When the alternative is too terrifying to contemplate.

Irrespective which part of the political spectrum you're on, one hopes you're on the side of democracy.

But throughout history democracy has been undermined from both the left and the right. Today, we are staring down the barrel of something akin to 1930s Europe where a democracy in peril, the Weimar Republic, fell victim to a range of crises. Some of their own making, some beyond their control, but all contrived to create the conditions for a new political landscape that would draw on the perturbations felt by people right across Germany.

History is a funny thing. What seems true across several examples throughout the 20th century is that democracy is certainly not infallible. We would do well to remember this when we spruik the politics of our tribe. Democracy is a tension of differing views operating in the context of broader and weightier ideals. If those differing views, or tribalism, override democratic rectitude, the latter will fall and conflict will ensue.

In 1917 when Russia descended into revolution first in February and then again in October, its first revolution was an experiment in democracy. But during that period the extreme left and right undermined the Provisional Government of Russia. A coup d'état in August by the extreme right led by General Kornilov was seen off by the Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky, but only by enlisting the aid of the Bolsheviks. Weakened by the coup, the Bolsheviks saw their vulnerable quarry and pounced in October. The result? The General Assembly Elections scheduled for December went ahead but soon after the Bolsheviks under Lenin shut down the Assembly and the Soviet dictatorship emerged afterwards.

Russia had no democratic institutions that gave the bigger ideals insurance. Its parliament was only first convened in 1906, there was no constitution offering freedom of the press or universal suffrage, separation of powers or any of the usual checks and balances designed to hold a democracy together. 

America has these institutions. It has a constitution outlining the rights for its citizens and limiting the possibility of the government going rogue. But like the Weimar Republic, it also provides its President with reserve powers that enables him/her to suspend habeas corpus as Lincoln did in 1861, intern citizens as FDR did of Japanese citizens during WW2 and most unsettling of all the president has the power to "commandeer states and governors of states, if the President deems they are engaged in insurrection." Who gets to check this and provide balance? The US Supreme Court. But if the Court is dominated by people of a conservative mindset who might agree with the President's actions and support them, then presto, the United States might quietly move to an authoritarian system via its very constitution. 

Hitler came legitimately to power by an election; although without a clear majority. Reichstag President, Paul Hindenburg believed, as did many others, that the Weimar Constitution had sufficient checks that would stymie Hitler from his worst tendencies. But they didn't bank on Hitler using the Weimar Constitution legitimately to assume total power. The Reichstag Fire in February 1933, barely four weeks after Hitler came to power gave him the impetus to use Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to legitimately pass a measure called the Enabling Act which essentially gave him the power to make laws without Parliament.

Remember that democracy often falls not from an illegitimate external attack, but from within, using the legitimate existing legal structures to transform the democracy into something else. When we see Trump attacking the "left" in a speech responding to the riots across America, he is using the same playbook Hitler used in justifying the Enabling Act. The Reichstag was likely set ablaze by Nazis, but it was communists who were arrested and charged with the crime.

It is why Churchill's call to arms regarding democracy remains true to this day:

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

So, no matter if you're on the left or the right, if you believe in the fundamental principle of democracy, then you must join hands with your political opponent in these times and defend a bigger cause. The alternative is too terrifying to contemplate.