If 2024 had a personality, it would not have been demure. The word of the year chosen by Dictionary.com conjures up images of modesty and quietude – qualities that democracy, bruised and boisterous, could hardly afford in its most testing year yet.
With 64 countries heading to the polls, the year felt less like a celebration of electoral freedom and more like a global stress test for democratic ideals. Yet, the narratives built around its fragility, with the oft-repeated cry that “democracy is in danger”, also rang hollow for many.
The cringe of fringe
Let us bury the comforting fiction first: that the far-right is a fringe phenomenon. This year, it strode from the margins into the heart of political discourse, carried by a chorus of enablers – not just the far right itself, but centrists, centre-right leaders, and even some on the left who flirted with its rhetoric to stave off electoral irrelevance. The so-called fringe has become a new kind of mainstream, reshaping not just policy debates but the tone of entire elections.
Take Europe: far-right victories were not flukes. Whether it was the far-right faction in the 2024 European Parliament elections, Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally, the United Kingdom’s Reform Party, Portugal’s Chega Party, Croatia’s Homeland Movement, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland or Georgia’s Georgian Dream, the world saw far-right factions gain unprecedented ground. They reflected a broader disillusionment with politics-as-usual.
These parties surged not as isolated incidents but as part of a wider shift in voter sentiment, one shaped by mistrust in traditional instructions and frustration about issues like immigration, economic inequality, and the perceived failures of established political elites.
Germany offers a blunt example. A young German friend explained to me that she, along with many of her peers, felt drawn to extremist parties like the AfD not for ideological reasons, but simply to say “fuck you” to the ruling coalition, which they see as the face of an ossified status quo.
Even the far-left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht gained ground in Germany, further proof that 2024 was not about who had solutions but who could channel resentment against the establishment.
It is not that the far right had a better pulse on the people. Rather, it is that the centre – and many ideological opponents – lost theirs entirely. This year was a global referendum on frustration, with voters shouting their discontent at institutions that seemed indifferent to their struggles.
Billionaires rewriting the political script
The financial powerhouses behind this political shift – billionaires such as Elon Musk – have taken a front-row seat in this global disruption. With their wealth and social media megaphones (Musk’s Twitter being a prime example), they are single-handedly tilting the power equation in their favour.
Musk, in particular, has waded into politics, whether by funnelling money into Trump’s campaign lottery or backing the UK’s Reform Party. He has even meddled in Australia’s political dynamics and offered praise for Germany’s far-right AfD, tweeting, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
This is not just about political endorsements; it is about controlling the conversation, swelling extremist voices, and using their platforms to destabilise the existing political order. Musk’s influence is not just financial – it is transformational, with the capacity to reshape entire electoral outcomes by tilting the political narrative and funding disruptors, thus furthering the erosion of political integrity.
A problem of abstraction
For voters trying to make ends meet, the warning that “democracy is in danger” felt like a luxury they could not afford. When food prices spike, rents soar, and wages stagnate, abstractions about democracy’s peril land with a thud. For many, these warnings sounded like pleas to preserve the very institutions that had failed them.
This disconnect left fertile ground for populists and authoritarians to exploit. Bread-and-butter issues like inflation and housing crises drowned out lofty appeals to democratic values. When voters turned to disruptors – be they strongmen or radical outsiders – they did not do so despite authoritarian tendencies but because of a belief that only these figures could break the logjam.
AI: The new disruptor
If social media was the great disruptor of the 2000s, artificial intelligence may prove to be its even more dangerous successor. This year marked the first time AI, widely accessible and weaponised, entered the political arena in earnest. Its influence became disturbingly clear.
In Romania, Calin Georgescu, a political nobody surged in popularity thanks to AI-driven TikTok campaigns, being transformed into a front-runner almost overnight. Indonesia witnessed a disgraced general Prabowo Subianto remade as a cuddly, dance-loving grandfather on TikTok. His AI-curated image catapulted him to the presidency.
The same tools that rehabilitated these figures are now being wielded with accuracy to distort public perception, build cults of personality, and dismantle trust in factual discourse.
The lesson here is sobering but simple: we cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the social media era, where regulatory inertia allowed platforms to become breeding grounds for polarisation and manipulation. Safeguards must come now, before AI fully entrenches itself as the preferred weapon of extremist politics.
Glimmers of hope in the chaos
Yet democracy, battered and beleaguered, showed remarkable flashes of defiance. Around the world, people resisted – sometimes with unimaginable courage – to fight for what democracy could be, rather than what it has become.
In Georgia, citizens mobilised against a repressive government, refusing to back down even as crackdowns escalated. In South Korea, mass protests forced the impeachment of a president who had attempted to strangle democracy under the guise of martial law.
Bangladesh saw voters reject the path to a one-party state, delivering a shockwave to embedded authoritarianism. And in Pakistan, despite the outlawing of Imran Khan’s party and his imprisonment, voters defied suppression to propel his independents to victory.
These were not quiet revolutions. They were messy, loud, and deeply imperfect – but they were alive.
A generation’s reckoning
And then there is the next generation. Saddled with the mess left by their elders, they have emerged as democracy’s most unlikely defenders. Gen Z and millennials have proven themselves unafraid to challenge cemented power structures, leveraging technology and collective action in ways that older generations can only marvel at.
This generation, unshackled from blind faith in traditional institutions, rejects the status quo as fervently as the disruptors they sometimes unwittingly enable. Yet their vision is clearer, their voices sharper, and their commitment to tackling issues like climate change, inequality, and human rights more urgent than ever. If democracy has a future, it is in their hands – and perhaps that is where it belongs.
Not so demure after all
The year 2024 laid bare democracy’s vulnerabilities but also its resilience. It was not a demure year, not for the ideals of freedom and equality, nor for the people who fought for them. The narrative of “democracy in danger” may have faltered, but the fight for democracy itself is far from over. It is messy. It is loud. And it is alive.
Pius Fozan is a photojournalist and public policy graduate from the Willy Brandt School and Central European University.
