Politicians worldwide are facing a surge in violence, threats and harassment, a survey published on Wednesday by the global Inter-Parliamentary Union found, warning that the trend, fueled by new technologies, could have major repercussions for democracy.
The IPU survey, opens new tab, mostly conducted in 2025, was based on questions submitted to lawmakers in more than 80 countries, with detailed questionnaires to 519 elected officials in five - Argentina, Benin, Italy, Malaysia and the Netherlands - to provide a representative global picture.
I suspect it’s actually the progressive politicians (the ones we would consider the decent, or at least not completely corrupt and evil ones) who are overwhelmingly the targets of violence and abuse. For example, Ilhan Omar. The ones who are doing this are being called to action by the evil, they support the evil, and will replace them with more evil. This is part of the plan to replace our democracies with something more evil: fascism. While yes, some significant amount of blame can certainly be laid at the feet of all politicians for this situation, and even our best politicians leave a lot to be desired, I’m not sure we should throw the whole baby out with the bathwater just yet. That’s committing to a pretty serious fight, and the fight we’re facing is already plenty serious enough without trying to fix all the world’s democracies problems at once. I think we need to focus on democracy surviving this at all, and I think there will be time and energy left to work on fixing its problems after that. But maybe I’m wrong.