Not trying to pick a fight, but I wanted to talk this out a bit because it’s something that I feel split about. Take Egypt, for example. Authoritarian government, whose main reason for being authoritarian is to suppress a largely rural Islamist movement from gaining power and creating a theocratic state, but, being authoritarian, they also suppress any critics, but also suppress LGBTQ+ folks to avoid handing red meat to the Islamist movement. Arguably the relatively liberal city dwellers would be far worse off under an islamic theocracy than under a secular authoritarian government. I don’t see what other choices Egypt has. And it’s damn uncomfortable.
How is it better? You missed to address the adminstrative, financial, and judicial corruption, on top of violent oppression and extrajudicial killings, torture and violation of human rights that happens under dictatorships. Ask egyption liberal city dewellers if things were better under Morse, the Islamic brotherhood president who was elected or now under the corrupt military dictatorship of Sisi. They were still able to protest and hold ministers accountable, and even crticize the president himself. Not to mention their freedom of expression, human rights, judicials, elections, ecomony all were miles better. Now their economy, judicial system, elections, freedom of speech, human rights are all gone.
A different and easier example for you is if you consider Saddam in Iraq and Asad in Syria, they used to kill and poison gas reigons that protest against them, but things were good for selfish liberal city dewellers who don’t care about anything but their existance. Same if you ask a Han CPP supporter in Bejin about their government treatment of the Ughyers, he’ll tell you life is good. In my opinion, all dictatorships are rotten and it’s worth to distrupt the good life and unequality which city dewellers enjoyed due to corruption.
Thank you for your perspective. EDIT: My understanding of what went down during Morsi’s tenure in office is different than yours. Incidents of violence against Shia and Copts went way up, for example. Morsi also did his best to install Islamic Brotherhood cronies at all levels of government. When the overwhelming majority of folks live in the city, it’s hard to call the minority of rural dwellers that want to impose Islamic rule on people the good guys. I guess I am coming at it from a utilitarian perspective - which type of undesirable government causes the least harm? By no means is authoritarianism desirable, though, I agree with you fully in terms of ideals. EDIT2: I agree that the brutality of authoritarian governments in China, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt are absofuckinglutely terrible.
