Seeds of Authoritarianism in America: Recognizing the Warning Signs
The heated and violent images authoritarianism presents in western media coverage reflect the reactions of people who have finally had enough. The moments of strife and violence are of those willing to risk life and limb because their lives seem unsustainable, they do not see a future. We think of the border crisis in Belarus, Molotov cocktails being hurled in the streets of Myanmar, the images of malnourished Alexey Navalny in the prison camp. These experiences while significant, do not provide the backstory. They do not show what life looked like in the weeks and days before the clash. Violent images provide us with a perverse comfort; we think, my life doesn’t look like this; I have food on my table and the protests are not on my street. If we are lucky enough to live in relative comfort, and it is not our loved ones and friends being turned away at the polls or that are missing mortgage payments and ending up on lines at food banks, then this is not our reality. But authoritarianism grows and persists in the quiet places, in the comfort of complacence. Before we know it can seep into the political system rendering it a shell for corruption and a shadow of democracy.
I recently returned from conducting fieldwork in Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, many peoples’ view of this country was informed by the satirical film Borat, a film that bears no resemblance to the culture or landscape of this ancient place. For my research, I interacted with urban citizens, college students, NGO workers, scholars, activists, artists, local and national civil service employees, political appointees at the national and urban levels, architects, developers, and investors in the private and public sectors. This research was possible due to their level of education; the overwhelming majority of the people I interviewed spoke English.
While your kids can get a public education, there may be new restrictions on teaching history and texts that are based in science over ideology or promote a critical view of American history. These infringements start small and appear circumscribed, but they chip away at the foundation of our society. Tolerance of one infraction provides an opening for more intolerance.
Kazakhstan became independent upon the collapse of the USSR in 1991, not immediately embracing this independence. When the Soviet Socialist Republics were first given the chance to vote on whether to remain or become independent, Kazakhstan initially voted to stay. When independence was thrust upon them, they quickly adopted to a democratic market economy. The public resources (including vast oil supply and infrastructure) were converted to private-public operations which persist to this day. One of my interview subjects, an NGO leader in Kazakhstan described to me how early in independence, the society was excited for the possibilities to come, “…it was much more advanced, and people would feel free and its more inspired and bolder, stronger but not anymore…”[1].
This period, the early 1990’s, was also the time of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, a movement inspired by the anti-nuclear movement in the United States which successfully advocated for the closure of a Soviet era nuclear site in Kazakhstan. This closure launched Kazakhstan as a global leader in the denuclearization movement. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first president, pushed for rigorous and rapid development, out of the desire for Kazakhstan to become one of the most developed countries in the world. These plans included investments in human resources and had a strong foundation of the Soviet education system which was rigorous. They provided funding for international education opportunities at the secondary and post-secondary levels, paying for graduate education abroad for those who proved their scholarly and linguistic aptitude, and, if you made a commitment to return.
In 2019, my mother accompanied me to Almaty, the former capital, and was shocked at how the city resembled her own home of New York City and the capitals of Europe. She marveled at the beautiful parks, the cafes and gourmet meals, the fashionable city dwellers that passed her on the street and the apparent familiarity of life. “You would never know you were in an authoritarian country” she exclaimed on more occasions than I can recall. She unwittingly uncovered a terrifying truth.
In recent years, Kazakhstan has disbanded numerous human rights and election monitoring organizations under the pretense that they do not meet the financial reporting requirements[2] imposed just before the 2021 parliamentary elections. Despite restrictions, there were videos made of ballots being stuffed, yet the results have been officially accepted. These recent developments are part of a long trend. During my first visit to Kazakhstan in 2012, I asked my friends if they were voting on election day to which they all said some version of, what’s the point, we already know who is going to win.
Authoritarianism is sustained by the practices implemented at home, and, those tolerated abroad by others. Just across the border from Kazakhstan in Xinjiang, China, ethnic Kazakhs are being interned alongside Uighurs[3]. Despite the fact that their ethnic brethren with family residing in Kazakhstan are put in these reeducation camps, the Kazakh government does not rebuke the Chinese government[4] nor has it supported those seeking asylum in Kazakhstan [5]. Kazakhstan’s government is in a tough position; the prolific One Belt-One Road initiative has at least three ongoing developments in Kazakhstan for much needed transportation and energy infrastructure. However, the extractive nature of this partnership is becoming more apparent as Kazakh exports to China are getting refused at the border in larger numbers than those of their other regional exporters[6]. It similarly tolerates the authoritarian behavior of its Russian neighbor likely due in part to the imbrication of their economies and dependence on Russia for its energy infrastructure and resources when their own stores fall short[7].
This October right after I arrived in Shymkent, I went to a café around the corner from the apartment. I ordered a latte from a young woman who spoke English while watching families enter the nearby park, friends in groups go in and out of shops leaving with parcels. It felt serene, and I recalled my mother’s comments from years earlier. While I and many others enjoyed our coffee and went about our quotidian errands, the authoritarian conditions were sustained. Scholars and think tanks have been ringing the alarm loudly and continuously about the decline of democracy, however, these fall on deaf ears as many readers are not linking the substantive changes in their lives to this phenomenon.
While we shop for holiday presents and pay taxes on those purchases, those taxes may not guarantee you representation as come election day, there may be steeper identification requirements when you go to vote. When you contest this, you may find that your non-partisan election officials have been replaced with partisan ideological actors. While your kids can get a public education, there may be new restrictions on teaching history and texts that are based in science over ideology or promote a critical view of American history[8]. These infringements start small and appear circumscribed, but they chip away at the foundation of our society. Tolerance of one infraction provides an opening for more intolerance.
Political rhetoric and candor, particularly as it concerns national politics, is alienating. But as these examples show, many of the changes which infringe on our human rights and allow authoritarianism to pervade are happening at the local level. This is good news. Local government is where the decisions that impact our daily life are made, whether it is the speed on your street or concerning your rights as a tenant or a landlord. For better or worse, changes happen much quicker at the local level than in national apparatuses, and thus as citizens, you have the ability to quickly (comparatively) make a change that will impact your life and community. Involvement at the local level has the potential to make substantive changes, even under authoritarian conditions.
My research concerns public participation in urban planning in Kazakhstan. I aim to understand how people organize in response to development plans in a place that does not have free or fair elections, nor, provides venues for participation and dialogue between constituents and officials. Urban activists are concerned with issues such as gentrification, residential displacement, transportation equity, green space provision and intensely local concerns about amenities. As they endeavor towards finding meaningful, tangible solutions in their homes they create venues for discussion about these concerns and ensure that those concerns heard by those who affect change. While creating these venues, they tangibly impact their cities, successfully saving public green spaces, and in the process, advocate for their voices to be included as decisions are made. Further, they strengthen community bonds and create mutual accountability mechanisms through person to person connections which are elusive at the national level. Tocqueville famously wrote that Americans’ participation in civil society and civic associations provided a necessary check on power and this uniquely strengthened American democracy. The American democratic experiment can only persist if we participate, and insist that our institutions include every voice, and provide the opportunity for each of us to meaningfully participate and think critically.
Please, do not confuse serenity on your street for social peace. If so, you may go to the local café and start a discussion with your neighbors about some troubling development only to discover that the group quickly disbands because you are intimidated by your other neighbors who do not agree with you, and those neighbors are empowered by sympathetic laws and law enforcement. And it will be too late.
[1] Interview in Almaty, August 2019
[2] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/03/kazakhstan-human-rights-groups-under-pressure
[3] https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/in-xinjiang-ethnic-kazakhs-suffer-alongside-uyghurs/
[4] https://cabar.asia/en/kazakhstan-ethnic-kazakhs-and-uighurs-fleeing-china-feel-unsafe
[6] Cite- EurasiaNet: https://eurasianet.org/kazakh-food-exports-to-china-plummet
[7] https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-seeks-to-buy-electricity-from-russia-amid-crypto-shortages
[8] https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/us/texas-critical-race-theory-social-studies-law/index.html
