AHQ: 20th century American/Anglosphere politicians who could have become dictators

[Declan]

Throughout the 20th century, many countries have experienced dictatorships. Some started the century that way. Some had democracies that crumbled. While others had dictatorships forced by external, invading armies.
The one realm of this world that has nearly consistently enjoyed civil liberties(or at least heavily trended towards full liberal democracy) throughout this period were the Anglosphere and America.
(The anglosphere being: the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand)

However, as seen across the world, civil liberties can always fall. One common method is by a leader coming to power via democratic means but he values either personal power or an ideology more than respecting existing laws and performs a self-coup. America and the Anglosphere are not automatically immune to this process.

So I'm asking which politicians in America and the Anglosphere would have eroded civil liberties and turned their country into a dictatorships.

Note:
-when I say "politcians" I don't necessarily mean people who were head of state/government or who ran for it. It could mean people who were serving in Parliament/Congress and didn't at any point in the OTL seriously run for the executive. It can include US governors and their Australian counterparts. Basically any relevant/semirelevant politicians at a given time. They can be current officeholders or not. On the flipside, completely irrelevant politicians are excluded. The chairman of the American communist party would have probably turned the country into a dictatorship, but that party never had a real chances of gaining power/electoral success.
- as the title says, this focuses on politicians. So a military general who had no involvement in politics beforehand leading a coup is not counted. However, a politician gaining the trust of the military and leading a coup to install himself is permissible.
- The politicians should be politically relevant for at least some point in the 20th century(1900-1999). So the mayor of some smll town in the 90s who was elected governor in the 2000s won't count.

 

[CASSICTOR2]

George Wallace, Oswald Mosley, Eric Campbell etc

You can have some leaders in the anglosphere that can fit into dictator

 

[BiasHangover]

Would civil liberties fall in an Anglo dictatorship?

I think you'd just get a liberal dictatorship. I mean look at Huey Long.

Actually now that I think about it, we do have dozens of examples for Anglosphere dictatorships. Colonies. Did British India retain civil liberties despite unelected lord linlithgow?

 

[Dorknought]

So a military general who had no involvement in politics beforehand leading a coup is not counted.

and yet these could be the most likely. An outbreak of violent discontent is put down by WW1 veterans under popular officers.
Following a government directive to have political observers to monitor Police Stations that triggered the mass resignation of the Police force, the subsequent anarchy on the streets of Melbourne led former AIF commander John Monash to demonstrate that he had the capability to put 5000 men on the streets of the capital within 24hrs and a further 5000 within 48 hrs, all under his command. This power didn't go unnoticed and many urged him to take over but his standard response was that he would not overturn the Constitution. If it helps, one of Monash's leadership team was a Senator and another was a former Defence Minister.

 

[Lafayette_]

This is ASB, but perhaps having a less depressed/more schizophrenic Nixon refuse to accept his impeachment, and then doing whatever he can to subvert the proceedings and remain in office illegally. “Enemies List” gone bananas.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

I can safely say Long would be in the dictatorial category, but he would not be a dictator like a Hitler or Stalin. Instead he would be much more akin to South American populists such as Vargas and Peron, in some ways similar to figures such as Putin too. A popular and charismatic leader who is the head of a nominally democratic nation, however its undeniable that both on the outside and inside they rule the country with an iron fist. Think of Puppet Presidents while they control the daily governance, using legal loopholes to give themselves legitimacy, using of bribery and extortion to control political parties. He would not be the kind of dictator who parades tanks on the streets, he would rather be a fatherly figure who is beloved by most of the people, bribes the establishment, eliminates his enemies in quiet ways by using criminal elements or "car accidents". Nominally there is freedom of press, but what's the point if the main editors and chairmen are controlled and won't approve oppositional articles? Use the enormous wealth of the US to finance their social programs and network which do help the people but are also cynically made for sake of popularity.

It's more of a shadow dictatorship than an overtly obvious totalitarian system.

 

[JDGiant]

Australia:

Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Billy Hughes
John Elliott
Frank or Kerry Packer
Rupert Murdoch

None of them would have been in power for as long as Robert Menzies, in all probability.

 

[marktaha]

George Wallace, Oswald Mosley, Eric Campbell etc

You can have some leaders in the anglosphere that can fit into dictator

Eric Campbell?

 

[bmac223]

Huey Long is a classic one based on the way he ran Louisiana. Woodrow Wilson (more specifically his attorney general Mitchell Palmer) launched a bunch of raids arresting people with suspected leftist ties during the First Red Scare. These were pretty undemocratic but didn't really end up doing anything since the Department of Labor wouldn't deport them. A more agreeable Labor Secretary could have led to it going the other way.

While we're on the topic of the Palmer Raids, J. Edgar Hoover got his start there, and he's a great example of someone who could be running things in the shadows, albeit not as an outright dictator.

 

[dcharles]

Do you want an illiberal autocracy specifically?

Because the US, the UK and South Africa have been illiberal democracies for longer than not. I think with the exception of the UK, that even applies post 1900.

 

[Blizy115]

George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Oswald Mosley, Huey Long.

 

[Blizy115]

Do you want an illiberal autocracy specifically?

Because the US, the UK and South Africa have been illiberal democracies for longer than not. I think with the exception of the UK, that even applies post 1900.

South Africa was illiberal up until the 80’s-90’s

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Eric Campbell?

If you don't know who that person is he was a political leader for the New guard in Australia who are an fascist party

 

[Declan]

Do you want an illiberal autocracy specifically?

Could be an illiberal oligarchy/junta(ie a one party state) as well.

Because the US, the UK and South Africa have been illiberal democracies for longer than not. I think with the exception of the UK, that even applies post 1900.

I don't exactly think this is true. For one, while the UK and the US were not full democracies throughout the entire span of the 20th century. The did have a strong system of free speech and other civil liberties. An example of what I mean would be in the US, wherean African-American who couldn't vote could still speak out against the laws that prevented him.

In my OP, I purposefully defined what I considered "anglosphere" countries, because those 4 specific ones, along with America, were known as bastions of freedom.
South Africa, as well know, pretty much bordered on a dictatorship. And not even because they selectively oppressed certain groups. The National Party won every election from the late 40s up until the demise of Apartheid.

Would civil liberties fall in an Anglo dictatorship?

I would like to believe so. It's a dictatorship. By definition, such states lack the modern notions of civil liberties.

I think you'd just get a liberal dictatorship. I mean look at Huey Long.

That's not a dictatorship, that's strongman politics. I would prefer to try to see which ones would turn their countries into something that more resembles the Assad regime in Syria or Franco's reign as caudillo. Not resembling them in terms of ideology however, but in terms out how authoritarian they are.

Colonies. Did British India retain civil liberties despite unelected lord linlithgow?

I'll just reiterate what I said earlier on:
"In my OP, I purposefully defined what I considered "anglosphere" countries, because those 4 specific ones, along with America, were known as bastions of freedom."
Colonies fall under a sort dictatorship so you can't really count them here.
(As an aside independent India can look to Indira Gandhi as their wannabe dictator)

 

[BiasHangover]

I'll just reiterate what I said earlier on:
"In my OP, I purposefully defined what I considered "anglosphere" countries, because those 4 specific ones, along with America, were known as bastions of freedom."
Colonies fall under a sort dictatorship so you can't really count them here.
(As an aside independent India can look to Indira Gandhi as their wannabe dictator)

The point of citing colonies, is that these dictatorships did retain civil liberties. So why would an dictorship in the Metropole more oppressive?

 

[Jiraiyathegallant]

We seem to be using funny definitions where no democracy ever existed in Ancient Greece and no liberals existed until some time after WWII.

 

[TheBalkanizer]

Huey Long

 

[Jellico]

Australia:

Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Billy Hughes
John Elliott
Frank or Kerry Packer
Rupert Murdoch

None of them would have been in power for as long as Robert Menzies, in all probability.

Joh was too local with limited appeal outside of QLD.
Hughes could do it, but it would take a perceived military crisis in WWI and some cards to fall in the right direction.
Elliot was a backroom player with no real support in public.
The Packers and Murdoch were in it for the money. Political influence was a means to make money.

 

[authenticity]

All of them. What most fail to recognise is that the broad discontent among the public during the Great Depression could have been channelled into a misconception that the country could only be saved by pooling all the powers into one individual or a collective leadership under an authoritarian ideology. Speaking English or being white has no discernable impact on whether people are inclined towards liberal values.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand were still agrarian and commodity exporting economies, while the UK was kept afloat by imperial preferences for its current account while practising managed trade on its imports of keep food and inputs cheap (i.e. living off its colonies). Thus they just happened face less of an economic challenge.

Also, for fascist ideology to take root, it takes a sweet spot of public education – you need relatively literate masses to read something like Mein Kampf, appreciate dirigiste corporatist economy – but they should not be too smart and understand it's not a sustainable policy. Imperial Germany and Weimar Republic had a much higher literacy rate than UK (not to mention Canada, Australia, NZ). To phrase it somewhat provocatively, the masses in the anglosphere were too "dumb" and not cosmopolitan enough (and had less incentives) to change the domestic politics for worse.

Perhaps most importantly, authoritarianism or command-control governance systems often appear in immediate preparation for war (look not least to China today). Britain or its "former" colonies had zero incentives to go to war after WWI – and had everything to win from status quo.

Imagine a scenario where Britain had lost WWI, see its navy decimated and prematurely lost its possessions (say, losing Australia and parts of India to a continental power) and thereby unable to deflect the economic shocks as the great depression hits. Famine erupts in most parts of the UK. Discontent with constitutional monarchy, people turns to something much worse than Ramsay McDonald: a nationalist-collectivist movement that feeds the people through nationalisation, land reforms and public projects. It promises to reclaim the glory of the Empire and all its former territories. It spends most of the 1930s rearming itself, and as the country is at the brink of an inevitable war, the House of Commons "temporarily suspends" elections and centralise the executive branch under a "Lord Protector" in times of "great emergency in international relations. "

 

[Lee-Sensei]

Maybe it's my bias, but I think the institutions in America, Britain and the Commonwealth countries are to strong to allow a dictator to come to power. You can have someone with authoritarian tendencies in office, but they're still not going to be able to exercise power in the same way that people did in early 20th Century central, eastern and southern European countries. Or in Latin America.