The thread is very political. All the listed authoritarian behavior is also behavior that get associated with political behavior. Deliberately presenting ones own political views in the best light and presenting the opposite view in the worst light get sadly defined as just being politics, regardless of how false it is in an objective light. Undermining and disregarding rule of law is common everywhere, particular with laws that were put in place to restrict those in a position of power. A standard practice in politics is to also have a media policy that in ways favor the press that favors their side and limits the availability of everyone else.
It all comes down to what degree one finds the other sides behavior worse. In an objective perspective there is surely people that are worse than others, but we should not talk about it as if one side is above such behavior.
I’m not sure I understand — is there a different way you can say this?
I do think I get the gist of what you are saying; in short, I agree that unethical behavior knows no political party. My comment was more about authoritarian behavior exhibited by various world leaders currently in power, since, well, since those are the people currently in power.
I certainly do have my own views, and think it’s appropriate in a conversation about authoritarian behavior by governments (which is a political discussion by its very nature) to share my views, as long as I do so in a respectful manner and point to reasonably valid sources for my claims.
In this case there’s been so much written about the two leaders I mentioned (and the one I didn’t) that simply encouraging people to google is, I think, sufficient.
Any article by any major paper of repute about political violence in the Philippines or Brazil will function as a source, as will any fact-checking site (politifact) or fact-checked article about US politics in the past few years.
I can take examples but I fear the more specific we get the higher the risks becomes that people dig down at the preferred side.
As an example of undermining and disregarding rule of law, in the US no party has respected surveillance laws as far as 2001 and likely further back. As an example from here in Sweden, government officials regularly undermine and disregard the law in regard to how open contracts between government and companies. As a global example, we saw on Wikileaks how almost all countries classified information in order to hide political embarrassing facts from going public. All this is authoritarian behavior with varied degree of harm, and the laws they undermine or breaks are laws that got written in order to restrict authoritarian rule.
In terms of the free press, political alignment is the tool of authoritarian rule. If the political party in power own the press, get campaign money from the press, and have a captured audience through the press, then the press is not free. The political party will grant interviews, space, time and opportunity to those they favor, and denying the same to the opposing side. Studies from both the US show this pattern to be very real during elections, and popular media often demonstrate this pattern in movies and TV shows.
In regard to facts, sources help but its not a panacea. A relative new media trick by authoritarians when faced with investigative journalism is to do double recording of the interview, and then rush to be first to publish a editorialized version that favors ones own side with link to the full version. This way you get to capture the narrative, and the small minority that have time and energy to follow the several hours long interview are at minimum primed to your message.
> As an example of undermining and disregarding rule of law, in the US no party has respected surveillance laws as far as 2001 and likely further back. As an example from here in Sweden, government officials regularly undermine and disregard the law in regard to how open contracts between government and companies. As a global example, we saw on Wikileaks how almost all countries classified information in order to hide political embarrassing facts from going public. All this is authoritarian behavior with varied degree of harm, and the laws they undermine or breaks are laws that got written in order to restrict authoritarian rule.
This so succinctly sums up my frustrations with what I view as the erosion of democracy as we know it the world over. The controls established to limit the awesome power of the state are being subordinated by the state itself, and in secret. The asymmetry makes it hard for the citizenry to do anything about it, even when it happens in the open.
Thinking more about it, the power of the people is only able to be exercised collectively, that is we require coordination in order to effect change. On the other hand, actors in government have figured out how to wield their powers unilaterally (in the US at least). This makes it much harder for the collective to effect change that restricts the actions of the individual actors, as the change is hard to make (collective action is hard) and easily undone later on.
It all comes down to what degree one finds the other sides behavior worse. In an objective perspective there is surely people that are worse than others, but we should not talk about it as if one side is above such behavior.