Global Authoritarianism.

Salman Rushdie (b.1947), the Anglo-Indian novelist, famously the subject of a homicidal fatwa issued by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following the publication of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), has spoken out against what he terms 'populist authoritarian demagoguery' on a global scale at the National First Amendment Summit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday 13th September 2023, held by PEN America.

Rushdie was asked what the greatest threat to freedom of speech was today, and replied: 'I think now we're facing another old enemy, which is authoritarianism. I think there's a real rise in authoritarian movements around the world.'

Rushdie is, if anything, somewhat late in identifying this trend, which has been going on for quite some time, and which persecuted minorities, such as members of the LGBTIQ community worldwide, could have told him about some time ago. Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality law is only the most egregious example of this persecution, prescribing the death penalty for consensual same-sex intercourse.

From Poland's anti-abortion crusade through to America's school library and classroom book bans, everywhere people and politicians on the Right of the political spectrum are using, or trying to use, the coercive power of the State to enforce their moral views - their values and ideas of what is right and wrong - on everyone else, regardless of whether they are in the majority or not.

Even when they are in the majority, minorities still have rights, which cannot be removed by mere fiat of any majority, no matter how large it may be. Democracy is not an absolute - otherwise it becomes far worse than any form of tyranny. Viktor Orbán's 'illiberal democracy' in Hungary is one of the worst kinds of government imaginable, and is an equivalent of fascism. It is no accident that he is such an admirer of Vladimir Putin.

It is very sad indeed that so many people are willing to vote for politicians like Orbán and Donald Trump, and believe their lies, but this is the greatest of the perils of democracy - that too many people will listen to the voice of 'populist authoritarian demagoguery' and be deceived by it; the myth of a 'Golden Age' that can be re-created, although it never existed in the first place, if only the demagogue's words are heeded, and he (it is usually a 'he') is given the power he craves.