Who downvoted this? Conservatism has always been an ideology that's opposed to progress, democracy and freedom. It holds back society to preserve tradition and "family values" while promoting xenophobia, bigotry, and unquestioned submission to authority. The most conservative states in the United States are also some of the poorest, with the lowest standards of living, and also the most backwards. It isn't much different in other countries. The Nazis were conservative. Islamic countries with Sharia Law are conservative. And right now, American Conservatives are trying to implement a Christian-flavoured Sharia Law.

Haven't seen any indication of it being in danger in Switzerland. But we have proportional voting rather than first past the post and referenda are common.

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The UK has also had multiple unelected prime ministers due to the way that the parliamentary system works.

That's... not any indicator democracy is "on the wane". In most Western European countries we don't directly vote for the one man/woman, we vote for MPs because the legislative power is in the hands of the Parliament. As long as the Parliament is made of elected MPs then democracy is working just fine.

The US's system is unbalanced and unfair, but it's far from "doesn't exist". And while you have listed a pair of blue/red state pairs, look at the 2nd and next to last state and you see a red/blue state pair. So it's unfair, but it's not uniformly unfair.

I'm not really familiar with the problem of voter ID laws in the UK. Here (Spain) showing your ID is mandatory to vote, and nobody think that's a problem (but we need ID for basically any paperwork, so it isn't an additional burden). Afaik, the problem in the USA is that it is quite difficult to get an ID card, and intentionally so for certain demographics. Is it the same in the UK?

Seems like the problem isn't with democracy, but with the western falvor of liberal parliamentary democracy. Democracy is working just fine in China according to people who live there. All the available studies, including ones coming from prominent western institutions such as Harvard, consistently show that China is democratic and that public satisfaction with the government is far higher than in any western country:

• https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
• https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resilience-surveying-chinese-public-opinion-through-time
• https://socialistchina.org/2022/01/24/china-is-not-a-democracy-or-is-it-the-chinese-toolkit/
• https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
• https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html
• https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-numbers-show-just-how-much-the-lives-of-everyday-chinese-have-improved-in-recent-decades-2019-10-02
• https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-that-china-is-more-democratic-than-the-united-states-russia-is-nearby-and-ukraine-is-at-the-bottom/
• https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
• https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree

My exact thoughts, certainly a similarity between the two

Or Viktor Orbán.

Of course not. India used to be secular. the far right Hindu extremism is taking over. Also it's so good to be able to post this and not be trolled by pro Modi trolls. The amount of concentration of power due to lack of alternatives is so scary.

PS: I'm an Indian who now lives in Australia.

Yes it is still a democracy, maybe a democrazy. There are no widespread voter suppression, disenfranchisement.

The most recent election has shown that.

There are some pockets of election tampering, violence but nowhere widespread.

Yeah literally, this same thing can be said about every country on earth. The only places where corporations haven't infected the government are ones like Afghanistan that have no strong corporations.

"Oh no. Thats disgusting. Which one? There are like.. sooo many."

Not really. Every instance of fascism has been really good at adapting to a local culture and political environment. Just to cite the major ones from 1930s Europe, there are clear differences between nazism (German fascism), Francoism (Spanish fascism) and Italian fascism (the original).

It'd be absurd for fascism in the USA to parade with swastikas, pagan symbols and Hugo Boss uniforms. An American fascism would use stars and stripes, crosses and… red baseball caps, I guess. In the same way, Modi's Indian fascism uses Indian iconography to maintain power.

Not really, it always adapts to local needs and shares the same oppressive memes, sometimes taking some and leaving some behind.

In our modern age, it really doesn’t. We have the infrastructure to make direct democracy possible, we just lack the political will to take responsibility for our communities and vote and be informed as much as that would require. As humans, not as a nation in particular.

And it's already been pointed out that the actions of Trump and Bolsonaro mirror the same undermining strategy but failed. Still, Modi controls nearly all the media now so it's going to be stronger propaganda than Fox News.

The LDP has never had opposition leaders arrested. Just because they are popular doesn't mean that they aren't anti-democratic. Democracy requires free elections, which cannot exist if a significant minority is being actively suppressed.

Dictators can also be popular, but that doesn’t make their systems of government democratic. I would suggest you read the article if you haven’t because it discusses both Modi’s popularity and the specific actions he has taken that undermine Indian democracy.