The world has seen a version of this story before: A charismatic leader and demagogue with a God complex leads a populist-authoritarian movement and rises to power by claiming to be the savior of a people. This leader and his propagandists mine the resentment, hostility, anxiety and frustration of a disaffected population and direct it an out-group. Leaders of this new movement show themselves to be pathological, and their pathologies spread as a form of collective sociopathy that attracts like-minded followers and infects an entire nation.
The country where this happens experiences a crisis of democratic legitimacy and other profound changes in the order of things: "Normalcy" becomes malignant; the public sinks into learned helplessness and survival mode. Instead of stopping this threat to democracy and the rule of law, the legal system enables it. "Responsible” elites either do not take the danger to democracy seriously, reason that they can profit from this leader and his movement, or decide to ride it all out and position themselves for survival.
