(today)

Social-science research shows that, unlike in the past century, 21st-century democracies don’t become dictatorships through force or military coups, but through gradual legislative changes. Emerging dictatorships exploit democracy‘s tools such as freedom of expression in order to deceive the public. Step by step they pass laws that empty the country’s democratic institutions of their moral values.

Before you know it, the country is left with an empty shell of democratic institutions, and the citizens remain without protection from the government‘s arbitrariness and without means for returning to the status quo.