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The famous noise of sabers that sounded in the Transition was diluted as Spanish democracy reached the age of majority. The 23F and the other attempts of astonished castrenses - abruptly abused - are a distant memory of the collective memory that only returns in anniversaries or television jokes. When Spain entered NATO and the European Union, any possibility of a military coup was neutralized.

Until very recently, political analysts considered that liberal democracy could only be demolished in two ways: the military coup or the revolution . Globalization ended the possibility that a Tejero would pronounce another "Feel it, pussy!" In the Congress of Deputies. That coup tricorn is already an outdated relic of the museum of rebellions, as are the guillotine and the red flag.

The destruction of the system is not counted today with bullets, but with votes. The discontented military and fired mobs have been replaced by urns with bad intentions, which hide very sophisticated control mechanisms.

“In the new context, the step towards a dictatorship is much slower than a few decades ago,” explains Ignacio Molina , a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor of Political Science. "The process would consist of the union of several factors, such as the progressive deterioration of civil rights, the questioning of the judicial system, the loss of strength of political parties and harassment of the press."

This democratic aluminosis has one responsible: populism .

Since the fall of communism in the 1990s, democracy had not faced such a powerful enemy. This crisis not only affects fragile democracies that have a recent dictatorial past such as Turkey, Brazil or Eastern European countries, but also consolidated systems such as the United States and the United Kingdom. This situation is recorded in the Freedom House Freedom Meter Index in 2019, which in a decade has quarantined some European Union country such as Hungary.

In the US assessment, this index indicates a "certain decline in their freedoms" and rates this icon of democracy with an 86 out of 100. It is surprising that countries such as the US itself, the United Kingdom (93/100) and Italy (89/100) are below Spain (94/100), a much younger democracy with less historical tradition. The populist wave hurts even the foundations of the strongest.

If a country's democratic suicide had to be measured, seven steps could be investigated to find out if liberal democracy under study is in danger.

1. An anti-mining movement

A characteristic inherent to populists who want to assault power is to affirm that they are not a party, but a movement. It is their mechanism to maintain distances with what they have called political "caste" and is based on a formula that combines illusion and fear. Because fear is a very well-oiled machine of votes.

In Turkey, a victim was made that claimed that religious people were oppressed and humiliated by the lay elite

Ece Temelkuran

"In Turkey, a victim was made that claimed that religious people were oppressed and humiliated by the secular elite of the system," explains Ece Temelkuran . This Turkish journalist, visiting Madrid, was fired from her environment for criticizing the Recep Tayyip Erdogan government and is considered one of the greatest specialists in populism. In his essay How to lose a country - which Anagrama will publish in October - extrapolates authoritarian drift in Ankara to other democracies infected with populism analyzing the steps that can lead to the dictatorship.

Temelkuran's strategy of victimhood is practiced without exception by all populists and is based on the need to locate a culprit that scares the majority. The reason: fear is never abstract and has many forms.

Trump's voter believes that Mexicans steal their jobs. The defender of Brexit states that the European bureaucracy annihilates imperial greatness. The far right of Alternative by Germany accuses the Greeks of bums. Polish nationalists complain that the world denies the heroic role of their country in World War II ...

And so all the time.

2. Infantilization of the message

The falton tone, even derogatory, and the alpha male style are other alarm signals. The communication channel used by the masters of populism in their messages is usually alternative, because the usual means are, according to them, in the hands of the elites (financial power, traditional parties, intellectuals ...) that have always submitted to the "royal people." We have Trump leading the free world with tweeting tweeters, Beppe Grillo, co-founder of the 5 Star Movement, expressing his opinions in his personal blog, while Erdogan and Putin like to intervene only in state media. Perhaps of all of them the most original was the late Hugo Chávez, who from his television show Aló Presidente launched populage soflamas and very original attacks such as the one directed at the then US President George W. Bush: « Mr. Danger [Mr. Danger], You are a coward, murderer, genocidal. You are an alcoholic, that is, a drunk.

3. Bombing of 'fake news'

The populist lies and that doesn't matter. The truth is replaced by anything, no matter if the argument is nonsense. Because if someone discusses their credibility , ordas of digital pit bulls will harass those who dare to doubt it. Nothing happens if Erdogan says that Muslims arrived in America before Columbus or if today President Trump accuses Barack Obama of founding the Islamic State. We are in the era of fake news , renamed "alternative facts" from the White House, and its production is large-scale and well organized.

"The Russian and Turkish governments have the same payment policy for their trolley armies," Temelkuran denounces in relation to this form of defamation. "Ironically, the invading anti-crime and anti-fact forces charge roughly the equivalent of the salary of an associate professor."

The truth is that lies are very difficult to counter because the internet has made them faster than ever. But even more so if, in addition, the free press of a country languishes, whether due to pressure or complicity with power.

In Hungary, the Government simply gets its friends to buy the media, fire the editor and squeeze journalists who can cause them problems

Marlene Wind

For Marlene Wind, author of The Tribalization of Europe (Ed. Espasa), who in 2017 put Carles Puigdemont on the ropes in a colloquium at the University of Copenhagen, not all cases involve a direct persecution of the critical press, as is the case in Turkey, Russia and China, countries where several communication professionals have been imprisoned. There are also more discrete methods. "In Hungary, the Government simply gets its friends to buy the media, fire the editor and squeeze journalists who can cause them problems," this Danish political scientist points to Papel .

4. Legal Tocomochos

"Elections are held, but the conditions and the organization of enacted districts favor the party in power," says Wind. In some countries, all types of changes have been registered to favor those who hold power under the force of the majority. Constitutional reforms are the order of the day. A clear example is Putin, the omnipresent. If he could not be re-elected as president, he rested a time as prime minister with a record endorsement in the Duma (Russian parliament). Even less modesty was Daniel Ortega , president of Nicaragua, who dreamed of indefinite reelection as a result of reform.

5. Discrediting of institutions

This operation goes beyond plugging the friends of the party into the power agencies, it requires a very powerful advertising campaign, which serves to convince voters that the current state apparatus is useless and superfluous and demands to be transformed. There are many examples, from Trump's constant attacks on the CIA to the invention of Nicolás Maduro , in 2017, of a Constituent Assembly to marginalize the opposition.

Of course, in this surgical operation the judges are very important. If they are independent, they will be accused of obstructing the "popular will." From this interventionist temptation almost no one is freed, not even a system with a fortress like the British. No country is free. When the Supreme Court magistrates ruled that the Government had the obligation to go to Parliament to activate the exit of the country from the European Union they suffered a campaign of discredit by the proBrexit press.

6. Citizen Engineering

The iliberal movements seek citizens governed by an ideological pattern of very defined values. In that sense, women tend to be the first victims in the implementation of roles, a temptation in which all dictatorships have fallen since their inception. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro declared before being a candidate for the presidency that “he would not employ [men and women] with the same salary. But there are many competent women ». For his part, Erdogan has made clear what the ideal behavior he desires of the Turks is: «Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women: motherhood. You cannot explain it to feminists because they do not accept the concept of motherhood.

7. Future generations

The political scientist Yascha Mounk, author of The People Against Democracy (Ed. Paidós), was one of the first to warn of this decline when he predicted the growth of the German extreme right. His theory on democratic consolidation points out that in Europe and the United States the number of young people who believe that living in a democracy is not essential is increasing and they are part of the current generation more seduced by populism. «Older people knew how to live in a dictatorship, young people did not. They feel frustrated, ”he says. «When you talk to them, they tell you: 'What can we lose?' ».

Answering this question properly can mean the cure of populist gangrene.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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