When ‘Democracies’ Out-Authoritarian the Authoritarians

In just about a month, three NATO states arrested or imposed some form of civiliter mortuus on the biggest political threats to their respective regimes. Romania forbade Georgescu, who won last year’s presidential election, from participating in May’s re-run; Turkey, with Istanbul’s mayor; Macron’s France, with Le Pen. In Poland, the Europhile regime of Prime Minister Tusk forces—for the first time since the dark days of communism—the opposition into exile and subjugates newspapers and TV stations through a series of brazen police raids; in Germany, the nation’s largest party, the AfD, is under the confirmed, official surveillance of the intelligence services while its legislation remains under consideration by the authorities, even after they lost the recent federal election and their popularity continues to implode; in Italy, a deputy prime minister nearly got arrested for upholding—rather than breaking—the law of the land. In Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia, protests—obviously sold by the mainstream media as spontaneous and innocent—erupted almost simultaneously: the targets are, of course, all governments known to be opposed to—and loathed by—the Brussels mandarinate. Fico, in Slovakia, nearly died at the hands of a terrorist hostile to the Prime Minister’s Ukraine policy.

Everyone—including the more cerebral prime donne of liberal democracy, whatever meaning the concept still holds—understands that none of these events result from the impartial work of serious judicial systems. Everyone understands that a new Terror is underway, and that the victims are, as ever, those brave enough to dissent: these tend to stem from the right, but not always. Being neither globalist nor progressive, Slovakia’s Fico is a heterodox left-winger; he, too, is suffering the full brunt of the repression. What is really happening is an authoritarian purge of those now increasingly representing the majorities of their peoples. Whether on the left or the right of the systemic camp, those who justify, downplay, or praise this purge are hardly democrats. Liberal they may be; genuine defenders of democratic rule and popular sovereignty they most assuredly are not. 

The recent events—and no doubt those yet to come—have, however, the virtue of clearing the field. As the most perceptive among us always suspected, the liberal-globalist Establishment’s anger was never actually directed at authoritarianism per se. As Schmitt once made clear, and recent events have come to prove, liberalism and despotism often go hand in hand. The problem was not in the methods of dictatorship: the shameless rigging of elections, the politicisation of justice, the opportunistic seizure, for factional gain, of the coercive apparatus of the state. The real issue was what program a government pursues, not the tools with which it pursues them, and whether or not that government is ultimately under control. 

Let us speak bluntly: the decaying plutocratic regimes of Europe are today considerably more despotic than some of those formally authoritarian states that are almost unanimously labeled as such. Russia’s example is relevant here. Whatever his sins, Putin never jailed or banned a political rival who genuinely threatened his grip on power. Navalny may have suffered much (and nothing erases or excuses it), but Navalny never actually scared the Kremlin. Serious people know this: even in polls conducted by wholly credible European pollsters, he barely had over 1-2% support. 

In contrast, Le Pen is hardly to France and Macron what Navalny was to Putin and Russia: according to polls, she commands the support of 35–40% of her countrymen in the first round of the 2027 presidential elections. The AfD is now Germany’s top party. Poland’s PiS is the country’s largest opposition force. Italy’s Salvini once led his country’s biggest political movement. There is a world of difference between the persecution of ultimately harmless micro-opposition forces and crushing those who genuinely challenge and threaten to replace those in power.

Perhaps contrary to what it might appear, the great purge now unfolding is not a show of strength by the incumbent elite: it is, rather, proof of its weakness. Impotent and under siege, Europe’s authoritarian liberals have been left with no means of survival beyond ever more brazen repression: arrests on truncated charges, naked censorship, indeed the very prohibition of democratic life is all they have left. This all began before Trump’s triumph, back in November 2024. But the populist success in America gave it fresh momentum and a redoubled sense of urgency. Exorcised in the United States, the still ruling caste now seeks, like the Optimates of Brutus and Cassius once did with Greece, a fallback fortress in Europe. The goal is to survive through entrenchment and attrition: the plot to bide their time until 2028, hoping that, one way or another, Trumpism eventually falls in America and the Deep State can, once again, rise from the depths and reclaim overt control. In the meantime, the EU is meant to serve as an alternative hub for the elite now ousted from Washington. Its inquisitorial zeal, for its part, aims to prevent the fall of the last bastion they have left; to that end, they must enforce ideological conformity by whatever means necessary. 

Yes, they will fail. But they have not yet been beaten, they have not given up, and they will fight to the last. Conservatives must be ready.