{"id":622026,"date":"2025-12-09T11:09:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/622026\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T11:09:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:09:25","slug":"we-asked-activists-from-authoritarian-regimes-what-they-wish-theyd-known-sooner-heres-what-they-said-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/622026\/","title":{"rendered":"We asked activists from authoritarian regimes what they wish they\u2019d known sooner. Here\u2019s what they said | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump makes no secret of his admiration for strongmen like Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n or El Salvador\u2019s Nayib Bukele. Last month, he praised<\/a> Orb\u00e1n\u2019s hardline stance on immigration and urged European leaders to show more \u201crespect\u201d for the president; earlier this year his administration struck a deal with Bukele to send more than 200 detained migrants to a notorious, maximum-security prison in El Salvador.<\/p>\n

Many international organizations<\/a>, experts<\/a> and historians<\/a> have sounded the alarm about the United States heading in a similar direction as these authoritarian<\/a> regimes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One year after Trump\u2019s re-election, the Guardian asked activists and opposition leaders from Hungary, El Salvador<\/a> and Turkey what their experiences have taught them about authoritarianism \u2013 and what they wish they\u2019d understood sooner.<\/p>\n

Americans \u201cshould look to other countries, especially in the global south for solutions and for what not to do,\u201d said Ece Temelkuran, a Turkish writer and author of How to Lose a Country. \u201cDrop the arrogance, drop the exceptionalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stefania Kapronczay<\/strong> (Hungary), former head of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union<\/strong>Stefania Kapronczay. Photograph: Daniel Byers<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s consolidation of power in the US echoes prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s authoritarian power grabs in Hungary, says Kapronczay. But with one important difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s happening much faster, and it\u2019s surprising for me that so many private companies and institutions just complied with the perceived or expressed will of President Trump,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect so many people would be so risk-averse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n first rose to power in 1998 amid widespread disillusionment with the country\u2019s political establishment during the post-cold war era. \u201cDemocracy promised economic prosperity and more equality, and it just didn\u2019t deliver that,\u201d said Kapronczay, now a senior fellow at Columbia Law School\u2019s Human Rights Institute.<\/p>\n

Even though his party lost control of parliament in 2002, Orb\u00e1n returned as prime minister in 2010, and has since tightened his grip on power, changing voting rules to favor his party; stacking the judicial system with loyalists; and cracking down on universities, NGOs and the press. In 2022, the European parliament declared Hungary<\/a> a \u201chybrid regime of electoral autocracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the period after his 2010 re-election, Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government pushed reforms that created some stability for the poorest of the society, Kapronczay said. \u201cAuthoritarians are responding to clear needs and frustration and anger in society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kapronczay says she\u2019s learned that opposition leaders need to pay closer attention to pocketbook issues. \u201cStanding up for democracy, resisting and all this very abstract language will not reach the majority of society,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s only a very small progressive circle that resonates with that kind of messaging.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the authoritarian turn also \u201cposed an opportunity for self-reflection\u201d, she said. \u201cIf our previous tools are no longer working, how can we serve our mission in a more impactful way?\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, between 2010 and 2012, Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party restructured Hungary\u2019s constitutional court, stacking the bench with political appointees and restricting its jurisdiction. \u201cWe [in civil society] were very concerned \u2013 and I think rightly so \u2013 but for a lot of people, the court was something really far away,\u201d Kapronczay said. Many civil society groups failed to address everyday issues, like household incomes, schools and healthcare \u2013 \u201cEven though these are the very issues [that affect whether people] feel a political system is working for them and whether they can make their voice heard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kapronczay says protests are important \u2013 particularly if the political opposition builds on them \u2013 but so are small, local gatherings that bring together people from a range of backgrounds and ideologies to solve shared concerns. \u201cAutocrats really want to polarize the society, so any kind of initiative that goes against it is really important,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Hungary\u2019s opposition has renewed energy in recent months. In June, tens of thousands of people, including Budapest\u2019s mayor, showed up for a LGBTQ+ Pride parade that Orb\u00e1n had banned. And polling shows that the opposition Tisza party, led by P\u00e9ter Magyar, is leading Fidesz, Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party, ahead of next year\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people believe that they can actually win the elections next year,\u201d Kapronczay said. \u201cFinally, there is a real competition, and that has enabled a lot of people to come out from self-censorship. My friends who are journalists say they have more sources coming forward. People are not so afraid to speak. Civil society and public life is much more vibrant than it has been in the past few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ece Temelkuran (Turkey), author of How to Lose a Country<\/strong>Ece Temelkuran. Photograph: Ece Temelkuran\/Joanna Paciorek<\/p>\n

Temelkuran says that while Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan<\/a> started to consolidate power during his first term as prime minister, it was his re-election, in 2007, that marked a \u201creal shift\u201d in Turkish politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they come to power for the second time, they feel more ruthless, and they behave as if there are no boundaries any more,\u201d said Temelkuran. \u201cI think especially in the leader\u2019s head, that association of \u2018me and the country\u2019 [being] the same thing becomes very prominent when they seize power for the second time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temelkuran had been reporting throughout Turkey<\/a> as a columnist for the newspaper \u200b\u200bMilliyet during Erdo\u011fan\u2019s rise in 2002. Early on, she saw his authoritarian tendencies: he regularly disparaged journalists and seemed to have little interest in politics as usual.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Autocrats] declare themselves as beyond politics,\u201d said Temelkuran. \u201c[They say:] \u2018Politics is corrupt. Parties are corrupt. We\u2019re clean.\u2019 They create a movement, not a party.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you despise politics, that means that you are probably going to do something to democracy itself,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

In the years since he became president in 2014, Erdo\u011fan has jailed political opponents and critics, cracked down on protests and concentrated power in the executive branch.<\/p>\n

After writing about Erdo\u011fan and other autocrats for more than two decades, Temelkuran says Americans need to gear up for a \u201clong game\u201d of fighting to rebuild democracy. \u201cIt took Erdo\u011fan 15 years to do what Trump did in 100 days,\u201d she said. \u201cIf [Americans] do not accept the fact that this is a long game, and it will be brutal, I think you won\u2019t have the patience and stamina to bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Temelkuran says she sees a glimmer of hope in recent protests in Turkey, which were sparked by the arrest of Istanbul\u2019s mayor, Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, on corruption charges. The charges are widely seen as an attempt to sideline a key rival of Erdo\u011fan ahead of the 2028 presidential elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time a conventional political party is accommodating or hosting the street protests,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was always either the street protests or elections and party politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The combination of the two \u2013 something Temelkuran says should have happened years ago \u2013 is breathing new life into Turkey\u2019s main opposition party, she said. \u201cThese political parties, they\u2019re like shipwrecks: metal structures, they\u2019re dead. Street protests, youth politics come into them like shoaling fish, to turn them into living reefs.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said a successful opposition movement in the US would need to bring this same level of energy to the fight. \u201cMany people, especially in America and in Europe, are organizing these fancy panels that normal people never go to. They\u2019re building these NGOs that people are not interested in,\u201d she said. \u201cThe only option is to propose a real change \u2026 and be absolutely courageous about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claudia Ortiz<\/strong> (El Salvador), federal deputy with the opposition Vamos party<\/strong>Claudia Ortiz. Photograph: Irving Rosales<\/p>\n

Ortiz says that one important lesson she\u2019s learned since the 2019 election of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is that she and her party, which had been formed two years prior, need to do more than simply oppose him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot make authoritarian leaders the center of your narrative,\u201d said Ortiz. \u201cYou have to make the people the center of your narrative, and you have to be passionate about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that means doing more to engage with citizens \u2013 and being prepared to be surprised by what they say. \u201cA part of the cure for this is listening to people,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t be so certain about what they want, what they need. You have to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n

The election of Bukele and his New Ideas party upended decades of two-party rule between the leftist and conservative parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parties that ruled the country in the past decades weren\u2019t capable of building a solid democracy that delivered results in the daily life of people,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we think that the road to overcoming that is not to destroy institutions, but to make them actually work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the last six years, Bukele, who has famously called himself the \u201cworld\u2019s coolest dictator\u201d, has enacted emergency powers, suspending due process, and has appointed loyalists to the judiciary, allowing him to skirt a constitutional amendment against serving a second term.<\/p>\n

His mano dura approach to crime has resulted in widespread rights abuses, including forced disappearances and torture; today the country has the world\u2019s highest incarceration rate<\/a>, according to rights groups.<\/p>\n

Many journalists, opposition leaders and rights groups have fled the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite this, Bukele enjoys consistently high approval ratings, something Ortiz and other analysts attribute to real drops in crime and propaganda. But Ortiz said she believes cracks are starting to show.<\/p>\n

Under Bukele, she said, basic services like health and education have gotten worse and costs of living have gone up. \u201cWhen reality knocks through your door and you don\u2019t have enough food to eat, or you have a relative that\u2019s been a victim of an arbitrary detention \u2026 that\u2019s the moment where you say: \u2018OK, this is reality, and it\u2019s quite different from the propaganda\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the honeymoon is passing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAuthoritarian systems give the appearance of performing, but their solutions are not thorough, they are not sustainable, and they are not fair,\u201d she went on. \u201cThey will decay because the way they function is to exclude, abuse, and allow massive corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she says she\u2019s also learned to never underestimate the autocrat.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s undermining the judiciary or intimidating local governments, \u201cIn many cases, you think, \u2018No, they won\u2019t do it,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cBut we have seen how [centralization of power] has advanced very quickly. So it\u2019s important that democracy is defended at every turn,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump makes no secret of his admiration for strongmen like Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n or El Salvador\u2019s Nayib…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-622026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115689302458609054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}