Europe: U.S. insurrection shows threat to democracy
“America has fallen into anarchy,” said Stefan Kornelius in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany). President Donald Trump,
“who despises the country and its laws,” roused the masses last week and exhorted them to storm Congress and prevent
Joe Biden’s election victory from being certified. The sight of police officers being beaten by Trump supporters and thugs in T-shirts emblazoned with neo-Nazi slogans walking the halls of power have chilled every European, and “these images of shame will engrave themselves into the collective memory of the U.S.” Five people died, and lawmakers were lucky to escape unharmed. In most countries, such an insurrection would be labeled an attempted coup, and Trump would have been swiftly handcuffed. Why does he still walk free? This “black day” was well foreshadowed, said Le Monde (France) in an editorial. Trump “never made a secret of his seditious intentions.” He had long said he would reject the results of the election if he lost, and he had already told extreme right-wing groups like the Proud Boys to “stand by.” The United States, cradle of modern democracy, has reaped “what its populist, demagogic, narcissistic president sowed for four years, with the complicity of the Republican Party.”
Republicans should have known how the Trump presidency would end, said The Times (U.K.). “It’s not as if they were unaware of the dangers.” Many Republican leaders loudly denounced Trump as a budding authoritarian during his 2016 run for office, only to go on to aid “his campaign to overturn 2020’s election result.” Even after the riot, eight GOP senators and more than 130 representatives challenged Biden’s win on the floor of Congress. That bodes ill for America, said Malcom Kyeyune in Goteborgs-Posten (Sweden). It’s easy to dismiss the rioters “with their flags and caps as frivolous and a bit ridiculous.” Yes, their violence was real, you might say, but a few thousand angry voters can’t topple the republic. That misses the point. What “makes systems fall is when the political elite becomes so internally fragmented” that it cannot function.
Trump’s coup might have failed, said Peter Lohmus in ERR.ee (Estonia), but there are other, subtler ways to destroy democracy. The path to autocracy is straightforward: Purge professionals from the bureaucracy and appoint loyalists in their place, pack the courts, create a slavish media, invent external enemies such as billionaire George Soros, and undermine the legitimacy of elections. “At some point, there is no turning back.” Republicans under Trump—and, alas, likely after Trump—have followed this autocratic playbook. That’s why the free world must rally to Biden, said William Hague in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Global surveys show “a growing loss of faith in democracy among young people.” Nationalist ruling parties in Hungary and Poland have taken over the judiciary and media. India, the world’s largest democracy, is sliding into autocracy. Biden has said he
“is committed to at least trying to bring the world’s democracies together.” This may be the West’s last chance.