Populist threat

Liberal democracies have the enemy within. The excessive generosity of the concept and the term democratic allows very toxic elements to be born and grow within it, elements that only use the tools of democracy to attain power and from there to profit personally, both in political, economic-commercial and social aspects. 

The populist threat has become the greatest enemy of the liberal democracies that since the Second World War have provided security, stability and progress to the countries that managed to consolidate a system that, as some say, is the least bad, but which has proved to be in the best interests of the people. 

Of course, liberal democracies have their magnificent lights and their evil shadows because the institutions that make them up are governed by people who do not always respond to the commitment that their responsibility demands, nor do their political and intellectual capacity give the necessary measure to face the transcendental decisions that their positions entail, whether in the executive, legislative or judicial power. 

From the inefficiency, incapacity and lack of category of those who have grown up from a young age in political parties turned into electoral machines to achieve power at any price and from the corruption that causes a deadly degeneration, the supposed saviours of the homeland appear, the unscrupulous authoritarian populists and opportunists who promise what the citizens need and want to hear in order to get their votes. Then they fail to deliver on their impossible promises and look for scapegoats to blame for all ills. Unfortunately, there are so many examples that we are experiencing and suffering that it would be unfair to focus on just a few, but it is obligatory to focus on those who have the most influence by gaining power in great powers. 

The most disastrous cases are in Russia with Vladimir Putin, who disguises his iron dictatorship with democratic overtones totally under his control, and in the United States with Donald Trump. We can think back to Argentina's Peronism in the 1950s to agree that the phenomenon is not new; what allows authoritarian populists to have a greater impact on the population, and more quickly, are new technologies, television and social networks. Putin has been carving out his power over the years, sheltered by liberal democracies that did not question him as long as they obtained gas and oil at a good price, and with the support of another great threat to the great American democracy, Trump, who attacks institutions to try to avoid his economic and commercial accounts with justice, in addition to the stolen secret documents. And the Chinese dictator pulling his strings around the world, as he builds his hegemony. Meanwhile, each country suffers its own populist spawn.