Hard versus Soft Authoritarianism. i.e. can we avoid both and still beat Trump? What it means in terms of 2020.
Palmer did bring up something about the 2020 choice which I will bring up, here:
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/mike-bloomberg-shouldnt-be-nominee-roadmap-donald-trump/25313/
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I spell all of this out so it’s clear that I’m not endorsing Mike Bloomberg on any level when I speak positively of how he’s running his campaign. But we really need to be paying attention to his approach against Donald Trump, because it’s really resonating with voters. Bloomberg has the unfair advantage of being able to run an essentially limitless number of TV ads, because he has limitless money in his bank account. But all those ads wouldn’t be helping him any, if they were the wrong kinds of ads.
The other Democratic candidates are largely focusing on important political and social issues, and I applaud them for their willingness to do this. But because they each have their own variation of how best to move things forward on matters like health care and the economy, what the average nonpartisan voter takes away from it all is that the Democrats are endlessly arguing with each other over policy. Our whole country is on fire thanks to Donald Trump, who is still running around with a blowtorch and setting more things on fire, and the firefighters are busy arguing with each other about which kind of equipment to use.
That’s not what’s really going on, of course. None of the Democrats running for president can do anything to stop Trump’s arson today, because none of them can get into power any sooner than January. So they’re all talking about their plans for how to fix things once Trump is gone. But Mike Bloomberg is doing something very different. He’s using his TV ads to take a blowtorch directly to Donald Trump.
Can Bloomberg’s ads do anything to stop Trump’s arson before January? No, not really. But it signals to the public that he understands that Trump is the 2020 issue. Hillary Clinton spelled out in 2016 why Trump would be a disaster, and not enough people believed her at the time, but now many of them can see it for themselves. The media rarely covered Hillary when she was talking about the issues. Instead, they only covered her when she was talking about Trump, and then they bashed her for not talking about the issues. Spoiler alert: whoever the 2020 Democratic nominee is, they’ll get that same unfair treatment from the media no matter what they talk about, so they might as well just go right at Trump.
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What we have is a Kremlin backed POTUS whom is using coercive power to try to shut off alternatives. And the issue is this, that in such a situation, we are having a template set up between a choice between hard and soft Authoritarianism. Trump is classic hard style Authoritarianism, whereas Bloomberg, Sanders and their ilk reference what is called Soft Authoritarianism.
If Trump were in power in 2021, he would utilize the power of the State in classic hard Authoritarianism style, even maybe going as far as street side tribunals, and drum court justice to intimidate his opposition. Think this is impossible ? We will get to this one at the end of this essay. But for now let us first actualize a discussion of soft Authoritarian influences.
So you know what I am referring to , start with this'- roughly put Soft Authoritarian inputs go through the power of example and persuasion, i.e. Cuba's doctor exports all over the third Word are a case in point, i.e. and also Singapore's PAP party, versus the classic brute power
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How authoritarian regimes use migration to exert ‘soft power’ in foreign policy
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been dispatching religious scholars to about 2,000 mosques abroad each year in an effort to project a “Turkish Islam abroad.” (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)
By Gerasimos Tsourapas
July 6, 2018 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
In early June, Austria shut down seven mosques and began to review the visa status of dozens of imams for potentially violating a law banning foreign-funded institutions. In recent years, Turkey has been actively sending religious scholars abroad to exert its influence. This is one of the many new ways authoritarian regimes have been using migration as a noncoercive foreign policy tool. From Latin America to the Middle East, these policies have played a key role as authoritarian regimes seek greater influence in regional and global affairs.
Building on existing literature about how one country can persuade others to do what it wants without the use of force, my recently published research illuminates how autocracies employ cross-border mobility as a “soft power” strategy. Initially confined to the developing world during the Cold War, authoritarian regimes’ use of migration has, over the past 30 years, burgeoned into a truly global phenomenon.
Is Turkey’s soft-power strategy an exception?
Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has been dispatching religious scholars via the powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, to about 2,000 mosques abroad each year in an effort to project a “Turkish Islam abroad.” Across Europe, the Friday sermons are word-for-word facsimiles of those written by the Ankara higher-ups and delivered across Turkey.
In early 2017, Germany opened an investigation of Turkish imams’ alleged spying on political dissenters for the Turkish government. The case was dismissed because of lack of evidence and because the suspects fled the country. However, Turkish news has reported that the Diyanet uses imams to gather information across 38 countries.
While this particular brand of soft power seems new, the West has a long history of welcoming citizens from nondemocratic regimes. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. policy encouraged the defection of Soviet dissenters by providing them with asylum status. Liberal democracies across Europe, North America and Australia have strategically hosted those fleeing hostile political situations at home — from Cuba in the aftermath of the 26th of July Movement and from Iran after the Islamic revolution.
Many autocratic regimes adopt an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” approach and let these diaspora communities be. Others carefully monitor their activities via consulates and embassies, as Morocco has done in past decades. A small number seek to persecute such communities abroad. Violence against Libyan dissenters abroad by the regime of Moammar Gaddafi was not uncommon. Moussa Koussa, widely known as Gaddafi’s “envoy of death,” was suspected of being responsible for assassinating opponents across Europe (though Koussa and his family have denied these allegations). Under the dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia stripped political dissenters — particularly members of the Islamist Ennahda movement — of their citizenship if they managed to flee abroad.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has various strategies to deter the Syrian diaspora from engaging in anti-regime activism. The 2017 killing of Syrian opposition activist Orouba Barakat and her journalist daughter in Istanbul was attributed to the long arm of the Syrian regime. But these instances all involve political dissenters. Why would regime loyalists choose to relocate abroad?
Winning hearts and minds through migration
As my new research details, authoritarian regimes’ international agendas do not merely seek to punish opposition; they also target host states’ societies. Once in power in the early 1950s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser developed a number of strategies intended to “export” the Egyptian revolution across the Arab world and Africa. Newly uncovered archival material shows how this policy relied on the emigration of high-skilled professionals, notably teachers.
For almost two decades, thousands of Egyptian educators were selected, trained and dispatched across the Middle East, where they aimed to spread ideas of anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism and Arab unity. From North Africa to the Levant and the Persian Gulf, Egyptians introduced these principles — ideas that continue to reverberate today — to a new generation of Arabs. This form of migration also sought to influence foreign policy across Africa. Egypt and Israel sent professionals to newly independent states, ostensibly to gain their support on the conflict’s debate within the United Nations.
For Egypt, migration was not a means toward economic development or attracting remittances. In fact, similar to Erdogan’s Diyanet policy, the Egyptian state paid the wages of many of these migrants during their time abroad. Nasser’s aim was soft power, winning the “hearts and minds” of young Arabs and Africans.
Exporting doctors, culture and revolution
Authoritarian regimes’ use of migration in world politics is more common than one might expect. Since taking power in Cuba, the Castro regime developed an intricate system of allowing medical staff to spend a number of years in other parts of the Global South, a process that continues. The sole exception to Cuba’s otherwise-restrictive migration policy, this strategy aimed to carry the torch of the revolution across Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
Likewise, the rise of China as a global power is enmeshed with its pursuit of cultural soft power, or “wenhua ruan shili,” including the dispatch of Chinese teachers to more than 500 Confucius Institutes across the world. Criticism over these institutes’ constraints on freedom of speech have led a number of universities, including prominent European and American institutions, to end their Confucius Institutes.
The future of migration’s soft-power politics
How liberal democracies respond to these practices will determine the future of authoritarian emigration states’ soft-power agenda. For decades, these strategies were limited and restricted to other parts of the Global South. Why are they now becoming increasingly relevant for liberal Western democracies?
For one, the end of the Cold War and the rise of transnational politics has made Western targets more prominent. More important, authoritarian regimes’ attitudes toward migration have evolved to allow for higher rates of cross-border mobility: As migration increases states’ interdependence, maintaining a firm control over citizens’ exit is now the exception, rather than the rule, in world politics.
Austria’s decision to close down mosques and several European states’ ban on Turkish political rallies last year appear to be muddled and ad hoc responses. Western concern with hard-power dynamics has largely obscured any concerted attempt at responding to nontraditional challenges. Yet as a growing number of regimes develop novel ways of targeting democratic societies — from electoral meddling to cyberwarfare and from media campaigns to migration — a more nuanced understanding of global authoritarianism and its motives could benefit analysts and governments alike.
Gerasimos Tsourapas is a lecturer in Middle East politics at the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham in Britain. Follow him @gtsourapas.
Correction: This post originally stated that, “Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s ‘envoy of death’ was responsible for assassinating opposition across Europe.” The piece has been updated to reflect that this nickname was used among dissidents and is not the author’s invention and that allegations of Koussa’s involvement in such assassinations were never proven in court.
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In a word, Trump would be using naked power to survive in 2021 with an abrupt shift to state violence in order to coerce people he does not like. The two leading contenders in the Democratic side, Bloomberg and Saunders would be instead be involved in what I would call a soft Authoritarian milieu. Here is an example of such:
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The Soft Authoritarian Tool Kit: Agenda-Setting Power in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
Article in Comparative Politics 41(2):203-222 · January 2009 with 351 Reads
DOI: 10.5129/001041509X12911362972034
Abstract
If elections and civil liberties are the principal institutionalized mechanisms of democratic governance, and if naked coercion is the centerpiece of hard authoritarianism, what allows a soft authoritarian system to survive? The cement of soft authoritarian rule is the ability of elites to frame the political debate, thereby defining the political agenda and channeling political outcomes. The contrast between the strengthening of soft authoritarianism in Kazakhstan and the erosion of soft authoritarianism in Kyrgyzstan shows that soft authoritarianism is effective when it succeeds in making good use of the state's means of persuasion, although coercion remains a part of the ruling elite's arsenal. This perspective implies a need to conceptualize soft authoritarian rule in dynamic, rather than static, terms.
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The same dynamic would be in play in either a Saunders or Bloomberg presidency .
Why I say this
a. It is not appreciated the shocking disconnect Trump voters have in basic US institutions: and also the sift toward Bloomberg on the part of Suburban Democrats whom want an end to the Trump abomination
Quote- here is the canary in the coal mine example
PHILADELPHIA — When Elizabeth Warren was emerging as a front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary last fall, Helen Springer enthusiastically contributed $100 to the liberal Massachusetts senator’s campaign.“She was trending high,” said Springer, 75, of Kennett Square. “That didn’t last.”Springer, a retired human resources administrator, has watched with dismay since then, concerned that none of the candidates who competed in Iowa and New Hampshire can win the nomination, unite the party and defeat President Donald Trump in November.But another candidate is giving her hope: Mike Bloomberg
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Here is the Trump dynamic
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/opinion/trump-voters-chaos.html
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The Trump Voters Whose ‘Need for Chaos’ Obliterates Everything Else
Political nihilism is one of the president’s strongest weapons.
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality
Trump supporters at a rally in Manchester, N.H., in August.Credit...
Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
Over the four years during which he has dominated American political life, nearly three of them as president, Donald Trump has set a match again and again to chaos-inducing issues like racial hostility, authoritarianism and white identity politics.
Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, the winner of the best paper award in the Political Psychology division was “A ‘Need for Chaos’ and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies.”
The paper, which the award panel commended for its “ambitious scope, rigor, and creativity,” is the work of Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen, both political scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark, and Kevin Arceneaux, a political scientist at Temple.
It argues that a segment of the American electorate that was once peripheral is drawn to “chaos incitement” and that this segment has gained decisive influence through the rise of social media.
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b. I.e. What Bloomberg would in a very specific way would be is a firewall against the chaos agent milieu of a core of the Trump voter base seeks, as due to its estrangement from the core values of American life and institutional governance- However, Saunders offers a left wing version of much the same dynamic from a different ideological foundation than Bloomberg
I would argue that Saunders is, in spite of the Bernie brothers phenomena, also a "restoration" dynamic, i.e. one set on the LEFT, whereas Bloomberg is a Conservative firewall against deliberate Trump chaos and incitement
c. What the Democrats do not realize, is that Trump operates from chaos incitement, as his primary draw, and that the choice the Anti Trump forces have to make is a choice between either Conservative or Leftist based firewalls against chaos as represented by Trump as his core appeal
This is in its own way a deadly choice for Democratic governance. I.e. Trump wants to make a personality cult out of Governance, much as Mao did in China in the Great Cultural revolution which lead to over 10 years of hell in China. If Trump gets away with this, we will have a decade of outright despotism and state violence, i.e. extremely hard Authoritarian government
We do not need to go there. But the restorative firewall approach, albeit from very different directions as given by Saunders (left wing bias) and Bloomberg, whereas it is vastly preferable to a government by personality cult as represented by Trump (whom would be operating from a level of coercion not seen since Joseph Stalin) has severe drawbacks.
Soft Authoritarianism of the Saunders-Bloomberg milieu would inevitably involve a tight scripting of allowed discourse and fencing off of alternatives.
A choice has to be made as to if the US population has the patience for deliberative government and if it has the patience to reject either hard of soft Authoritarian governance in favor of deliberative discourse
To a degree people do not realize , the descent into Trump madness has severely damaged the sinews of deliberative governance which the Public can access . Do we have the patience for restorative work without the convenient short cuts of soft Authoritarianism ? That will be the real meaning of what the American nation decides as of 2020.
Andrew Beckwith, PhD