Former President Of El Salvador Receives 14-Year Sentence For Gang Talks

[Judi Lynn]

2. Meet the MAGA movement's new favorite autocrat

The American right is falling in love with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, over his crime crackdown. But he’s also tearing down Salvadoran democracy.

By Zack Beauchamp@[e-mail] Apr 8, 2023, 8:00am EDT

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. Before coming to Vox in 2014, he edited TP Ideas, a section of Think Progress devoted to the ideas shaping our political world.

When Donald Trump was arrested this week, most world leaders stayed silent. But Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, tweeted about it immediately.

“[J]ust imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate,” Bukele wrote. “The United States ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”

Such a development would be convenient for Bukele, who has emerged as one of the most prominent — and flamboyant — elected autocrats on the global stage. In the span of roughly a year, the 41-year-old leader has declared a state of emergency, suspended civil rights protections, detained tens of thousands of citizens indefinitely without charge, built a new mega-prison made up of cells that cram 100 people in each, and packed the country’s highest court with his picks — who then promptly changed electoral rules to allow him to run again in 2024.

Salvadoran human rights advocates are sounding the alarm about democracy’s death, and the Biden administration has sanctioned key members of his government.

The response on the American right has been strikingly different. The authoritarian rhetoric, brash right-wing policies, and loud social media presence have captured the imagination of a small but influential group of American conservatives. In the past year, leading figures in MAGA world — including Tucker Carlson, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone — have praised Bukele, and even instructed Americans to learn from his example.

More:
https://www.vox.com/2023/4/8/23653324/nayib-bukele-trump-american-right-crime