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Having fought literal fascists in their youth, South Korean liberals internalized the idea that democracy is "mutually reinforcing expectation" - a bargain, as it were. And they sensed the conservatives were walking away from the bargain by sliding into authoritarianism.
Korean liberals' response was the correct one: jail the former conservative presidents and their major cabinet members, push their mid-level cronies out of the government, and shut down the most outlandish fringe media characters. It's the only way to save democracy.
This effort is necessarily partisan, because only one of the parties believe in democracy. Lots of outside observers didn't understand this point, and assessed South Korea was experiencing "democratic backsliding" because of the (necessary) partisan house cleaning.
What they failed to understand - as many in US fail to understand now - is that in a democratic system, there is no moral equivalence between democratic forces and anti-democratic forces. The latter must be destroyed for who they are and what they believe in.
People pause at that last point, because it grates against the baseline presumption of liberalism that every opinion must be treated equally. But liberalism is not nihilism. Liberals need not treat anti-liberals as equals until liberalism is altogether destroyed.
In a liberal democracy, people are allowed to have a wider range of beliefs and opinions than in any other political system. But there is just one belief they cannot have: there should be no liberal democracy. And today, we have a critical mass of people who believe this.
We had a lynch mob that invaded the hall of democracy to murder people's representatives to subvert the result of a popular election. This is as direct an assault against democracy as it gets. That they failed to achieve their aims doesn't make it any less alarming.
We already got too close; we should not be getting any closer than this. These fascists cannot be allowed to enjoy the privileges of liberal democracy for even one more second, until they surrender and commit to the democratic order once again.
