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Comment by ftxbro | Hacker News Reader

OK but what if the will of the people is to move forward from democracy?

Then they can do what every other nation that has lost democracy does, elect a dictator with enough party members to undo democracy and kill off the opposition. Heck, they can get Bolsonaro back in power with exactly this playbook.

It'll generally help if the party runs on a moralist/religious platform. "We've sinned and need to bring the nation back to god." That way, as the party breaks laws they can claim to do it in the name of god so that's ok. This even often gives them some wicked heathens to hate. Having a common enemy really brings people together. However, if they can't find that it's easy enough to blame outsiders for all the problems. Perhaps a conspiracy or two about how "those foreigners are taking all our jobs, resources, and are generally making everything here worse. If it wasn't for them, our country would be amazing. Let's make their lives a living hell because they've harmed everyone with their presence"

You know, standard fascist stuff.

In a democracy, the only way forward from a democracy, legally speaking, is through laws. Specifically a new constitution. And the constitution (at least in Brazil) is very clear on what happens of you try to depose the democracy by force.

It's always possible to remove democracy democratically. But the (legal) mechanism for doing this is made difficult on purpose, and rightly so. It's usually going to require a constitutional amendment, which requires a supermajority or referendum or something, not just a simple majority vote as if we are passing laws on mundane things like parking tickets. That's good, because it should be hard to remove people's fundamental rights on a whim during a temporary wave of hysteria and passion. Democracies have these safeguards to make it difficult on purpose.

> "a whim during a temporary wave of hysteria"

ok but I mean in global history democracy is more temporary than other governments so what if they say your team is the temporary hysteria instead

I'm going to repeat myself with my response. If people want to democratically remove democracy, then they can. If they want to make murder not a crime, they can. If they want to remove everyone's rights, they can. There are democratic mechanisms that can achieve all these idiotic things if the people really want to achieve them. Revoking these rights is made difficult on purpose because, over a period of 50+ years, the majority of people have decided that we shouldn't revoke said rights if only 50.001% of people wish to do so over a timeframe of 1 day. They built mechanisms to make very sure that it really was the will of the people if said rights were to be permanently revoked.

> "If they want to make murder not a crime, they can."

I feel like you can't compare murder to allowing someone to run for office.

Indeed, the consequences of letting a an autocrat keep trying fraud/violence until it works are generally far worse than a single murder.

the word autocrat has bad connotation what if they call your guys the autocrats and don't let them run for office

Since you don't like that word, what should we call trying to use fraud or violence to steal an election? A traitor? A candidate for a firing squad? A guy trying his hand at a bit of high treason?

The word "forward" needs a bit of explaining here.

The expression "move forward" is just an idiom. It's like "circling back" except about the future and with a more forward-thinking can-do and proactive attitude.

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