Have any authoritarian regimes fallen due to their “base” turning on them?

Factual Questions
1

Inspired by the threads in P&E about parler and Trump’s supporters. It’s my opinion that Trump’s supporters, at least the MAGAs, will support Trump no matter what. The question for this thread is about historical examples of similar situations. Let’s assume a situation where the leadership is deliberately lying to it’s base. What authoritarian regimes have fallen due to their followers turning on the leaders because they opened their eyes, realized they were being lied to, and overthrew the leaders? Here are the parameters I’m thinking about.

The change in government can be through any domestic means, democratic, peaceful revolution, or violent revolution. Being defeated by a foreign enemy doesn’t count, so Hitler losing to the allies is out.

It doesn’t count if the old leader is overthrown by a new leader who won the loyalty of the base by being a better at lying or being more charismatic.

It doesn’t count if the new leader overthrows or kills the old leader in a coup. Stalin forcing Trotsky into exile doesn’t count.

Losing to the domestic opposition doesn’t count. It had to be the formerly loyal base turning on their leaders because they no longer believe the lies. The Iranian shah and his more secular follower being overthrown by the ayatollah and his fundamentalist followers doesn’t count.

ETA. I’ll settle for failed attempts. What I’m really looking for is examples where the “base” realizes they were being lied to and turn on their leaders. If the leader then uses other means to turn on their base and the revolution fails, I’ll still accept that as a valid example.

2

Maybe all of Eastern Europe - it has to be said that some of those trie to maintain the status quo, realised the futility of their position and switched.

3

That’s certainly an interesting case. I assume you’re referring to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union from 1989 - 1991. My understanding is that Gorbachev, being a basically decent guy, essentially decided that being a dictator was a bad thing and declared an end to the dictatorship. After that the whole thing came crumbling down because the people were living under such bad conditions that it was impossible to continue the lie that Soviet style communism was a good thing.

4

That’s not really what happened. It is true that Gorbachev, after his rise to power in 1985, started to institute reforms, and one can speculate as to what the Soviet Union would have developed into if it had not ceased to exist, but presenting it as a case of the dictatorship simply shutting down out of the own volition of those at the top does not accurately summarise what had been going on. The Soviet leadership was far from being in control of things, not in the Soviet Union and much less so in the other Eastern Bloc countries, many of which - starting with Poland in 1980 - had very powerful democratic movements of their own. In short, things were crumbling outside Gorbachev’s control; it wasn’t Gorbachev shutting down the Soviet Union, or the Eastern Bloc.

Viz., among others, the August 1991 coup d’état which overthrew Gorbachev. That coup failed, and Gorbachev was reinstated after a few days. But that did not strengthen his position in the longer run; quite to the contrary: These events accelerated the demise of the Soviet Union, and it became clear that events were much more driven by people other than the Soviet leadership around Gorbachev (mostly the leaders of the Russian democracy movement led by Boris Yeltsin).

5

Thank you for providing me with more insight. It sounds like this case does meet the definition of a population which decided they no longer wanted to stay loyal to the old system and conducted a successful revolution based on that.

6

In 1971, Indira Gandhi was re-elected the Prime Minister of India. She was accused of using fraudulent means in the election and convicted in a State High Court for election fraud in1975. She was quite authoritarian ; for example she ordered forced sterilization as a method of population control.

There were massive public demonstrations but she refused to give her office. She declared an emergency and imposed martial law.

Ultimately she was voted out of office with her party suffering a major defeat. She did serve time though it was perfunctory. She did return to power in her later years.

My knowledge of history is not very good, so Pundits please feel free to correct the above. But the gist is that she was overthrown by peaceful democratic means.

7

I think that especially the peaceful revolution in East Germany leading to the fall of the Wall is a good example. Granted, some previously existing dissident groups like peace activists and church groups (often overlapping) were crucial to the movement, but in the end the regular people who had always stayed loyal, at least quiet and/or apathetic, just had enough and were fed up with the regime so that they took to the streets in droves and toppled the system.

8

Authoritarian regimes generally do not gain power through a popular uprising - their base is usually a loud minority. So I’d argue that it’s more to do with the silent majority waking up and finding their voice. But by then the mechanisms of the state are working against them so it becomes difficult.

There’s a book called Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe in which the author Roger Petersen says the first step on the road map of rebellion is the slow shift in the largest part of the population from what he calls regime “neutrality” to “widespread but unorganised and unarmed resistance”.

This is the key, plus the ability to organise and then sustain the resistance. What the authoritarian’s base does is unimportant. Unless maybe there are 70 million of them… :grimacing:

9

The end of the last military dictatorship in Argentina may count.

From the wiki
Corruption, a failing economy, growing public awareness of the harsh repressive measures taken by the regime, and the military defeat in the Falklands War, eroded the public image of the regime. The last de facto president, Reynaldo Bignone was forced to call for elections by the lack of support within the Army and the steadily growing pressure of public opinion.

10

Maybe the Franco regime would count. It has the added peculiarity that the leader who initiated the process of democratisation, King Juan Carlos, had previously been groomed by Franco as a successor.

11

Another factor, common to Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal and Communist Europe, is a visibly increasing sclerosis in a supposedly authoritarian system’s ability to respond to wider global economic and social change. There was a long period where fear gave way to a resigned or cynical playing along (as in the Soviet Union, the joke “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”), until some event brought things to a head. That might be Franco’s obvious physical decline combined with ETA blowing up his hardline Prime Minister, or the impossibility of preventing East Germans from accessing West German TV combined with both the demonstrations and the opening up of routes to the west through Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

There were also hints that in the satellites, the USSR under Gorbachev might have been trying to encourage opposition, even trying to manipulate demonstrators.

12

I don’t know that any example is relevant. A characteristic of movement-driven government take-overs thae descend into authoritarian repressive regimes, is that they tend to suppress and purge the more vocal elements that got them there. The Reign of Terror in France, or the Lenin-Stalin purges, all follow this pattern. A movement overthrows the establishment based on the crowds whipped to a frenzy by fanatical followers. Then, once a leader has the reigns of power, they consolidate their position by eliminating threats. The biggest threat in that situation is those fanatics who value ideological purity over loyalty to a leader. making compromises or taking harsh measures to stay in power will bring out dissent from the fanatics. And - once El Lider has power, the base no longer matters. You don’t want mobs running through the streets, because they could just as easily turn on you. (Think Tien Amen)

In all the examples - the communist bloc, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Indira’s India, and also Iran in 1979, Arab Spring, not to mention Philippines and Indonesia come to mind: it wasn’t a regime with ongoing popular support, so much as a repressive regime that kept the general population sufficiently less unhappy that they tolerated the situation until things finally got worse and the general anger boiled over. Whatever base got the dictator in place to begin with evaporated decades ago.

Funny thing - after the Russian liberation, when the economy was in the dumpster trying to adjust, there was a grumbling minority who hankered for the “good old days” when the bad old times looked relatively good compared to today. But no doubt there are those older Americans who look on the BLM riots and think things were better under Jim Crow.

13

The Romanian Revolution fits the OP’s parameters, I think.

14

This is what immediately came to mind, especially a major “support” rally he called that turned against him:

https://fee.org/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-nicolae-ceausescu-the-romanian-fuehrer/

15

I don’t know how “authoritarian” it was, but the unexpected accession of Lady Jane Grey to the throne of England definitely fell because, although it was perfectly legal (McConnell would have loved that), it was totally unexpected to most people and had no support. When the royal barge went down the Thames taking her to her coronation, people asked who that was. They were expecting Mary Tudor. Grey was famously known as the “Nine Days Queen”, because that’s how long it took for Mary Tudor’s supporters to come in and put Mary on the throne.

In keeping with the thread title, it didn’t take long for much of Mary’s base to become disenchanted with her, raise an army, and demand that she abdicate and put Jane back. Which is why Lady Jane Grey – who Mary Tudor simply wanted to keep under house arrest – ended up getting beheaded.

16

I still don’t buy any of the examples. In authoritarian regimes, other than the established hierarchy - the party members who have cushy jobs because of the oppression of the government - any base is long ago evaporated. The party beneficiaries would probably be more opportunists than believers, and generally to few to qualify as a groundswell “base”.

The Romanians, AFAIK, did not have a popular backing for their government. Indeed, it had one of the most oppressive regimes, sufficiently hated that unrest turned into overthrow in a matter of a day or less. (The was the protester in East Germany with the placard: “Poland 10 years, Czechoslovakia -10 months, Hungary 10 weeks, Germany 10 hours” and hastily scrawled at the bottom - “Romania, 10 hours”) Elena’s last words were apparently “Nikki! They’re going to shoot us!”

Lady Jane, IIRC, (Someone with a better grasp of British history to weigh in?) was first of all married to Dudley Jr. so it was a power grab by her father-in-law. Combine that with it being the fight between Catholic and Protestant, and the tug of war between religious politics and legal succession, she probably did not stand a chance to begin with. It wasn’t so much that people supported her and changed their mind, as that when Edward died, it was assumed his much older sister Mary would take over despite being Catholic, despite being originally excluded as product of an illegal marriage. Henry and Edward had played games with the succession laws but in the end decided to let the old law and tradition stand - Edward, then Mary, then Elizabeth unless any of those produced offspring. Dudley Sr. gambled that the elite would prefer Protestant over legal succession, and lost bigly. Perhaps too many remembered the War of the Roses only 3 reigns prior, and were reluctant to support a less direct claimant. Some didn’t want Dudley Sr. calling the shots.

Perhaps a better example of how a regime has a base is the Iraqi one - the Baathist party was mainly central Iraqi Sunni’s. They kept under control the southern Shiites (who outnumbered them) and the northern ethnic Kurds. Anyone who wanted a career in government agency had to join the party. The Sunnis recognized that their position was precarious and depended on Saddam’s repression of the others, but despite typical totalitarian cult of the leader, there’s no indication they were adoring fans of the leader - they just tolerated him. And, it was outside forces that did him in.

Of course, no example would be complete without mentioning Hitler. Again, there was a fanatic group of Brown-shirts willing to cause trouble and engage in violence, but the majority of his support - at most, 33% of the votes cast - was because of his violent opposition to Communists and promises to get the economy going again. It was less than 15 years since communists had trashed the Russian empire, executing the elite and confiscating anything of value from the middle class, and fellow travelers were creating chaos in Germany. It was 10 years after gross hyperinflation had destroyed the local economy. Hitler promised to make things better, and exploited xenophobia and prejudice to blame those responsible, for a population looking for blame. Things got better for a while for those who did not oppose him, but presumably enthusiasm dwindles as things got worse. And still … got only 33% of the vote. And like Saddam, was removed by external forces.

I suspect a disillusioned base in a stable dictatorship is more likely to lead to a palace coup. Perhaps we can pick on Mubarak. His regime collapsed because the general population was disillusioned with his government and its blatant corruption. The Army stood back because they disapproved of Mubarak’s attempt to place his playboy son in charge; in the ensuing chaos, the Army itself seems to have not lost the people’s respect, and after some interesting messy (lethal) politics seems to have come out the winner.

17

While people may have the impression that there was a conscious decision by the soviets to open the Berlin Wall, it actually happened more or less by accident.

18

Excellent post overall. Thank you. Ref this snip …

Baathist Iraq is an excellent example. Now I’ll apply that idea to the USA assuming the white supremacists take over here soon and do not enact mass murder, merely mass political and economic marginalization of the “lesser races and creeds”.

Absent a huge change in birth & death rates, within another 30-50 years they would be a minority by a goodly percentage. And shrinking fast. So much like the Baathist Sunnis did, they would recognize they’ve ridden that tiger well out onto a limb (torturing two metaphors at once!). States with an oppressive regime representing a religious or ethnic minority almost never end smoothly or harmoniously. That dam bursts bigly and all that was before is washed away.

That Nelson Mandela himself and the regime turnover he engineered in South Africa are both considered nearly miraculous examples of divine intervention is surely the exception that proves the rule.