When a party is devoted to a person

+ political pressure on Netanyahu steers Gaza response US Edition - Today's top story: Why Trump's control of the Republican Party is bad for democracy [View in browser]( US Edition | 1 February 2024 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( American politics move fast, but we on the Politics + Society desk keep a close eye on the deeper, systemic issues behind the headlines. So when I came across a scholarly paper about how the Republican Party’s devotion to Donald Trump endangers democracy, I got in touch with its authors. Those authors − Erica Frantz, a political science scholar at Michigan State University; Joseph Wright, who studies political science at Penn State; and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who holds, among other posts, a position as distinguished practitioner in grand strategy at Yale − translated their scholarly article into a piece for regular readers. In it, they describe how democracy can be subverted into giving birth to authoritarianism. It has to do with political party insiders being purged or converted into supporters not of ideals or policies but of a particular person. It has happened around the world, and it’s happening here, too. In 2020, for instance, the Republican Party adopted no new platform, agreeing instead to support whatever Trump did or said. The cause of this problem, Frantz, Wright and Kendall-Taylor explain, is not so much with the person at the top but rather with [all those in the lower ranks who go along or allow themselves to be pushed out of the way](. These scholars describe a process, already underway in the U.S., that provides a warning not about politics but about democracy. Jeff Inglis Politics + Society Editor Republican elites have embraced Trump as their leader. AP Photo/Alex Brandon [Why Trump’s control of the Republican Party is bad for democracy]( Erica Frantz, Michigan State University; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Yale University; Joseph Wright, Penn State A second Trump presidency may be a danger to democracy, but that’s more to do with the Republican Party than Trump himself, researchers of authoritarianism explain. Confederate leaders Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis are depicted in this carving on Stone Mountain, Ga. MPI/Getty Images [For 150 years, Black journalists have known what Confederate monuments really stood for]( Donovan Schaefer, University of Pennsylvania At the turn of the 20th century, Southern sympathizers started building monuments to Confederate leaders. Black newspaper editors saw these emblems clearly for what they stood for – a lost cause. On Dec. 8, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the funeral of a 25-year-old Israeli soldier who was killed in Gaza. Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a dilemma: Free the hostages or continue the war in Gaza?]( Dov Waxman, University of California, Los Angeles A scholar of Israeli politics explains why Israelis are increasingly turning against Netanyahu and his promise that Israel can quickly defeat Hamas and bring Israeli hostages home. [Colorado voters seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot tell Supreme Court Jan. 6 ‘will forever stain’ US history]( Wayne Unger, Quinnipiac University In their Supreme Court brief, Colorado residents seeking to bar Trump from their state’s ballot say that ‘Trump intentionally organized and incited a violent mob to attack the US Capitol.’ [Why treason is a key topic in Trump’s 14th Amendment appeal to the Supreme Court]( Mark A. Graber, University of Maryland US law has long held that those who support rebels and insurrectionists are just as guilty of treason as those who support foreign enemies. 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