America’s authoritarians operate with impunity. It’s time to take action | Jan-Werner Müller

If Democrats won't ensure accountability, Americans should look to the example of Argentina's escraches

Recently Greg Bovino, infamous former Border Patrol commander, served as a star attraction at a remigration summit" in Portugal; there he took selfies with Austrian activist Martin Sellner, one of Europe's most notorious rightwing extremists, and told him: We've never talked before - face to face, that is - until yesterday, and we were on the same sheet of music almost immediately."

Meanwhile, Tina Peters, the disgraced former elections clerk whose sentence was commuted by Colorado governor Jared Polis, pontificates on Steve Bannon's show about how Democrats will cheat in the midterms. It is rare that those out of government service show contrition, but it is also rare that they immediately monetize past cruelty and present-day conspiracy theories. Presumably it is only a matter of time before the men who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti get to cash in with podcasts for Maga world.

Jan-Werner Muller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University