After years of prevarication on the part of those who should know better, it has finally become common knowledge that democracy is being strangled in Hungary and Poland. What is less known is that democracy and the rule of law have been effectively dismantled in another EU member state, Bulgaria, under the rule of Europe’s longest-serving populist leader, Lieutenant General Boyko Borisov.
Unlike other European ‘strong men’, Borisov is not fascistic, antisemitic or xenophobic. Unlike other macho leaders in the region, he does not even have a problem with gay people. This makes him, I’ve been told by EU officials, somehow “safe” when it comes to democracy.
But it is not only fascistic xenophobes who are capable of killing democracy. This task can be very efficiently handled by semi-literate macho males bereft of any anti-democratic ideology.
