The New York Times calls Hungarian democracy into question – Video

Hvg.hu came across a video from The New York Times titled Is there something wrong with democracy?. They fundamentally analyse the state of democracies in certain countries – including Hungary – where they find that leaders are methodically tearing down democracy.

According to the tendency of the past century, the wealthier countries got, the sooner they established a democratic system. However, there are exceptions. For instance, Russia and Venezuela democratised gradually, but they recently returned to a dictatorial setup.

Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, journalists of The New York Times, try to look for answers in The Interpreter video series.

“A handful of seemingly established democracies are sliding back towards dictatorship. These countries didn’t have coups or invasions. In each case, voters elected strong man leaders, who dismantled their democracy from within”

explains Taub. This is the point where Viktor Orbán is featured along with Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian Vladimir Putin.

They describe their methods as a row of gradual measures that can even be popular in the moment. One of the key tools is the polarisation of the society: if they manage to achieve that the sympathisers of a political party fear the opposition, they will find it more important to protect themselves than democracy.

The journalists don’t exclude that something similar could happen in the USA since the bad signs are apparent.

Featured image: www.youtube.com/TheNewYorkTimes

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/video/