# Why the global rise of autocracy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 3, 2025, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584 "2025-04-03T18:06:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2025, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/21 "2025-04-03T23:24:18Z")
[ANALOGY] When the young mother finally gets the screaming baby down for a nap, sometimes – rather than do a happy dance – she simply collapses herself. [/ANALOGY] ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2025, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/22 "2025-04-03T23:25:57Z")
> [@Al128](#): > > I always wondered that there was not more of a broad and bipartisan “_thanks-god-now-we-have-a-grown-up-as-president-again_” movement in the US, when Biden came and did reasonably things all around. The Republicans don’t want a “grownup”; they want Trump. Biden isn’t _nearly_ evil or stupid enough to make them happy, even if he wasn’t the wrong party. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2025, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/23 "2025-04-03T23:34:04Z")
F’ing solid post, no notes. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2025, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/24 "2025-04-03T23:56:43Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > [Rates of infectious disease linked to authoritarian attitudes and governance | University of Cambridge](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rates-of-infectious-disease-linked-to-authoritarian-attitudes-and-governance#) Here is a pre-print with more info: > **[OSF](https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/84qcm_v1)** They are mostly saying that in areas where authoritarian ideas are now most prevalent, COVID hit worse. One possibility – which would go against their thesis – is that the authoritarianism existed before COVID and impaired public health measures in those areas. However – both could be true – preexisting authoritarianism made COVID worse, and then bad COVID made authoritarianism worse. I actually consider this positive. The COVID effect should start wearing off. Yesterday was one of the worst days in American history. Can I hope that was the nadir?. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/25 "2025-04-04T00:08:01Z")
This predates covid, and finds that higher rates of infectious diseases in the 1990s still causes higher rates of authoritarianism 20 years later. We might just be beginning to see the rise of authoritarian politics due to this. Who knows how bad it’ll be. But since Covid, Trump has gotten re-elected and the far right are winning all over Europe. No idea if there is a connection though. > The US findings were replicated at an international level using survey data from over 51,000 people across 47 different countries, comparing responses with national-level disease rates. > > The most authoritarian US states had rates of infectious diseases – from HIV to measles – around four times higher than the least authoritarian states, while for the most authoritarian nations it was three times higher than the least. > > This was after scientists accounted for a range of other socioeconomic factors that influence ideology, including religious beliefs and inequalities in wealth and education. They also found that higher regional infection rates in the USA corresponded to more votes for Donald Trump in the 2016 US Presidential Election. > > Moreover, in both nations and US states, higher rates of infectious disease correlated with more ‘vertical’ laws – those that disproportionately affect certain groups, such as abortion control or extreme penalties for certain crimes. This was not the case with ‘horizontal’ laws that affect everyone equally. > > “We find a consistent relationship between prevalence of infectious diseases and a psychological preference for conformity and hierarchical power structures – pillars of authoritarian politics,” said study lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod, an expert in the psychology of ideology from the University of Cambridge. > > “Higher rates of infectious diseases predicted political attitudes and outcomes such as conservative voting and authoritarian legal structures. Across multiple geographical and historical levels of analysis we see this relationship emerge again and again.” > > “We found that pathogen rates from over 20 years ago were still relevant to political attitudes as recently as 2016. If COVID-19 increases the allure of authoritarian politics, the effects could be long-lasting,” said Zmigrod, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/26 "2025-04-04T00:10:05Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Yesterday was one of the worst days in American history. Can I hope that was the nadir?. That is an…optimistic…view. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![duality72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duality72/32/3910_2.png) [@duality72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duality72)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/27 "2025-04-04T05:43:37Z")
> [@Al128](#): > > I think we all understand that our (collective) children will not be able to easily afford their own house, etc… so for the first time in “direct” human-memory, there will be a generation that will NOT be better off than their forefathers. This just isn’t true, though. Young adults today are buying houses at about the same rate as the last several decades; sometimes it’s been a bit better, but sometimes it’s been worse. People think for some reason that millennials are worse off, but it isn’t so. > **[Young people buy a lot of homes - Kevin Drum](https://jabberwocking.com/young-people-buy-a-lot-of-homes/)** > > Yesterday Dean Baker asked a good question: why do media outlets keep telling us that it's all but impossible for young Millennials to own a home? It seems that cost-cutting or other measures prevent reporters at CNN and the New York Times from... There are certainly problems I wish we would address with capitalism, especially in the U.S., but people are still generally better off than they have ever been. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/28 "2025-04-04T10:43:09Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > That was a huge factor in the energy that propelled Marine le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, etc. - because they were the parties calling for this migration to be curtailed while the liberal parties weren’t. Without so much Muslim/African/Arab immigration, those far-right parties would have had a lot less popularity. Yes. This is _the_ factor behind the rise of the far right in Europe. Mainstream parties refused to consider lowering immigration, or they promised to reduce it and failed. So the far right parties have gained more and more support. > [@Al128](#): > > I think on a “meta” level the 2 hard drivers are: > > a.) Migration > … and the problem is not that it was a migration of people from Germany or Illinois, but from culturally “very 1800s” countries that were objectively a poor fit (coming from intolerant cultures into tolerant and triggering → [Paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)) 1400s more like. There was a naive view that everyone is the same and immigrants would easily integrate and become part of their new societies, and as we are now seeing with the second generation, this is just not the case. Yet the enthusiasm of politicians to bring in more and more people continues, regardless of all the problems we’re seeing and regardless of the wishes of voters. > [@Al128](#): > > b.) “Peak Capitalism” > I think we all understand that our (collective) children will not be able to easily afford their own house, etc… so for the first time in “direct” human-memory, there will be a generation that will NOT be better off than their forefathers. This might be a key factor in people not aligning with the mainstream or “the system” (that beforhand was a pretty good guarantee to move up socially - american way of life and all that). I think the Great Recession broke the trust of the people in neoliberalism, yet there is no mainstream alternative. Hence the turn to economic populism and willingness to try things like tariffs. ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/29 "2025-04-04T12:15:14Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I’m going with WWII was 80 years ago and people collectively are stupid. I’m going with this as well, in that people with memories of WWII are literally dying out; even those with experiences once removed are aging out of power. I have photos of my dad and his pilot buddies, all with sidearms, standing in front of ruins in Berlin. I have the few medals he picked up off the floor of some Berlin building, and I have a memo with Hitler’s signature on it. My dad had a coworker in the federal govt who was an RCAF fighter pilot who managed to rip off a BF 109 to get back to the UK. A lot of my (or our, Dopers’) generation have had experiences like that related to us. To the folks in power these days, I think that all of this is, almost-ancient, history such that the consequences of authoritarianism are simply things from overexaggerated dystopian fiction. ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/30 "2025-04-04T14:23:41Z")
I remember when Bush the elder was running for presidency and I thought his military service was during Vietnam or Korea. It was a shock even then to discover a WWII vet was still active in politics. WWII was grandparents war in my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/31 "2025-04-04T14:57:46Z")
> [@duality72](#): > > This just isn’t true, though. Young adults today are buying houses at about the same rate as the last several decades; sometimes it’s been a bit better, but sometimes it’s been worse. People think for some reason that millennials are worse off, but it isn’t so. > > [Young people buy a lot of homes – Kevin Drum](https://jabberwocking.com/young-people-buy-a-lot-of-homes/) I don’t know where that data come from (the plot says “Census Bureau” but no clue as to what data it is actually using) but the National Association of Realtors—who, you might say have a vested interest in knowing their market—show a quite definite trend of [declining proportion](https://www.nar.realtor/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.nar.realtor%2F%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2024-11%2F2024-hbs-first-time-home-buyers-1981-to-2024-bar-graph-11-04-2024-1300w-698h.png%3Fitok%3Dao55ptkC&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_GpxxtuDUy1eZaXSj8TxXyGBsPCNj) and [increasing age](https://www.nar.realtor/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.nar.realtor%2F%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2024-11%2F2024-hbs-median-age-of-home-buyers-1981-to-2024-line-graph-11-04-2024-1300w-713h.png%3Fitok%3DgIzkEA7s&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_GpxxtuDUy1eZaXSj8TxXyGBsPCNj) of first time buyers. From the [summary](https://jabberwocking.com/young-people-buy-a-lot-of-homes/): > - **First-time buyers** decreased to **24% of the market share** (32% last year). This year now marks the **lowest share since** NAR began collecting the data in **1981**. > - The **median first-time buyer age** increased to **38** years old this year from 35 last year, while the **typical repeat buyer** age also increased to **61** years from 58 last year The [full report](https://store.realtor/2024-nar-profile-of-home-buyers-and-sellers/) will cost you a nickel short of $200 but presumably goes into more detail. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/32 "2025-04-04T19:08:52Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Yes. This is _the_ factor behind the rise of the far right in Europe. Mainstream parties refused to consider lowering immigration, or they promised to reduce it and failed. So the far right parties have gained more and more support. That’s projecting American politics onto Europe; there’s plenty of anti-immigrant hostility and general xenophobia in the European Left. ---
**Author:** ![duality72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duality72/32/3910_2.png) [@duality72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duality72)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2025, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584/33 "2025-04-06T19:07:36Z")
You can click through to the Dean Baker article with a link to the Census Bureau data. And I’ll take neutral data and analysis over a trade group’s doomsaying any day. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-global-rise-of-autocracy/1016584.md?page=1)