This sounds like the communist revolution in Russia, although I don't know a lot about that. Basically, it's repressive forces of national socialism or communism. It is based on the assumption that people are dangerous and need controlling and forcing into a system which is fairer for all. By opposing authoritarianism and repression, he seeks to impose a different variety of the same thing.
There is a long history of fearing the masses, usually propagated by the elites. Antifa in USA is a reaction to such fears.
This kind of paranoid demonological thinking is potentially a greater threat to liberal democracy than any populist movements. It stems from an unwillingness to recognise legitimate grievances and a demonisation of the working class. It's like a new form of McCarthyism. Nazi support was mainly from the middle classes and elites. Hitler crushed the unions, even though his propaganda was about blue collar workers. Hofstadt told the elites what they wanted to hear; that democracy was the danger as it allowed the uneducated rabble to disrupt rational technocratic reforms and got 2 Pulitzer prizes for it, but he was wrong. In US, Barry Goldwater was wrongly labelled a potential fascist.
The Authoritarian Psychology is deeply flawed but is endlessly recycled and dumped into the stream of public discourse. Recent intellectuals have incorrectly aligned Trump with authoritarianism.
Pippa Norris calls attitudes shared by most people in society as “authoritarian”. Norris's non authoritarian citizen, who is unpatriotic and indifferent to national unity, tolerant of lawlessness and disorder, and puts little value on family would strike most people as an amoral sociopath.
The overclass intelligentsia is likely to continue to portray critics of technocratic neoliberalism as irrational and maladjusted.
Norman Pollack in 1960 : Psychology imposes a static model on society (the consensus) [Overton window] upon the study of social movements because it requires a standard or reference point by which to judge what is or is not irrational. Thus, all behaviour not conforming to the model is categorised as irrational, with the result that the analysis is biased in favour of the status quo and places all protest movements by definition at a disadvantage.
Hillary Clinton called many Trump supporters racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic etc.
A person (Orthodox Jewish rabbi) opposing homosexuality, adultery, premarital sex and masturbation on theological grounds is still a “homophobe”.
A racist is different to a non-racist trade unionist who thinks immigrant numbers should be reduced to create tighter labor markets to the benefit of workers, but both are “xenophobes”.
This blurring of distinctions is just a way to attack political adversaries.
Liberal democracy in the West is not endangered by Russian machinations or resurgent fascism. But liberalism and democracy are endangered when irrational moral panics lead hysterical elites to redefine “extremism” or “fascism” or “white nationalism” to include ordinary populists, conservatives, libertarians, and heterodox leftists.
What is lacking in all this mud slinging is a recognition that the status quo of elites might just have their own interests ahead of the population. Imagine that? Is that possible??
Populist demagogy can be harmful and destructive without being totalitarian or traitorous. Populism today is a response to oligarchy. The greatest threat to liberal democracy is not masterminds in Moscow or white nationalists who seek to create a Fourth Reich, but the gradual decay of N. America and Europe under well-educated, well-mannered, and well-funded centrist neoliberal politicians into something like the regimes that have long been familiar in many Latin American countries and the American south, in which oppressive oligarchic rule provokes destructive populist revolts. Not a Weimar Republic, Banana republic maybe.
