I urge everyone to read this:
How to Lose Democracy: A Brilliant Journalist's Guide
What must Canadians and their new government fight to prevent? Ece Temelkuran explains in seven steps.
Andrew Nikiforuk 2 May 2025 The Tyee
In 2019, the Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran described how citizens can forfeit a democracy to the charms of an authoritarian populist in just seven easy steps.
In her book How to Lose a Country, she compellingly compared the process of democratic disintegration to the shedding of icebergs the size of Delaware off the coast of Antarctica.
But few with powers to do something about it in Europe and North America paid attention.
As a political columnist, Temelkuran occupied a front-row seat to the future as she watched Turkey's strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rise to power in 2002. He then systematically poisoned public discourse and weakened her own country's institutions over two decades.
The same forces of right-wing populism then started to rip apart Hungary, Israel, Britain, France, South Korea, Canada and the United States — all following a distinct pattern.
Every democracy believes it is exceptional, Temelkuran wrote, until it isn't.
Fascism, she added, was not a historical artifact but a living organism. Moreover, it was gaining strong appeal in an increasingly chaotic world that too often treated democracy as an empty spectator's sport with abundant popcorn.
So, you ask, what are the steps?
Just how does a revolutionary populist transform from "a ridiculous figure to a seriously terrifying dictator, while corrupting a country's entire society to its bones"?
The short version is that, first, an aspiring autocrat must create a movement of "real people." This movement then erodes truth and reason with infantile, terrorist or plastic language that shreds facts and civic discourse. In the process the populist removes shame and mercy from all public discourse and reduces democracy to bad reality TV.
Then, once the autocrat achieves a narrow electoral victory, he or she undermines a democracy's checks and balances with judicial and political reforms that centralize power and enrich oligarchs. The autocrat then disorients citizens with an ever-changing platform of change (Donald Trump calls it "flooding the zone") while progressives laugh at the political circus. But no matter, the clown wins. And so the autocrat builds a postmodern state where people in the shadows come to lament, "This is not my country."
That's it. And we've seen some of this playbook tried in Canada.
MAGA maple syrup populist John Rustad nearly toppled B.C.'s NDP government by judiciously applying the beginning steps. The United Conservative Party led by Premier Danielle Smith has proven itself "an authoritarian force in Alberta," carefully detailed by political scientist Jared Wesley. And demagogue Pierre Poilievre came within a few seats of making Canada over in ways that reflect Donald Trump's United States.
There, it may be too late. Trump has completed the chaos machine and is now building a revolutionary society.
Before delving more deeply into some of Temelkuran's observations, it's important to note the essential preconditions for failure.
Certain historical forces predispose a democracy to walking the seven steps into the embrace of strongmen rule. They include a political class that has grown dangerously aloof and ignores rampant economic inequality. Add to that explosive mix a citizenry rattled by the wild horses of history: inflation, mass migration, pandemics and technological disruption.
Finally, a revolutionary tribe of counter-elites must emerge to inflame and channel the discontent. Fascism does not erupt in vigorous democracies; it can succeed only in debased ones where habits of self-reliance, responsibility, community, competence, initiative and social equality have been allowed to atrophy.
So once a nation's smug elites have abandoned working people, divided the nation with culture wars and reduced the idea of democracy to a performance art without consequences, the ground is laid.
As Canada emerges from a close-fought federal election that turned on threats against the nation's very sovereignty, the stakes are quite clear. So let's walk through Temelkuran's seven-step program for replacing democracy with autocracy.
1. Create a movement of 'the real people'
The crusade begins with pissed-off ordinary folk. Burdened by grievances and indignities — such as those imposed by the COVID pandemic, inflation or an opioid crisis — the people clamour for respect.
From this base of real loss or suffering, the leader of the movement then manufactures extra-strength victimhood. Mexicans are overrunning the United States. Christians aren't getting a fair shake. Immigrants have debased Germany. Muslims are oppressed in Turkey. No province has been ignored by Ottawa more than Alberta. Jewish George Soros has betrayed Hungary. And so on. Not surprisingly, the status quo dismisses embracers of these tropes to be deplorably weird emanations.
Notably, almost all these movements start in the hinterland where urban elites have typically shrugged at the casualties of progress.
The illiberal ruler of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, built his base on festering economic, social and energy issues in the countryside, where 40 per cent of the population still lives.
Erdoğan, Turkey's powerful leader of 20 years, harvested his initial political support from the small towns of rural Anatolia.
Take Back Alberta, which catapulted Smith to power, fermented in the evangelical watering holes of central Alberta.
The extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany party emerged from rural areas with disposable incomes lower than the national average.
2. Throw away rational discourse and spank the naughty child
Once a populist has created a movement, the leader must disrupt reasonable discourse and charm followers with infantile language. This reduces citizens to the state of needy children and elevates the movement's leaders into all-knowing mothers or fathers. With soothing and simple slogans (Axe the Tax, Vote for Change, Drain the Swamp) leaders can take a movement anywhere with the promises of fairy tales.
In Trump's second presidential campaign, the Vladimir Putin apologist Tucker Carlson even compared Trump to an angry father who was going to discipline his children. "When Dad gets home, you know what he says? 'You've been a bad girl, you've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now.'"
Because fascism arises from human emotions of loss and despair, it has no patience for rational debate. Revolutionary populist leaders attack, attack and attack. They disparage the character of their adversary, appeal to ignorance, argue that something is true because people believe it, and openly celebrate absurdity. The historian Hannah Arendt noted that constant lying in political discourse is not about making people believe a lie but about "ensuring that no one believes anything anymore."
The abandonment of reason shouldn't surprise members of highly polarized societies, adds Temelkuran. It is but "a coherent consequence of the times we live in, and something that contaminates all of us, albeit in different ways."
To own the narrative, populist leaders must also attack or denigrate the press while cultivating their own regime-friendly outlets. If a populist is not offending the mainstream media, then he or she is missing an opportunity to establish good communications with "the real people."
A largely urban and well-educated media really hasn't got a clue about how to deal with this unreason. Fact checking and correcting misinformation can't really stop a tsunami of irrational waves of anger, warns Temelkuran. She compares such tactics to playing chess with a pigeon:
"The pigeon will just knock over all the pieces and shit on the board, then depart, proudly claiming victory and leaving the mess behind for you to clean up."
Germany's mighty press in the 1930s had no idea how to handle Hitler or the Nazis. "There is no law to prevent right-wing populist political language invading and destroying the public sphere," writes Temelkuran.
3. Banish shame and mercy
Temelkuran argues that acceptance of highly organized, large-scale lies in a democracy simply requires "the normalization of shamelessness."
She points her finger at the selling of the Iraq War and the emergence of reality TV. Programs like The Simple Life, The Apprentice and Survivor idolized shameless power mongers and banished mercy. Donald Trump, a convicted felon, rapist and snake oil salesman, epitomizes this coarse normalization.
Every so-called populist leader now breathes this odium like air. When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, a former talk show host, recently shared the stage with right-wing influencer Ben Shapiro to raise funds for an NGO that supports Donald Trump, she shamelessly pretended that she was practising some kind of tariff diplomacy. Instead, she was actively undermining and betraying her own country.
4. Weaponize judicial and electoral reform
Once a revolutionary populist has achieved power, he or she tampers with the system to extend their power and crush their opponents. In Hungary Orbán rerigged the judiciary and electoral mechanisms to guarantee free but unfair elections. Smith is now doing the same in Alberta by rewriting laws that politicize municipal politics, curtail freedom of information rights and allow the wealthy to pour more dark money into elections.
The illiberal state breeds the illiberal citizen drowned by a flood of ever-changing causes. A populist leader asks only three things: obedience, submission and rage. And so the illiberal citizen must not question the powerful one when he or she replaces civil servants and honest officials with quacks, party members and rent-seeking individuals. But the illiberal citizen must, on command, express rage against targets of the regime, whether they be Ottawa, transgender people or environmentalists. "People's desire for a cause is satisfied by the authoritarian leader's confidently told story," writes Temelkuran.
Here Temelkuran offers what may be a counterintuitive insight. Ever since Trump became a political force in 2016, much of the United States' political class responded by treating Trumpism as an entertaining joke. Many progressives turned to the satirists Bill Maher and Jon Stewart to ease their anxiety and laugh at the orange dunce. (Hitler was dismissed as a grand buffoon and crank by the press too.)
In Canada, Danielle Smith has been characterized as a wackadoodle posing as someone serious. That seemed to be the main theme of the NDP's failed election campaign against her.
But joking about the horror is a big mistake, writes Temelkuran. She calculates that the left wasted crucially valuable time in Turkey "by reacting to right-wing populism with humour and sarcasm" and "trying to laugh away our fears." The problem is that laughter can expose the ridiculous character of the throne holder but it cannot tip over the throne. Instead of laughing, citizens must respond with concerted actions that address the real roots of the malaise.
7. Build a different nation
As the laughter evaporates, every autocrat uses their power to build what they vow will be a new and great nation if not the greatest nation. In Hungary Orbán called his creation "an illiberal democracy." In reality it operates as a mafia state enriching Orbán's friends and relatives. Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu fostered an illiberal apartheid state now guilty of genocide. In the United States Trump has refashioned a tired republic into a kleptocracy by ignoring the rule of law, giving more power to oligarchs and starting a global trade war.
Smith is now working on "freeing" Alberta from Confederation with a made-in-Alberta pension fund and an international border defended by her own police. She is even threatening secession. The electoral reform package she introduced this week is Trumpian in tone and impact.
In a 2024 TVO interview Temelkuran offered some pointed updates with humility. She said: Don't be afraid to use the word "fascism." This ever-evolving condition has re-emerged in our politics in truly modern and elastic clothes. Beware as the new fashion of fascism sometimes masquerades as merely another form of highly seductive political entertainment.
The brilliant Turkish journalist also said that she understands why privileged citizens might think they can ignore such nasty political developments and escape the natural disaster unfolding at their doorsteps.
But that would be a grave mistake, she warned, paraphrasing Pericles, the ancient general and politician who lived during the golden age of Athens. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean the fascists and revolutionary nationalists will not take an interest in you.
Once the seven steps have been completed and your democracy looks like a melting ice sheet, "your individual life will become a difficult place to live."
Temelkuran lived the tragedy. She now writes in exile from Germany, where populists have followed the same seven steps and now threaten to unravel that country's democracy, too.
An updated version of 'How to Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship' will be published in 2026.
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