South Korea Protest Culture Prevents Coup: Defending Democracy

                Protestors and legislators across both parties limited South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law from taking effect for more than one day.  After President Yoon’s late-night declaration of martial law, thousands of protestors converged on major sites in Korean electoral political life.  Then legislators convened in the middle of the night, live-streaming themselves climbing over the fences around their chambers, to vote unanimously to oppose the President’s declaration, including elected leaders from Yoon’s own political party.  So the President backed down, as did the generals who had supported him as well as his defense minister.

               How did a presidential declaration of martial law fail to take effect?  Some commentators have attributed this successful defense of electoral democracy to the protest culture that has pervaded Korean culture during the many attempts by presidents to overthrow the electoral process.  The first day after President Yoon’s declaration, hundreds of thousands of protestors did gather in many cities, including not just the capital but also the southern cities of Gwangju, Suncheon and Yeosu in Jeolla Province, as well as the Gyeongsang area including Busan, Ulsan, Changwon and Daegu, along with Gangwon Province and Jeju Island.

               Elected legislators also successfully mobilized in the middle of the night and agreed across party differences to unanimously oppose the president’s unexpected declaration.  In this case party allegiance was trumped by dedication to the electoral process, a dedication that remained strong in South Korea as a result of a their experience of dictatorship and coups in the 1970s and 1980s.  The question of when sworn allegiance to constitutional mechanisms for the transfer of power will defeat narrow partisan and individual interests is a central question for the survival of electoral democracies. 

               How many countries can have full confidence that their citizens and legislators will mobilize to interrupt the declaration of martial law?  When presidents show that they lack dedication to electoral process of power transfer, as in the United States in 2017 and in Tunisia in 2021, what does it take for democratic practices to trump autocrats?

Preparing for Trump 2.0: Defending Democracy

                Several social movement organizations and non-profits that support electoral democracy had done extensive in preparation for a Trump victory.  Knowing that his administration would be a major threat to democracy in the United States, they knew that organizing to defend democracy would be critical in the period before Trump takes office.

 For example, Movement for Black Lives mobilized with more than 200 other organizations to hold a mass call two days after the election, with speakers from some of the strongest opponents of Trump’s attempts to hold onto power in his first term, such as Center for Constitutional Rights; SEIU; Public Citizen; National Women's Law Center; United We Dream; Political Research Associates and the Center for Popular Democracy. As an outcome of that mass call, the group of organizations began inviting people into meetings to discuss how to respond to process the meaning of this blow to democracy on November 7.  Many other organizations and coalitions have been doing similar work for the past month.  So where to focus organizing efforts?  What skills are needed for to defend democracy?

               Fighting against authoritarian leaders has been widespread globally for many decades.  Knowledge sharing based on experience in democratic movements has always been an important part of the process.  With the rapid international communication systems and the internet, many organizations have provided guidance and research to those who seek it.  Gene Sharp’s work at the Albert Einstein Institute has been widely used to weaken dictators and assert the power of ordinary people in Burma and many other locations. His pamphlet guide to nonviolent methods to topple dictators, From Dictatorship to Democracy, is available for free downloads, and a brief summary of his 198 Methods based on Sharp’s research is widely available.   The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict draws on research by Peter Ackerman, Hardy Merriman, and Ivan Marovic to offer workshops, staff traiining, online courses, & other services.

               Other sources for training and skills development are available for free from other organizations as well.  WhatifTrumpWins.org is providing a series of skills workshops for the Trump era in such areas as de-escalation, mutual aid, action security, and strategy and vision.  Waging Nonviolence is producing a series of conversations with experienced organizers in struggles against authoritarians, frontline reporting, and other resources.  WagingNonviolence.org has argued that training large numbers of people is important in times of political upheaval, trainings that they and many other provide.  Waging Nonviolence has also produced a carefully selected group of resources in response to the election of Donald Trump as president in the United States.

               Training in specific skills useful in resisting authoritarian leaders and vigilantes are also available.  EndPoliticalViolence.org has released a guide to protecting communities from intimidation, threats, and physical violence, and provides free trainings to individuals and organizations.  Mijente is providing trainings on immigrant defense training on December 10, 13, and 16^th and will continue to provide trainings as we get into 2025.  And the Immigrant Defense Project has long provided guidance on community defense from ICE raids and resources for advocates and organizers. As with all social movements and resistance efforts, digital security is becoming increasingly central to effective organizing, as a recent UN report has suggested. So many organizations are including digital security skill development in their communications and action plans.

               Different organizations and movements make decisions based on their goals for how to prepare for at least four years of the Trump administration.  Collectively and individually we all have decisions to make about where to focus our energy and time, our resources and relations, and our hopes and our dreams. 

An Authoritarian President in the United States: Defend Democracy

 

               One risk of electoral systems is that an opponent of democracy can come into office through election.  In history elections have indeed served as a path to power for autocrats and dictators.  While Adolf Hitler is the best-known case of a dictator who came to power through an election, many others have more recently done the same (Putin, Miloševic, Erodagan). 

Yet a candidate for the presidency who openly stated that he does not plan on leaving office has now been elected in the United States.  After attempting a coup in 2019 and 2020, then being convicted of a felony tilting his previous election in his favor, voters in the United States elected Donald Trump for a second term to be their president.  Despite his requests during the 2020 campaign cycle to be elected for “12 more years” and “for life,” voters invited him back into a position of power. Despite his use of the claim that the nation was in a state of emergency for his own ends in his first term, voters have given him the levers of power of the  nation-state once again. Despite his tax cuts and other policies benefitting the wealthy much more than the general populace, voters wanted more of the same.

The election of an autocrat-wannabe to office was a long time in the making, and is an outcome of the slow erosion of democratic mechanisms over many decades in the United States. The election of a friend to white supremacists and misogynists is no surprise to those who know the past few decades of U.S. history, despite the successes of diversity efforts and social movements like the #MeToo movement.

Trump practices many tactics and strategies that are common to autocrats and dictators-in-the-making. Corrupting elections and spreading disinformation. Strengthening executive power and politicizing independent political bodies. Scapegoating the vulnerable and stoking violence.  His approach to political power is straight out of the authoritarian’s playbook.

Resistance to Trump administration efforts to stay in power despite constitutional limits on U.S. presidents to two terms will certainly emerge within his own administration, as it did during his first administration. Resistance to his efforts to destroy the constitutional balance of powers to consolidate his own power can be strengthened in many ways. 

During the next few months leading up to Trump taking office and the four years (or more) of his administration, I will introduce some resources for those who wish to continue to support the electoral democracy model of democratic governance and analysis of developments as they unfold.  Many posts in past years on this blog will be useful for thinking about how to protect democratic governance from an international perspective, and also from the viewpoint of local democracies at other scales besides the nation-state. 

Please feel free to click on the “Defend Democracy” at the top section on “Series” on the left column of the home page if you are interested in learning more about how democratic modes of power relations have been defended in the past in the United States and other regions.  See also the series on “Misnaming Democracy” if you are interested in places and times where what looked like democratic practice was not distributing power widely and equally to voters and others.  And the series on “Other Democracies” will introduce you to social relations (Mutual Aid, Abolition, Social Movements, etc.) and mechanisms (Mass Assemblies, Listening, etc.) that are democratic in nature, and also show you ways that groups often systematically excluded from electoral democracies (Indigenous communities, slum dwellers, etc.) have practiced democratic governance.