UK and US in tatters, virus death rates among worst in the world, economies in ruins and populations up in arms. This week Trump and Johnson found out that this isn’t as easy for them as it is for actual dictators
It’s been a bad week for wannabe authoritarians on both sides of the Atlantic.
Before we go on, let me be clear, as our Tory politicians are fond of saying. The USA and the UK are not authoritarian states. But they both currently have leaders who have strong authoritarian tendencies. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are both populists who were elected on a misguided wave of “strong men who get things done” sentiment, specifically “Getting Brexit Done” in Johnson’s case and “Making America Great Again” in Trump’s case.
And how’s that working out? Both countries are in tatters, with coronavirus death rates among the worst in the world, their economies in ruins and their populations up in arms with fury.
Johnson and Trump both want to get on and do whatever they want to do without all the bothersome checks of a functioning democracy. This week they both found out that this isn’t as easy as it is for actual dictators…
Johnson thought he could just keep his special adviser because, well, he wanted to. He went down the road of saying: “Dominic Cummings did nothing wrong and it’s just a few crazy lefties who are complaining.” A week later and the public rage is still burning.
Never in my life have I seen one man inflict as much damage on the public good as Cummings. A few days after it was clear that nothing was going to happen to him, I went out for essential supplies for the first time in a week. The roads were busier than I had seen them since lockdown began. The forecourts of petrol stations were rammed, the queues to get into them 10 and 12 people long. This was the Cummings effect in real time: “If he doesn’t care, why should I?”
Only a lunatic would defend Cummings at this point. Step forward Johnson and every single senior Tory, including the loathsome Michael Gove, who actually started laughing during his attempt to mount a defence, so ludicrous were the words coming out of his mouth. These are men whose reputations are all but destroyed with everyone except the most fervent right-wingers, the likes of Darren Grimes and Katie Hopkins. You know – lunatics.
Johnson has been desperately trying to say, “Just shut up and move on”. He’s saying, “Don’t do as we do, do as we say,” another authoritarian trait. The problem is – no one is listening to that. And as for it just being those crazy lefties, well, unless the Daily Mail and Julia Hartley Brewer have had some sort of conversion to socialism that I missed, he’s very much mistaken there too.
The will of the authoritarian strongman has met the mood of the public and taken a proper beating. He might well get to keep Cummings but the cost to his reputation will have been immense. It’s a bit like trading your house and all the money you have in the bank for a bald
Gonk made of hate. Meanwhile, Trump. For weeks now he’s been indulging in another authoritarian trait: undermining elections, which he needs to do in order to have an excuse not to accept the results come November. He’s been screaming about mail ballots being a way to cheat, despite there being zero evidence of this and the fact that he himself votes by mail. (Once again – don’t do as I do, do as I say.) Up until a few days ago, Trump was spouting this lie with impunity on Twitter. And then Twitter flagged his tweet as problematic. They didn’t ban it or delete it. They just put a box on it that had an exclamation mark and the words, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which linked you to, you know, the facts. Trump went crazy.
Despite the fact that more than 100,000 Americans are now dead from coronavirus, he immediately got an executive order together saying, well, nothing really. It just vaguely threatened Twitter with closure, as authoritarian strongmen do with things they don’t like. Problem is – Trump can’t close Twitter. And Twitter knows it.
A few days later, Minneapolis was burning to the ground as the black community there reacted with fury to the alleged murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in broad daylight and on video. Trump took to Twitter again, not to condemn Chauvin, but to condemn the rioters, calling them “THUGS” and promising them that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.
The quote originally comes from a racist Miami police chief in 1967 and its meaning was clear – Trump was threatening his own citizens with shooting by police. Just as you would in an authoritarian state.
Twitter immediately slapped a fresh warning on this tweet that said: “This tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible”. When you clicked on that message, you got the following from Twitter…
“We consider content to be in the public interest if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern… in rare instances, we may choose to leave up a tweet from an elected or government official that would otherwise be taken down.”
Trump has spread hatred and told outrageous lies on Twitter almost every single day for the last five years. Now, for the first time, Twitter had censured him twice in a few days.
It is clear what Twitter was saying here: this is war. What they are saying to Trump is the same thing the rage of the British public has been saying to Boris Johnson for the past week. We do not yet live in an authoritarian state. You cannot just do what you want. You cannot tell lies with impunity.
We will not do what you say and not what you do. There will be consequences.