“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…”Winston Churchill, November 11, 1947.
The above quote has been used profusely and is regarded as a cliché, but it seems to be a guiding principle of contemporary political confrontations and upheavals in the world today.
What do anti-MAGA democrats (or endangered-species legacy Republicans) in the United States, liberal-democrats in Israel, opposition protesters in Turkey, political dissidents in Hungary and pro-democracy demonstrators in South Korea have in common? Each other.The United States stands before two gargantuan, momentous challenges: Whether the 21st century will be a second “American century” or the first “Chinese century,” and how to positively harness and regulate the imminent, exponential and limitless power of Artificial Intelligence.At such a juncture, its president, Donald Trump, is busy dismantling the U.S. federal government, vilifying imaginary enemies in the “deep state”, defying the courts, imposing tariffs on anyone he meets and endangering alliances.Israel is in the midst of a three-front war and has no coherent plan for a political settlement with the Palestinians, who comprise almost 50 percent of the inhabitants between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Yet, its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is expanding the war for political purposes, firing the head of the Shin Bet as well as the attorney general, boycotting the president of the Supreme Court and resuming the constitutional coup he initiated in 2023.
Turkey is faced with a legitimate political challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the government arrests the mayor of Istanbul on bogus charges of corruption. In all three countries – you can add Hungary and South Korea – democracy is threatened and attacked in the same way: From within, but emboldened from abroad.
When it comes to democracy as the preferred organizing principle for governing societies, democrats in these countries have more in common with each other than with the other half of the population in their own societies.
This is not meant to be a “globalist,” “universalist,” or “post-national sovereignty” observation but a political fact of life regarding contemporary crises in democratic countries.
Notwithstanding a person’s national, ethnic or religious identity or the cultural affinities and social attributes she or he possesses, liberal democrats in New York, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Budapest, Seoul, Tbilisi, or Buenos Aires have more in common with each other than they do with their government and many other people in their countries.
Despite the significant differences in their countries’ circumstances, these democrats all face a monumental challenge: Preserving a value system and safeguarding democracy.
They are pushing back against populist, demagogic, atavistic and authoritarian leaders and popular sentiment that divide their countries almost evenly along the middle.
Is this cultural divide a local issue within a country’s boundaries, or does it have global common denominators?
Both. When Trump adulates Putin, calls Orbán a great leader, mocks Ukraine and Canada, Putin sees Trump as an asset, and Netanyahu says the same and laments his political persecution, the pattern of an authoritarian solar system, all orbiting around Trumpism and complementing each other, is revealed.
They all claim to speak for regular people, duped by sinister elites. They barely represent half of their societies.
The most daunting political fault line in the world today is not between warring superpowers or the haves and have-nots, nor between the global north and south or between democracies and autocracies.
These schisms exist, to be sure, but there is a huge and broadening cultural divide that threatens democracy. The “Blue” half of America, majorities in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, half of Israel, half of Turkey and half of Hungary all share a fundamentally secular, individualistic, post-modern, rights-based, equality-based, and expertise-based version of what is known as liberal democracy.
We take democracy for granted, as if it is the natural order of things, the way polities have always been organized.
It is very far from the natural order. In fact, modern democracy is a recent configuration, not even 100 years old. Democracy, or more precisely, Western-style liberal democracy, is a political, social, and cultural phenomenon that took several hundred years of revolutions, struggles for civil and political rights, and the adoption of the rule of law to mature and develop.
Democracy has an a priori quality, and so very few – often dismissed as alarmists – understand from history what happens when liberties are stripped away.
This is exactly where the boiling frog analogy is relevant. If a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, the political equivalent being a military or quick constitutional coup, it will jump out.
Yet, if the frog is in tepid water brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be eventually cooked to death. That’s what half of America, Israel and Turkey are experiencing right now.
It is understandable to take democracy, with all its frustrating flaws, for granted. A person living in what we call a “Western democracy” born in 1945 or afterward knows no other reality. Only a very few countries descended into authoritarianism but managed to restore democracy. Spain, Portugal, Greece, Brazil, Argentina, and South Korea all went through episodes of military rule, but democracy ultimately prevailed.
Contemporary Western societies, a term used loosely here, are torn between the conflicting values of modernism and old conservative traditions, globalism and nationalism, and ethnic identity and immigration.
Democracy cannot adequately reconcile these divisions. So cynical authoritarians came up with an ingenious idea: Ditch the checks and balances of democracy, restore past glory, tell a spurious alternative narrative, invent enemies and make people believe they’ve been conned.
This is why the MAGA ilk admire Vladimir Putin and why Netanyahu’s cult adores Trump. They are on the same bank of the cultural divide “as us”. On one side, there are Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Erdoğan Orbán, the self-ordained “strongmen” who implement anti-modernist illiberal policies, authoritarianism, and yes, quasi-fascism.
On the other side there are modern liberal democracy, checks and balances, diversity, multiculturalism, science, expertise, rights, universities and yes, extreme forms of wokeness and excessive political correctness.
The MAGA crowd sees them as radicalized sacrilegious heathens, intent on controlling the average person’s life against their will and values.
The Netanyahu sycophantic groupies have been further radicalized by constant incendiary language and regard the other side as “leftist traitors” who think the Supreme Court should govern the country.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. and replace “justice” with “liberalism” (lower case), illiberalism anywhere threatens liberalism everywhere.
Demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Budapest, and, possibly in the not-so-distant future, New York, Chicago, or San Francisco may only seem different, but they are a response to the same thing: an onslaught on democracy and the rule of law.
What do half of America, half of Israel, most of Canada, Australia and Western Europe have in common with Trump or Netanyahu? Nothing. What do Trump and Netanyahu have in common with Putin? Everything.
First published in Haaretz, 25.03.2025
