Photograph Source: Elekes Andor – CC BY 4.0

In military coups, the generals take over from one day to the next. Civilian presidents, when they declare martial law, assume emergency powers and start immediately ruling like dictators.

But the more common method of destroying a democracy these days is through death by a thousand cuts. Elected leaders only gradually undermine democratic institutions and accumulate more executive power. One day, voila, the democracy is fatally compromised, and no one can point to a single act that transformed the elected leader into an autocrat.

That is the way that Vladimir Putin, who was elected to his first term as president in 2000, has become Russia’s leader for life. Viktor Orban became Hungary’s prime minister in 2010 and, by consciously following Putin’s example, has presided over Hungary ever since.

And now Donald Trump is following Orban’s example. The architects of Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s return to power, were inspired by the Hungarian’s attacks on higher education, his controls on the press and the judiciary, his rewriting of the constitution, and his emphasis on nationalism, Christianity, and the heteronormative family.

And now Trump is in turn inspiring other right-wing leaders around the world, from Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Javier Milei in Argentina to Karol Nawrocki in Poland and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. He has also motivated citizens in countries from Canada to Australia to defeat Trump-like politicians out of fear that they would undermine those democracies.

But the global backlash against Trumpism is, so far, an exception to the rule. The sad truth is that democracy is under siege around the........

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