> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order

The EU is just one AfD win away from doing the same thing. It's not immune to this issue either, you have the same problem happening right under your noses.

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epolanski 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not really.

Most European countries have parliamentary democracies.

It's not a winner-takes-all system ala presidential and semi-presidential republics where effectively individuals:

1. rule without opposition. There's no opposition it's not represented in that branch.

2. rule without even needing support of their own parties. The Italian prime minister or the German chancellor have to fight every day in parliament to have support of their parties and the other parties coalitions.

3. a single individual can claim popular mandate. In parliamentary systems you vote for parties/coalitions, not individuals

There's a reason why this authoritarian trend goes from the Philippines, Nicaragua, to Belarus, to Turkey, to Russia, to most African countries and now US. They are all presidential republics.

The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been...Sri Lanka. Almost 50 years ago. Presidential ones? It's basically every year.

Systems with winner-takes-all mechanics do not represent voters, and power is too concentrated.

Parliamentary democracies might be labeled as less efficient, that I can agree, but they have strong antibodies to such people.

See Austria or the Netherlands as examples where strong far right authoritarian-wannabes individuals became prime ministers...and then nothing happened and their governments didn't last.

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noobermin 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Europeans are so blind to how they are essentially on the same path as the US, the US just got there first.

	▲	sofixa an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Most European countries have functioning legal and electoral systems, and more than two parties. On top of that, constitutional courts aren't political appointments. So it would be incredibly hard for a political entity like AfD or RN to gain full and absolute power like the orange has achieved. Even in the worst cases, those parties usually only have ~30% popular support at most, which usually translates to at most ~30-40% of seats in parliament. Which means they cannot even get parliamentary majority, and probably can't get head of state either. Americans just like to pretend things aren't that bad and they aren't the only ones falling into the abyss.
	▲	messe an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		While there is a trend toward the right in many (not all) EU countries, it's a far cry from the shit show on the other side of the Atlantic.