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Democracy threatened by democratically elected leaders (www.deccanherald.com)

submitted 1 year ago by xuxebiko@kbin.social to c/world@lemmy.world

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Narendra Modi is a democratically elected leader, but his image is that of a leader who decimated opposition and dissent — in Parliament or on university campuses.

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[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, he wasn't. He was appointed. His party won the largest number of seats, but not a majority, and Paul von Hindenburg won the Presidency. The problem is that the party with the largest representation got to choose the Chancellor, so obviously the Nazis picked Hitler. In theory the President needed to agree to it, unfortunately they were Nazis so, ya know, not big fans of mutually beneficial compromises.

Then Pauly Boy let them pass the Reichstag Fire Decree and the purge of opposition began.

The power sharing at the time was a bit convoluted but eventually he'd force the Presidency into irrelevance and then, eventually, just take the title too, for shits and giggles.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And in the end, Pauly did it all because he inherently hated the left, independent of any evidence or anything. He just believed they were traitors and the reason everything was lost.

Hrm... sounds familiar recently, doesn't it? 😑

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Two further tidbits:

The NSDAP already had falling results in 1932 (down to 33% from 37), and the 1933 elections weren't free (47%).
The enabling act wasn't really passed legally. They had to arrest SPD and KPD MPs to get the necessary 2/3rds majority, ignoring the quorum.

On the whole they kept up the appearance of the whole thing being legal as far as they could because, well, they could: Why throw away the appearance of legitimacy when you don't have to, Nazis are idiots but not in that way.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 5 points 1 year ago

The process you described sounds like a normal parliamentary system to me, and lots of countries with that kind of system are generally described as democracies. It also sounds a lot like the Electoral College in the US.

By your account, the voters might not have chosen Hitler personally, but they did choose the Nazi party, and I assume anyone who was paying attention knew the Nazis would select Hitler as Chancellor.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Edit:

Parliamentary systems typically choose PMs or whatever from elected representatives, but it's true enough it's not strictly required, and he certainly had the support of the Nazi base.

The other important lesson to learn from the example, other than the Nazis never won a fair national election but seized power anyways, is that Hitler could not run for office because of the crimes he was convicted of. You know, like trying to overthrow the government.

Disbarring a fascist from office doesn't work if you let him out of prison with a slap on the wrist.

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023

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