Title reads 'Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook'. A blackboard with chalk illustrations and arrows. From left to right across the blackboard is a cannon being lit with text 'Weaponize fear'. Then a balancing scale with a hand holding one side down that reads 'Undermine Institutions'. Then a hand holding up a book that reads 'Exploit religions'. Then a family with a suitcase standing in front of a large metal fence that reads 'Target outsiders'. Then a person standing on a step holding a sword aloft that reads 'Rewrite history'. Then two hands - one is holding two people up and one is squishing two people down and text reads 'Divide and conquer'. Then a sum of 2 + 2 = 4 with a hammer smashing the 4 and text reads 'Erode truth'.

Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook

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Introduction

How populist nationalist leaders across various democracies are employing a playbook involving fear exploitation, institutional undermining, truth erosion, and more to erode democratic values and consolidate power.

 The hallmarks of populist nationalism are gaining ground in many of the world’s largest democracies from Modi’s India to Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Trump’s America. In these, and many other countries, elected leaders are flirting with aspects of authoritarianism in an extreme era of digital disruption, mass migration and the mounting effects of climate change.

Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook

In this project, Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook, reporters from The GroundTruth Project in India, Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Poland, Italy and the United States chronicled how seven nationalist leaders in each of these countries seem to be working from the same playbook.

It is a playbook that our reporting team has pieced together from the speeches and techniques in use by an interconnected web of populist leaders and their strategists as a way to gain power, impose their values and implement their agenda.

The reporting is not intended to suggest that each of these countries is now under an authoritarian regime, but that their leaders are showing instincts and inclinations that lead to a brand of populist nationalism that, if history is a guide, can lead to authoritarian government.

The Key Plays

The key “plays” in The Playbook are to:

  • Weaponize Fear – Embrace a language of violence, promote a more punitive culture, leverage military might at home. Give critics reason to believe they’ll be harmed if they oppose.
  • Target Outsiders — Stoke the fires of xenophobia by demonizing immigrants and foreigners. Blame domestic problems including economic woes on these scapegoats, and depict political opponents as sympathetic to these imagined enemies.
  • Undermine Institutions — Take over the courts, eliminate checks and balances, undo established treaties and legislation that limits executive power, weaken protections for free and fair elections.
  • Rewrite History — Exert control over schools and the media to indoctrinate the public with beliefs that reinforce autocratic power.
  • Exploit Religion — Appeal to the religious majority while targeting minorities. Conflate national identity with religious identity.
  • Divide and Conquer — Use hate speech and encourage violent actors to widen social rifts and use manufactured crises to seize more power.
  • Erode Truth — Attack the press as an “enemy of the people”; dismiss negative reports as “fake news,” counter legitimate information with disinformation, or “alternative facts.” Blast the media landscape with endless scandal and contradiction to overwhelm the traditional fail-safes.

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Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook

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And though leaders like Modi, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Kaczyński and Trump are democratically elected, populist authoritarians seize hold of the levers of democracy and turn the machine in on itself to satisfy their own ends. As believers in a more pluralistic world evaluate their next moves and how best to counter the rise of populist nationalism across the globe, they might do well to study The Authoritarian’s Playbook.

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