Autocracy is making a comeback
All over the world, autocratic politicians are singing from a similar hymnsheet
Around the world, autocracy is making a comeback. Vladimir Putin in Russia; Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia; Donald Trump in the US. And they use similar tactics.
They discredit the media. Trump recently described CNN and MSNBC as news channels that broadcast “97.6 per cent bad things about me… what they do is illegal, it’s illegal”.
In the same month, Malta’s Prime Minister Robert Abela also delved into the mathematics of truth and claimed that “90 per cent of what The Shift News published was false news”.
US Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a close Trump ally, when politely asked about the classified discussion of air strikes on Yemen chaired by Vice President JD Vance on a Signal chat group, suddenly tore into the journalist, telling her literally to “go back to your country” and “we don’t give a crap about what you write”.
Abela’s repeated dismissal of media reports about his ministers’ abuse of public trust and finances is similar in tone. He calls the reports “disgusting” and “vile attempts to throw my minister and family into jail”.
They intimidate the judiciary: Trump said a federal judge who tried to stop his deportation plans of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador should be impeached. The president described US District Judge James Boasberg as an unelected “troublemaker and agitator”.
Closer to home, we have a prime minister who, last year, claimed that some members of the judiciary were part of the establishment and that the timing of the conclusion of the damning hospitals concession inquiry, weeks before the MEP and local council elections held in June 2024, “was not a coincidence”, describing the actions as “political terrorism”.
They control the police: Trump sacked the director of the FBI as well as all six of the FBI’s most senior executives and multiple heads of FBI field offices across the country. These included the high-profile leader of the Washington DC field office, which was involved in the prosecutions of Trump as well as federal prosecutors who investigated the January 6 riots.
Our police commissioners, and there have been many under Labour, are known to be chosen for loyalty to the Labour government.
Malta’s police commissioners are known to be chosen for loyalty to the Labour government
Citizens’ direct access to a magisterial inquiry has been removed and handed over to a police commissioner with a record of not taking action against corruption.
They promote misinformation: Abela has One, which is the local model of Trump’s Fox News. Both serve as a journalist kindergarten for those seeking a future political career and a high place in the party. Abela also controls the state broadcaster.
They pardons criminals: in olden times, the king’s pardon was an expression of the monarch’s absolute power over you.
On entering the White House, Trump pardoned the January 6, 2021, rioters and thugs who attacked Capitol Hill and who tried to overthrow the results of the November 2020 presidential election.
In Malta, the government pardoned many of those who received a monetary benefit intended for people with severe disabilities they did not suffer from.
They are experts in U-turns: the tariff war that Trump declared on foe and friend alike lasted no more than a week before being put on hold for 90 days. The stock market crash and this pause gave rich investors a golden opportunity to buy in at a low price and look to huge profits in the future.
Labour has performed U-turns on several issues, the most notable being that of blocking a public inquiry into the Jean Paul Sofia tragedy.
Autocrats hold that democracy amounts to nothing more than a vote thrown in a box every four or five years.
History shows that ordinary people can be made to listen, fear and be made to believe anything. The autocrats talk using words of “making their country great again”. In local parlance, we are told repeatedly that we have become “the envy of the world”.