OPINION | Human mollusks and democracy | CNN

(Credit: Al Drago / Getty Images)

Editor's Note:

Camilo Egaña is

Camilo's

driver

.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

(CNN Spanish) -

There was a time when even the most disappointed citizen said: "How can we not believe in democracy?"

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and most of the right-wing dictatorships, it seemed that democracy, or at least democratic aspirations, were emerging by spontaneous generation in the world.

However, since the mid-90s wave of authoritarianism spread like an uncontrollable virus.

Contempt for civic affairs and political immorality multiplied in countries that seemed to have resumed or consolidated the path of the rule of law.

This unfortunate trend has continued to spread with the support of runaway populism, social media, and further disappointment of people in a vicious cycle.

But is social unrest enough to explain the reappearance of the autocratic spirit in the main democracies?

Is it the persistent loss of confidence in traditional politicians that has led to leaders such as Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines or Donald Trump in the United States, including Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Viktor Orbán in Hungary?

Or is there something much darker in the human condition for authoritarianism to be an everyday experience today?

Why do authoritarian leaders and governments endure in the 21st century?

Why are there people who, after escaping from such regimes, once released, bet on these caudillos and come to idolize them?

Is there an autocratic vocation in the human being?

Is contemporary authoritarianism the fascism or communism of the 21st century?

Why do some make politics a matter of faith?

Perhaps the first answers to these questions — only the first ones — belong to a woman, Hannah Arendt, a philosopher and political theorist, in my opinion the sharpest analyst of authoritarianism.

He wrote something that could begin to explain what is happening these days:

»The ideal subject of the totalitarian regime is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false ( that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist ”.

Miguel de Unamuno called them "human mollusks."

And we are surrounded.