How Democracy Dies
A look at Hungary and Myanmar and how they expose some of democracy’s different vulnerabilities.
Where once tanks would roll into the streets to silence dissent, today, authoritarian rule is often imposed much more subtly, yet just as effectively.
We travel to Hungary, described as the European Union’s first outright dictatorship, where radio journalist Mihail describes how, in an act of media suppression, the government has suspended his radio licence. It was the beginning, he says, of wider attempts to control the media. Csaba Lukacs, an independent journalist, supports this claim; he risks jail for distributing his newspaper.
We delve into the personalities of leaders like Viktor Orban and examine his growing popularity in Hungary. We also travel to Myanmar to explore the aftermath of the February 2021 military coup and meet political activists and revolutionaries using civil disobedience to challenge the military in a bid to achieve democracy.