“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ― Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays.
Since the onset of the Coronavirus Pandemic, governments worldwide have enacted strict measures to contain the spread of the virus–but not without infringing on their citizen’s individual freedoms, equality, and democracy itself. Aspiring autocratic leaders around the world have not let the Pandemic go to waste; they’ve taken advantage of it–seized control of their governments and implemented draconian legislation to expand their power. As per usual, during times of crisis, laws passed are often rapidly voted on without much reflection and almost always outlive the crisis they were supposed to solve. For example, the Patriot Act of 2001, drafted in response to the Terrorist Attacks of 9/11, expanded American government surveillance on American citizens, citing an increased need to intercept terrorism. Now, in 2021, twenty years later, the Patriot Act is still active. While many countries granted political elites emergency powers that would be unreasonable pre-Covid, nothing is as disturbing as the increasingly authoritarian regime of Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán. Since being elected in 2010, Orbán and his party have slowly dismantled the systems of democracy within Hungary by rewriting the constitution, redrawing parliamentary districts, expanding the constitutional court’s size, and buying 90% of private media, among many other tactics. Emergency powers granted to Orbán due to the Coronavirus Pandemic have aided him in successfully dragging his country into authoritarianism; the Hungarian Prime Minister now has the power to suspend existing laws, bypass Hungarian parliament on new laws that he disagrees with, limit freedom of speech, suspend all Hungarian elections, and imprison anyone who’s distributed “distorted” or “false” information, as defined by Orbán and his party–and, these emergency powers are indefinite. After a little more than a decade in power, Orbán has now become the democratically elected dictator of Hungary.
Like that of Hungary, the regression towards a more authoritarian-like state is, unfortunately, common during times of calamity. Specifically, during Covid; Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has granted his intelligence agencies the power to track citizens with their mobile phone data; President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has been granted extraordinary powers, such as assuming ownership of private companies that “unjustifiably refuse or signify that they are no longer able to operate due to the outbreak,” as defined by President Duterte himself; Thailand Prime Minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha, has been granted the authority to censor the media if they spread “disinformation,” as defined by Chan-o-cha himself; and, the United States just barely dodged legislation that would’ve allowed the indefinite detaining of citizens without trial–directly opposing the Sixth Amendment.
While we need to take immediate, drastic measures to contain the Coronavirus, we must not forget that those in power will take advantage of the crisis for their own benefit. While the Coronavirus itself may be new, its history has been playing on repeat since the human species gained sentience. Political elites in Ancient Greece fostered conflict and competition between their city-states to further their own agenda, contributing to the fall of the Athenian democracy. The Roman Empire's political elites used their status to gradually shift their representative democracy to a dictatorship, which contributed to the Roman Empire’s ultimate demise. Hitler used the tragedy of World War 1 and Germany’s severe economic depression to establish the Nazi party, evoke a wave of German nationalism, and establish the harmful myth of Aryan grandiosity. Coronavirus has only modernized these dangerous political tendencies. Fighting for the preservation and expansion of democracy is the moral and ethical obligation of every citizen in every country–not just those on the brink of dictatorship like Hungary. If we do not apply history’s lessons to the present day, we will undoubtedly seal our fate as part of the repeating cycle.
References:
Beauchamp, Zack. “It Happened There: How Democracy Died in Hungary.” Vox, 13 Sept. 2018,
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump.
Borbáth, Endre. “How Does the Corona Virus Strengthen Authoritarianism in Hungary?” Berlin Social Science Center, 15 Apr. 2020, www.wzb.eu/en/research/corona-und-die-folgen/how-does-the-corona-
virus-strengthen-authoritarianism-in-hungary.
Kingsley, Patrick. “As West Fears the Rise of Autocrats, Hungary Shows What's Possible.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/world/europe/hungary-
orban-democracy-far-right.html.
Guerra, Gustavo. “Global Legal Monitor.” Philippines: President Granted Temporary Extraordinary
Powers to Combat COVID-19 | Global Legal Monitor, 30 Apr. 2020, www.loc.gov/law/foreign-
news/article/philippines-president-granted-temporary-extraordinary-powers-to-combat-covid-19/.
1 comment:
What an excellent overview of the current and past challenges facing democracies!
Post a Comment