Why Fringe Figures Are Holding Democracies Hostage
Mainstream political parties once acted as sponges, absorbing extremists and rendering them harmless. No longer.
McCarthy had to bend a knee.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Minorities occupy a special place in liberal democracies, their rights safeguarded by institutions from the tyranny of the majority. Several of the world’s leading democracies are now grappling with quite a different phenomenon, however — what might be called a tyranny of the minority.
In the United States, not only did an incompetent demagogue become president, he emboldened fringe figures who now control the Republican Party and hold hostage one chamber of Congress. The governing Conservative Party in Britain, likewise, is being pushed further and further to the right by a minority of ideologues — on “Europe” in particular. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government in Israel cannot function without support from far-right ministers who would have been dismissed as dangerous fanatics just a few years ago.