Why do people keep voting for authoritarian leaders?

AvaddonLFC ☄️ 🤘@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 235 points –

I'm just trying to understand. Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary etc... Why do these leaders still get so much support after all they've done? What do they exactly like about them?

Aren't these people seeing a massive drop in their quality of life?

73

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Demagoguery, something that Socrates critiqued as a product of democratic systems.

Socrates imagined an election between a doctor and a candy store owner. The doctor would tell the populace what they didn’t want to hear.
As Socrates described it, the candy store owner would say of the physician that he works many evils on you. He hurts you, gives you bitter potions, tells you not to eat and drink whatever you like. What fun is that? The candy store owner, however, would offer sweets and tasty things. He would appeal to what people wanted, not what they needed. He would provide easy and popular answers to all their difficult problems

source

unfortunately we have too many candy store politicians across the globe.

Or, distilled into a modern cliché: "What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular." Elections are contests of popularity, not contests of thoughtfulness or morality.

In Spain the government decided that housing is a basic human right. Sounds awesome, right? But the population voted for its right-wing opposition anyway because immigrant bad.

Problem is that people disagree on who's the candy store owner. "Let's make housing a human right" may look like candy if you don't fully believe in their actual plans to make housing available at reasonable prices.

It's always wild seeing reading about ancient civilizations having the same exact conversations and challenges we're still having today.