right – read white racist fascists – may implement and normalise tyranny and the cult of personality. As in Nineteen Eight-Four, the Ministry of Truth headed by Mr Bannon and Kellyanne Conway may routinise “alternative facts” which propelled Mr Trump’s to victory. Oppression, fake news, and the mainstreaming of Nazi ideologies may become a staple in America.

Beacons of democracy

There are several reasons why fascism, racism, and anti-democracy are winning. First, white people – whether in Europe or North America – feel beleaguered. Their numbers are dwindling. Global power is shifting from the North to the South. Migrations – lawful and unlawful – of refugees and migrants from the Global South to the Global North are reconfiguring the demographic landscape in the West.

It’s predicted that in several decades, whites will be a minority in America and in some European countries. Diversity and democracy was only good in the West when whites were a formidable majority at the ballot box.

The Nordic countries – regarded as beacons of democracy – find it very hard to live with ethnic, racial, and religious diversity. Secondly, globalisation in all its dimensions – commercial, industrial, religious, ethnic, racial, digital, and cultural – has for the first time put the West at a seeming disadvantage. The philosophy and logic of the post-1945 global order – which was hegemonic domination of the globe by the industrial democracies of the West led by America – is fatigued. People in the West see the rise of “the other” as a loss. The so-called angry working class white male can’t take it anymore.

And he isn’t alone – a majority of white women in America voted for Mr Trump over Hillary Clinton, a fellow woman. The post-1945 ideological script of liberalism and liberal internationalism is under great strain. America seems to be turning dangerously eccentric.

I saw a report of a Syrian-American family that voted for Mr Trump and became its first victim. Their Syrian relatives who had secured resettlement in America to escape the carnage were deported upon arrival at Philadelphia Airport because of Mr Trump’s executive order barring Syrian refugees.

Mr Trump’s devastating policies will sink in soon enough, even for some of his supporters. Dictators – in Kenya and elsewhere – are emboldened. Bad things happen when good people remain silent. Let’s fight back.

—The writer is SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of KHRC.

@makaumutua.