Trumps refusal to commit to honoring the results of the election is the top headline out of the third debate, and rightly so. But I’ve seen very little discussing the actual potential dangers of his position. The best cautionary tale I’ve seen was a tweet stream from last night. I’ve edited the formatting to be more readable, but you can find the original tweets here:
@bogiperson wrote:
WRT #debates again, I know exactly what things can happen after a leader of a major party does not commit to accepting election results.
This happened in Hungary after 2002, when right-wing Fidesz (back then LESS right-wing, but already led by Viktor Orbán) refused to commit. He would make these exact vague comments like Trump just did?? That we will see?? And then after the elections made even stronger statements I was physically there at his big post-election rally on Andrássy St. I'd just moved to Budapest and went out of curiosity. He would later claim that he only referred to the historical 1947 Communists when he said "the Communists committed election fraud", but the way *I* remember it, he mentioned the 1947 elections only to draw an immediate parallel with the present day. (back then no youtube) Then he and his party would spend the entire term calling the legitimacy of the govt into question, until a point in 2006 when the moment finally came. A recording leaked about the governing Left's internal strife. Immediately right-wing demonstrations sprung up, until the whole thing culminated in neo-Nazis rioting in downtown Budapest, attacking and ransacking eg the National Television building (at this time i was in Northern Norway on a fellowship & desperately trying to reach my brother who lived in the area... and slept thru it!)
Many of the neo-Nazis were from organized football (= soccer) ultra groups and appeared clearly organized. To this day it is unclear WHO organized them. But what is clear is that Orbán and his party spent an inordinate emount of effort defending and justifying this. And they WON the next elections, not by inciting what? a civil war? Or any kind of RAPID change. But a whole term of "THEY cheated" and also "THEY" cannot protect you from neo-Nazis. First, they incite peopled and then went like "hey, it was not us, we PROTECT you from them".
So, it does not need to lead to immediate large-scale bloodshed if someone questions the legitimacy of elections. But it is definitely a HUGE warning sign that they are happy to use antidemocratic means to gain the upper hand... and then say "hey, we won the DEMOCRATIC elections".
And you know what?? They did! people voted for them! (I didn't, small consolation) they CHANGED the political climate to make that POSSIBLE. Trump is doing the exact same thing with the exact same tactics. And let me reiterate, Hungarians my age are moving abroad at stunning rates. And this happened through minimal bloodshed mostly confined to police and demonstrators. It doesn't need to be an all-out civil war. So even if G-d forbid Trump wins, and there is no civil war right away but he continues with the same arguments, BE ON YOUR GUARD. (btw now there are older people moving away too who did not have the opportunity to learn English/German at school bc of the Iron Curtain, which really terrifies me because what will they do abroad?? I see this in my social circles and I worry for people so much.) So basically that's it for now, please do go vote, even if the polls show a large projected difference (I have another rant about that).
This is truly scary stuff. Donald Trump has spent the last few years using birtherism to question the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. It looks like he is now preparing to spend the next four years questioning the legitimacy of Hillary Clinton’s presidency, and using that to build for a greater attack on our democracy in 2020.
I hope this analysis makes it into the traditional news media. The dangers need to be discussed widely.