Human Rights Watch
Political leaders willing to fight for human rights principles showed that they could limit authoritarian populist agendas, Human Rights Watch said in launching its new World Report 2018:
When leaders push back strongly against politicians who demonize minorities, attack human rights, and undermine democratic institutions, they can limit the advance of populists. But where mainstream politicians capitulate to a message of hate and exclusion, the authoritarian populists flourish…..France represented the most prominent example of successful resistance to xenophobic populism. In Austria and the Netherlands, by contrast, leaders of center-right parties competed by adopting xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim positions, thereby mainstreaming abusive populist policies.
