“Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party”
Mark Copelovitch unpacks his signature phrase.
This Q&A is a bonus for paid subscribers. If you value Public Notice but aren’t supporting the newsletter with a paid subscription, now’s the time. Our work is 100 percent reader funded, and becoming a paid subscriber helps keep our independent coverage of American politics free for everyone.
“Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties.”
“Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party.”
If you’re familiar with these phrases, you’re probably aware of Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has popularized them on social media.
Both expressions capture something profound about American politics in the age of MAGA. Not a single day goes by without performative lying from Republicans — consider the truth-resistant sales pitch they’re currently making for Trump’s big bill — or without fresh demonstrations from the press and/or the political opposition that they’re unequipped to deal with a major party that has abandoned democracy for the sake of smash-and-grab mobsterism.
So today, as a bonus for paid subscribers, we’re running an interview we recently conducted with Copelovitch about his signature phrases, their origin, and why the American system is uniquely unfit to deal with a far right authoritarian party.
“In the US, we have a set of electoral and legislative institutions that drive us toward only having two parties,” Copelovitch told us. “That allowed the 20 to 25 percent of people that support the far right to basically take over one of the two parties, and everything in our system is weighted towards the Republican constituency — the Supreme Court, the gerrymandered House, the way the Senate is apportioned. All of these things basically bias the electoral system towards the right.”
“When the right-wing party becomes a far-right party, that’s a recipe for our system being taken over,” he added.
A transcript of Copelovitch’s conversation with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Thor Benson