“Democracy is at stake,” US President Biden told a gathering of Democratic Party governors on September 28th. His warning about the global spread of illiberalism followed the stunning gains made by populist parties in Sweden and Italy, the latter of which he mentioned directly. “We can't be sanguine about what's happening here either,” he added. Biden has already called much of his own domestic opposition “semi-fascist,” and fears of anti-democratic violence remain following the storming of the US Capitol on January 6th, 2020, by rioters attempting to overturn his own election.
But these worrying developments on the political Right reflect only one expression of the new authoritarianism. The Western Left, once advocates of free speech and tolerant of markets, now embrace a massive expansion of state power, complete with expansive curbs on expression and speech. Perhaps most ominous of all, expanded state power and intolerance are also now being embraced by some of the world’s most powerful corporations, which have benefited greatly from liberalism, the rule of law, and open inquiry.
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