Authoritarian measures can persist within nominally democratic structures via normalized crisis

Evidence

What is unique about the dystopia in Children of Men is that it is specific to late capitalism. This isn’t the familiar totalitarian scenario routinely trotted out in cinematic dystopias (see, for example, James McTeigue’s 2005 V for Vendetta). In the PD. James novel on which the film is based, democracy is suspended and the country is ruled over by a self-appointed Warden, but, wisely, the film downplays all this. For all that we know, the authoritarian measures that are everywhere in place could have been implemented within a political structure that remains, notionally, democratic. The War on Terror has prepared us for such a development: the normalization of crisis produces a situation in which the repealing of measures brought in to deal with an emergency becomes unimaginable (when will the war be over?) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 7

What is unique about the dystopia in Children of Men is that it is specific to late capitalism. … For all that we know, the authoritarian measures that are everywhere in place could have been implemented within a political structure that remains, notionally, democratic. The War on Terror has prepared us for such a development: the normalization of crisis produces a situation in which the repealing of measures brought in to deal with an emergency becomes unimaginable (when will the war be over?) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 7

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Frankfurt School material on fascism as compatible with nominal democracy and crisis normalization. — connects to: Soviet totalitarianism functioned through interpretive ambiguity, not just coercion — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 101; Leaderless structures hide informal rules that exceed formal authoritarianism — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 772; Totalitarian regimes maintain an ostensible façade government alongside real power structures — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 905 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 7

Related

• Emergency measures become permanent once crisis is normalized. (similarity 0.87)
• Low-capacity democracies are rare and historically short-lived (similarity 0.86)
• Late-capitalist dystopia depicts catastrophe as an ongoing lived condition rather than a punctual event (similarity 0.84)
• Emergency-powers measures become unrepealable once crisis is normalised (similarity 0.83)
• Crisis normalization makes the repeal of emergency measures unimaginable (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian regimes maintain an ostensible façade government alongside real power structures #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 905