Popper’s Plato

From the post I was replying to, and the post of yours that preceded it in this thread, I take it that you consider democracy in the USA and UK to be less resilient than in Germany and Austria, and you attribute this to the latter pairs' defensive democracy.

The Wikipedia article you linked to, however, claims that the US uses defensive democratic tactics frequently. I'm not saying this implies the US has a resilient democracy - I'm not sure about the link between defensive democracy and resilience, and I am not sure this claim about the US can be justified in the first place - but if this claim were true, it would appear to contradict what I take to be your thesis, as outlined in my first paragraph here.

I my second paragraph, I am making the claim that there is a paradox in how the the defense of democracy can, and quite often has been, used to justify acts that do no such thing. In the US, since the 2020 elections, various states have amended voting laws, allegedly to defend democracy against electoral fraud, even though there is no evidence for any threat justifying these particular defensive measures, despite a great deal of effort being expanded in trying to find any.

"Traumatized by the trial and execution of his teacher, Socrates, at the hands of his fellow citizens, Plato became an avowed enemy of democracy."

This reverses cause and effect. Plato was a member of the aristocratic class, and that's why he hated Athenian democracy that had deprived his social class of power. His cousin and fellow Socrates pupil Critias was the leader of the bloodthirsty quisling regime of the Thirty Tyrants installed by the Spartans when they defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

One of the treaty terms for Spartans allowing a return of democracy in Athens was an amnesty for the Thirty Tyrants. Athens could not try Socrates for treason, so they found an unrelated charge to trump up (disrespecting the gods and corrupting the youth), but everyone in the jury know exactly what Socrates was being tried for, i.e. being the thought leader for the Tyrants.

The most likely outcome was Socrates would have been ostracized, i.e. exiled (as indeed Plato was), but far from showing contrition, he argued in the remedies phase of the trial that a fitting punishment would be for him to be fed for life by the state expense in the house where national heroes were hosted, and an enraged jury sentenced him to death with a larger majority than had voted to convict him.

Plato's role in philosophy gives him no shortage of apologists (not to mention those pandered to with the conceit of philosophers deserving to be kings), but Popper's indictment of him is thorough and irrefutable.