CENTRAL NEWS
After coming to power through elections, the preferred target of rulers with authoritarian projects is to equip the judicial system with an eye, especially on the control of the Supreme Court, allowing changes in the Constitution under an apparent tutelage of legality.
Another part of the strategy works on silencing the voices of the opposition, with the use of justice and intelligence systems to intimidate and financially undermine both the non-government press and educational institutions – a space dominated by academics whose influence and freedom of opinion would be a dangerous focus of opposition to the stability of power.
In a joint study, professors at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman of the University of California at Los Angeles argue that the new kind of authoritarianism that has emerged in recent decades avoids the ostensible use of violence and seeks to build a scenario where it is possible to simulate a democracy.
The main concern of these governments is with information. According to teachers, although they use violence at times, they remain in power not by terrorizing victims but by manipulating beliefs. Traditional dictatorships, (although they also make great use of vigilance and propaganda), resort to violence in the first place.
Control of the judiciary
Perhaps the most illustrative case is that of Hungary, led since 2010 by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had already held the post between 1998 and 2002. Orbán is transparent in his intentions: he wants to turn Hungary into an “illiberal state”. According to him, “the Hungarian nation is not just a group of individuals, but a community that needs to be organised”, and freedom “is not the central element in the organisation of the state”, giving way to a nationalist approach.
Orbán and his vision of the state are very successful at the top level of the Brazilian government. In April last year, Eduardo Bolsonaro went to Hungary and was received by the president, pouring praise on Twitter:
“I learned mainly about culture, dealing with the press without political correctness and so on,” adding that Orbán’s “weekly talk” on the radio “is also inspiring.
Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo celebrated the union of Brazil and Hungary, which, together with “other nations,” would be “putting the confrontation of persecution of Christians on the international agenda. According to Araújo, “the devaluation of Christianity by the politically correct culture in countries with a Christian majority is a big part of the problem. During his time in the country, the chancellor took the opportunity to sign a bilateral extradition law between the countries.
In giving prestige to the possession of Bolsonaro, Orbán celebrated the fact that both have a common vision about immigration, an issue he sees as “the most important for the future. Bolsonaro praised his colleague’s stance, and criticized the latest Brazilian immigration law passed in 2017, which would have transformed Brazil into a country without borders.
For Orbán, who works on articulating the ultra-right front for the European Parliament, “the most apt definition of modern Christian democracy can be seen in Brazil, not in Europe”.
In Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the deputy in charge of the Law and Justice Party, PiS, follows Orban’s recipe. Since 2015, when he elected President Andrzej Duda and – most importantly in a parliamentary system – obtained a significant victory in the parliamentary elections which guaranteed an absolute majority in congress to the party, Kaczynski nominated Beata Szydlo for the post of Prime Minister and, when he found it necessary, replaced her with the then Finance Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki in 2017.
After coming to power, PiS turned its efforts to the Constitutional Court, the country’s Supreme Court, to accelerate its nationalist and conservative authoritarian project. By denying office to three judges legally appointed by the previous government and excluding three others from the court, the new government consolidated its majority in the court of 15 judges. It was not necessary to impose a new constitution, since new laws passed did not risk being considered unconstitutional by the court.
Control of the higher courts is also the easiest way to make the traditional desire of autocrats for the unlimited extension of their mandate possible in institutional clothing.
After 20 years in Russia’s power, Vladimir Putin has secured permission for his mandates to be “zeroed” in a bizarre maneuver, allowing him to remain president until 2036. The success of the strategy still depended on a referendum, initially postponed by the pandemic, but held in the last week of June. The reform, which also includes “faith in God” and “marriage as a heterosexual institution” to the text of the Constitution, was approved with almost 80% of the registered votes.
Under his previous rule, Putin could not run until after the end of his term in 2024. In 2014, the president signed a law that promoted the merger of the Supreme Court into the Supreme Court of Arbitration, a move that increased the number of court judges and precipitated the exchange of several of its members.
Recep Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey from 2003 until 2014, later became president by popular vote in 2014. The process of authoritarian resurgence was accelerated by an attempted coup in 2016 by the military, which Erdogan managed to frustrate and repress. From then on, his power increased, and the purging of alleged opposition in public office began.
A plebiscite in 2017 changed the country’s political system from parliamentary to presidential. His re-election in 2018 under a new model consolidated the weakening of Congress with the end of the post of prime minister, and assured Erdogan the right to appoint 12 of the 15 Supreme Court justices.
Turkey and Venezuela are examples of the new paths of authoritarianism of democratic makeup and the difficulties in consolidating and legitimizing a traditional coup against established institutions. While in Turkey the coup attempt quickly failed and strengthened Erdogan, in Venezuela the coup d’état of Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela – despite official support from countries like the United States and Brazil – was not enough to overthrow Nicolás Maduro’s government, which was long weakened by its authoritarian escalation and humanitarian collapse that has already caused 4 million Venezuelans to migrate, according to the United Nations. Amidst the pandemic, another disastrous coup attempt involving former U.S. military personnel has been thwarted in the country.
Censorship in the press and teachers
Another strategy common to all these governments is the attack on universities and their teachers. Maintaining academic freedom in an increasingly authoritarian environment turns academia into a place that produces and reverberates criticism of the regime. By no chance have more than 20,000 professors had their licenses to work revoked by a counter-group conducted by Erdogan. Among all categories, which include judges, police, soldiers and clerics, the largest number of people defenestrated by the expurgation in Turkey are teachers, university rectors and officials attached to the Ministry of Education.
Similar movements in Hungary, Poland and Russia show that the choice of academia as a target by governments is part of a larger project of “suppression and silencing dissent,” ranging from personal persecution of teachers to the appointment of government-aligned rectors in public institutions and budget manipulation that limits funds and grants.
The silencing of opposing views has been one of the most aggressive faces in attempts to control, co-opt and suffocate the free press. The former countries of the communist bloc operate in a similar way in the work of undermining the survival of the non-aligned press, capable of offering narratives contrary to those imposed by governments. In Hungary, changes in the controls of media companies have gradually put everything from the big broadcasters to the small local press in the hands of pro-government groups. Even billboard advertising was co-opted, occupying public spaces with the official narrative. Controversy is increasingly weakened and limited to the Internet, a fertile field for narrative disputes supported by fake news production.
In the Polish case, by taking control of the state broadcaster TVP which was until then run by a committee independent of the Executive, the government imposed an editorial turn that eliminated any negative exposure and, at the same time, guaranteed a hegemonic audience, especially in rural areas of the country. More than 200 professionals from the station were disconnected or resigned. One of the last focuses of resistance and main opposition to the government in the press, the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza has already been the target of more than 50 lawsuits filed by the party in power and by the organs of the Executive itself.
Another strategy of the government is to cut advertising funds from state-owned companies, which puts financial pressure not only on independent media, but also on advertising companies that fear reprisals in public negotiations.
While in Hungary an exception legislation passed during the pandemic is causing Orbán’s critics to be arrested on charges of producing fake news, the manipulation of information as a weapon for the dispute of narratives in the public sphere puts members and supporters of the Brazilian government in trouble in the courts on charges of mass production of false news.
The most recent chapter in the attempt to manipulate narratives occurs with data from the new coronavirus epidemic, fundamental for public information and local government decision-making. The maneuver to hide the total number of deaths, the intention to carry out a recount and establish new 
criteria, crediting the deaths to the comorbidities, shatters the credibility of the country at a time all over the planet, and calls for transparency in facing the pandemic. Besides placing Brazil under international distrust, in the company of countries like Russia, China and Tanzania, the attitude – aggravated by the reproach of the Brazilian position on environmental issues – compromises not only the country’s pretensions to enter the OECD, but also the agreement with the European Union, already rejected by the Dutch parliament.
Even so, although it is clear that the undermining of democracy depends on the success of governments in their strategies for equipping and controlling information in different spheres, international bodies have done very little to curb the escalation of autocrats. Betting that foreign market sanctions and requests from the international community would be enough to halt the authoritarian march is a very optimistic and risky idea. In Europe’s case, the advance of Euroscepticism exposes the limits of power the EU has to deal with what would be the first dictatorship among its members.
