As Ukrainians fight to preserve their democracy, PBS’s Christiane Amanpour declared it necessary on her Friday show to likewise preserve democracy at home against those would rather seek to install some sort of autocracy.
Speaking with political scientist Francis Fukuyama, Amanpour warned, “your own country, the United States, has seen -- and certainly some European countries, and particularly in Eastern Europe, you know, illiberal democracies, even a tendency towards a slight autocracy, even in our democracies. And this was happening in the United States. And a lot of it is a result of or built on the incredible partisan division inside the United States. You touched on it - right now, you know, with the fight over vaccine mandates and—and-- the rest.”
Earlier in the segment Fukuyama condemned people who equate mask mandates to authoritarianism, claiming that the war in Ukraine should put things into perspective, but Amanpour appears to be arguing that opposition to mandates has led to increased domestic autocracy which makes no sense.
Despite this lack of coherence, she added “there seems to be no sense of the commons in countries like United States and other illiberal democracies. So, even if ‘we’ win this battle against autocracy in Ukraine, it seems to me that the table has to be reset at home, in the homes of democracies, in a very, very deep way, serious way.”
Fukuyama agreed and warned of leaders siding with Vladimir Putin:
Oh, absolutely. Look, there's one battle going on that has both external manifestations, like Ukraine, but it has internal ones. And what's really different about this battle, compared to the Cold War, is that it reaches into the heart of our democracy, because you have populist politicians, you know, like our former president, or Matteo Salvini in—in-- Italy, or Viktor Orban in Hungary, who are really allies of Putin, who like that kind of strongman rule.
Not only did Fukuyama ignore Trump’s role in arming Ukraine, he bizarrely declared, “And they all work together. They all support one another. They support non-democratic regimes. They're all gathered in Venezuela to keep Nicolas Maduro in power. And so it is, first of all, an international network of anti-democratic forces. And it's one that, unfortunately, has allies that are burrowed deep into our democracies.”
None of those three men support Maduro, but Joe Biden has inquired about working with him on oil production.
The man who wrote The End of History unironically concluded with one final warning about the erosion of democracy, “And so when I'm saying we have to exercise some agency in order to fight back, that has both an international dimension, as in the battlefield in Ukraine, but it also has a domestic dimension, where we need to protect our democratic institutions against this erosion by people that really don't value democracy in the way it should be valued.”
Neither Amanpour nor Fukuyama never did provide any concrete examples of this decline into authoritarianism, just vague charges against their opponents.
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Here is a transcript for the March 18 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
3/19/2022
1:10 AM ET
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yes, but just your own country, the United States, has seen -- and certainly some European countries, and particularly in Eastern Europe, you know, illiberal democracies, even a tendency towards a slight autocracy, even in our democracies. And this was happening in the United States. And a lot of it is a result of or built on the incredible partisan division inside the United States. You touched on it right now, you know, with the fight over vaccine mandates and—and-- the rest.
But—but-- there seems to be no sense of the commons in countries like United States and other illiberal democracies. So, even if “we” win this battle against autocracy in Ukraine, it seems to me that the table has to be reset at home, in the homes of democracies, in a very, very deep way, serious way.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: Oh, absolutely. Look, there's one battle going on that has both external manifestations, like Ukraine, but it has internal ones. And what's really different about this battle, compared to the Cold War, is that it reaches into the heart of our democracy, because you have populist politicians, you know, like our former president, or Matteo Salvini in—in-- Italy, or Viktor Orban in Hungary, who are really allies of Putin, who like that kind of strongman rule.
And they all work together. They all support one another. They support non-democratic regimes. They're all gathered in Venezuela to keep Nicolas Maduro in power. And so it is, first of all, an international network of anti-democratic forces. And it's one that, unfortunately, has allies that are burrowed deep into our democracies. And so when I'm saying we have to exercise some agency in order to fight back, that has both an international dimension, as in the battlefield in Ukraine, but it also has a domestic dimension, where we need to protect our democratic institutions against this erosion by people that really don't value democracy in the way it should be valued.
