There is a very real turn to "strong men will solve it".

[Nada Jung]

It's striking that people add up the countries that went rightward in leadership to declare a trend, while the rejections and left trends don't get tallied up much. So here goes: Lula is back in power after one term of Bolsonaro; Poland dumped its far-right leadership; the right didn't triumph in France as predicted (though it's chaos there and centrist Macron is unloved); the UK got its first labor government since forever; Mexico elected a progressive woman; Germany is a mess but with left-of-center p.m. after all those years of Merkel making conservatism look good; Australia has a labor prime minister; Spain has a socialist prime minister.

I mean yes, Argentina, Hungary, Italy, the US, etc. and worth noting quite a few of these authoritarians have rigged the system so there is no real choice, including in Russia, meaning that many of them do not represent a tide of popular opinion (in the US disinformation/misinformation is so powerful that you could make that argument here; a lot of people voted for what made sense in the parallel universe, not the actual one). Syria just overthrew a dictator, Georgia is revolting against a Putin-tainted election....

Worth mentioning that one reason given for Putin's invasion of Ukraine is that having a thriving democracy on its border (after he attempted to corrupt its elections and get puppet pm's elected) posed a threat to autocracy in Russia. Also worth mentioning that if authoritarians were popular they wouldn't have to attack democracy, distort information, etc. in their countries. There is a very real turn to "strong men will solve it" thinking or thoughtlessness coupled with ethnonationalism and manosphere madness. But that's not all that's out there, and the Arab Spring, Occupy, and much else has testified to the desire for accountability, equality, and justice.

For the record my friend Siva Vaidhyanathan just published an essay making more or less the contrary argument at the Guardian, writing "The three largest democracies in the history of the world will soon be ruled by intolerant authoritarians who leveraged celebrity and social media dynamics to achieve power. In 2024, India re-elected Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi as prime minister for the third time. The United States has elected Donald Trump as president for the second, non-consecutive time. And in October, Indonesia elected as president the millionaire Prabowo Subianto, a former special-forces commander who was once married to a daughter of late dictator Suharto."

~ Velcrow Ripper via Rebecca Solnit

Siva Vaidhyanathan: I wrote something else..

"Mark Zuckerberg has gone full Maga"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/08/mark-zuckerbe...