How America’s Democracy Is “Ripe to Be Exploited” – By Eric Umansky (ProPublica) / Sept 26, 2022
Why are so many people now embracing demagogues? Barbara Walter, political scientist and author of “How Civil Wars Start,” tells ProPublica that the vital signs of healthy democracy are in decline around the world.
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Voters in Sweden this month gave a leading role to a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots. Italy is also on the cusp of putting a party in power that has fascist origins. And of course, in the United States, one party has increasingly embraced election denialism and attempted to undermine the legitimacy of the electoral process.
To try to understand what, exactly, is happening, I talked with Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California San Diego who studies democracies across the world. Her book “How Civil Wars Start” has become a bestseller. Rather than talk about the prospects for political violence, we discussed why many democracies are retrenching and how the U.S. stands alone — and not in a good way.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
CONTINUE > https://www.propublica.org/article/democracy-demagogues-fascism-elections-barbara-walter
