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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like Newspeak to me. Insofar as climate refugees may trigger “xenophobia” it will be elites trying to overcome democratic resistance to open borders. In the US, all it took was a modest amount of scarcity ($5 gas and a bit of inflation) for the GOP to pull back ahead in the polls.

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I find your point extremely interesting, though I think I'm missing one of your core assumptions. When you highlight the term "democratic," it seems to me as though you implicitly switched away from the ethical perspective of nequo's comment based on the assumption that universal human rights should be respected no matter what. Instead, you seem to be working from a legal perspective based on American law and ethical theory surrounding it. Do you mind expanding on this?

You have to distinguish between “democracy” and “liberal democracy.” Democracy doesn’t inherently require “rights.” And in general “rights” are invoked to curtail democracy. For example, Germany is more democratic than the US, insofar as it leaves far more things to the public to decide—everything from abortion to guns to campaign finance to same sex marriage—without invoking “rights” to override the public’s decisions. The problem with sweeping invocations of “universal human rights” is that in practice they’re not so universally accepted, and tend to be invoked to override the popular will.

My quibble with OP is that he’s using “anti-democratic” to mean exactly the opposite. The concern is not that a minority of voters will force countries to exclude climate refugees. To the contrary, the concern is that a majority of voters will seek to exclude refugees, in contravention to, as you put it, migrants’ “rights.” But who decided those rights exist? Most people in the world would not agree anyone else has a right to live in their country. Even insofar as they might welcome refugees, they would see that as an act of magnanimity, not “rights.”

Illiberal democracy is not an American invention. See Hungary. The truth is that people can vote in whichever government they like. As long as that government still ensures free and fair elections it's still a democracy.

Whether or not Hungary meets this definition in 2022, however, is an open question.

There's more to democracy than the tyranny of the majority. Didn't Hungary (and Poland) also destroy their independent court system?

A pure democracy is literally tyranny of the majority. Anything restricting that tyranny is anti-democratic. Wholly necessary as well in view.

Most people don't define democracy that way. For example, consider the EU's reaction to Poland and Hungary destroying their court systems, not to mention refusing to obey EU court decisions.

The EU isn't a democracy.

You have a point. "Anti-liberal-democracy" would probably be more accurate to say. But talking about "liberal" and "democratic" is hard in a country where this is immediately associated with one of the two major political parties.

What I meant was that our ideas of due process and equality before the law will be seen as much less desirable when those things will be the obstacle to deporting large numbers of refugees. Those things are also fundamental to democracy.

I understand what you mean by “liberal democracy” and I agree that’s a more accurate description.

You might find Shadi Hamid’s writing on illiberal democracy interesting: https://wisdomofcrowds.substack.com/p/first-draft-is-there-a...

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