I have learned many lessons in my studies of authoritarian takeovers of once thriving democratic nations throughout the ages leading often to genocides. Strong leaders whip up sentiments by employing dehumanizing stereotyping and scapegoating of entire groups, while other citizens or entire nations often refuse to intervene or even contribute to authoritarianism.

On a micro level, this is also apparent, for example, in episodes of schoolyard, community-based, as well as electronic forms of bullying. Many others, not only the direct perpetrators of oppression, play a key role in the demise of democracy and bullying, sometimes leading to genocide.

Dan Olweus, international researcher and bullying prevention specialist, enumerates the distinctive and often overlapping roles enacted in these episodes:

We can also relate these roles in the case of national politics.

A plurality of 49.8% of the U.S. electorate voted for the twice impeached, 34 criminal count indicted, with a verified and documented by The Washington Post of 30,573 false or misleading statements, or an average of 21 per day in his first term.

Many political forecasters predicted members of the wealthy or upper classes, who expected Trump to continue or enhance the corporate and income/wealth tax breaks from his first term, to vote for the former president.

Many who voted for Trump, however, were also blue-collar working-class people who might have fared better voting for Kamela Harris and the Democrats whose policies during the past four years made the U.S. one of the strongest and most resilient economies of the world.

So why did people presumably vote against their own economic self-interests to elect a billionaire and his plutocratic enablers to the highest and more powerful office in the land? Did they “buy” the propaganda and lies of the Republicans and the Right-wing media factory? Should we hold the uninformed voter, the politically disengaged, at least partially accountable for the current state of affairs?

During Trump’s first time in office, he conspicuously moved the extremists on the political right from the margins to the center of his MAGA movement. At a Democratic fundraiser in advance of the 2022 midterm elections, President Joe Biden blasted the so-called “Make America Great Again” philosophy arguing that it is “like semi-fascism.”

Though many top Republicans pushed back against Biden’s representation of a significant extremist segment of their Party, in August 2022, “Threats to Democracy” rose to the number one position as the most important issue facing the country in a plurality of registered voters in an NBC News........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)