What I care about is outcomes, what actually happens, what norms and institutional posture actually obtains in reality.

And on that basis, "western liberal" society has very little business holding its nose up about "authoritarianism" as a blanket term for rival nations in 2025. No one here is talking about Sudan or Turministan, they're talking about other advanced nations with participatory politics, robust social welfare programs, limited influence for oligarchs, and highly competent governance.

This becomes diffusion of responsibility because every cycle maybe 1% were directly embracing far white religious authoritarian. The consistency of those choices were sticky because the oligarchy spent decades ensuring.

The point being, very few people actively participated and there was no progressive decadal length comspiracy. But the reverse isnt true.

There was and is a decadal length conspiracy to become a far right ethnostate run by religious minority.