Ready to learn the most important takeaways from How Democracies Die in less than two minutes? Keep reading!
Why This Book Matters:
How Democracies Die discusses how democracies have turned into dictatorships throughout history with an emphasis on Latin America.
The Big Takeaways:
- A possibly harmful autocrat can be difficult to spot before it is too late.
- If The three major things to watch out for are the rejection of democratic laws, politicians trying to unfairly dishonor their rival, and encouraging violence.
- Democracy needs robust protectors.
- Gatekeeping involves evading public demonstrations that can be seen as normalizing extremism.
- Donald Trump avoided the gatekeepers and sounded the alarm several times while doing so.
- Republican politicians who did not endorse Trump, but would not cross party lines, left the door wide open for Trump to win the presidential election.
- The downfall of democracy happens steadily, not overnight.
- Changing the rules so the autocrat has the advantage is a major warning sign.
- We must uphold democratic standards in order to fight authoritarianism.
- Extremism should be confronted with democratic norms.
Leave a Reply
View Comments