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Guardian

Guardian

Behind Trump’s victory lies a cold reality: liberals have no answers for a modern age in crisis | Nesrine Malik

Guardian
Summary
Nutrition label

67% Informative

Authoritarian democracies thrive by co-opting those with proximity to power and managing those who do not benefit.

The trappings of national success assuage the masses and give a sense of power, prosperity and momentum.

In Egypt , as the jails swelled with political prisoners, the military government erected grand pharaonic monuments.

In India , Narendra Modi entrenched authoritarianism while he wooed big business and launched enormous infrastructure projects and Hindu temples.

So long as centrists double down on this system and hope for the best, western democracies will be vulnerable.

The authoritarians have an answer to the problem of systems too established and lucrative to undo: lie, scapegoat and appeal to people’s fears, prejudices and vanities.

Liberals don’t. Because they cannot grasp that within such systems, the benefits of rationality and individual freedoms do not accrue meaningfully to enough people any more.

VR Score

61

Informative language

54

Neutral language

47

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

58

Offensive language

likely offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

detected

Time-value

short-lived

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