Canada should be preparing for the end of American democracy

A Donald Trump supporter flies a Trump flag at a trucker convoy protest against COVID-19 restrictions in Toronto, Ontario.

A person waves a "Let's Go Brandon" flag (code for an expletive, "Fuck Joe Biden") against U.S. President Joe Biden used by supporters of former president Donald Trump, in Ottawa, Ontario during the so-called Freedom Convoy 2022.

Rioters loyal to Donald Trump climb the West Wall of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., on 2021-01-06  [2021 United States Capitol attack].

Background

The United States is on the precipice of becoming a failed democratic state. In 2021-01, pollster John Zogby conducted a survey that showed 46 per cent of Americans believe that the United States is headed toward another civil war  [local copy]. As Canada's closest neighbour fractures at the seams and slides toward dangerous forms of authoritarianism, we [Canadians] should be deeply worried. As someone whose research has tried to explain how and why democracy works, I [Robert Danisch, Professor of Communication Arts, University of Waterloo] am deeply worried.

We should be planning our possible responses and preparing for what comes next. Failing to do so will put our own democracy at risk - as we're witnessing right now with the so-called freedom convoy in Ottawa and its nefarious funding [see: Freedom Convoy 2022]. The worst-case scenario in the U.S. - blood in the streets - isn't necessarily the most likely, but we ought to resist the tendency to assign too low a probability to events that could have serious, catastrophic consequences.

Some of the most constructive academic work in the middle of the 20th century, after all, was motivated by doom-saying around nuclear war (Thomas Schelling's Nobel Prize work on game theory, for example). More recently, predictions about the devastation that will result from the climate crisis   [anthropogenic climate change] are being used to drive public policy and political debate. Will all the predictions bear out? Maybe not, but the intellectual exercise of preparing for the worst can improve our decision-making and position Canada to succeed in times of crisis.

Jan. 6, 2021 Just A Prelude?

For some reason, systematic and dispassionate analyses of what will happen if or when the American experiment with democracy ends have not happened, either in Canada or the U.S. Many are engaged in the battle to prevent the right-wing from stealing the next U.S. election, but this is only one, narrow concern. Spend an hour listening to someone like Dan Bongino  [Wikipedia: Dan Bongino], a former United States Secret Service agent and Donald Trump supporter, and you'll come away certain that the violence we all saw on 2021-01-06  [2021 United States Capitol attack], was not an isolated event but the beginning of something bigger.

The trucker convoy is one small example of what can happen here when the dangerous forms of anti-democratic rhetoric south of the border spread into Canada. The people in Ottawa aren't protesters, they're occupiers. They reject the use of democratic rhetoric in favour of authoritarian rhetoric, and they aim to dismantle the system that makes protest and free speech possible in the first place. What happens when that anti-democratic rhetoric becomes the norm in the U.S.? The combination of media outlets like Fox News that have far-reaching impact and anti-democratic, authoritarian rhetoric is exactly a recipe for the contagious spread of the kinds of behaviours that can threaten our own democracy.

What are the likeliest problems? Most obviously, violent rhetoric tends to fuel violent actions. We will see violent rhetoric normalized by cultural figures like Tucker Carlson but also U.S. politicians. Imagine Fox News no longer playing the role of a media outlet that's welcoming to the fringe voices of the far-right, but instead is the formally sanctioned voice of the state. The more violent, extremist rhetoric becomes the norm, the more danger and violence we're likely to see. What will happen when Tucker Carlson turns his attention to Canada as a target and radicalizes our own citizens with the authoritarian rhetoric he regularly employs?

Critical questions for Canada

Can we - should we - regulate American media if they are clearly driving the rise of authoritarianism and the spread of propaganda aimed at ending free, liberal   democracy? How do we treat American broadcast media and social media if they become obviously responsible for hastening the end of liberal values like equality, reason and the rule of law? How will Canada combat the virulent spread of propaganda and misinformation when it comes directly from a government pretending to be democratic while enacting fascism? What if American journalists wedded to the ideals of free speech, objectivity and professional standards of fairness become targets of state violence? Will we protect the right to a free press? How?

If American elections become obviously rigged, what will our role be in monitoring that kind of democratic backsliding? What about American citizens still committed to the rule of law and the basic tenets of liberal society? Will they seek asylum in Canada by the millions? How do we negotiate trade deals with an ideological, irrational state? We've had some preparation for this during Donald Trump's one term as president, but he was still constrained by a semi-functioning system of checks and balances. What happens when that system is dismantled?

Ripple Effects

We need a national conversation on these urgent questions. Our security, our economy and our culture are so deeply enmeshed with the U.S. that any significant change there will have ripple effects here. Those ripples may turn into a tsunami should the changes be as radical and dire as some predict. Such a national conversation will require us to shore up our own democracy and to learn how to regulate and prevent the spread of authoritarian rhetoric, hate speech, and other forms of misinformation in the U.S. We must be ready and able to champion the values and advantages that are afforded by living in a democracy. We might avoid the worst, but the preparation will make Canada a stronger, freer, safer country.

Additional Reading

American democracy had a near-death experience one year ago this week  [2021 United States Capitol attack, 2021-01-06]. There's no sign, a year later [2022-01-06], that it's served as a habit-changing wake-up call. The prognosis is bleaker yet. Even this solemn anniversary of the 2021-01-06 attack on the U.S. Capitol underscores the inability of the country's warring political tribes to set aside their loathing and inhabit a common reality for just one day. There are opposing vigils. Democrats will mark the occasion with candlelight events; right-wing activists are holding vigils to honour the jailed attackers, calling them political prisoners.

Here's the key part: This is no fringe view. A new poll  [local copy] says most Republicans feel the rioters were defending democracy; on crowdfunding pages, millions of dollars in donations have flowed to cover the rioters' legal fees. And the man who tried stealing a presidential election, who encouraged that mob, will hold his own Jan. 6 event - demonstrating how unrepentant he is. Donald Trump remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party, a hero to its voters, and he'll mark 2021-01-06 by repeating conspiracy theories about his election loss on 2020-11-03.

Election norms are being rewritten. In one state after another, non-partisan election officials have needed police protection after fielding hundreds of threats. Now their control of elections is under threat: Republican politicians in several states want their legislatures to claim power in declaring election winners. "It's a constant barrage of attacks," said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who currently heads Wisconsin's bipartisan - and increasingly embattled - election commission. "A constant repetition of false claims about 2020.... We still get people calling and hollering."

"We were insufficiently alarmist"

An academic who co-authored the book How Democracies Die now says he was too optimistic when he wrote it in 2018, as the U.S. has blown past the warning signs flagged there. "I think we were insufficiently alarmist," said Harvard professor and author Steve Levitsky, a scholar of democratic decline. What troubles Levitsky, he says, isn't so much Trump - he never expected the former president to play by normal democratic rules - but Levitsky did expect stronger opposition to Trump's antics from other Republicans. Now Levitsky says he's terrified about 2024  [2024 United States presidential election]. If the conditions align, he says, we could easily witness a stolen election and the end of American democracy as we know it. "2024 is a coin flip," Levitsky said. "We are a coin flip away from losing our democracy."

Multiple public opinion polls paint a consistent portrait about the risks to American democracy, and here are two examples.

• An NPR / PBS / Marist survey  [local copy] in 2021-11 found that only 33 per cent of Republicans will trust the 2024 election result if their candidate loses, versus 82 per cent of Democrats.

• Another survey offers a warning sign. Washington Post polling over time has found a steady increase in people saying violence against the government can be justified, with 40 per cent of Republicans and 23 per cent of Democrats now feeling that way.

If last year [2021] was the near-death experience, this year [2022] will allow us to check back in and test the American republic's vital signs.

3 questions for 2022

We could soon have answers to three questions about 2024  [2024 United States presidential election], provided in part by the 2022-11-08 midterm elections  [2022 United States elections].

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