Authoritarian rule is spreading across the world – it could all end in violence

Amidst all the bickering, it should have been heartening to note that India and Pakistan these past few days were celebrating over seven decades of their own independence from British colonial rule.

I say “should have”, but given current relations between the two rivals over the vexed question of Kashmir, the mood has been anything but celebratory.

While Indian prime minister Narendra Modi continued to defend his government’s controversial measure to strip the Kashmir region of its statehood and special constitutional provisions, Pakistan was having none of it.

While Modi digs his heels in, so too does his Pakistan counterpart Imran Khan, who insisted that his country is prepared to fight to the end over Kashmir if necessary.

Khan’s remarks came as about 4 million Kashmiris stayed indoors for the 11th day of a security lockdown and communications blackout by the Indian authorities.

It’s hardly surprising then that neither side were in the best of moods for their independence jamboree.

It was 72 years ago when the British flag was lowered from Delhi’s Red Fort and replaced by the Indian tricolour. Much of the world hailed the birth of a new nation, proof that a secular democracy could emerge from colonialism.

But today’s India under Modi’s hardline Hindu nationalism looks a very different place right now. His rule is quite simply authoritarianism in action and around the world there is no shortage of that almost wherever you look.

From Kashmir to Hong Kong, Brasilia to Ankara, the global pattern of authoritarianism has become ever more visible and visceral. While Modi rides roughshod over a constitutional settlement, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could well turn the streets of Hong Kong into another Tiananmen Square.

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In Turkey, meanwhile, the ruling party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan boasts of the mass book burning it has undertaken since the failed coup against him in 2016. Dissent in Turkey continues to be suppressed ruthlessly.

“In just three years, the publishing landscape in Turkey has been all but decimated, with 29 publishing houses shut down by emergency decree for ‘spreading terrorist propaganda’,” warned PEN International in a statement recently.

In far-off Brazil, authoritarianism there too is making its presence felt under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. In moves reminiscent of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, Bolsonaro took to the airwaves recently to urge police and vigilantes to kill criminals so that they “die in the street like cockroaches”, promising those who carried out the killing immunity from prosecution.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro

At the heart of this new authoritarianism of course lies identity politics. As Gulnaz Sharafutdinova of the Russia Institute at Kings College London recently observed: “Whether it is Trump ‘making America great again’, Putin rising ‘Russia up from its knees’, or right-wing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban preserving ‘Europe for Europeans’, they all present themselves as embracing the will of whole peoples.”

What all these leaders have in common is that each and every one are what observers have dubbed “identity entrepreneurs”. It’s a nice turn of phrase, one that belies the self-serving and malign manipulation at which such politicians and leaders are so adept, often at great cost to those who oppose them.

You don’t have to look across the globe to find such people. Currently you’ll find some right here among us in the UK. In the main they present themselves as saviours of their respective nations, though they are usually anything but.

In his book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, the distinguished American philosopher Jason Stanley explained how one of the key traits of such political operators is the identification of opponents as traitors.

In the imagination of such leaders, political opponents are not mere rivals but existential threats and almost always portrayed as “unpatriotic” and “evil”.

Having successfully tarnished them in this way, then it’s only a matter of time before people buy into tactics as being legitimate to suppress them. Be it voter suppression, packing the courts, changing libel laws, burning books to quash dissent, rounding up “criminals”, or moving the goalposts of parliamentary democracy, the aim is always much the same – consolidating authoritarian rule.

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This authoritarian impulse, when cross-bred with bigotry, has helped birth some of history’s worst ever political excesses. Today is no different.

For some time we’ve witnessed the rise of elected autocrats and far-right leaders who run on anti-establishment and “law-and- order” tickets, only to set about eroding democratic norms and institutions once elected.

As the Russian pro-democracy activist and former word chess champion Garry Kasparov once observed, the authoritarian business continues to boom and statistically is one of the largest – if not the largest – challenges facing humanity.

It was only last year that Mischael Modrikamen – the Eurosceptic right-wing Belgian politician and pal to that other advocate of authoritarianism, Steve Bannon – declared that “the future is to the Trumps and to the Putins and to the Orbans of this world”.

It’s a chilling thought and while such a vile vision has not yet been borne out, there’s no doubt such a potentially disastrous future remains a real global threat.

International politics continues to change rapidly and as it does so political discourse is becoming increasingly degraded and dangerous in one country after the next.

The simple inescapable fact is that authoritarians rule increasingly large parts of the globe. And as if this was not enough cause for concern, almost always autocracies end up going head to head with other violent and repressive regimes.

For now, India’s prime minister Modi might well score political points by playing his authoritarian card in Kashmir, but it’s equally possible in doing so he might just fuel conflict with Pakistan.

In Hong Kong, China might feel the time has come for a Tiananmen-style crackdown based on reasoning that no global power will intervene. But who’s to say that the US might decide Beijing has over-stepped the mark, pitching both giants against each other?

Such threats might seem far removed from our own experience, but to think so is a mistake.

It is precisely for that reason that we must remain alert to the continued march of authoritarianism and the threat it presents at both home and away.