Maybe that's the point? It's hard to be authoritarian if people can rebel. Some EU politicians (Verhofstadt) have been talking about the "European Empire".
EU countries generally aren't authoritarian regimes, and it's easier to argue that it wouldn't be as likely to be abused in the EU. The countries also have legislation and other controls to curb abuses of powers granted to the authorities. It may not be 100% but it's different than in an authoritarian regime where curtailing dissent seems like an obvious goal, not just a potential and somewhat unlikely side effect.
With that said, it still always seems shortsighted to me to abandon fundamental principles for circumstantial or narrow gains.
> favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom
This currently describes a lot of European countries. The proponents will make the argument that this is only "temporary authoritarianism" in the pursuit of "safety", but we've seen how that works out before.
Of course, but both of them can be true at the same time. I wouldn't call either of those countries an authoritarian regime, but they've both moved several steps in that direction.
Your parent said: "disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out". And that definitely happened, the EU has been saying "we're concerned about that" for a while now, and the only response has been "nah, it's fine".
That's kind of the point I was going for in my (post-edit) comment. EU countries are broadly very free countries, totally and qualitatively unlike the authoritarian exemplars. The threat of shutting down social media to quench anti-government protests, specifically, is very, very like parallel examples from repressive dictatorships. It's a thought-terminating cliche to erase this second observation by overwriting it with the first.
North Americans and Western Europeans are incredibly naive about how authoritarian states work.
All authoritarian states will end up having a caste sysem hierarchy. The upper caste have it just as good a people in the West and in modern times they will have unfiltered access to the Internet. They have zero reason to revolt because they have everything then need.
If you look at it from the other perspective, you could argue that the EU's very left-leaning and sacrificial policies are being very effective in promoting such changes to Poland & Hungary. I personally wouldn't call it "authoritarian descent", though.
I'm not saying that it isn't authoritarian (in my Libertarian book most western countries including the US and most of the supranational EU organisms are authoritarian to some degree)...
I'm saying that "authoritarian" doesn't equal "dictatorship".
I don't understand your point. I agree the law is more restrictive in Europe, but not restrictive in ways that limit my freedom in ways that matter to me.
I was questioning why you see it as authoritarian. Are you saying that any law is authoritarian?
I think it would be way easier to devolve into an authoritarian government when there's no one to tell you to slow down and rethink it.
There's already plenty of Nazis in Britain. "Britannia rules", "Destroy the fascist/socialist/capitalist EU" (yeah, make up your mind please), "kick out the foreigners".
Remove the EU oversight and they can do whatever they want.
You can vote yourself into authoritarianism, but you cannot vote yourself out. And when that authoritarian you love so much makes a major blunder, invading Europe for example, he takes everyone with him, and that's by design.
Authoritarianism has been tried out around the globe in the 20th century multiple times, but each attempt failed. In fact, moth western nations were kingdoms at the start of the 20th century, and WW1 and WW2 turned most of them into republics.
I think the problem in Portugal is the opposite; the authoritarian regime was taken down in '74, but entirely too many people still have that mindset, even if they disagree on who should be the authority.
reply