Wednesday, January 6 2021 was a day that will live in infamy in the history of the United States. The culmination of the assault on the temple of American democracy by hordes of fanatics spurred on by a demented egomaniac exemplifies how liberal democracies can be killed without the need to be shot down by an outside enemy. The most cynical and self-destructive national populism seen since the Russian Revolution and the rise of fascism in Europe attempted to assault American democracy and forcibly reverse the legitimate outcome of democratic elections. It almost succeeded.
This is unheard of in a republic that has been, since its foundation, the world reference for a system of government based on the constitutional order, which consecrates the people as sovereign, the rule of law, separation of powers, and which free, direct, periodic and transparent elections are the basis of its legitimacy.
During the 20th century, putting an end to liberal democracy as the worst system of government, if we exclude all the others (Churchill dixit), was a task to which first Hitler and Nazism, and then the late USSR, applied themselves with determination. For the Soviets, Western-style democracy was nothing more than a corrupt, bourgeois order designed to shore up the capitalist system based on capital's exploitation of the working class. But the USSR failed, and the wall came tumbling down.
