Antidemocratic Quotes

Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.

The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic.

Inflation is essentially antidemocratic.

The scientist, like the magician, possesses secrets. A secret — expertise — is somehow perceived as antidemocratic, and therefore ought to be unnatural

Too many…especially in Europe, conflate democracy as process—free elections with a free press to determine who gets to run a particular country—with electoral outcomes. They define a democratic election as one in which the right people win. Under the former definition, any reasonably free election is a victory for democracy, even if the winner is a bad person with bad ideas. But under the latter definition, elections that bring the wrong candidates to power are considered undemocratic. An electoral victory by a party that wants to crack down on illegal immigrants? A failure of democracy. Victory by a party that refuses to rework society around the preferences of people who feel they were born into bodies of the wrong sex? A gain for authoritarianism. Victory by a party that rejects green-energy mandates as too expensive and impractical? An attack on everything democracy is about. … [It] becomes the duty of democracy advocates to suppress their domestic opponents. The police should investigate citizens who post “antidemocratic” tweets about trans people or migration. Governments can and should ban antidemocratic candidates or outlaw antidemocratic political parties for the crime of advocating “undemocratic” ideas. It doesn’t matter if these ideas are popular. The more popular an “antidemocratic” idea becomes, the more necessary it is to suppress its supporters. This approach is madness—an unmitigated and total disaster for the democratic cause.

We begin the path toward defeating Mexico's real adversary, who represents authoritarianism and the worst antidemocratic practice, who represents a return to corruption as a system and impunity as conviction. That adversary is Pena Nieto and his party.

The Muslim world suffers from internal divisions, antidemocratic practices, and the violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms.

A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A "community" is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That's just self-righteousness - incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic.

There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.