It's back to being Dictator! At least that's pretty much what you have to come to when you look around Europe and the world today. How else are we going to explain ourselves to would-be saviors of the people like Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey? The drive for absolute power can no longer be overlooked in many government circles around the world and this is both threatening and unspectacular. It's threatening for the obvious reason. We are just celebrating 75 years of the end of World War II. With this and with the European unification that followed, a new belief was associated throughout Europe:that we had now left nationalism behind us once and for all. In the meantime, however, we have noticed that this is obviously not the case. Nationalism is still thriving. Today’s (right-wing) populism would be unimaginable without him. Again, this development is unspectacular because, with the best will in the world, it is nothing new. In my home country of Austria in particular, we know that the “populist wave” hasn’t just rolled over us for a few years, as the international media sometimes makes it seem. It's been going on there for at least thirty years! But even in earlier history this development is by no means new. Today's populists are not a new breed of politician. In the past they find a rich pool of role models, which they also use eagerly.
The age of the autocrat strikes back?
The 20th century was teeming with autocrats, autocrats and those who would have liked to be. In Europe, as in Asia, Africa and Latin America, they sat at the controls of power throughout the century - whether it was the Stalin disciples of Eastern Europe, the military dictators of Africa and Latin America or the despots of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But even the most influential among these rulers eventually started out as tiny populists - just like their students today. Only nobody remembers it anymore. For the people of today, even the few decades that lie between us and the dark days of the dictators are already too long. Nobody knows any more about the political rises of that time - or at least nobody really wants to remember them. Even if the later image of the brutal rulers Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini may still be present today:the details of their rise and their time as loud populists are not. And so, remembering then doesn't stop a modern populist from ascending using the same methods.
These populists, in turn, have no qualms about using these methods. Why should they? Apparently the old tricks still work after all! The various autocratically minded politicians of today often differ only marginally in their appearance from their brutal predecessors. They even follow the same manual left to them by the Stalins and Hitlers, the Ceausescus and Hoxhas of this world. Methods such as controlling the media, playing with enemy images, overestimating the nation, taking advantage of crises ... they have not lost their effect to this day and have long since become evergreens of populist opinion-making. It is all the more tragic that nobody wants to remember the rise of the tyrants of yore - and that they used exactly the same methods to do it.
Let's just look at Germany or Austria. AfD and FPÖ have been criticized for the fact that elements of the parties carry anti-democratic opinions for as long as they have existed. Nevertheless, the voters are breaking in the doors. Many people are obviously no longer aware of where anti-democratic politics can lead in the end. What can be the reason? Well... There may be a certain arrogance. We tend to never assume the worst. "We can't have anything like that any more" - you hear that often enough these days when you talk about the populist wave. Very similar tones were heard 100 years ago. Back then, many only had to realize with horror how much they were wrong.
Hold on!
Are you saying that today's populists are all just tomorrow's brutal dictators? no At least not in this general way. But caution is still required, because we also share this assessment with our friends from a hundred years ago. We have to keep our eyes open, because we are by no means immune to developments like those that have taken place in the past. If certain opposition politicians today make democratic… let's call it questionable… statements, it's probably no coincidence. It is a sign of their belief that they are not just an exception in right-wing populist movements. It's not all isolated cases! The Dictators' Handbook is finding new uses around the world today. We democrats therefore have a responsibility:we must know these populist methods – and counteract them!
This article is based on my new book, Populism Made Easy. Learning successfully from the great dictators of history” . In it I write down the "Dictator's Handbook" in a satirical and at the same time warning way and show how it is used again today. The book will be available in stores from mid-July. Sign up now for the newsletter to be informed by me!