Democracies survive outright assault, face internal threat

It’s the old horror-movie cliché: front door creaking, shutters banging, windows shattering... when the real danger is the intruder who’s already inside.

But it may also be the best way to understand a recent series of violent, extremist plots against major world democracies: the January 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol and, in the past few weeks, a mob attack on government buildings in Brazil and a foiled scheme in Germany to break into the Bundestag and handcuff legislators and government ministers.

For despite the understandable alarm those events have caused, the more immediate challenge for democracies comes from within. Far-right politicians who, just a few years ago, were seen as beyond the political pale are gaining sway in mainstream parties and government institutions in America, Europe, and now in Israel as well.

Still, so far, in almost every developed country, the essential bedrocks of democracy – free and fair elections, unfettered news media, an independent judiciary and the rule of law – are holding fast.

That’s all the more remarkable because the world has been wrestling with multiple crises: a pandemic, a European war, and severe economic turbulence. Those threats have tested many people’s faith in their governing institutions, broadening the appeal of the strong-rule, anti-immigrant, anti-minority messages offered by the extreme right.

That, some fear, could lead some countries down the path forged by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He rules a country that is still nominally democratic. But he has gained control over most of the media, limited opposition parties’ opportunities to spread their messages, and constrained the independence of the judiciary and of university education. The European Union’s Parliament last year branded his government an “electoral autocracy.”

But Hungary remains an outlier, even though far-right parties have been making progress elsewhere.

In Scandinavia, the far-right Sweden Democrats have moved from being a fringe group to become the third largest group in parliament. Their votes are critical to the survival of the new center-right coalition government, which lacks a legislative majority.

Likewise in France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen last year won her highest vote share ever when she ran for the presidency a third time; in legislative elections a few weeks later her National Rally party became the largest opposition party in the national assembly.

In Italy, Giorgia Meloni, leader of a far-right party with its roots in the post-World War II neo-Fascism, became prime minister three months ago.

And the newly returned prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has had to rely on small, extreme-right political parties to put together a governing coalition.

There are echoes of this process in the United States as well, dramatized by California congressman Kevin McCarthy’s agonizing path to become speaker of the House of Representatives this month.

His political fortunes rest on fellow Republicans whose views would once have been dismissed by party leaders as outlandish – especially their claim that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump.

But few of these hard-right legislators raised similar protests over the recent mid-term elections.

And in Europe, while newly prominent far-right politicians have pushed the immigration debate rightwards, there is no sign that they are taking aim at the core pillars of democratic government.

Mme. Le Pen has been using her influence in the French parliament to dédiaboliser – de-demonize – her party, drawing a veil over its neo-fascist origins and burnishing her governing credentials with an eye to the presidential election in four years’ time.

Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni has focused on passing a state budget. And despite the Italian far-right’s past chumminess with Vladimir Putin, she has reiterated support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion.

The sternest test of democratic resilience may come in Israel. Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right partners have raised the prospect of new Orthodox religious restrictions on public enterprises and leisure spaces, and floated the idea that doctors might be able to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients.

But Mr. Netanyahu’s most controversial initiative would allow his Knesset majority to overrule decisions of the country’s Supreme Court – a key oversight institution in a nation with no written constitution.

Tens of thousands took to the streets last weekend to oppose the proposed law. Israel’s president warned of a possible “constitutional crisis.”

Mr. Netanyahu said there would be “deep discussion” in a parliamentary review committee before the law went ahead, and has pledged to safeguard democracy.

But his critics look with concern to Hungary, where it is an elected leader, not a mob attack, that has undermined bedrock institutions.

Their fear, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, is that democracy could end “not with a bang but a whimper.”