Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin – from Manila to Moscow, Washington to Budapest, populist authoritarians are the new normal.
In Hungary, Orban, the prime minister, aims to build an “illiberal democracy” while in Russia, Putin long ago crushed independent journalism and political opposition. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presides over a brutal crackdown on media and civil society. In the Phillipines, Rodrigo “the Punisher” Duterte promised to drop the corpses of 100,000 suspected gangsters in Manila Bay, threatening to close down congress if it opposes him.
And in the US, Trump’s run for the presidency prompted Republican commentator Andrew Sullivan …read more
Source: The Conversation