John Keane
It’s a sign of our troubled times that when asked about the health of their democracies, millions of citizens curse politicians, complain about poor government performance, and express fears that their democracies are fast sliding towards a cliff’s edge (Alliance of Democracies 2024). Across the globe, they say that they’re especially worried about matters such as inequality, social polarization, political disorder, and the rise of extremist leaders. They make special mention of events such as the January 6 meltdown moment in the United States, when armed and angry protesters, hellbent on overturning an election result, stormed a legislature, cheered on by a demagogue president and his buddies.
They also mention crunch points of the kind that gripped Brazil two years later, when supporters of Jair Bolsonaro—refusing to concede his election defeat and calling for military intervention— stormed a presidential palace, destroyed art works, hurled broken furniture through shattered windows, ransacked Supreme Court rooms, and, just for the hell of it, switched on sprinkler systems to flood parts of Brazil’s Congress building.
These citizen anxieties about mob-rule moments are well-founded. They remind us of the great fragility of democracy—above all, that while building a democracy is a tough task that can take at least a lifetime, its destruction, or “democide,” is much easier and can happen faster (Keane 2009). Indeed, it has happened many times in the history of democracy. Democide always outpaces demogenesis, but the destruction of democracy’s spirit and substance typically never happens in a trice. This is the troubling truth of the demagogue-inspired insurrections we’ve seen in the United States, Brazil, and other countries in recent years: They’re not “sudden death” moments but single acts in a much lengthier traveling circus of political vanities, blustering fun, social decay, and lust for revenge—set against a backdrop of hunger for power, wealth, and fame.
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