The world as we know it today was built on the foundation of democracy and personal freedoms. People have the right to practice their religion freely, speak freely and vote to influence how governments around them are run. America, in particular, was founded with the intent of completely committing to these principles, and has been extremely influential in getting other countries to do the same.
Thirty years ago, America seemed on top of the world, winning the Cold War and attempting to create a new, democratic world order. Yet now, the democratic institutions and freedoms in many countries, even in the US, are being slowly worn down and replaced with more authoritarian practices. The Economist Intelligence Unit is calling this a “democratic recession.” So what’s going on?
In short, this is an intentional effort by right-wing groups to erode these democratic institutions and alter public sentiment towards them.
Right-wing populist parties such as MAGA Republicans in the United States or the Reform Party of the United Kingdom have pushed hateful narratives that scapegoat unwanted minority groups for various problems of their country, such as that immigrants are taking jobs and that ‘woke’ ideologies are ruining modern-day living standards.
Jade Turner ‘26, a high school student in Kelmscott, Western Australia, has seen this happening in their country. “A common narrative that’s being used in Australia is that immigrants are causing the current housing crisis with low availability and high cost. There are also common narratives that immigrants are taking jobs from Australians, particularly in response to policies supporting skilled immigration. These are not true,” Jade Turner said.
As a result of this scapegoating, hateful sentiments such as Islamophobia and transphobia have seen a stark increase in the Western world. The British Broadcasting Channel has reported an increase of 19% in hate crimes directed against Muslims in the UK. The Pew Research Center has found that many Black and Asian Americans have experienced more racism since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles found that transgender people were more than four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgender people.
This shift in sentiment isn’t an isolated instance, as the constant push of these intolerant ideologies and narratives have normalized them for the general public. “It’s that kind of thing that’s being normalized, ‘we are the normal ones, you are the weird ones, and we just want to live our normal lives where nothing changes,’” Caitlynn Turner, a commissioning officer for the National Health Service Kent & Medway Integrated Care Board in the UK, said. “Reform has come in and very much taken the extreme stance of MAGA Republicans and adopted it, and it’s proving very popular.”
The effectiveness of these narratives being pushed is significantly amplified by individuals and media conglomerates with significant amounts of money, connections and pull, such as the Murdoch family, JK Rowling and Elon Musk.
The Murdoch family’s media conglomerate, composed of everything under News Corp and Fox Corporation, has significant global influence on right-wing media, owning many news and media outlets that push right-wing narratives, such as Fox News, The Australian, The Times and others. Many of these media outlets, on top of their right-wing bias, have questionable-at-best factuality in their reporting, with Ad Fontes Media rating Fox News to have “wide variation in reliability” and Media Bias Fact Check rating The Sun UK with “Mixed” factuality. The sensationalized narratives rife with factual errors that these news outlets broadcast are creating outrage and fearmongering, which leads to governments being pressured into implementing anti-democratic and/or freedom-restricting measures.
“A recent article in The Australian supported the Queensland government in stopping schools from supporting trans kids without supportive parents to socially transition at school. This article lied about numerous stats related to socially transitioning and was formed in such a way as to promote fearmongering, causing outrage,” Jade Turner ‘26 said. “This outrage encouraged the government to violate the Supreme Court’s overturning of this bill and reinstate it, a hugely damaging move to trans kids in the state.”
In a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Rupert Murdoch admitted in court that Fox News commentators were endorsing claims of widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which they knew were false, which weakened a key pillar of democracy: people’s trust in the electoral systems. Dominion Voting Systems was awarded $787.5 million dollars in damages due to these defamatory claims.
Meanwhile, JK Rowling has had a significant effect on fueling outrage based on hateful ideologies in the UK. “Rowling has been a very, very loud vocal element against trans rights in general, particularly male-to-female, out of fear of losing her influence and losing her audience or becoming irrelevant,” Caitlynn Turner said.
Rowling is a large proponent of the trans-exclusive radical feminism ideology in the UK, being a vocal supporter of the UK Supreme Court’s anti-trans rulings and Reform UK’s anti-trans pushes, personally funding many anti-trans lobbying efforts and going on social media tirades about transgender people.
“I suppose there’s a reason we’re called the TERF Island, ‘cause everyone is more than happy to use feminism to defend the go against trans people, which is what Reform does,” Caitlynn Turner said. “[Rowling is very much a continuation of Maya Forstater’s] ideology of ‘I am defending a woman, I am defending the right to be a female against these people who are trying to erode the term female.’”
Over in the US, Elon Musk has spread hate through his large right-wing media influence, particularly through the Twitter (currently known as X) feed algorithm and Grok, his company xAI’s large language model. Twitter’s feed algorithm has been found to be biased towards right-wing politicians and media outlets while boosting low-credibility content, influencing what people see on their feeds and generating outrage in right-wing circles. Musk has also been ordering xAI to make Grok’s outputs less “woke” and left-leaning, criticizing instances when Grok would agree with left-leaning ideas/media. Multiple notable incidents have occurred, where Grok would post conspiracy theories and hateful tweets when responding to users. For example, the AI pushed the “white genocide in South Africa” conspiracy theory on entirely unrelated conversations and it called itself MechaHitler while using antisemitic language and tropes against groups and individuals.
The effect of these pushes by right-wing individuals and groups have been profound. These pushes against democratic processes and the rights of individuals that they would have in a democracy are making it more likely that the public approves of measures that are less democratic and pull power towards a central authority.
“[They’re basically saying,] ‘This is too slow, this isn’t getting you the answers, the [migrant] boats are still coming in, the migrants are still taking your jobs, etc. etc., we will make sure that doesn’t happen cause we will fast-track [the solution]’ and kinda using that as a guise to confuse the public into authoritarianism. And it’s working. You can see it in every poll,” Caitlynn Turner said.
“The large effect of News Corp also heavily played into our previous nine year [Liberal Party] government, which is in spite of failing to deliver on election promises, massively increasing the deficit and rotating through leaders like a revolving door,” Jade Turner ‘26 said.
In Apr. 16 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, defeating years of LGBT rights progress made in the country. This came after waves of anti-trans outrage and lawsuits from anti-trans groups arguing against the rights of trans women, as well as shifting public sentiment against transgender people. The UK Parliament also passed the Online Safety Act, which requires UK citizens to provide proof of adulthood to view certain content, which has come under fire for governmental censorship, having the risk of personally identifiable information leaking and legitimately harmful sites not being restricted.
In Japan, due to persistent issues with tourists and immigrants causing issues with citizens, anti-foreigner sentiment is boiling over, with a “nuisance YouTuber” who campaigned on “protecting Nara City’s deer and citizens from foreigners” winning a seat in the Nara City Council election and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi taking hard-line stances on immigration and foreigners in Japan while citing unverified anecdotes.
In the U.S., the Trump Administration has been using the justification that out-of-control illegal immigration and protests have caused crises to send military troops to U.S. cities and to deport immigrants, often without due process or any legal justification. Two examples of the deportations, which have gained large amounts of media attention, are Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was arrested and deported to El Salvador without any court hearings due to allegedly being part of the MS-13 gang, and Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested without a warrant and ordered to be deported to Syria or Liberia due to his comments on the Israel-Palestine war allegedly having “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” which is a deportable offense under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Both of these cases have been ruled in favor of the arrested, due to the reasoning not being legally justified. These actions by the Trump Administration have been protested by many, while cheered on by many others.
Democracy is declining around the world as a result of boiling frustrations. The agendas of leaders, corporations and parties push hateful narratives, often scapegoating minority populations. The people have been misled towards extremism against exaggerated issues. It is imperative to stay informed, avoid biased narratives and reject hate with so much information distorted.
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