As legal investigations of current and former populist leaders get underway, it is easy to succumb to schadenfreude. But the assumption that Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Sebastian Kurz are finally getting their comeuppance is premature.
MOSCOW – Until the cease-fire, the world’s attention was trained on Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, which may have suited Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is facing trial on corruption charges. And Netanyahu is hardly the only populist leader in legal peril. From Austria to the United Kingdom to the United States, similar investigations are underway. Have democracies finally found the means, and the willingness, to vanquish their domestic enemies?
MOSCOW – Until the cease-fire, the world’s attention was trained on Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, which may have suited Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is facing trial on corruption charges. And Netanyahu is hardly the only populist leader in legal peril. From Austria to the United Kingdom to the United States, similar investigations are underway. Have democracies finally found the means, and the willingness, to vanquish their domestic enemies?