I’m just trying to understand. Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary etc… Why do these leaders still get so much support after all they’ve done? What do they exactly like about them?
Aren’t these people seeing a massive drop in their quality of life?
People are seeing a massive drop in their quality of life before they vote for an authoritarian.
That’s why they vote for strongmen - the neoliberals that were in charge before fucked everything up, and without any understanding of why that happened they just react by electing the opposition.
Except that leaders like Orban or Erdogan have been in power for like a decade already.
Sure, once these types get in to power they’re hard to dislodge.
Quality of life declines, people vote for a strongman. Then, once he’s in, he just has to make sure he isn’t the one that gets blamed for continuing declining quality of life. They usually control the media and suppress political opponents, and it doesn’t help that the alternative being offered is just a return to the previous neoliberal politics that oversaw the start of the decline in the first place.
Eventually people get fed up and turn to more radical solutions, but they have to lose faith in voting first.