When leaders rule by fear, turmoil grows By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Aug. 31, 2020

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/08/2020 (1579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced a visit to Kenosha, Wis., to express his support for the local police department and his opposition to street demonstrators. Mr. Trump, who seeks re-election to a second term on Nov. 3, is promising to defend law and order in bedroom communities like Kenosha, which lies between Milwaukee and Chicago.

Black Lives Matter supporters have been demonstrating in the streets since Aug. 23, when a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a black man, seven times in the back, paralyzing him. This was one of a series of police shootings of black civilians in U.S. cities, which have touched off recurring street protests.

Mr. Trump has steadily supported police action, sent federal officers to Portland, Ore., deployed riot squads around the White House for his own convenience and blamed Democratic Party officials for tolerating demonstrations.

Meanwhile in Minsk, capital of Belarus, beleaguered president Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday deployed his heavily armed police forces to block enormous throngs of demonstrators who were approaching one of his palaces. President Lukashenko’s press officer distributed a photo of the president dressed in body armour and carrying an assault rifle.

Mr. Lukashenko claims he won the Aug. 9 election with an 80 per cent majority over Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who ran for election in place of her imprisoned husband, Sergey Tikhanovsky.

It has been obvious from the numbers of street demonstrators for and against Mr. Lukashenko that the election result he announced was unrelated to public sentiment. The people of Belarus want him out. The Aug. 9 election result that Mr. Lukashenko’s government announced was obviously fraudulent.

The United States, which has two robust political parties and independent law courts, is in no danger of turning into a one-party dictatorship like Belarus. It is nonetheless illuminating to see both Mr. Trump and Mr. Lukashenko hiding behind phalanxes of riot police to keep themselves in office.

Mr. Trump will not win the election among America’s Black and Latino voters nor in its large cities. He may be able to scare white-skinned suburbanites into believing they are in danger from angry Black citizens. He is casting himself and the police forces of America as the line of defence that stands between the leafy suburbs and the criminal under-class.

In Belarus, the police are the line of defence that stands between the hated dictator and the people who want to be rid of him. The police have been grabbing people off the streets during anti-Lukashenko demonstrations, torturing them and then releasing them to spread fear among the people.

It hasn’t worked yet: throngs once again filled the streets of Minsk on Sunday telling the dictator to quit.

Mr. Trump and his supporters should watch the news from Minsk. It shows that Mr. Lukashenko has already lost legitimacy and political authority. As long as he cultivates the loyalty of his police and keeps the option of calling in reinforcements from Moscow, he still has a fragile kind of power. His power rests on fear, however, and the people are showing they are no longer afraid.

Consent is a better basis for power, a more stable basis than fear.

If Mr. Trump and his Republican Party cannot win fearless consent from the American public, they would do better to lose this election and return to fight another day.