Then came the benign dictators… A story of doing practically nothing

What led to the first dictatorship in a European Union member state

We first got a glimpse of new millennium nationalism, authoritarianism and neo-nazism in Jörg Haider. We noted it, Europe expressed its outrage, but after it was gone, we thought of it as a bad dream. Then came Berlusconi. That lasted for quite some time. But Sylvio was more of an Augustus and less of a Julius Cesar. And he could charm the masses. So we got complacent. Then Putin climbed the ladder of power in Russia, but it wasn’t clear from the get-go that his tenure would drift so dramatically towards autocratic standards and practices. So we let him roam freely, let alone rub shoulders with prominent European leaders who were dying to strike deals with him.

Then came the Dutch politician Pim Fortuin. This one creeped us out a little. He was very intelligent and manipulative with the truth. He coined the phrase “Nederland is full”, to criticize the number of immigrants coming into the country. And with the 9/11 attacks as wind beneath his wings, Fortuin was said to be the next prime minister. Until  someone got him out, assassinated him, and so our worries were put to sleep again. Then came Erdogan. Like Putin, he didn’t show us his true colors right away. And many Europeans, including Greek politicians, got comfortable with him. No alarm went off here too, not then, not even later, when he was already becoming the new Sultan. Merkel even visited him in his opulent Serai. And she also reprimanded a German comedian for making fun of the Sultan.

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

Then came another Dutchman, Geert Wilders. He became popular, but not as popular as Fortuin. He managed eventually to get into a coalition government, for a brief moment, until he was kicked out. He said that he resigned. Truth is, the Queen wanted him out, and so it happened. In any case, he was out of the governmental picture. But in the meantime, fascism was growing stronger. Spreading its roots throughout the whole society. Rutte moved to incorporate Wilders’s rhetoric into his own program, in order to weaken him by appealing to his voters. And he did succeed, but at what cost. Then came Marine Le Pen. She rose to prominence, after clashing with dad over the reigns of the empire and beat him. We got really worried over her, things got a bit sticky. But soon enough, she lost to Macron and we kicked the can down the road again.

I don’t care if they respect me, so long as they fear me.

Then came Golden Dawn. For decades they were getting 0,something percent of the Greek vote, so nobody cared. But with the Euro crisis already in sight, the Golden Dawn rascals took advantage of the anti-immigration sentiment and the overall injustice of the credi crunch and started taking center stage at the country’s political arena. And inside the Greek society too, by targeting immigrants and refugees. We let them take their hatred out on innocent people, for years. We let them beat and kill everyone who stood in their way. We let them become 3^rd party in number of votes. Some of us even voted for them, or secretly applauded their actions. We let them be whitewashed by mainstream media and the journalists who spoke fondly of that neo-nazi party, we elected them as MPs with the current ruling party in Greece.

Then Viktor Orban returned to power in Hungary. Although one could foresee where the situation was headed, European leaders let it unravel, took very little action, practically did nothing. They were busy with punishing Greece and the European South, with deepening the divide and threatening countries with exits, and so missed the authoritarian storm that began to sweep the country first, and the continent later. Then came the instigators of Brexit, Nigel Farage and the rest of the nationalists from the UK. What did we do? We deemed them ridiculous and frivolous. Until the frivolous became mainstream. And we lost the plot again. Brexit made nationalism so sexy again, that their cousins across the Atlantic got jealous and elected their own nationalist, Donald Trump.

Everywhere else, the world was in shock. Or was it? Or were there many of us who celebrated Trump’s victory? In Europe, in Greece, everywhere? No one saw it coming, or so we tell ourselves. It’s like watching a meteorite fly above your head, thousands of miles away, and then you see it closing in, and then you see it crushing but you still go on like nothing happened, because the collision happened far from you and the smoke hasn’t reached you yet.

Make the lie big. Make it simple. Keep saying it, and eventually, people will believe it. 

With Trump the shit got real. With Trump in power, every other leader of a smaller country grabbed the opportunity to take it two or three steps further. Which is why we have now Orban practically declaring the very first dictatorship within the European Union.

How many more wake up calls do we need to get our democratic shit together and do something about it? How much closer do we need to get to the fire, before we put it out or burn ourselves out? What is Europe waiting for? Or, are we purposefully procrastinating, because we share, deep down, some of Orban’s ideas? Look at the way Europe treats immigrants. Look at the way we view The Other, The Foreigner, as a threat to our European way of life. What is Fortress Europe all about, if not a castle haunted by our most conservative instincts? Do we really oppose Orban, or is it only aesthetically or superficially, while at the same time we implement small portions of his agenda into our own system?
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