Enabling Authoritarian Strongmen

2. Intractable Conflict Threat and Opportunity

Societal level intractable conflict, particularly the kind of hyper-polarization that we have in the United States, makes the rise of an authoritarian leader more likely in countries that had previously been democracies. (And it entrenches them further in non-democracies). When the virtues, needs, interests, and concerns of one side are seen as irrelevant (at best) and evil (at worst), it is easy to justify attitudes and behaviors that run counter to democratic pluralism, and take on, rather, characteristics of authoritarianism.

Many Americans were shocked, for instance, when the U.S. re-elected Donald Trump to the Presidency in November 2024, even after he had attempted to reverse the legally certified election results in 2020. (Not only were those results certified by Congress, they were also upheld in numerous court cases, even when the presiding judges were ones appointed by Trump.) That Trump continued to maintain that the 2020 election was "stolen," and that he urged his followers on January 6, 2021 to march on (and by implication) attack Congress, this wasn't seen as a disqualification for the Presidency, even though it was highly authoritarian in nature. That is because many of Trump's voters saw the behavior or policies of the left as worse. They thought that Trump, even as an authoritarian leader, would be more likely to protect their personal interests better than the Democrats would.

Similarly, until Biden's fateful debate in June of 2024, the Democrats were willing to run a person who clearly was uncapable of fulfilling the office of president o the United States because they thought he was the only one who could beat Trump (since he had before), and beating Trump was more important than running a candidate who was capable of fulfilling the duties of his office.

Bottomline, hyper-polarization destroys democracy and paves the way for authoritarianism.